Why Persona’s longtime director made an epic fantasy RPG

/ Katsura Hashino talks about moving away from real-world settings with Metaphor: ReFantazio.

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

Metaphor: ReFantazio. Image: Atlus

Persona 5 helped the roleplaying franchise break out with mainstream audiences, and it’s also a game that was in the works for a long time. Early work began in 2008, just after Persona 4 came out, with full development kicking off three years later. So, just ahead of the game’s launch in 2016, director Katsura Hashino — steward of the franchise since Persona 3 — asked the team

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