“How do you make a video game stand out from the crowd?” That is a question that many game dev teams have struggled to answer over the years, and we mean that literally. Anyone can have an idea of what a video game should be, but if you don’t implement it right, it’ll be D.O.A., as we’ve seen many times over the past several months and years. In the case of Atlus, they had a niche thing going with its RPGs, but things didn’t hit the mainstream until they went full tilt with Persona 5. They imbued it with a style all its own, and that included going over the top with its menus.
That might sound like an “odd flex” to state, that the team made “the best menus ever for a video game,” and yet, that’s what a lot of people remember about the game. Whether it’s the main menu screen where you see the characters in silhouette form or you go to the in-game menus where things are constantly shifting around to an almost cartoonish effect, it really stands out. In fact, it stood out so well that Atlus started putting those kinds of menus in certain remakes and in the upcoming Metaphor ReFantazio title.
However, Persona director Katsura Hashino admitted that while the menu screens may seem beautiful, they come at a serious cost to the team. He noted to The Verge:
“In general, the way most game developers make UI is very simple. That’s what we try to do as well — we try to keep things simple, practical, and usable. But maybe the reason that we’ve achieved both [functionality and beauty] is that we have unique designs that we make for each and every menu. This is actually really annoying to do. We have separate programs running for each of them as well. Whether it’s the shop menu or the main menu, when you open them up there’s a whole separate program running and a separate design that goes into making it. It takes a lot of time.”
When you look at all the menus and how they all appear unique, or are even animated, that makes sense. Not to mention, given there are so many menus, there are a lot of different ideas you have to come up with and then render to ensure that things look a “certain way.”
Let this be a lesson to you all. Just because something looks amazing and creative, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a pain in the butt to create.
