Bad news for devotees of Persona 4's iconic fuckboy Yosuke Hanamura: Yuri Lowenthal has announced on Bluesky that, despite his best efforts, he won't be returning to the role for the Persona 4 Remake.
Also, I guess there's a Persona 4 Remake?
read "For those who keep asking, no, I will not be returning as Yosuke for the Persona 4 remake." It doesn't sound like he's too thrilled about that, adding "I asked. Maybe I even begged, but they don’t want me to come back."
Which is notable on several levels, isn't it? Firstly, that—although it's one of the games industry's worst-kept secrets—this is the first we've got anything like official confirmation that Atlus truly is cooking a remake of Persona 4 to follow up last year's remake [[link]] of Persona 3.
That's not a surprise: in Atlus' history right up until in Atlus' history. Why wouldn't the studio want more results like that? But I'm gonna go ahead and guess a peevish tweet from the original game's voice actor wasn't exactly how Sega and co wanted the P4 remake unveiled.
It is a tad surprising that Atlus is determined to replace Lowenthal, though. Persona 3 Reload had an all-new voice cast, sure, but some of that game's OG acting wasn't so great and one of its members had become embroiled in a sexual harassment case in the intervening years. P4's voice cast was a lot stronger altogether (though the game's Vita re-release did swap out the original VA for Chie Satonaka), so you might think Atlus would be more open to bringing some of them back. I guess the studio is set on getting younger talent in.
I've reached out to Sega—Atlus' parent company—to ask about that, and I'll update this piece if I hear back. Interestingly, although this has all the hallmarks of a tweet that gets hastily deleted and memory-holed, it's still up at time of writing, which makes it seem like Lowenthal is very deliberately thumbing his nose at Atlus. I can't imagine he hasn't noticed all the replies and quote-tweets pointing out [[link]] he just leaked the game's existence.
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For now, though, I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that Atlus almost certainly is making a P4 remake and that [[link]] the studio is starting the whole thing with a clean slate. How do I feel about that? Well, I can't say it feels as necessary as a P3 (or P1/P2) remake did, but I won't pretend some part of me doesn't want to galactic punt another tank.