Developers at Atlus on Persona 3 Reload have explained why the female protagonist option from Persona 3 Portable wasn’t included with this new remake. With P3R now set to add The Answer from Persona 3 FES as DLC later in 2024, this makes Reload a near-content complete reimagining of the previous Persona 3 titles. The only omission happens to be the female main character, which is something that was only ever seen in Persona 3 Portable. Now, Atlus itself has provided a reason behind this exclusion while shooting down the notion of it ever coming to P3R in the future.ย
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Speaking to Persona Central, Kazuhisa Wada, the series producer for Persona, said that the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable is something that will never come to Persona 3 Reload. Wada said that those at Atlus considered the option, but said that it would have been far too much work to implement. Given that the inclusion of a second main character would have required large swaths of P3R to be re-written and re-recorded, it makes some sense why this decision was made.
“It pains me to say this… but unfortunately there is no chance of including the female protagonist,” said Persona series producer Kazuhisa Wada. “Of course we also considered plans to include her, but the hurdles were too high. It was expected to take a long development period and would have cost several times more thanย Episode Aigis.ย Additionally, as the Persona Team, we have a mission to not only work on remakes, but also on ‘completely new works.’ Our staff members are working in unison towards future developments you can look forward to, so we appreciate your understanding.”
Speaking of those “new works”, Atlus is currently in the process of finalizing its development on Metaphor: ReFantazio. This new IP from the Japanese studio is set to release later this year and, based on what we’ve seen so far, looks to have a lot of the same DNA of the Persona series. Further down the road, it’s expected that Atlus will also eventually release Persona 6, but this entry in the franchise has yet to be formally revealed.ย