It’s been well over six years since Atlus released Persona 3 for PlayStation 2, and since then, it has been known for being the title that expanded the popularity of the franchise in both Japan and the west. In an old blog post, series director Katsura Hashino shared a look at what the game looked like in its prototype stage.

According to Hashino, a big part in the development of Persona 3 was the change of “game rules,” starting with the battle encounters.

Above is a look at a video showing what Persona 3’s field and battle encounter looked like in the prototype stage of its development.

Hashino, who had forgotten what it looked like, notes that the battles happened directly on the field in seamless fashion, without going into a different area or scene for the fight.

Due to problems related to memory, the development team decided to go with a change that involved a more orthodox battle scene change, as seen above. As you may have noticed, the shading in the backgrounds have also significantly changed after they decided to go easier on the memory usage.

Hashino says that this version looks a bit closer to the finished product, and mentions that there are many things like this that goes on during the development of their games. Hmm… perhaps we’ll see Persona 3’s original battle system concept finally realized in Persona 5?

