Talent shortage almost scuppered Persona 3 Reload's The Answer

Atlus called in the Soul Hackers cavalry to save the day

It turns out Atlus wasn’t fibbing about Persona 3 Reload’s DLC epilogue The Answer after all, at least not entirely. The RPG's creative director Kazuhisa Wada told Famitsu that the team lacked resources to remake Episode Aigis and only decided to tackle the FES add-on after seeing how much enthusiasm there was for Reload (thanks, PC Gamer).

Even then, Wada said he and his team struggled to get the job done, and it only happened after Yu Hashizume, who worked on Soul Hackers 2 and Radiant Historia, stepped in as The Answer’s director. That kind of cross-team help is, apparently, not the norm at Atlus, but Wada said they had no choice this time.

“We were in such dire need of talent that we had to make an exception,” Wada said.

Persona 3 Reload cracks a million sales in its first week

Wada and Hashizume didn’t say what caused that critical shortage, though Atlus does have a lot on its plate at present. The studio, which employed roughly 320 people as of 2022, had Persona 3 Reload in production, along with Metaphor Re:Fantazio, a brand-new fantasy IP set to launch in fall 2024, and Persona 6, which is who-knows-where in production at the moment.

Which is all well and good, but it doesn’t explain why, just a few months before Reload launched – when development on Episode Aigis was well underway – Wada assured fans that Reload was a complete package with no DLC.

Episode Aigis launches sometime in fall 2024, but if you want it, you’ll have to pay $34.99 for the Reload season pass, which includes two waves of costumes and soundtrack options as well. That’s half the price of Reload itself. 

Persona 3 Reload review – A fourth try at the fourth Persona game