Persona 3 remake won't include later edition's female lead, extra content
UPDATE: Some extra content may be included, producer suggests.
UPDATE 13/6/23: Persona 3 Reload producer Ryota Niitsuma has suggested that some additions from Persona 3's extended edition FES will be included in Reload, via an interview with Famitsu.
However, as previously stated, this will not include FES' epilogue, nor the female protagonist and story expansions from Portable.
"Persona 3 Reload started out as a project to remake the original release of Persona 3 for current platforms," Niitsuma said. "This means the continuation to the main story added in FES and the female protagonist added in [Persona 3] Portable are not included.
"However, this doesn't mean that additions included in FES to the main story are not included in Reload."
Exactly what will be included, however, remains to be seen. As well as the epilogue, FES added a few more minor changes, including a hard mode plus a few new quests and costumes, as well as a revamp of the game's Naganaki shrine.
ORIGINAL STORY 12/6/23: Persona 3 Reload, the newly announced remake of the original game, won't include extra content from other versions.
Persona 3 was re-released as Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable: the former included a new playable epilogue, while the latter included a new female protagonist, the ability to directly control party members, and other major changes.
However, this won't be included in Reload as the development team focus on "recreating the Persona 3 experience".
"So first I'd like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don't have the FES and Portable contents included," producer Ryota Niitsuma told IGN. "We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience."
He continued: "So we can't really go into the details at this point yet, but we have remade basically everything from scratch as for Persona 3 the original version.
"So we have newly recorded voices, we have new scenes and events. We also have both new and arranged music. We'll be kind of releasing that information, following everything. So please look forward to that."
Fans have long-debated the merits of each version of Persona 3, so it will likely be disappointing for some that Reload won't include everything from all previous versions.
Instead, the aim is to bring the game in-line with advancements made in Persona 5.
"So the basic concept of recreating the Persona story was that we wanted to keep everything from the original version, but update everything to the modern day," said chief director Kazuhisa Wada.
"So at the same level of Persona 5, basically. So we have the newest graphics, we have updated the system to the newest usability... We have the voice lines in [both Japanese and English.] We also have the text available in 13 languages. So you should be able to have similar experiences to that of Persona 5."
Persona 3 Reload was announced at the Xbox Games Showcase, though details leaked several days earlier.
Atlus also revealed the next game from the Persona creators: Metaphor ReFantazio.