Atlus’ has shared the reason for why it replaced the original voice cast for Persona 4 Revival and some things aren’t quite lining up. In an interview with Gamesradar, Kazuhisa Wada, the game’s director, talked about how difficult it was trying to nail down the original cast, many of whom have become literal voice-acting royalty in the nearly two decades since the game’s original release. “There were quite a few people who we weren’t able to get,” Wada told Gamesradar. “So we’re like, ‘OK, I guess we have to kind of once again roll up our sleeves. Alright, let’s start over. Let’s get a whole new cast in and let’s do our best.’”
However, last year several members of the original voice cast posted on social media to say their attempts to participate in the remake were rebuffed or they were simply not contacted by Atlus at all. Yuri Lowenthal, known for his numerous video game and animation voice acting roles including Peter Parker in Insomniac’s Spider-Man, accidentally confirmed the existence of the Persona 4 remake by revealing he’d “begged” Atlus to let him reprise his role as Yosuke, only to be denied. In a now-deleted Bluesky post the actor wrote,
“And for those who keep asking, no, I will not be returning as Yosuke for the Persona 4 remake. I asked. Maybe I even begged, but they don’t want me to come back.”
Amanda Winn Lee and Erin Fitzgerald, who voiced Yukiko and Chie in the original, respectively, also said Atlus did not ask them to come back.
Since, I’ve had several people ask me: No, I wasn’t asked to voice Yukiko in the P4 remake
— Amanda Winn Lee (@amandawinnlee) May 30, 2025
That’s awkward and unfortunate. A lot of the actors playing members of the investigation squad have exploded in popularity since the original game’s release. And yeah, going down that cast list which includes Johnny Yong Bosch, Troy Baker, Yuri Lowenthal, Laura Bailey, and more—sheesh. It’s likely that trying to keep costs down played as big a role in recasting the actors as simple availability issues. It’s also not like the roles are inviolate, either, with many OG cast members like Troy Baker and Laura Bailey being replaced by other actors (specifically Matt Mercer and Ashley Burch, who themselves later became huge nerd household names) in later Persona 4 spinoffs.
In the interview, Wada said that he respected “the work that the original cast did,” which might mean that Atlus thought it’d be better to have none of them if the studio couldn’t have all of them. But if it’s a matter of respect for the original cast, and many members of said cast voiced their willingness to return, it seems like there’s more than just “respect” behind this decision.
