Nothing about this is surprising or ridiculous to me.
I mean what do people actually expect when making statements like that.
You build technology/tools to be as robust as possible so you can use them for as long as possible.
"Assets and data from Persona 3 can still be found all over if you dig in the files, to an amount that cannot be explained with testing data."
Again statements like these makes me doubt if the person has even any kind of technical background. Especially when I look at that wiki and that's an amount of leftovers that can't be explained with "testing data" lol.
Maybe there's an argument about why so much was left in to be able to be found but and aspect of development is managing priorities, cleaning up is not always the highest thing on that list. So leftover placeholder stuff isn't really anything surprising or out of the ordinary.
But like I said maybe the important context to let it make sense is just missing.
Looking back at the original Tumblr source, it just seems as if the person is recalling something they might have heard from an older source or someone. The large amount of leftovers is quite unusual, and having it just be "testing data" doesn't really fit. Which would mean you are right in that some context is necessary to understand what happened in the development to lead to the material being put on the cutting floor. I hope someday we may actually see some detailed background into how the game were developed. Maybe not as detailed as Square did with every single Final Fantasy entry, but at least more detail than we have here.
Yes Telltale are obviously also in a financial hole which also explains the lack of major changes in the game engine for every one of their games since Walking Dead I.
(Sry the snark is not directed at you, I just want to again demonstrate why that text seems like a bunch of nonsense to me and people should think twice before taking anything in it as fact.)
People need to think about engines like actual tools. Because it's not the first time I feel like I'm reading statements that seem based of on nebulous ideas on what an engine actually is. You don't make a new hammer for every new cupboard you build. What will differ most often than not is the thing you're actually building not the tools you build it with.
It's like people that don't know any programming telling you about how you need to learn X language because that's currently the hot shit. They don't understand that, that's not the important thing about programming.
I have never played a TellTale game, so your snark was certainly lost on me! If if so, I didn't it personally. As I said before, if Atlus (or TellTale) were Konami, Square, Rockstar Games, Capcom, EA, or some larger company, I would have more context into their background. I just don't know enough about Atlus as a company to have an informed opinion.
Going back to the idea of game engines, don't most game developers modify or upgrade their game engines when they make sequels? Or maybe I'm just thinking of larger developers. I'm genuinely surprised when I hear they practically copy and paste everything, which seems to be what the source is saying. Game engines often have upgraded versions to allow for better animations, shading, etc. The components that make up the game engine are improved to allow a game to work more fluidly. It sounds like here in the case with Atlus, they just used the exact same engine. The PS2 Grand Theft Auto era game series all used RenderWare, but you can obviously tell a difference between all three games when it comes to graphics, collision detection, draw distance, animation, shading, etc. Those upgrades they made on the same base game engine is what I'm referring to.
Atlus is a company notorious for reusing as many assets as they can across their games. Look at all of their PlayStation 2 era output and you'll easily see why there is nothing weird about the fact that they wouldn't have updated their engine in such a short period of time. Look at Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
The engine they made for Persona 5 and a whole bunch of those assets? I 100% guarantee you you'll be seeing them exactly as they are in future Atlus titles, and that's to be expected.
Again, Atlus isn't that large a company that they would need to make big technical adjustments like that. It's not how they roll, especially not back in the P3/P4 era.
That is a lot of good info to know, and thank you. Is the release of Persona 3 and 4 on the PS2 basically Atlus using the same engine for as long as possible? I was surprised to learn that the original Persona 2 was ported to the PS1 in 2002 and 2003! That alone speaks enough to what you mentioned. Even if they re-use the assets from Persona 5, its good that they are finally taking the time to add some "bells and whistles" to their games. The fact that they are releasing a Persona game on a modern game system without a successor generation is great in itself.
