Midori has confirmed we are getting some new rereleases of Persona 1 and 2, of some sort.
On Twitter, Midori answered a question about these games:
“Yes. P1 and P2 are going to receive remakes too.”
However, when she was asked to clarify if she meant remakes or remasters, she said this:
“To be safe, I will call it updated form for right now.”
We had previously reported that Midori claimed there would be a Persona 2 remake last February. So whether these releases are remasters, or even broader remakes, they have been in the works for some time. In fact, Midori being able to talk about this now may be because her sources decided that it would be OK to do so, because Atlus is planning to market and release these games soon.
As to why Midori can’t confirm if they’re remakes or remasters? For one, she may be revealing too much if she answered that. But there’s another possibility, that Atlus’ work on these titles so far doesn’t conveniently fit into either category.
Now, you may think you already know the difference between a remake and a remaster. But as this Washington Post profile, interviewing three different game studios, shows, the people making these games themselves use the two terms interchangeably when referring to the same game.
In fact, this profile also points out that video game marketing will also use terms like ports, Definitive Edition, Deluxe Edition, etc, to refer to the same kind of product. Gamers may believe they can tell these apart. But, when these games are in the development stage, the people working on them don’t really care. It is worth pointing out we ourselves refer to last year’s Dead Space as Dead Space Remake purely out of convenience, in telling it apart from the original title.
So why are we bringing this up here? Well, it’s possible Midori can’t answer that question because Atlus is somewhere in between working on these titles, and it isn’t actually clear if gamers will see it as either a remake or remaster. Atlus may not know where they will ultimately land either, and there’s a real possibility they will land somewhere in between.
Atlus themselves are somewhat notorious for having made vis-à-vis remakes and remasters of the same game, Persona 3. Some fans may refer to the 2023 release of Persona 3 Portable, and this year’s release of Persona 3 Reload as the same game, but some fans won’t feel that way.
So it’s kind of up in the air what exactly we are getting, but it’s good to know that these PlayStation originals will finally be available on modern platforms, after what feels like forever. What we really need is to get the official announcements from Atlus themselves.
