Ohhhh boy, you guys. Toooooonnnnns of info just got released after months of waiting and waiting.
Atlus hosted a livestream earlier to announce more information about Persona 5. The whole event was themed around the "phantom thieves" who are the protagonists of the game coming to "steal" Tokyo Tower. I managed to find a user on Hitbox who was mirroring the livestream in her channel and providing rough translations. After about a half hour of watching fake reporters feign shock and suspense, we finally got the goods.
First, we got a brand new trailer, chock-full of info. Tons of new characters, right off the bat. There is a brunette girl dressed like a knight, riding a sort of motorcycle, a long-haired computer hacker girl who serves as the dungeon navigator (who rides around in a spaceship-shaped Persona), and a "pretty girl thief" who dresses like the Scarlet Pimpernel and has a finishing attack involving her sitting down at a table to drink tea. There are glimpses of a fourth male character, but nothing on him yet. No names or other info for the girls beyond what we see in the trailer.
Lots of gameplay footage shown, plus many of the bosses. The mechanics look very stylish; there's a "baton toss" that you can use that looks like one character attacking an enemy and then asking a teammate to deliver a follow-up attack. The dungeons look amazing. No new dungeons shown, just more footage of the ones already revealed.
Second, the Japanese release date will be September 15th, which oddly does fall into their estimate of "summer 2016." The fall equinox isn't until September 22nd this year, so it's just...very late summer. There is, as yet, no release date beyond "2016" for North America. Even if Atlus is generous and gives us a simultaneous release with Japan, we won't get it until the last quarter of the year. I was really hoping to play this during the summer (I was secretly hoping that Japan would get this in, say, late June/early July and that we would get a fast localization for maybe August. Oh well.)
I'll admit, I'm grumpy about this because I wanted to play it this summer. C'mon, Atlus! Autumn is a busy time at work! Don't make me use by vacation time then!
The livestream ended with an announcement that more information would be revealed at E3--which says to me that this has something to do with the localization outside Japan. After all, E3 is an American event, so I would be shocked to see Japan-only news. So now we wait until the middle of June to get what I expect will be a NA release date.
Whew. That's it for right now, although I might post again later because I know that I'm forgetting some stuff. Miss Scarlett, signing out for now!
