So in some videogame related news, Atlus just announced and posted a trailer for a remake of Persona 3. Pretty normal gaming news right? Yet the response I've seen on reddit and elsewhere has literally been batshit crazy.
They announced that it was gonna be a straight up remake and not include any of the portable content (Which added a female main character route). This has people I guess losing their fucking minds calling it misogynistic and "heteronormative" or other crap about how they're gonna boycott Atlus and not buy the game and yada yada yada.
Like who cares? It's a remake, they can make it however they want. Not to mention the female mc they're creaming over was only in the portable remake and never mentioned in any of the official works. Yet these people are foaming at the mouth over it? Have videogamers always been this crazy, like is a portable spinoff character from 14 years ago worth to sperg over? I just don't understand it and wonder if I'm alone in it.
I don't think you're really familiar with the Persona franchise's fanbase.
Imagine you're playing minesweeper and you click the first cell and it comes back "8", and then you click another cell and it also comes back "8".
That is Atlus's experience with the Persona fanbase. There is nothing they can say in any direction that will not piss off someone. Every installment they manage to put themselves on a hill where every possible move is downwards so their only recourse is to build the hill even higher next time around.
We can assume that a hypothetical Persona 9 will be the end of all computer gaming because it will be everything for everybody and any change will alienate half the fucking world.
The SJW angle of criticism really heated up after 5's release, which brought in a ton of mainstream attention from the twitter/tumblr-style audience.
I personally just think that a remake of a game should contain ALL of the content of the previous version(s) of the game. It isn't just the female MC that's missing in this case - it's missing EVERYTHING from the Portable edition, as well as EVERYTHING from the FES edition, which altogether includes tons of new scenes, new Personas to summon, and an entire postgame chapter. Also of note, the female MC isn't just a model swap for the male MC - there's a pretty significant plot difference towards the endgame depending on which gender you choose at the start. Anyway, point is, there's a very not-insignificant amount of content, tens of hours of content potentially, that they're just deciding to not include in the remake.
Besides, this is Atlus, so there's a very good chance that they'll end up releasing an updated version of the remake in a few years to add the content, for full price.
Edit: Also, the Persona community has been divided for years over whether P3F or P3P is the better version of Persona 3. Each version has it's own strengths and weaknesses, so it's really hard to say either one is truly the definitive version of the game. Atlus had the opportunity to finally create a truly definitive version by combining the content from the two versions... and they simply chose not to. So fuck 'em.
Not to mention that they just released P3P, and only P3P, on Steam as the only re-release of a quite rare game. Meaning the majority of people's first experience with the franchise just happened, and it was with that version.
So immediately announcing a remaster with a huge chunk of that cut out is almost asking for backlash.
Oh. It’s not going to include content from FES, either. That just seems lazy. Especially now that we run the risk of them EVENTUALLY adding all that as DLC, as if they were surprised to find out there was additional content to remake.
This is Atlas, the company that rereleases games later to have a 'definitive' edition (see: Persona 5, and then Persona 5 Royal). Everyone knows this, and they've been doing it since 3. The consoooomers still buy them both anyway. Knowing this, we can probably expect:
Release the P3 remake
Release the P3 remake with FES
Release a P3 remake with the female protagonist
Release a definitive P3 remake with all of the above
Why release one game everyone wants when you can release it 4 times, and (most of) the fans will buy it 4 times?
In their defense, Persona 3 and 4 were PS2 games where DLC wasn’t really an option. I was naive (stupid) enough to buy Persona 4, figuring the inevitable additions would be a DLC. But nope, they pulled that bullshit move of “there’s so much new material it was impossible to integrate it with DLC.”
Fucking pricks.
Plus, they could look over to Capcom and see that Monster Hunter was doing it at three times the speed they were and making bank off it.
Because most of the worst Jap business decisions can always be traced back to Capcom and then people copying them.
Sigh, guess I'll wait another 5 years to buy the Final Persona 3 Definitive FESP HD Collectors Edition.
For those wondering, the ENTIRE cast is being recast in English, not just "certain actors deemed evil by progressives."
So it's not just Vic Mignogna then.
Who, of course, is taking the classiest route possible by congratulating his replacement on getting the role.
God, Vic's awesome.
Karen Strassman would've been another issue. She appears to be conservative.
I don't think they were in the game, but Chuck Huber and Wally Wingert are also confirmed conservative.
I've never played a Persona game before.
Karen was Aigis. The robot girl and basically FACE of P3.
best girl
I have always wondered why remakes do this so often. Is it like a government agency trying to justify their budget? Generally the quality of voiceovers isn't what needs to improve. Now in cases like System Shock some of the original voice acting was atrocious and redoing everything is a good idea. For something like Dead Space why can't they literally use the same audio clips? Are people going to criticize them for that? Another one that comes to mind was Metal Gear The Twin Snakes, the remake of MGS for Gamecube. I thought the original voices were fine.
The Twin Snakes was an interesting case. From what I recall they revoiced it because when the original playstation recordings were brought to hd standards they found they could hear literally everything in the recording booths or something so it makes sense why they wanted a re-recording.
They retranslated the script so some lines were different.
Hideo Kojima has famously hated essentially every single English localization for his games. For MGS he had no sway so the US team played a bit loose with the script arguably punching it up overall and contributing to the games smash success (kojimas writing by comparison is fairly dry and matter of fact.)
There's lots of articles out there but as the series wore on and Kojima gained more influence he took more direct control over translation and voice acting, pretty much battling it out with everyone in the process.
Ah in that case you would need to redo them. You could probably get away with not bringing them to "hd standards" too and I'm not sure anyone would notice.
I agree but from what I recall and again this was years ago I read it, the Playstation I guess helped smooth over the outside noise whether it was the compression needed or something with the sound processor. When they tried moving it to the gamecube it just didn't work.
I remember royalties were an issue in the Silent Hill HD Collection, which is why Konami tried to recast everyone. Good on Guy Cihi for sacrificing his money to "do it for the art," but it was a wasted gesture given how dogshit the port was.
If I had to give the most charitable answer, I'd say its because remakes, unlike remasters, often have a need for at least some new lines. Rather for new content, new translations, or due to coding fuckups.
Which means either leaving those completely unvoiced, drawing huge attention to it, or having a new actor for only certain lines, drawing even more attention to it. All of which are bad.
Especially as I'm fairly certain they'd have to pay the original actors again for using those clips, so why bother with the trouble?
The amount of screaming over the MGS 3 remake I saw for using the same dialog leads me to believe a ton of people actually want it. That's just the screaming I came across trying to learn about the mouse cursor showing on Ground Zeroes. I haven't looked up anything specific on that remake, I'm not even sure I'm interested in it.
It could be anything from the actors now being under some union to actors being fucking dead.
I think this is better than just replacing Vic and Karen, in my opinion. Better they change everyone than just the controversial ones. (They also haven't had Fuuka's original VA since P3 Portable, and I don't think Wendee Lee fits the character...) I won't hold my breath for soundalikes, though.
It was either all of them or none of them (without explicit consent). They can't clearly take a side in sociopolitical issues, they know there's real diversity among their consumers, and the past few months have shown that a not-insignificant amount of actual consumers can and will boycott if you do stupid shit.
Considering the performance she brought to the game, I hope she hasn't had work at all since then.
How they managed to get the literal worst VA of the bunch, and made her the most talkative by making her the battle narrator, I'll never understand. Its not like this was a game where everyone was bad, everyone else is doing just fine with her noticeable standing out.
If I were to guess as an outsider on this as haven't played the Persona games, this is what happens when the crazed zombies (twitter freaks) encounter a wall (a niche Japanese game)
They've latched on to the sentiments of a few disappointed a little that this is a straight remake not an ultimate edition like Skyrim that comes with all the add ons to push their narrative as I don't see actual fans using 'hetronormative' given in one of the games you had to point what looked like a fun to your head and pull the trigger to enter a battle mode or something.
I don't know if Atlas will buckle but hopefully they just ignore it and get on with their lives.
Yeah this is the game that in battles you point a gun to your head and commit suicide to summon your demon pokémon.
Like I get it people sperg about videogames for various reasons, I've just never seen so much concentrated vitriol over the smallest thing. Like the character their losing it over was from a game from 14 years ago, so if you played the original in your teens, you'd be well in your late 20s, early 30s now. Like seeing 30 y/o's losing it over twitter and reddit just makes me not even want to play games anymore.
Just do what I do, don't involve yourself in these 'gaming communities', most of them are astroturfed anyway.
You want gaming buddies of around 3-20 guys than something that resembles a less fun clan if you want to game consistently with the same people.
To be fair to Atlus, the only reason the female protag happened at all is because they cut so much from p3 to make it portable that it became almost a visual novel so it was much less work to add another playable character than in something like p5 which would require a ton of animation and cutscene reworks as well as ton of script rewrites of the story just to make it barely function.
That definitely explains things. It's just weird to me that their foothold is a PSP release from 14 years ago. As someone who used to play a lot of import releases and japanese games for the Playstation Portable adding a female mc or other routes was bog standard for most of the releases of the time.
Which makes sense, they needed something to get people to buy re-releases or portable ports.
It was released on Steam 6 months ago alongside P5.
You know, if I want a different experience with a game, show, movie, etc than the one offered, I just go play/watch a different one.
I wish I’d realized earlier that I should have been demanding the makers of the one in front of me change everything around so it aligns with what I want.
Regarding the adult children, this is the same age group that would put their Harry Potter house on their LinkedIn profile. The characters in their media consumption is a core part of what they are. It's literal genocide to them as is every thing else that makes them less than perfectly happy.
Yeah my generation honestly worries me sometimes. It's like the girls I see my age who will post online that they're latest relationship didn't work out because they're zodiac signs or didn't match. Like you're nearing 30, I'm sure there is other reasons it didn't work out.
I have come to believe that women have always done this, but due to the internet their "woe is me, moon was in the wrong house" bullshit is on display for all to see instead of being localized, similar to other groups publicly posting their Ls and then being confused when no one wants to associate with them.
The Persona fanbase is full of a special kind of retard because alphabet people thought two characters in p4 were part of the rainbow mafia (completely missing the actual message of their character arcs as usual) which brought in a bunch of woke fans to the series because they think it gives representation when in actuality it doesn't.
That's why so many retards bitched about p5 not letting the male protag date guys, or why so many people insist that there should have been an option to make a female protag playable despite the fact that the mc being female in p5 would completely break the story and would require a crap ton more work for something only a very small percent of the fans would even give a shit about. The only reason p3p has a female protag option was because they cut back on so many features so it could run on the psp (game basically became a visual novel outside of dungeons) that they gave the female protag option to try and make up for it. Outside of crossover games she's basically almost non canon anyway.
Yes. Persona has a really fucking annoying fanbase. It's only natural when half the game is a (simplistic) dating sim where you can hook up with any and/or all of the opposite sex characters. That alone attracts shippers who kill every fandom with their garbage, particularly since a lot of those shippers (if not most of them) are fujoshi who see everything as fucking gay and vehemently insist that they be. And in this day and age, shipping and slash are now moral obligations, so all these "fans" end up being woke activists.
It doesn't help that Persona 5 is the game that put the series into the mainstream with its emphasis on outcasts and social pariahs fightin' the powah of a corrupt establishment, with a couple of the bad guys being evil male rapists. Which only further attracts the social justice crowd who seriously believe they're the noble La Resistance opposing an establishment that hates them...while the government, media, banks, tech center, and corporations are all on their side.
To be fair to P5. P4 had already gone partially mainstream and made the fanbase insufferably horrible.
You know, the game where a bunch of spoiled privileged kids get to pretend they have real problems while they mock people who have a much worse lot in life for daring to cause them trouble.
It's kind of annoying because you know they're leaving out content so they can do a special rerelease later. Atlus isn't as bad as some companies but they've still taken a few ranks in Soulless Corporate Scummery. And they've started censoring content in the west, which does not endear me to them.
But with that said:
These people have destroyed gaming and society at large, so it gives me pleasure to see them take a loss, however small and imagined.
Found your problem.
Similar to what Piroko mentioned, the Persona games (well, from 3 onward at least) attract leftists. It's similar to Danganronpa games. Any discourse on characters immediately leads to "<character> is trans/gay/bi" or "<story event> is problematic." It's unfortunate, because the Persona games are very good JRPGs.
I'm almost inclined to say that it's because the "idyllic school setting" attracts them because they had such terrible experiences... But that doesn't explain Danganronpa.
That's awesome news. I'm not necessarily opposed to the portable content, but for a long time I've just wanted an HD version of the original on PC. (it will be on PC, right?) I suspect most Persona fans are of the same opinion and what you're seeing is not representative.
If that were entirely true gamergate would not have happened. We're only still here because Japan has, by luck or xenophobia, been thus far resistant to the woke virus bringing the west to societal collapse.
Nobody wants the original. They want FES (sans The Answer).
Which is also not being included.
You don't understand.
The P3P vs P3FES debate has been ongoing for over a decade, and them releasing P3P on Steam instead of FES has basically exploded the fanbase for the better part of this year. They absolutely should not have done both of these this close together to not get this kind of treatment.
She was in Q2. Like, she was an actual incredibly good addition to the game because instead of just lazily pasting her over the Male MC they basically rewrote the entire game, including making her almost a completely different character instead of the same moody emo kid like the Male one. Not my cup of tea, but it was a good effort at the time.
If not for Atlus' retarded decision to turn FES vs P3P into a decade long battleground with her stuck as the only redeeming quality to half of that, it wouldn't have really any of these spergouts.
Like, I'll say it again. They directly stoked every problem that lead to this point, through a decade of laziness and cheapness with creating multiple "remasters" of the same game with mutually exclusive content.
İ personally liked the female mc and i was kinda sad when they are announced they not gonna include her but foaming over this and calling it misogynist its just a stupid opinion to me boycotting just for this is insane
A remake cutting out content is a lazy cashgrab.
Just play the originals, and if these shit corps want to cashgrab they could just port it all properly, but since emulation exists it's unnecessary.
Haven't played or seen a remake of any game that was actually good yet outside of some of the mainline nintendo games like pokemon.
FeMC has a different personality, interactions, and social links. So some people like her more
They should release her as DLC so Atlus can finally get hard sales numbers on people who actually give a shit about FeMC. I'll bet the number is a lot lower than people expect.
Probably would be. I remember people having a similar reaction about the female Shepard from Mass Effect 3 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey along the lines "The female character is canon and everyone agrees!!l
And when they released the stats they had, 80% of people always choose the male character.
The people who only play for FeMC is probably pretty low, but I can imagine a lot of people would absolutely do a playthrough of her for replay of the game.
Because despite being built for playing a full two times through in every game (because without a guide you almost certainly won't get the full Link completion, on top of needing to do so to reach a superboss in most games), you basically are sitting through 10+ hours of staring at the fast fowarding text to do so.
The FeMC being an option for NG+ would probably work for a lot of people in that regard.
I would agree that it is a likely case for not that many people going femc but you shouldn't argue for less content in a game.
The fanbase for Persona games is very gay, both literally and pejoratively.
Didn't Atlus confirm FeMC is an alternate universe take of P3 and not canon to the main timeline?