Persona 5 Scramble Was Originally Planned To Be “Persona Warriors”

Last year, Atlus announced a spin-off/sequel to Persona 5 called Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers, for the Nintendo Switch.

In an interview with Dengeki PlayStation, key staff from Koei Tecmo and Atlus revealed that the game wasn’t originally planned as a continuation of Persona 5. In early stages, the game was going to be more of a “Persona Warriors”, presumably with content from other games in the franchise. However, the team later decided to focus the story more on the characters of Persona 5, which led to the game’s current form.

You can read an excerpt from the interview below, as translated via Siliconera:

Kazutoshi Sekiguchi, Koei Tecmo Director: “Actually, development [on Persona 5 Scramble] started on the same month Persona 5 released.”

Daisuke Kaneda, Atlus Director: “The scale of it all was so large that it took a while to get things moving after we began talking.”

Kazutoshi Sekiguchi: “Our company has many Persona fans, at first they proposed a ‘Persona Musou (Warriors)‘. However, in the story-filling stage, we decided to make it into something that delves deeper into the characters of Persona 5. After some twists-and-turns, it ended up becoming an action RPG that told a continuation of Persona 5.”

Daisuke Kaneda: “The entire story was put together by the Persona Team. The very first plan was proposed by Koei Tecmo. And after several meetings, we’ve made it into a story that delivers a Persona-like theme and message.”

Mumon Usuda, Atlus: “In any case, we wanted to make a fun story. The previous game, Persona 5, was more serious and we didn’t get to see many instances of the Phantom Thieves having fun. We wanted to give a different taste where the Phantom Thieves solve cases while having fun.”

Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers launches on February 20 in Japan for Switch.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.