During the CEDEC + KYUSHU 2024 conference, Persona series creative producer Kazuhisa Wada explained the reasons behind choosing a male protagonist for the Persona series, as well as why the cast is mostly students. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
During the Q&A section of a talk focused on the past and present of the Persona series, Wada was asked how much freedom he has during the planning stage regarding the main protagonist in each Persona game, as well as what was the reason for deciding to make a cast of mainly students and a male character for the protagonist for the latest entries in the series.
In response, Wada said that games in the Persona series are coming-of-age stories focused on growing up, and the most effective setting for those kinds of stories are of students on the verge of entering adulthood. Wada added that student life is an almost universal common experience and people can easily identify themselves with it.
As for the gender of the protagonist, Wada said that the choice is related to maturity and mental age. For high school students of similar ages, it seems like female students tend to have a higher mental age than male students, Wada continued. To better depict the themes of growth, the developers decided that a male student as the protagonist would fit better. However, Wada insisted that the team doesn’t think that adults or women as protagonists aren’t a possibility to consider.
The CEDEC + KYUSHU 2024 conference was held on November 23, 2024 and new information about some of the talks by the attending game developers have started to come out. In past years of the event, there have been talks offering details about how character lighting is handled in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 or details about Dark Souls boss arenas.
Published: Dec 13, 2024 06:00 pm