Atlus' Persona 4 is finally revealed in the latest issue of Famitsu. It looks like that investments company was right about how it would be a PS2 game. I'm not going to post the magazine photos here since you can just about find them anywhere amongst all the gaming blogs and forums.

Due on July 10th 2008 and 85% complete at the time of the article, Persona 4's story takes place two years after the events of Persona 3. The Main Character is a second year high student who moves from the city to the rural countryside town of "Inaba" to stay with his relatives because his parents are going to be working overseas. Since then a series of bizarre murders occur and there are rumours at Yasogami High of a show named "Mayonaka TV" that can only be viewed on rainy midnights.

The development staff is going to be Katsura Hashino as Game Director, Shigenori Soejima as Character Designer and Shoji Meguro as Sound Composer. P4 will be very much like P3 but with more content and improvements. It will feature:

• Suspense thriller with a number of twists.
• A weather system. A murder happens whenever there is fog.
• 1.5x the content of P3.
• More multiple endings than P3.
• 180+ Personas.
• 60 - 70 hours long.

Joining the MC will be Yousuke Hanamura who is also a transfer student from the city and likes attention. Then there's Kung Fu movie fan Chie Satonaka, a cheerful energetic girl who likes to talk and her friend Yukiko Amagi.

The following seventeen minute preview was ripped from the Famitsu magazine DVD.

It begins with Margaret (another resident of the Velvet Room) speaking with the MC, showing him images of the future and summoning him to the Velvet Room. His conscious is guided there where Igor greets him and starts the limousine shaped room they are in to show the MC the images he saw once again, in search of the reason why the MC had those dreams. Usually only those who have a contract can reach the Velvet Room but for some reason, the MC is brought there without one. Igor is deeply interested to know why.

After arriving at Yasonaba Station, MC meets his relatives the "Doujimas" and arrives at his new home where he'll be staying for the next year. As he meets his new classmates, he learns of the rumours about the Mayonaka TV programme that appears only during rainy midnights. When one stares at the switched off TV, they will find their own face changing to someone else's before them who will supposedly be their fated other half.

Later one night, the MC hears voices from his TV about a door opening. He touches it and finds himself dragged into another world. There, they meet a strange bear-like creature. Thinking it was just someone in a costume, Yousuke tries to take it off but finds no one inside. Moving on, we learn the enemy is once again Shadows that can consume the human heart. They also highlight the importance of Social Links and Personas are also explained.

Soon, the MC is about to wake up. Igor is pleased about the events he will be seeing in the future and tells the MC to forget about all that he has seen so that he go about his daily life as usual. Igor is sure they will meet again.

Thoughts

Still has that mysterious dark feeling to it but they seemed to have improved the graphics engine. The Anime scenes are looking much better too with more details but, a few of the scenes reminded me of Makubex's pile of monitors from GetBackers and Light scribbling away furiously in his Death Note...

Music sounds good and maybe that's not surprising considering it's from Shoji Meguro again. Too bad it doesn't sound like they have Lotus Juice and Yumi Kawamura doing the vocals this time round. The cast seems pretty generic once again because you can just about match up Yousuke with Junpei, Chie with Yukari and Mitsuru with Yukiko (except she seems more open). Still, that doesn't mean the story will be bad. From the preview, I think they're going to be keeping the Dark Hour cycle from P3 only this time, it'll be rainy midnights in P4.

I wonder if these "bizarre murders" are supposed to link to the events of Persona Trinity Soul that takes place seven years after P4? When I read that line about the "unexplained serial murders" and "unrecognisable corpses", I just thought of that show.

Will be looking forward to what they put on the official site when it opens next Monday!