2021 seems like the year that Atlus finally announces Persona 6. A new game in the franchise has been a long time coming, since Persona 5 has been out for almost five years now. As much of a success as Persona 5 has been, it's only natural that the franchise will eventually move on to a new installment, and probably sooner rather than later. 2021 happens to be the 25th anniversary of the Persona franchise as well, so it seems like the perfect time to share information about Persona 6. Atlus has promised its fans big plans this year, and many fans hold hope that those plans include details on a brand new Persona game.
Fans aren't sure what to expect out of Persona 6, though. On the one hand, it's likely that the game will stick to a lot of conventions of the franchise. Persona is a series of tradition; new games generally remain very similar at their core to previous games. On the other hand, Atlus made some significant changes when designing Persona 5. It's possible that it will do the same and find even more drastic ways to change Persona's formula. Although the possibility of change can't be denied, there's a fairly long list of things crucial to Persona that Persona 6 will probably retain.
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It's almost certain that Confidants or Social Links will return in some form in Persona 6. These games have always made it very obvious that the protagonist's relationships matter. The player is constantly motivated to spend spare time with friends and other connections, because these everyday activities will pay off in one way or another when investigating supernatural worlds like Mementos and Tartarus.
Persona assigns Arcana from tarot decks to each Confidant and Social Link; odds are the protagonist will be the Fool, as usual, and their closest companions will other Arcana associated with themselves too. The question is whether Persona 6's social system will look more like the traditional Social Links or Persona 5's newer Confidant system.
On the one hand, Social Links had the virtue of simplicity. They don't ask as much of the player as Confidants do, and generally just require some time commitment to advance. On the other hand, Confidants come with many more benefits other than Social Links. Atlus vastly expanded on what Confidants can give the protagonist by building a good relationship together.
Odds are that Atlus will do something more like Persona 5's Confidants, even if the system gets renamed again. Gaining new skills and new game mechanics both inside and outside of battle via Confidants really made the system worth the player's time and was generally pretty gripping. There's plenty of room for Atlus to experiment with Confidants while remaining true to the system's core, too.
There's one character who is a common thread that connects all of the main Persona games, and that's Igor. This mysterious and powerful man always has a significant relationship with the protagonist, introducing them to the world of Personas and teaching them the ropes. Igor will definitely come back as a major character in Persona 6. He might have a slightly different role than usual, though. Persona 5 used Igor in a totally different way than usual, making the true Igor actually have a fairly limited relationship with Joker even though he was a staunch supporter of Joker. Maybe Persona 6 will similarly find a new narrative angle for Igor.
If Igor returns, then Persona 6 will also include the Velvet Room, where the protagonist meets up with Igor to perform Persona fusions. Fusing new and more powerful personas is crucial to progressing through the game; some of the best personas in these games can only be created with Igor's help. Atlus will probably introduce a new blue-clad assistant of Igor's for the protagonist to befriend as well, since so far, Persona games don't have Igor's assistants make repeat appearances. However, the return of the Velvet Room is certain, and so that means Igor and Igor's foretold assistant will be in Persona 6.
In that vein, Persona 6 will probably keep it so that Persona 6's protagonist can have multiple Personas at once, whereas their friends and teammates can only have one at a time. A protagonist with many versatile Personas is a core mechanic for both social life and combat that the Persona franchise has built itself around. It would be interesting if Persona 6 bent tradition a little bit and allowed other characters to hold more Personas, but unfortunately that might be a nightmare for balancing combat.
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Persona's enemies and Personas themselves are always inspired by religion, mythology, folklore, and literature, whether they're small household sprites or the mightiest gods of pantheons from across the globe. This style of enemy design will surely return in Persona 6. Monsters springing from the imagination of humanity are important to Persona's themes, and they give the games a unique aesthetic to boot. In fact, many Persona enemies look almost exactly the same as they did twenty years ago.
However, mythology's impact on Persona goes beyond the way that enemies and Personas look. It'll also be core to the plot's inspiration too. It's a common running gag that JPRGs start out tasking the protagonist with solving wholesome, everyday problems and eventually end with the protagonist killing a god. That's not just a joke, though — it's frequently true.
Persona is no exception, as Persona 5's final battle with Yaldabaoth indicates. However, Yaldabaoth isn't a mythical entity that Atlus made up for Persona 5; it was taken from Gnostic lore, and many locations and story beats are inspired by religious imagery. Odds are the core plot of Persona 6 will also somehow be inspired by rich if obscure religious texts.
Finally, Persona 6's protagonists will probably be teenagers. For many years, every Persona game has been about high schoolers discovering their supernatural talents and using them to seek justice and defend the human world, in one way or another. Discovering a persona serves as a vehicle for coming-of-age stories of all kinds; on some level, Persona is always about how hard it is to be young and the potential of new generations. It's probable that Atlus wants to keep this tradition in place and find more ways to examine what it's like to be a young person in Japan — even if that young person has some unexpected superpowers.
A Persona 6 update has got to be on the horizon right this year. A new game in the franchise would be the perfect way to celebrate as important an anniversary as the 25th is. It's possible that a new game in the franchise is still pretty far off, since Atlus has been focused on Persona 5 adjacent projects Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Strikers until recently. However, it could still be that the studio has four or five years of work already done on the new game and can at least give fans a taste of what's to come this year.
Persona 6 is rumored to be in development.