Persona 4 Golden’s much-delayed PC arrival has given fans the ability to mod the game, and as expected, players are running wild the possibilities. One particular mod, which restores the Yosuke romance route that was initially cut from Persona 4, has particularly captured the Persona community’s attention.
Yosuke’s affection for the player character is obvious in both the original game and Golden. He calls you “partner” nigh incessantly, fawns over you whenever possible, and you even get to share an umbrella with him in Golden, which players familiar with Japanese cultural conventions may recognize as a deeply intimate act. Each successive rank of his social link seems determined to ramp up the tension, to the point where even the straightest player can’t deny there’s something going on between Yosuke and the player character.
The romantic coding in Yosuke’s social link is likely intentional because digging through Persona 4 files will turn up several cut voice lines indicating he was supposed to be a romanceable option. While the gay coding is especially obvious in the Japanese voice lines, some lines made it as far as to be officially dubbed into English. The Yosuke romance restoration mod seeks to implement these into PC Persona 4 Golden, in addition to fleshing out a fully realized Yosuke route.
The Yosuke mod is still a work in progress, but its author frequently updates its page with status reports and notices. As of the writing of this article, the mod is about 10% finished. Players who want a sneak peek of what the final product will look like can choose to download unfinished test of Yosuke’s edited Rank 10 from the mod page, or watch the mod’s trailer on YouTube. Note that the trailer features a repeating voice line error that has the creators have since resolved.
A list of Persona 4 Golden mods can be found on Resetera, and while most of the mods compiled there are nowhere near as ambitious as the Yosuke romance mod, there are quite a few mods implementing quality of life improvements, including a music manager mod and an Xbox to PlayStation 4 button prompt mod.
Source: Gamebanana, Resetera
