While English-speaking Persona 5 fans are currently eagerly awaiting the upcoming release of Persona 5 Strikers in the west, it wasn’t long ago that they were upset at the lack of translation news. Now news has come to light explaining why it took so long for even a localization announcement to be made.
Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers, as it’s known in Japan, released nearly a year ago, on February 20. Months followed with zero information coming from Sega or Atlus regarding the game’s potential translation, aside from a few leaks pointing to an English version of Persona 5 Strikers.
Cassandra Lee Morris, the English dub voice of Morgana, held a virtual chat with fellow voice actor Erika Harlacher, who provides the voice of Phantom Thief Ann Takamaki. During the nearly hour-long conversation, the two covered the dubbing process, where the Persona 5 voice actors recorded their lines from home. Initially, the plan was to have everyone report to a recording studio and perform their lines traditionally. However, the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic forced the localization team to rethink the plan and record from home.
Since each voice actor didn’t have their own personal recording studio, this process required the localization team to actually procure and ship recording equipment to the voice actors involved in the title. Shipping and setting up the equipment alone likely took some time, in addition to actually recording the lines and getting them just right. Sega likely didn’t want to make any teases or announcements until this process was fully completed.
Initially, the plan was for the English voice actors to start recording their lines in April of 2020. This indicates that a localized script was already developed for the game, and may have even been in development before Persona 5 Strikers launched in Japan. While the exact amount of time it would have taken to finish the localization and release in the west is unknown, players may have received news of the localization earlier on, and likely would have been able to play Persona 5 Strikers by now, had the pandemic not occurred.
While translating Japanese games for the west has typically sped up, waiting a year or more for games to be brought to English-speaking territories wasn’t out of the ordinary for much of the history of gaming. It goes to show, however, that Atlus and Sega are well aware of Persona 5‘s outrageous popularity in not only Japan but overseas, as well. While it remains to be seen if the Phantom Thieves will have any more adventures before Atlus moves on to Persona 6, it’s safe to say that between the performance of Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden‘s recent PC release that the any future sequels or spin-offs are extremely likely to come to the west.
Persona 5 Strikers is set to release on February 23 for Nintendo Switch, PC, and PS4.
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