10 Video Game Characters We Can't Believe Got Cut
6. Ryotaro Dojima - Persona 4: Arena
When it comes to ATLUS' Persona series, Persona 5 Royal may be the greatest entry in the franchise (it certainly has the Metacritic score to prove it), but Persona 4 will always be this writer's sentimental favourite.
No other Persona game has come close to matching the uplifting, heart-warming joy engendered by the franchise's fourth entry, and no other characters embody that emotion better than Ryotaro and Nanako Dojima.
Briefly, Ryotaro is a recently widowed cop, working in the small town of Inaba and making an absolute hash of his work-life balance.
This forces his adorably precocious daughter Nanako to grow up fast, due to his continuous absence from home. The pair's evolving relationship provides Persona 4's narrative arc with its greatest emotional beats, which led fighting game savants Arc Systems to theorize that the duo would be just as effective in pulverizing enemy combatants as they were at tenderizing gamers' hearts.
When developing the fighting-game spin-off Persona 4: Arena, Arc Systems proposed to add the Dojima duo to the game as playable characters. Game Director Takumi Iguchiya stated that, whereas the other fighters in Arena would be backed up by their Personas - imagination-fuelled superbeings with godlike capabilities - Ryotaro would have been assisted by Nanako, his frying-pan wielding seven-year old daughter. ATLUS - perhaps unsurprisingly - put the kibosh on the idea when they got wind of it.
Sorry, Ryotaro. Sorry, Nanako. At least we'll always have Inaba.