What I will be talking about regards comments made by the game's director, Katsura Hashino, during a recent interview posted onto Waypoint. In the interview, Hashino was questioned on a wide variety of topics related to the game, but his comments on the lack of a gender option in the game were most discouraging. In Persona 3 Portable, appropriately enough the port of the third title on the Playstation Portable, the player was given an option to play the original male main character or a new female main character. The changes were widespread. Certain plot details changed; a huge variety of Social Links, an in-game system of measuring your interpersonal relationships, were switched to account for the gender difference; and of course there were new animations and voice acting to accompany the change. It made many hopeful that similar changes would occur in later games. Unfortunately, Hashino made it clear, both in action and in words, that this would not be the case.
While the question was being asked, Hashino also elucidated the reasoning behind the option never being added to Persona 4. His reasoning was...perplexing, at best:"Every time the development on a new Persona game starts, this subject always comes up at the very beginning," Hashino tells me. "When thinking about how much work goes into accomplishing such a feat, it's a huge amount. Honestly, to put that option into the game, we'd have to cut out other things to compensate for the workload, and every time that's the situation we'll basically say, 'it's not worth it'."
" . . . With Persona 4, though, we needed the character to come from a big city to a small country town to be the driving force of the story, and it seemed more natural for a male character to fulfill that role. There are story aspects to this decision, as well."First of all, speaking as a huge fan of Persona 4, I can't think of any "story aspect" to the game that made a male main character important or necessary. As for the move from a big city to a small country town...surely Hashino doesn't think there aren't any girls who have gone through this?
Back to Persona 5, however, the idea of a female main character being "impossible" strikes me as silly. It's almost amazing that this argument is being made; Remember when Assassin's Creed: Unity got flak for claiming it would have doubled the amount of work the animators had to do? Remember people from other companies, such as Naughty Dog and former BioWare animator Jonathan Cooper estimating it would actually take perhaps two days? He details his reasoning here, and even specifically notes it's an issue of planning over any sort of technical or resource limitation. That was nearly three years ago. And here we have another company talking about the work for a female option like an entire team of animators would be hunched over their computers for years.
"Now now," I hear you cry, "There's story considerations as well! There would need to be differences in some dialog for male and female main characters!" Yes, absolutely. Some of the dialog would need to be rewritten. Specifically, given that Persona 5 has disappointingly continued to not allow any queer relationships in the game, any references to a romantic attraction towards or from another female character would need to be altered. Similarly, romantic options would need to be added for the male characters in the game. Again, I'm not going to say that I know, for certain, that this would be a simple task. Writing romantic dialog is, I imagine, a different thing from writing typical dialog which requires looking at a character in a particular way. But, much like the animating, I can't imagine it's some hellish nightmare of writing. I can't see a writer on Persona 5 slaving away at it night after night because it's such an impossible task.
Hashino's claim seems to be that the team didn't have the resources to make a female main character option. One thing I'd like to point out before continuing on: This game was originally scheduled to release in 2014. They had the resources to develop it for 2 and a half years past their original release window...but not for a female main character?
What this all boils down to, and what it has always boiled down to, is that Hashino doesn't care. He doesn't care about any portion of the audience that would want a female option. He doesn't care about how much it would mean for a title in a series as popular as Persona is (in Japan, at least) to let you play as a woman. He believes that it's unnecessary, so it's more important to have a special animation for one of your party members to be visibly uncomfortable with a revealing outfit they're obliged to wear. To be fair, I imagine that's an opinion that a fair amount of the team share. But he still has the final say, and he just didn't care.
I appreciate the work Hashino has done; Again, I'm really enjoying Persona 5 so far and I'm a huge fan of Persona 4, another game he directed. But to hear "it would have been too much work" as an excuse again after so much criticism was levied against other games for it is disheartening. Hashino says that, after Persona 5, he's hoping to move on to other series at Atlus, specifically the fantasy RPG announced late last year. I sincerely hope that, whoever takes over the franchise from here is more willing to listen to those asking for a gender option. Or, at least, they give a better reason for it.
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