It’s my own fault. I’m such a sucker. When Atlus confirmed that Persona 5 would be coming out in 2015, I believed them – and then I was burned. “That’s the last delay,” I thought. They said the game would be ready by spring / summer 2016, and that seemed perfectly reasonable. And then there was silence. I wasn’t worried; there was an impending Persona 5 livestream out of Japan and I just knew that a global release date would be revealed. Well, the stream came and went and Japan got a September release date, but everything was quiet in the West. “E3 is going to blow my mind,” I thought. Atlus was keeping all the aces up its sleeve and was going to blow our minds at E3 with a September release date and killer special edition.
Imagine my shock waking up one random, pre-E3 morning to discover that we finally had a Persona 5 release date. Usually it takes me a solid 30 minutes to get out of bed and fully wake up, but as soon as I saw the headline in my notifications I bolted upright. Tensely, anxiously, I hovered my thumb over the headline until I finally mustered the courage to tap it and read what, deep down, I feared would happen all along. Persona 5 is still over eight months away, and will be releasing February 14, 2017.
There have been two responses to this news by two different classes of people. The first class of people are responding with amused disbelief that this should be such a big deal. “Delays happen all of the time,” they say. “We knew this would happen.” “What did you expect?” These people are Muggles. They don’t understand the magic that is Persona . They clearly haven’t caught the bug. They don’t understand the second class of people because they don’t share our passion for the hip, sexy, spooky, goofy, grind-fest-soap-opera.
The true Atlus faithful, the second class of people, are looking at their PS4s and thinking about packing it up until winter comes. So much wind has left my sails, dude. The first poster for this game originally teased a winter 2014 release. 2014! The last Persona game came out in 2008 for the PS2. That’s a huge gap, and I think we have some right to be pissed at Atlus for taking so freaking long. Did we really need four Persona 4 spin-off games in the meantime? Could that time and those resources have maybe, possibly been allocated elsewhere? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
You know the worst part about it? You want to know the most disgusting twist in this sad story? Before my stomach even had time to sink in disappointment I was on Amazon placing my pre-order for the special edition. I was so paranoid that it would sell out quickly that I didn’t even have time to properly mourn the delay. I have no regrets, and I know when that box shows up at my door I’ll forget this ridiculous two-and-a-half year delay and give Atlus my money when they announce a Catherine remaster due out by summer 2017.
Image Credit: Daniel MacGregor