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
According to the game director Katsura Hashino, while "ideas [had been] thrown around earlier", development on "Persona 4" in Japan did not begin until after the release of "Persona 3". The development team consisted of the team from "Persona 3" and new hires which included fans of "Persona 3". Atlus intended to improve both the gameplay and story elements of "Persona 3" for the new game, to ensure it was not seen as a "retread" of its predecessor. Hashino said that "to accomplish that, we tried to give the players of Persona 4 a definite goal and a sense of purpose that would keep motivating them as they played through the game. The murder mystery plot was our way of doing that." The plot of "Persona 4" was "greatly inspired", according to Hashino, by mystery novelists such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Seishi Yokomizo. "Persona 4" was officially unveiled in the Japanese gaming magazine "Famitsu" in March 2008. An article in the issue detailed the game's murder mystery premise, rural setting, and new weather forecast system. The game's North American release date was announced at the 2008 Anime Expo in Los Angeles, California. Atlus would not make an add-on disc or epilogue for "Persona 4", as had been done with the "Persona 3 FES". "Persona 4" allowed players full control of characters in battle. This was due to negative comments from players about most of the player team in "Persona 3" being controlled by the game's AI. The amount of data the team ended up incorporating around school life, character relationships and spoke character dialogue was so large that there were fears it would not fit onto a single disc. The anime cutscenes were produced by Studio Hibari.