When you have a franchise go beyond a certain timeframe or number of titles, the fanbase soon starts to weigh in on things that they feel future titles should have. Sometimes, it can be a simple graphics improvement or adding new gameplay features like multiplayer or an open-world setting. It truly depends on the game. For the upcoming Persona 6 by Atlus, gamers have plenty of ideas on what they’d like to see. Yet, one of the more dominant suggestions is a return to having both male and female protagonists, which is something that has been missing in the last few titles and remakes.
At first, the franchise had dual male and female protagonists. Then, when the series “rebooted” with the third entry, it and its two subsequent mainline sequels had male protagonists only. The 3rd title did get a female protagonist added on via an “upgraded” version, but she was removed via the recent 2024 remake.
During a special Q&A that Famitsu picked up on, producer Kazuhisa Wada gave a…unique…reason for why there haven’t been female protagonists in the RPG series lately:
“For high school students of similar ages, it seems like female students tend to have a higher mental age than male students. To better depict the themes of growth, the developers decided that a male student as the protagonist would fit better.”
That’s…a very curious reason for doing things, especially when you consider the actions and “mental growth” of certain female characters within the past three mainline titles. Futaba, for example, had to change her entire lifestyle to come out of the shell she put herself in. Chie had some serious issues to deal with despite being an incredible fighter, and Ann had one of the most traumatic introductions in the series’ history due to the harassment she suffered from a teacher, which almost led to the suicide of her friend.
Now, to be fair, Wada also noted that “the team doesn’t think that adults or women as protagonists aren’t a possibility to consider.”
So, it’s possible we could get a female protagonist in the future. Or, at the very least, we could get the option of playing a female protagonist. One has to wonder if this is also a “cultural thing,” with Japan being known for all sorts of stories that feature male protagonists getting “harems,” which are an option in-game, including possibly Persona 6, even if they do backfire on players in the end.
