Persona 5 Royal Staff Interview Reveals Bonus For Players with Original Persona 5 Save (Updated)

Iyane Agossah May 8, 2019 2:56 PM EST

Persona 5 Royal also has a scene with Joker and human Morgana sleeping together.

Atlus and Sega revealed new information on Persona 5 Royal in this week’s Famitsu. The information is contained in an interview with the game’s main staff, who was also revealed for the first time with this interview.

Here are the main tidbits:

The subtitle “Royal” was coined by Atlus to show their desire to deliver a gorgeous experience to players.

The new playable content at the end of the game, between January and April, will be bigger than the new playable content they added in Persona 4 Golden. Besides the changes already revealed, the game was also made easier to play and things like experience gains were rebalanced.

Persona 5 Royal will have currently undisclosed bonuses for players with PS4 Persona 5 save data. It’s not a save import system though.

The new Assist function is an extension of the system in the original game which let you see other players’ actions on a specific day. With the Player Assist, you’ll be able to see what players did, depending on which confidants and which activities are available, and immediately fast-travel to do the same thing.

New Phantom Thieves member Kasumi has her own Confidant events. There are new Confidants characters who will be revealed later besides Kasumi and Maruki. Small new details about them were revealed too. Maruki is supposed to be a really nice adult, while Kasumi’s addition will let us see new facets of the story and characters. After we played the game, we’ll also have a new look at some of the scenes in the first trailer.

Persona 5 Royal has a scene with Joker and the new mysterious ‘hot guy’ character, who is definitely Morgana, sleeping together. The game has around 20 new BGM tracks compared to the original game.

Persona 5 Royal launches on October 31 in Japan, in 2020 in the west, on PS4. All of the above is from the usual Famitsu leaks. This article will be updated in a few hours with more information when Famitsu becomes available.

Update: Here are additional details from the interview and some screenshots

During the new January to April playable part, players will be able to freely enjoy their days, it’s not made of scripted events. All the different places in the game from Shibuya to Shinjuku and the newly added Kichijoji will be accessible. The other world will be accessible in some way too.

Persona 5 Royal’s Kichijoji was recreated as closely as possible and has many details you’ll notice if you really went there. There are places from trendy shops where young people gather to old fashioned bars. The darts game there is a proper mini-game like the batting center in the original game.

They added Maruki and made him into a really nice guy to make the game feel less like a “kids vs evil adults” situation. Personally speaking, I think the original wasn’t too bad in that aspect, it felt like some of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s anime, in a good way.

Producer Kazuhisa Wada mentioned that they were very careful with how to add Kasumi in the story. While she appears right from the beginning of the game, they made it sure to not alter the story too much and include her naturally.

When speaking about Kasumi’s design, Soejima said that she needed to look different than all Persona 5 characters for her to become the icon of Persona 5 Royal, but also needed to look similar so she doesn’t stick out. That’s also why her Phantom Thief costume is very similar to Joker’s. Parts of her design like her ponytail or the leotard of her Phantom Thief costume also points out she does rhythmic gymnastics. Soejima and the art team made plenty of new portraits and illustrations cut-ins for Persona 5 Royal.

Some of the new screenshots like the scene with Joker and Morgana sleeping together are below. I didn’t include everything as the official site should be updated soon with direct-feed versions anyway.