New Persona 3 Reload Battle Theme Will Play When You Ambush Enemies

Following the latest information drop for Persona 3 Reload, Famitsu conducted an interview with General Producer Kazuhisa Wada, Director Takuya Yamaguchi, Producer Ryota Niitsuma, and Atsushi Kitajoh.

This is a lengthy interview that goes into quite a bit of detail about various facets. One series of exchanges regards the new battle theme by Lotus Juice and Azumi Takahashi, “It’s Going Down Now.”

Fans can rest assured that the original Persona 3 battle theme, “Mass Destruction,” will remain for standard enemy encounters, albeit as a newly revised version. On the other hand, “It’s Going Down Now” will play when you ambush enemies.

You can view the full quoted exchange below:

――In addition to the PV, a video highlighting battle scenes has also been revealed. Is the track playing in the background of the video new?

Kitajoh: Yes, “It’s Going Down Now” is a new song that plays when you ambush an enemy. In Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden, we’ve had new songs play for ambushes while the original tracks play for standard battles, so we tried to incorporate that in P3R as well. However, instead of using the original track as is, this time the entire song was revisited to fit this new title.

――Wow, that’s exciting! “It’s Going Down Now” also seems to have some essence of “Mass Destruction” from the original game. It captures the feeling of P3, even though it’s my first time hearing it.

Kitajoh: I’m very happy to hear that you feel that way. The idea was to make a fresh but nostalgic song, so I tried to create it while respecting the atmosphere of the original game. In the intro and other important parts for “It’s Going Down Now,” I used the sound of the original “baby baby” and included the chord progression of “Memories of You” in the chorus.

Kitajoh: For the vocal songs, Lotus Juice (the male vocalist) requested that we rewrite the lyrics to better fit the scene, change the original one-chorus song to two choruses, and for some songs, add a little arrangement to the tone to match the vocals.

For the new songs, we didn’t feel it would blend well if we simply added additional tracks to the original setlist created by Meguro (Shoji Meguro, sound composer of the original game), so I added phrases, chord progressions, and samples from the original songs, including “It’s Going Down Now.” Therefore, phrases, chord progressions, sampling, and other elements of the original songs are all utilized as glue in the creation process to tie everything together.

Niitsuma: We felt the music of the original game released 17 years ago has a charm that has not faded at all, even listening to it now. However, we also felt it would be a disservice to simply reuse the original songs as they were, considering that this title is launching on modern platforms. I think the final music we created ultimately landed in a very good place, from the standpoint of appreciating both the newness of the full remake and the timeless charm of the original.

You can check out the interview for many more details.