Image: Atlus
Sega wants to turn Atlus games like Persona, Shin Megami Tensei and Catherine into live-action adaptations.
Sega has announced that it’s looking into live-action adaptations for developer Atlus’ game franchises, including the Persona, Catherine and Shin Megami Tensei series. The publisher wants to work with Atlus to, “expand the lore,” of these games with multiple TV and movie projects already being explored across various studios and producers.
In an interview with IGN, Toru Nakahara, lead producer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic Prime, said that, “Atlus' worlds are filled with high drama, cutting-edge style and compelling characters. Stories like those from the Persona franchise really resonate with our fans and we see an opportunity to expand the lore like no one has seen - or played - before."
Nakahara confirmed that Sega is in the midst of working with Atlus to bring these games to new audiences, and they were already in talks with various production companies to make it work. These adaptations might not be a straightforward retelling of the games in live-action, considering that Sega wants to ‘expand the lore’ of the games. We could see sequels or spin-offs within the universe of Atlus’ games instead.
This immediately seems like a bad idea. Atlus’ Persona games are heavily stylised RPGs with huge casts of characters and very long story campaigns, more often than not taking more than 80 hours each to complete. Distilling all of the games' charms in a singular movie or TV show seems like an impossible task, especially since most of these games end with gigantic boss battles with the fate of the world at stake. Not exactly the stuff network television is made of.
Atlus’ games rely heavily on strong characters and dark stories, and we can only hope that the upcoming adaptations can live up to that. For now, the Persona games are launching on the Nintendo Switch and Xbox/PlayStation consoles in November, just in time for a replay session.