With Persona 3 Reload out the door and Persona 4 Revival next in line, series producer Kazuhisa Wada has said remakes of the first two games will “probably” happen as well.
Developer Atlus seems to be on a mission to revisit every high-schooling, demon-mashing, double-life-simulating game it’s ever made. In 2024, the studio pulled the gun on Persona 3 Reload before starting work on Persona 4 Revival, coming next February. But Atlus may reach even further back for some new (old) source material.
In an interview with RPS, Wada said the team originally came up with the idea to remake Persona 3 and Persona 4 around the same time. The latter “had to be put” on the backburner for a while, but the intent for both was the same. “I think a remaster or remake is some kind of cultural preservation,” he said, per a translator.
Wada continued to explain that it’s Atlus’ “duty” to make sure its older games aren’t lost to time “and are still around in the modern day.” With that in mind, “Persona 1 and 2 are something we’ll probably eventually do, too.” There you have it, folks.
Persona 1 and Persona 2 are also the only mainline games in the series that aren’t readily available to buy on any modern system, making Wada’s point about “cultural preservation” even more salient here.
Regardless, I think it always made sense to begin this remake voyage with Persona 3, the game that spawned the series’ more recognisable features (social elements, dating, etc) and notably didn’t include a major antagonist that might be tricky to depict in the same way nowadays (a rumour-fuelled Hitler reincarnation).
A few years back, a prominent Sega leaker claimed that Persona 1 and 2 remakes were in the works, alongside a Persona 4 remake that hadn’t been made official at the time. It wasn’t clear how substantially different those rumoured remakes would be, however.