{"id":5116,"date":"2024-10-12T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-12T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldclassservers.net\/blog\/2024\/10\/12\/persona-director-reveals-the-secret-to-atlus-beloved-games\/"},"modified":"2024-10-12T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T13:30:00","slug":"persona-director-reveals-the-secret-to-atlus-beloved-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2024\/10\/12\/persona-director-reveals-the-secret-to-atlus-beloved-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Persona Director Reveals the Secret to Atlus’ Beloved Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katsura Hashino knows exactly what he wants when it comes to video games. The legendary game director, who is responsible for the modern Persona games and more recently Metaphor: ReFantazio<\/a>, believes that, in a world obsessed with pixel count and frame-rates, only one thing matters: the people who made it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want something \u2013 even if it\u2019s not complete, even if it\u2019s really rough, even if it\u2019s something really unfinished \u2013 to give me a glimpse of the humanity behind it. [I want to know] who created it and for it to give me a glimpse of the emotion that inspired it,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a philosophy that has served him well over the past 30 years and it\u2019s one of the reasons the Persona games have such a devout following. Yes, the art direction is impeccable, as is the attention to detail, even down to the UI, but it\u2019s the characters who populate this fantastical series that really make a difference. Chie, Junpei, Ann\u2026 They all feel like real people, with traits and emotions we can relate to, so much so they feel like old friends rather than characters from a video game. That\u2019s entirely intentional and it\u2019s what drives Hashino to make games \u2013 a personal approach that runs counter to some of the bigger projects out there that are required to meet the expectations of both fans and company shareholders alike.<\/p>\n

I want something \u2013 even if it\u2019s not complete, even if it\u2019s really rough, even if it\u2019s something really unfinished \u2013 to give me a glimpse of the humanity behind it.<\/p>\n

Hashino is a longtime director at Atlus, having worked on several of the company\u2019s Shin Megami Tensei games, the much-loved RPG series that merges the occult with more grounded settings. In a world dominated by \u2018traditional\u2019 Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, they\u2019re a sort of goth alternative that has steadily grown in popularity over the years. <\/p>\n

He took over the Persona series starting with Persona 3, following the departure of the previous Persona director Kouji Okada. Hashino brought over some of the darker themes from Shin Megami Tensei and mixed them with Persona\u2019s more stylish pop vibe, resulting in a vibrant anime-influenced aesthetic, set against a high school backdrop that grappled with mythic ideas like gods and demons, as well as psychology. It\u2019s a series that has established Hashino as one of gaming\u2019s most respected directors. On the eve of his latest game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, IGN sat down with Hashino to look back at his past work and what drives him to make games. <\/p>\n

Persona 3 catapulted the series into mass popularity and coincided with a renewed interest in anime in North America. However, despite its cartoon visuals there\u2019s a lot of depth to the game and, importantly, the characters, as Hashino explains: \u201cI think the gap between the kind of realism of the characters themselves and the anime aesthetic is a really interesting and important part of the game. You might first look and see these very anime-style characters and this anime-style world, but then might be surprised and interested to see there\u2019s a very real [world] underpinning to them. Looking beyond the anime and seeing the realism is really a wonderful part of our games.\u201d<\/p>\n

I feel like if you have these super highly polished games that look like they were designed by a bunch of people in a CEO boardroom, that doesn\u2019t really excited me<\/p>\n

This realism \u2013 the effort Hashino and his team goes to, to ensure every character feels real \u2013 is what drives every decision in the design process, from broad ideas to specific dialogue, as Hasino explains: \u201cThere\u2019s this little girl named Nanako [in Persona 4] who\u2019s in elementary school. When we were first writing her dialogue, we wrote [it] to be really, really cute. But then we took a step back and thought, \u2018Wait a minute, all of her lines are so cute and they\u2019re so well done that it doesn\u2019t feel like any actual human girl would [talk like that] at that age\u2019. It just felt like too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than lean into the fact Nanako is a video game character and thus might have dialogue that doesn\u2019t sound truly authentic, Hashino and his team went back to the writers\u2019 room. \u201cWe started cutting back on those overly cutesy dialogues and tried to root it in reality instead. So even though Persona 4 is a modern fantasy game, we wanted it to feel closer to something that could be happening next door to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing that becomes clear when speaking with Hashino is the love he has for the well-being of the characters in his games. When discussing his favorite moment in Persona 5, he tells us it\u2019s when the cast of characters are able to hang out in the retro-style cafe in Shibuya that the Phantom Thieves make their hideout.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Persona 5, a lot of the characters don\u2019t really have a place where they feel safe,\u201d Hashino explains. \u201cSo I wanted to find a place where they can go and just really have that sense of security. And in Shibuya [a neighborhood in Tokyo] it\u2019s really hard to find that location. There\u2019s lots of roads, lots of corridors, but there\u2019s not really a place where [you think], \u2018Okay, you guys can just sit here and chill out and just use it as your base\u2019. Finding a place [where] they\u2019d be welcome is really difficult. So for the characters in Persona 5, I was trying to give them a place where they would<\/em> be welcome. That\u2019s when I came up with the idea of what we call in Japan a junkissa<\/em>, which is an old-style cafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Hashino\u2019s love for the characters he creates is something that\u2019s echoed by fans, and even though Metaphor: ReFantazio steps away from the familiar Persona setting \u2013 it\u2019s set in a new, fantasy world rather than Tokyo \u2013 it has a lot in common with the games he\u2019s made before. Similarly, the characters you\u2019ll meet in Metaphor, despite being different from the Phantom Thieves we\u2019re familiar with, are faced with many of the same emotional pressures such as prejudice, fear, and anxiety.<\/p>\n

\u201cMetaphor is a game where the characters are around teenage age, but they\u2019re not facing [traditional] teenager problems,\u201d Hashino says, inferring that the characters you meet will struggle with a lot more than typical teen drama like peer pressure and romance. \u201cThey\u2019re facing anxiety and all these other big things that affect everybody, no matter who they are, where they are, or how old they are.\u201d So while Metaphor: ReFantazio presents a new world with new characters, many of its themes can be found in Hashino\u2019s other games.<\/p>\n

Indeed, whether it\u2019s Persona, Shin Megami Tensei or Metaphor, getting under the skin of each character is core to the experience. It\u2019s something Hashino believes comes from the people who make the games, and that he prefers projects in which you can see a developer\u2019s true self: \u201cI feel like if you have these super highly polished games that look like they were designed by a bunch of people in a CEO boardroom, that doesn\u2019t really excited me \u2014 it doesn\u2019t really interest me\u201d, he admits, bluntly. \u201cBut when I see these sorts of games [which reveal a little about the people that made them], it really fills me with the motivation to keep developing,\u201d he says. \u201cThat these artists, these creatives, had something they really wanted to say is where I get all of my inspiration from, and the drive to continue to be creative myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him <\/em>@lawoftd<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katsura Hashino knows exactly what he wants when it comes to video games. The legendary game director, who is responsible for the modern Persona games and more recently Metaphor: ReFantazio, believes that, in a world obsessed with pixel count and frame-rates, only one thing matters: the people who made it. \u201cI want something \u2013 even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPersona Director Reveals the Secret to Atlus' Beloved Games - Next Level News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stay on top of the gaming world with Next Level News. 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