New characters "rougher around the edges" than their predecessors. "On the run for doing what they think is right."

Following its debut gameplay trailer at Persona Super Live, Persona 5 director and producer Katsura Hashino has taken to both the official Persona website and Weekly Famitsu to discuss more about the upcoming RPG sequel.

Get the details below.

Weekly Famitsu Interview

This is an excerpt from an interview in next week’s issue of Weekly Famitsu. Stay tuned to next week for more information about the protagonist and his persona, his friends, and the game’s systems.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything new. How’s development coming along? Hashino: Things are really coming along and we’re starting to hit our quality benchmarks in terms of what goes into the game, so at this stage, we’re hard at work building the game and fleshing it out. We’re just as eager to bring this game out finally so they can enjoy what all we’ve been working on and day by day, we’re getting closer to the finish line. It’s just going to be a little while longer now before it’s here. During our last interview, I remember you talking about how you wanted this game to depict things like the cathartic feelings that come from freeing yourself of your own chains in life and being ale to yell out to the world you’re free. Now that we know more about the game, I’d like to ask you to elucidate about the themes of the game again. Hashino: I don’t think it’s a stretch to say in this day and age that there are a lot of people out there who feel like they aren’t moving forward, that they have no future, and carry a lot of weight on their shoulders every day. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, emotionally speaking; on the one hand, they might not be keen on living by the same rules and values that defined previous generations, while still lacking the will to go out and actually break those barriers down themselves. That dark side of society is a central pillar to the game we want to make with Persona 5. In the midst of all that, though, you got these high school punks who are trying to bite back at a world that’s trying to pin them down. If our game can give people a little courage to keep going in their day to day lives, to face things head on and do something with themselves, then we’ll have done our jobs here. But the main characters… are they thieves!? Hashino: It’s interesting you refer to them in that way specifically because one of the things that inspired us to make this question to begin with was how, say, a classic, iconic thief in the vein of Lupin III might win the hearts and minds of people in today’s day and age if they were out running around today. There have been a lot of books and films over the years that explored the sorts of lives that thieves live and how they’re able to shake up the world with what many would perceive to be sheer brazenness, but that’s not ground that’s very well covered in games and we intend to rectify that. We want our players to be able to empathize with these characters and enjoy seeing what they get themselves into and we’re giving it everything we’ve got to make sure that comes through loud and clear in the final game.

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