Persona 5 Royal will be removing homophobic scenes for western release, confirms video game developer Atlus.
Speaking to IGN, Atlus Communications Manager, Ari Advincula, explained that a series of scenes — involving Ryuji and two gay characters — will be changed to no longer show homosexuality in a “negative light”.
Advincula continues to speak about localisation efforts involving Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal.
Speaking to GameSpot, Senior Project Manager, Yu Namba, explained that the two male characters seen with Ryuji were “portrayed [as]… predatory”.We actually were able to go through some of the lines that players may not have received as well, look at that feedback, and then [update it] for the current generation. Royal was a chance to make it right.
I think the community had a very strong response to that, and you saw that, and that was definitely altered for Royal.
Persona 5 Royal heads to PS4 on March 13.As a localisation manager, I really cannot do too much about what has already made it into the game. Our team members felt a little bit of awkwardness about when working on it. And with Royal, we were determined to see if we could do something about it at least localisation-wise.