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This weekend, footage surfaced online purporting to be leaked from an as-yet-unannounced remake of Atlus' PlayStation release Revelations: Persona, the very first title in the beloved Shin Megami Tensei sub-series.
The two-minute video contains footage of reimagined narrative cutscenes, world exploration, and in-game battles, featuring recognisable scenes and characters from the underplayed, underreleased 1996 RPG. While the video has a certain degree of professional style - enough to pass as legitimate - various shortcuts have been taken in its execution, including reusing assets and animations from other Persona remakes, such as 2024's Persona 3 Reload.
While we live in a timeline where hoaxes can look more authentic than ever, the nature of the video - from its replicated assets to its montage of Persona's three key gameplay sequences - makes it seem much more likely that this is neither a fake nor leaked remake footage, but an internal concept video, likely commissioned to show the money makers what could be done with a Revelations: Persona remake, rather than what definitely is being done. A demo, of sorts, to convince Sega to hit the big green button
Revelations: Persona, originally titled Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, was a spin-off release to SMT, and birthed many of the elements that would become typical of the Persona series, including the academic settings, a selection of students afforded powers unbeknownst to the outside world, and themes revolving around the Tarot, social issues among juveniles, and the duality of man - represented by the heroes and their awakened "second personalities", or "personas".
SMT: Persona would receive a modest release in Western territories, and was later rereleased for PlayStation Portable (PSP) in 2009, following the immense success of PS2 releases Persona 3 (2006) and Persona 4 (2008). Given that both of these titles have received modern-gen remakes in recent years (with Persona 4 Revival hitting the scene early next year), it stands to reason that Atlus, a publisher never afraid of squeezing every last buck out of its properties, might be courting the idea of remastering the first two titles in the series.
Again, there is no evidence yet that this video is anything more than an internal concept, or even authentic. But with Persona 4 Revival incoming, and the recently revealed Persona 6 expected to be some years away... Maybe something has to fill the gap in the shareholder reports.
Whatever is on the books, a heads-up to Atlus: You don't have to stylistically convert every game in the series into P5.