Masayoshi Yokoyama on Yakuza and Like a Dragon: You show yourself confident and uncompromising

The Yakuza series is finally moving on, and at full throttle. However, now under the name Like A Dragon, as Yakuza 7 already introduced with the new main character Ichiban Kasuga. As part of the Tokyo Games Show, we spoke to the new head of the studio, Ryu Ga Gotoku, twice. In the video above you get an overall impression of Masayoshi Yokoyama before the three brand new games Like A Dragon 8, Like A Dragon: Ishin! and Like A Dragon Gaiden: A Man Who Erased His Name were announced.

After the RGG Summit, where the studio itself presented this news including a star cast (Riki Takeuchi, Hitoshi Ozawa, Hideo Nakano and the main cast of Kiryu and Ichiban), there was another interview with Yokoyama. He was already much more relaxed in that when he reported on the new direction for the games in the first conversation. This interview now follows in the written part of the article. Both discussions with Masayoshi Yokoyama took place in a roundtable with several journalists.

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What struck me immediately after the announcement was the name change to Like A Dragon. Why was it necessary to drop “Yakuza”? Does this decision mark the turning point of the studio and when did the process start thinking about it? “The genre and the protagonist changed already in the seventh game, so we already combined both names there. For a long time we have been thinking about re-branding our brand abroad. In general, we also wanted to change our name in Japan because the focus moves away from the yakuza. But the action still takes place in Kamurochō (more on that in the video 13:43) and it’s still about the nightlife, so we left it at Like A Dragon,” replies the studio boss.

Nevertheless, there have been innovations since Toshihiro Nagoshi’s farewell. For example, the transfer of the RGG Summits simultaneously translated, which the studio attributes to YouTube’s growing role in the video game world. “We don’t want to force any changes. Upheavals usually come on their own and when they occur, we adapt progressively,” Yokoyama wants to correct. In addition, dramas are no longer so popular in Japan, but abroad they are. So it makes sense to expand in the international market.

Yokoyama insists (video interview 16:40) that Like A Dragon remains a kind of underdog and belongs to the “night life”. I asked myself if success doesn’t come with changes. With such a high demand, isn’t the development a little different, even if it’s just the feeling of freedom because you were able to successfully convert the gameplay from brawler to round-robin? The boss of Ryu Ga Gotoku responds as follows: “The process doesn’t change. As a creator, even if I become as successful as Hideo Kojima, I still want to create video games exactly how I want to. This is also because SEGA allows us lets do what we want!”

Like A Dragon has a strong focus on the story. Yokoyama mentions several times that the gameplay adapts itself to the storyline. The new head of the studio joked at the summit: “If local co-op fits the story of the two main characters, we would do it. If it were to become a party game, then we wouldn’t have a problem with that kind of gameplay.” And meanwhile I wasn’t sure if it was really a joke because I would love to play an It Takes Two starring Ichiban and Kasuga.

I was wondering, if even the gameplay adapts to the story, how specific does the soundtrack need to be? Actually, it can then only be composed cinematographically, similar to what Takashi Iizuka explained to us with Sonic Frontiers. Excluding the karaoke sequences, of course. “Our composers are probably the only ones who read the entire script of the game before composing the music. Because they need to be able to get an accurate idea of ​​what kind of atmosphere and feelings we want to create. Like A Dragon 7 has that For example, the team introduced extra boss battle themes to support the RPG combat system. It’s really hard and I don’t know if any other studios let their music team script the game.” replies Yokoyama. He emphasized several times how difficult he finds the work of composers.

The focus of TGS was the announcement of the remake of Like A Dragon: Ishin! Here replace the historical Shinsengumi, who fought for the capital in Japan in the 1860s, played the role of the yakuza. But precisely because it is a historical setting, the question arises as to whether we in the West can follow the game and if so, how? The original version of the game didn’t have an encyclopedia explaining old ideas to players, but the remake will finally get one. “The game has a lot of difficult terminology and historical concepts that even the people of Japan themselves don’t understand. The problem doesn’t just affect people from abroad. Many think it’s enough to know that someone has killed a certain person, but the context itself is often not clear. That’s why it was important for us to include an encyclopedia,” explains Yokoyama.

Ishin is not the first game with a traditional Edo period Japan. There are of course many games that have paved the way for the setting in the West, such as Sekiro or last but not least Ghost of Tsushima, which was developed by an American studio. “Obviously, these games encouraged us to release our remake at this point, but there’s also a general change in the perception of the world. It’s become more open and international. For example, I’ve only recently started listening to Western music myself discovered, I hadn’t heard anything like that before. Streaming services such as YouTube or Amazon Prime are also helping to open borders. This means that our culture is better accepted internationally,” explains the studio boss, joking about how much he would like to play a GTA that takes place in Japan.

I would like to end with one important thing about the new games: Like A Dragon: Ishin! was developed on the Unreal Engine because the Dragon Engine specializes in neon light afterlife (video 12:02) and this in Ishin! don’t matter because the game takes place in the Edo period. Like A Dragon 8 and Gaiden will likely continue to be developed using the Dragon Engine.

Thanks to Masayoshi Yokoyama for the time and the two very detailed interviews about Like A Dragon.