Why did Atlus port Persona 3 Portable to the Nintendo Switch, and not Persona 3 FES?
After a very long wait, Persona fans can now enjoy a version of Persona 3 on modern consoles,
including Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, as well as PC.
Some fans have been disappointed, though, that Atlus chose to port the slimmed-down
PSP version of the game, Persona 3 Portable, rather than the more expansive PlayStation
2 director’s cut, Persona 3 FES.
Nobody at Atlus has been forthcoming about the reason for this decision, so we did some
digging.
We looked at old interviews given by the developers at the time of P3P’s release, in an effort
to identify why they would consider this to be the must-play version of the game on modern
hardware.
One answer is: because they put a lot of work into it, and they want you to appreciate that!
Another explanation is that Persona 3 Portable was designed as the most accessible version
of the game, in an effort to make it more palateable to Persona 4 fans who wanted to
explore the series’ history.
Said project director and design director Mumon Usuda:
“After P3 and Persona 3 FES, Persona 4 was released.
We’re quite grateful for all of the attention it received, and it brought many new fans
to the series.
Seeing that response, we thought that all these new fans, as well as people who haven’t
played a Persona game before, might want to get to know the series a bit more.
P3 was a turning point in the series, and we felt that if we made a handheld console
port, many more people would be able to play it more easily.
With that in mind, we set to work.”
Persona 3 FES released less than a year after the original Persona 3, as a kind of director’s
cut.
Among other changes, its most notable inclusion is an expansive epilogue chapter, localised
into English as The Answer, which explores events after the canonical end of the game.
This epilogue is missing from Persona 3 Portable – and it’s not the only thing.
In order to cram a full PS2 game onto a PSP UMD, the developers stripped out much of the
game’s polygons and presented the bulk of the story as a visual novel.
According to Usuda, the team was woefully unprepared for the challenge of developing
for PSP, and the vast majority of the game had to be redone entirely from scratch.
He said: “When we started the project, we basically
had no experience with PSP software development.
Accordingly, we had no idea how much development would cost – we figured we’d just have
to give it a shot and work from there.
So, it ended up being more of an undertaking than we had initially imagined.
Cut this bit, change that bit…
We had never envisioned any of that when we started, but if we didn’t cut down on various
internal parts of the game, it just wouldn’t fit.
Development was quite difficult because of this.
Every step of the way we’d hit a new wall, and every time we’d have to overcome it.
… “Take the 3D character models, for instance
– if we left those as-is, they definitely wouldn’t fit.
So we halved the polygon count, and then we had to adjust the models so they didn’t
look off.
In the end, we essentially had to remake everything.”
For the development team, though, it wasn’t enough to simply recreate an approximation
of the original game in a portable form.
They wanted to add a substantial new element that would give existing fans reason to revisit
the game.
This task was assigned to Azusa Kido, a rare woman on the development team, who had originally
been responsible for Persona 3’s Social Links – the system by which the player makes
friends in the real world.
As game director and scenario writer, she reworked many of the Social Links, but the
main bulk of her work involved creating the game’s new female protagonist.
This decision came from feedback from fans, as the team strove to incorporate the desires
that players had for the series.
Usuda said: “We knew from surveys that female fans wanted
to be able to play as a female character.
There were a variety of contributing factors, and with all of them taken into account, we
decided that it was the right time to add a female protagonist.”
Designing this new player character took a lot of work.
Character designer Shigenori Soejima has explained how his first few designs for the protagonist
were rejected for appealing too much to the Male Gaze.
He said: “[Kido] said that only trying to draw a
girl that men would find cute would make her a heroine, but not necessarily a protagonist.
I suppose I made her too ideal a woman; one that appeals largely to men.
So, I read some shoujo manga, and realized that male and female protagonists have similar
designs, fundamentally.
“Male protagonists seem absent-minded and unapproachable at first, but they’re often
designed in a way where they get better and cooler when you look at them properly.
If you make the protagonist look like your ideal rather than a representation of yourself,
they end up becoming the boyfriend or prince in a shoujo manga, or the heroine in a shounen
manga.
“I learned that when there’s no space for a character to grow—regardless of their
gender—then they can’t become a protagonist because they aren’t relatable.”
At the same time, Kido has stated that the team were hesitant to add in new characters
and content simply for the sake of bulking out the game.
She said: “We wanted to make the game feel new, and
adding new characters is a critical part of that.
But we couldn’t just throw in new characters for no reason – P3 was already a complete
work, so adding new characters to the protagonist’s main friend group was out of the question.”
One element of gameplay that saw a significant reworking was the combat.
In the original Persona 3 and in Persona 3 FES, while the player can select their character’s
moves in battle, companion characters’ moves are chosen by AI.
With four party members to account for, this means the player only selects a quarter of
the team’s moves, leading to a large random element for each battle.
Katsura Hashino, who directed original Persona 3, has explained that this mechanic was not
exactly popular with players.
He said: “I think it's more fun to have the party
members controlled by their AI, so each member's characteristics and personality are on vivid
display.
There were no objections raised among the Persona 3 development team, either.
It's a completely different story, though, if the AI routines used in the game are limited;
it wasn't well received by many of the Persona 3 players.
We were on the AI-crafting side, so I guess our tolerance level was higher than that of
the players.”
Based on player feedback, Persona 4 instead allows players to control their entire party
in battle.
When then going back to work on Persona 3 again, the Portable team decided that it was
best to incorporate elements of Persona 4’s combat system into the remade game, including
the option to control the whole party, as well as some other mechanics.
Persona 3 Portable is designed to help newer Persona 4 fans feel more comfortable with
a slightly older game, and this is one of the more likely reasons why Atlus feels that
this version is the best for new players in 2023.
Of course, there is one other difference between Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable which
may have impacted this decision: the two games’ disparate sales figures.
According to charts from Persona Central, taken from the weekly sales figures from Famitsu
magazine, both Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable sold a little over 100,000 units
in their first week on sale in Japan.
After this, though, Persona 3 Portable went on to generate an additional hundred thousand
sales over time, while Persona 3 FES only managed an additional fifty thousand sales.
Including rereleases as well, Persona 3 Portable has sold over 300,000 units in Japan, making
it one of the highest selling remakes in Atlus’ catalogue.
These, then, are the most likely reasons why Persona 3 Portable was chosen over Persona
3 FES: it’s a more financially successful version of the game, with content designed
to appeal to longtime fans and newcomers alike.
The moral of the story?
Uh….
Something about not judging a book by its cover I guess.
The end.