Persona 4 Revival is bringing a classic PS2 RPG to a new audience, and Atlus has said that it is making some tweaks to some of its characters to make them less “insensitive” than they were almost 20 years ago. In particular, Yosuke Hanamura, the protagonist’s class clown best friend, is getting a few changes in the remake. Revival will likely adjust his old homophobic behavior directed at a fellow party member named Kanji Tatsumi. However, fans have also been wondering if this might mean the remake could bring back the scrapped gay romance between Yosuke and the player from the original game. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like that’s the case, but Atlus apparently did discuss it.
In a new interview with GamesRadar, Revival producer Kazuhisa Wada said that bringing the Yosuke romance back was on the table, but Atlus decided not to because they thought they would have to add romance arcs for the rest of the boys on the team, as well. “We were thinking if we did Yosuke, we kinda have to add all the other male characters as well,” Wada said. “And if we did that, like that’s a lot of work. I don’t know if we could handle that.”
Persona has had a spotty history with queer characters that it has been gradually trying to improve upon with these remakes, having removed a notoriously transphobic scene in Persona 3 Reload and made some gay storylines more overt. Did Atlus really need to make romance arcs for all the boys to bring back the one it originally was considering? I don’t think so, though it would have inevitably received some backlash for not doing so.
Just one gay romance would have been an improvement, and Yosuke’s internalized homophobia does lay the foundation for that relationship to evolve over the course of the game. Persona 4 Revival has a lot to unravel in terms of its relationship to queer themes given some of the more controversial storylines, and I’m curious how Atlus is going to handle them, but it sounds like if there’s going to be any same-sex relationship options, it might not be until Persona 6.
If you want to see the Yosuke romance for yourself, fans have managed to use the remaining files in Persona 4 Golden to mod it into the PC version.