 They're actually doing it. Persona 3 Remake has been announced as Persona 3 Reload, and wow. You remember back when the Final Fantasy remake got announced and all those people who were recording themselves crying? Well, this is kinda like that, but for me. I've wanted to see a remake of Persona 3 for such a long time, and they're finally doing it. If you've played the original, you would know what I'm talking about. Persona 3 is one of the greatest PS2 games of all time. This game took risks and experimented around with different gameplay mechanics, basically creating the formula that the series still follows to this very day. Persona 3 has a dark story and dynamic characters that grow alongside you. It is just a really unique experience. The game has themes that resonate with me a lot more than P4 and P5, and its gameplay requires a lot more time management planning, so it's a bit more of a hardcore JRPG experience. I always thought that if they remade this game and fixed all of the quality of life issues from the original, this would easily be the best game in the entire series. And from what we've seen, this remake looks really good. It's almost exactly what I always imagined a remake of the game would look like. The game is actually running in the Unreal Engine this time around rather than the in-house engine they developed for Persona 5, and the graphics just look so nice. It's kinda the same style as P5. We see Aigis' introduction like from the original game, and we see some exploration around town, and everything's exactly how expected it to look. The layout of DecoCon High School and Polonia Mall look almost identical to the original, and we even see some new locations, such as this kitchen right here, which wasn't in the original game, so it's confirmed that they're actually adding new events to the story. For example, we also see the screenshot of Junpei, Yukari, and the main character studying together right before their midterm exams, and this was not in the original at all. So it's not just a remake, they're adding some new content to the game. So who knows what else they might add, there's so many possibilities. There might even be social links for Junpei and Akihiko this time around. And speaking of social links, we see Kenji's first social link too, and it seems to be the same as the original, complete with the snarky dialogue choices, which is great. The dialogue seems to be retranslated slightly too, which is fine honestly, as long as they don't change this legendary scene. Look, if they remove that line from the game I will actually be pissed, I'm not even joking. We also have brand new anime cutscenes too, and from these screenshots they look really great. These are the opening cutscenes where the main character arrives at the dorm, and just knowing that the game has these scenes still puts me at ease, because it just wouldn't be the same without them. They even seem to be improving the UI and menu system with this really nice underwater pause menu, and buying weapons is much more organized than the original this time around. You can actually filter by character, which you couldn't do in the original. I will say I kinda miss how the original battle UI looked. In the footage we see here, the command buttons are all in this blue circle, which is fine, but the original game had this revolving command circle to mimic our revolver cylinder, because the game is all about guns. Little touches like those really gave the game some personality, so it's a bit disappointing that this new one doesn't look quite the same. But aside from that, the game looks really good. I'm actually very impressed. We see Igor in the Velvet Room here, and a little bit of Taurus exploration with some combat, and as you can see here you can actually control your party members this time around, unlike the original where they were AI controlled. I mean it was kinda obvious that they were gonna change this, because that was a huge problem in the original. Overall, there's a lot of opportunities from the fixed issues that the original game had, such as this one, but there's also a lot of potential for them to mess things up and remove elements that made the original game unique, and that kinda worries me. A big one being the status conditions where your party members could actually get tired or sick from either grinding or studying all night, requiring them to take a break before they're ready to fight again. This system forced to keep track of sleep schedules, bathroom breaks, and the amount of time explored in Tartarus, which was really engaging. I'm kinda worried that they're gonna remove this, because a lot of people complained about it, even though if you ask me, it's a really cool feature that adds another layer to your time management, and encourages players to use different party members, so it would be a huge shame if they caved in and changed that. I also want them to keep the social link reversals from the original game rather than scrap that. In the original P3, if you act like a jerk, say something rude or cancel a date last minute, you can actually piss off one of your friends and they won't talk to you, and you have to go through all these hoops to make up with them, which is a really cool feature because that kind of thing happens in real life. Sadly, it didn't really work that well in the game though. The dating sim feature in P3 had this mechanic where your girlfriend could actually catch you cheating on her, which sounds cool and realistic, in theory, but in actuality, it was completely broken because if you didn't hang out with them for a week, they would just assume you were cheating and confront you about it, and it was really annoying. So instead of improving this feature, they just scrapped it all together and never looked back. I would like them to at least try to implement some kind of social-incroversal system that works the way they intended originally rather than abandon it. It would be a huge shame to let these good ideas go to waste. We'll see though. So overall, I think the remake looks awesome. I'm super excited for this. Persona 3 has always stuck out to me as the game was a lot more depth to it than 4 and 5, only being held back by some poor design decisions. If they pull off this remake right by making a definitive P3 that maintains the original game's uniqueness while fixing all its little issues it had, it could very well be the best game in the entire series. If you enjoyed hearing me talk about Persona 3 Reload, you should definitely check out my in-depth thoughts on the original Persona 3 versions right here. I think you'll definitely enjoy it. I'll see you there.