Eh. Hashino said fans of 3 and 4 would "feel right at home" with 5. Doubt it'll be that big a change, at least to the core game.
I agree. The only mainstays I am anticipating are the Calender System and Slinks in some form. I think the battle system, dungeons, time spent doing activities, and the velvet room will change drastically. I also believe character portraits will be removed altogether, but this is just my opinion, and it's probably wrong
I'm not sure it could be, and it would fine with me. I just feel 5 will be a pretty big change. All we can do is wait and see though.
But I've seen a lot of people here and elsewhere quote that line in particular at face value, so here's what he originally said first in Japanese so any other Japanese speakers in the thread can know I'm not making things up with respect to what I have to say next:Interesting, thanks for the clarification! It'll be super exciting to see what he meant when they finally show the game.Be careful quoting the semantics of my translation since I'm not a very literal person as a translator at all.
Here's an alternate translation of what he said in a more literal sense: "There's something to be said for developing the game such that players who liked P3 and P4 can come into this without feeling out of their element and can just readily enjoy this new game. Hopefully those fans can rest assured that we have them in mind."
The key phrase in the original Japanese is 「違和感なく」, literally "without feeling something off" or something along those lines. You'll have to take me at my word at this point, but the way Hashino words it in Japanese indicates less to me that he and his team are interested in a complete mechanical and tonal retread of P3 and P4 so much as just making a game where people who got into the series through those games can basically look at 5 and recognize it as a Persona game in its own right.
The big point about that Hashino interview that I maybe should have made more clear when I initially posted my translation was that in terms of the back-and-forth and how Hashino articulates his answers, it was very much so a piece that was originally designed for Japanese consumption. The language just has mechanics embedded within it where it's okay to not explicitly express everything you mean to say when you have a reasonable assumption that your audience is already aware of the basic context and cultural nuances informing the content of what's being spoken. As a translator, I don't think you can do Hashino's personality and his deliberately substantial, but ambiguous answers justice by translating it literally because he wants you to try and read things between the lines of things that he both says out loud and remains quiet on. And try as I might have to make his answers play more naturally in English, it's hard to get away from the fact that English doesn't share those same conventions about subtlety or silently understood subjects, so a lot of people who aren't necessarily informed into those differences approach that interview as though it was always meant to consumed by them from the start under their cultural expectations when it wasn't at all. I'm not faulting people at all who take who my answers overly literally since it's just a natural way to respond to that content in general if you haven't been brought up around Japanese conversational culture, so to speak.
I'm still really proud that interview when it comes to my hobbyist work, but the interpretations I've seen from the media and elsewhere have given me a lot to think about moving forward because at the end of the day, it's still totally my job to make those nuances and underlying attitudes apparent in English even if you don't have a background like mine. Hopefully the June issue of the magazine has another fun interview like that to work on so I can get a second shot at improving my translation skills in that respect.
The truth is that I'm just not very good at writing concisely or being a good editor for my own work. When I was still in school, I was actually really notorious for routinely managing to break upper page count limits for essays and research papers when they were in place and while I was mostly allowed to get away with it, it wasn't without some criticism and grade deductions from time to time. Basically I write like how I think, which as you've seen tends to be a lot, and then I just write until I feel I've comfortably conveyed my viewpoint and made it comprehensible. I am what I am as a writer, ahaha.
Be careful quoting the semantics of my translation since I'm not a very literal person as a translator at all.
Here's an alternate translation of what he said in a more literal sense: "There's something to be said for developing the game such that players who liked P3 and P4 can come into this without feeling out of their element and can just readily enjoy this new game. Hopefully those fans can rest assured that we have them in mind."
The key phrase in the original Japanese is 「違和感なく」, literally "without feeling something off" or something along those lines. You'll have to take me at my word at this point, but the way Hashino words it in Japanese indicates less to me that he and his team are interested in a complete mechanical and tonal retread of P3 and P4 so much as just making a game where people who got into the series through those games can basically look at 5 and recognize it as a Persona game in its own right.
The big point about that Hashino interview that I maybe should have made more clear when I initially posted my translation was that in terms of the back-and-forth and how Hashino articulates his answers, it was very much so a piece that was originally designed for Japanese consumption. The language just has mechanics embedded within it where it's okay to not explicitly express everything you mean to say when you have a reasonable assumption that your audience is already aware of the basic context and cultural nuances informing the content of what's being spoken. As a translator, I don't think you can do Hashino's personality and his deliberately substantial, but ambiguous answers justice by translating it literally because he wants you to try and read things between the lines of things that he both says out loud and remains quiet on. And try as I might have to make his answers play more naturally in English, it's hard to get away from the fact that English doesn't share those same conventions about subtlety or silently understood subjects, so a lot of people who aren't necessarily informed on those differences approach that interview as though it was always meant to consumed by them from the start under their cultural expectations when it wasn't at all. I'm not faulting people at all who take who my translations overly literally since it's just a natural way to respond to that content in general if you haven't been brought up around Japanese conversational culture, so to speak.
I'm still really proud that interview when it comes to my hobbyist work, but the interpretations I've seen from the media and elsewhere have given me a lot to think about moving forward because at the end of the day, it's still totally my job to make those nuances and underlying attitudes apparent in English even if you don't have a background like mine. Hopefully the June issue of the magazine has another fun interview like that to work on so I can get a second shot at improving my translation skills in that respect.
