Persona 4
Persona 4 is a role-playing video game developed and published by Atlus for Sony's PlayStation 2, and chronologically the fifth installment in the "Persona" series, itself a part of the larger "Megami Tensei" franchise. The game was released in Japan in July 2008, North America in December 2008, and Europe in March 2009. "Persona 4" takes place in a fictional Japanese countryside and is indirectly related to earlier "Persona" games. The player-named protagonist is a high-school student who moved into the countryside from the city for a year. During his year-long stay, he becomes involved in investigating mysterious murders while harnessing the power of summoning Persona. The game features a weather forecast system with events happening on foggy days to replace the moon phase system implemented in the previous games.
Persona 4
The design of Inaba is based on a town on the outskirts of Mount Fuji. Its rural design was a source of conflict between "Persona 4"s developers, as "each staff member had their own image of a rural town", according to director Katsura Hashino. The entire staff went "location hunting" to determine Inaba's design. Inaba does not represent "a country town that has tourist attractions", but rather a non-notable, "'nowhere' place". Hashino described the town as being "for better or for worse... a run-of-the-mill town". Unlike other role-playing games, which may have large worlds for the player to explore, "Persona 4" mostly takes place in Inaba. This reduced development costs, and enabled Atlus "to expand other portions of the game" in return. A central setting also allows players to "sympathize with the daily life that passes in the game". To prevent the setting from becoming stale, the development team established a set number of in-game events to be created to "keep the game exciting". The choice of Japanese mythical figures for the characters' Personas as opposed to the Graeco-Roman deities used in earlier games was directly inspired by the new setting. The appearances of Personas were based on the characters' personalities. The design team had a good deal of creative freedom while creating Personas, because although Japanese deities have well-defined character traits, their appearances are traditionally unspecified. The Shadows were created by Hashino without much outside consultation, although he had help from female staff for female Shadow selves.