Persona 3 Reload Won’t Include Content from FES or Portable, Including the Female Protagonist

The Persona 3 remake has long been one of Atlus’ worst-kept secrets, but Persona 3 Reload was finally officially announced at today’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase. The game’s first trailer showed combat and graphics updated to resemble Persona 5, but fans noticed that something big was missing. 

Namely, Persona 3 Reload appears to miss the additional content from Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, which includes the option to play as the female protagonist. In an interview with IGN, Persona 3 Reload producer Ryota Niitsuma and chief director Kazuhisa Wada confirmed that Persona 3 Reload only features content present in the original release of Persona 3.

“So first I’d like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don’t have the FES and Portable contents included,” Niitsuma said. “We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience.”

Persona 3 originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2006. Persona 3 FES is a 2007 add-on disc with updates to the original game, while Persona 3 Portable is a PSP release that added features like directly controlling party members beyond the main character. The female protagonist also first appeared in Persona 3 Portable, but it seems players won’t have the choice to play as her in Persona 3 Reload. 

“So we can’t really go into the details at this point yet, but we have remade basically everything from scratch as for Persona 3 the original version,” Niitsuma said. “So we have newly recorded voices, we have new scenes and events. We also have both new and arranged music. We’ll be kind of releasing that information, following everything. So please look forward to that.”

“We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience.

Persona 3 Reload will be a faithful remake of the original version, which is sure to be disappointing for fans hoping to play as the female protagonist, and players who wanted to experience all of the content different versions of Persona 3 have offered over the years. 

It’s certainly possible Atlus will release another version of Persona 3 a few years from now that features the missing content — as they’ve done with Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden — but Atlus obviously isn’t saying anything about that now. 

Instead, Niitsuma and Wada are focusing on the updates added to the original version of Persona 3 that make it more in line with Persona 5.  

“So the basic concept of recreating the Persona story was that we wanted to keep everything from the original version, but update everything to the modern day,” Wada said. “So at the same level of Persona 5, basically. So we have the newest graphics, we have updated the system to the newest usability… We have the voice lines in [both Japanese and English.] We also have the text available in 13 languages. So you should be able to have similar experiences to that of Persona 5.”

Persona 3 Reload is set to launch in early 2024 on Xbox and PC, although more console announcements may be forthcoming. It’ll also be available day one on Game Pass. For more, check out everything announced at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.