Having finished Persona 5 this past week, I starting thinking about what it would take to include a female protagonist in the inevitable re-release with bonus material.
I was disappointed that Persona 4: Golden didn't have an option where you could play as a female protagonist, considering that Persona 3 Portable did, but when I look at what was involved with making Persona 3's female main character (FeMC), I can see why they'd be reluctant to do it again.
Unlike a game like Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls where the character's gender rarely comes into play aside from romance options, the Persona games are heavily gendered even outside of romance. I'm not sure if it's a Japanese cultural issue or just that life as a teenage girl often is different from that of a teenage boy. For instance, in Persona 3 one of the male MC's friends is a high school boy crushing on his teacher and he wants to start a romantic relationship with her. It's not terribly likely that he would confide this kind of crush to a female friend.
That Social Link was completely replaced in the FeMC's version of the game. (The student himself still exists, but he's not one of the FeMC's friends.) And it wasn't the only Social Link that was either replaced or rewritten. All existing female party member Social Links were redone to bond as girls rather than romance a guy, and all the male party members, who didn't even have Social Links in the original (!), had to be written from scratch and added to the game.
Persona 5 as it stands has nine female characters who are romance options, and because this is Persona the player will be getting to know them regardless for gameplay bonuses (though romance at the end is still optional). Looking at the list of Confidants, and likely male targets of affection, we have the player's fellow party members, Yusuke and Ryuji, classmate Mishima, and that's pretty much it.
It's possible a tortured romance could be managed with Goro Akechi (they did manage one with Ryoji in P3), which would bring the number up to four, but most of the male characters in the game aren't suitable. Shinya's too young, Iwai's too old (though if my character was 10-20 years older sure), and Sojiro's the player's surrogate dad. So if they wanted to do a female route, it would require an extensive reworking of the Confidants.
Kawakami would probably go, since hiring a cosplay maid to clean your room on a dare from your guy friends is less probable for a FeMC. A few other female links would probably have to be replaced without anything inherently being wrong with them to allow enough romance options.
While I wouldn't mind female love interests for a FeMC, the game would still be short of male options, and a lot of dialogue would still need to be changed. For instance, someone seeing two teenage girls hanging out together probably won't jump to the conclusion that they're dating in the same way they would if it's a boy and a girl, unless there's some other context involved.
Also worth noting is that three, possibly four, of the current romance options are adult women. (Chihaya seems out be out of high school, but she might still be a teenager and in Japan the legal age of adulthood is 20.) While dating your teacher or a twenty-something woman is a teenage male fantasy, the situation becomes a lot creepier when playing a teenage girl with her adult male love interests.
It might not be fair, since teenage girls crush on adults just as much as teenage boys, but I think the potential squick factor and the chances of the adult being viewed as a predator is higher. (Granted, the consensual male teacher, female student relationship is not unheard of in shoujo manga so it's possible the Japanese player base might not bat an eye at it.)
I remember a relatively obscure visual novel, Sweet Fuse, came out to the US a few years ago which originally had a seventeen-year-old female protagonist. Half her potential love interests were in their 20s and one was even in his 30s. When it came out in the US, her age was bumped up to 18 so she was at least legal. This wouldn't work for Persona 5 though, considering that much of the game takes place in school and the player is pretty obviously not a senior since they have upperclassmen.
Also an issue, especially for the English localization since our language is more pronoun dependant, is that all the spoken dialogue that refers to the main character's gender would have to be re-recorded. Considering that there was not enough room to hold dual audio Japanese and English audio (Japanese was a free DLC), adding a gender might take up enough space that the audio wouldn't fit (and hitting download to get your gender VO DLC just sounds terrible).
Considering the work involved (and this is assuming no other new content), is there enough reason to go through all this trouble for a game that's already out in the wild? I'd like to say yes, but I don't know what the sales figures were for P3P. It's possible that for a re-release it wasn't worth the money spent and that's why Persona 4 Golden didn't off a gender option.
Financially I'd like to hope that Persona 5 knocked it out of the park. The series has been getting increasingly better recognition ever since Persona 3 and P5 has been the fastest selling installment in the series. It's far too soon for Atlus to announce a re-release, but give it a couple more years and something will likely come down the line.
And I really hope there's a female protagonist. I want to be a female Phantom Thief next time around.
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