Like a Dragon series producer on Kiryu's return, Kasuga and future Gaiden titles
I sat down with Ryu ga Gotoku Studio Chief Producer, Hiroyuki Sakamoto at Gamescom to chat about why the team decided to bring Kiryu back from retirement, and how that pertains to the future of the series – as well as find out what his favourite Karaoke song in the series is.
Alongside getting to preview Like a Dragon Gaiden at Gamescom, I had the chance to chat with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's chief producer, Hiroyuki Sakamoto, about Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name – which launches this November – as well as asking about the future of the series before 2024's Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. For those unaware, the Like a Dragon series (formerly known as Yakuza) was led by protagonist Kazuma Kiryu until 2018's Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, which ended with the character leaving his past life behind.
This was followed by 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon (known simply as Like a Dragon 7 in Japan) which introduced us to the series' new protagonist going forward: Ichiban Kasuga – a loveable himbo who was in many ways the polar opposite of Kiryu. Kasuga was received with a warm reception with many ready for him to take the mantle as the protagonist of the series. Which made it even more shocking when Sega announced that, not only would Kiryu return as a co-protagonist in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, but that he would be starring in another game explaining what he was up to between the events of the sixth and eighth entries in Like a Dragon Gaiden.
Sakamoto told me that the idea to bring Kiryu back to the forefront happened while the team was working on Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. "We decided that well, he’s going to be one of the protagonists of the story, but we really needed to explore the story of who he was again".
But the Dragon of Dojima's return wasn't just a case of facilitating his appearance in Infinite Wealth, as Sakamoto explains.
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"A surprising amount of users had their start with the series at 7, with Kasuga Ichiban". Considering Kiryu makes a major appearance towards the end of that title, he elaborated, saying "in that game Kazuma Kiryu is kind of treated as a legend. He was this character who kind of came up and there was all this weight behind him... we decided that we really needed an introduction; a way to tell people who this character is, what his personality is, why is he a legend".
Punch Club
Like a Dragon Gaiden marks a return to the brawling combat the series is known for (Sega)Aside from the intro of the new protagonist, Kasuga, in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the biggest shake up was the introduction of turn-based combat inspired by Square Enix's Dragon Quest series – with Kasuga himself literally saying in the game that he views every fight through the lens of Dragon Quest. Considering every single entry in the series up to this point was a brawler, this was a massive departure. But now with Gaiden, the series' classic brawler combat returns.
"We pick the fighting system and game system to match the story that we’re trying to tell" Sakamoto told me, adding "this game is a story about Kazuma on his own, going at it with a lot of people. It doesn’t really fit the RPG style, it’s more of an action one, so we decided that we’d just make this an action game".
"In [Yakuza: Like a Dragon] it was a story about gathering friends and fighting together so we were like ‘okay that will be an RPG’."
But despite Kiryu having so many games under his belt, he has some new tricks in this entry due to his new job with the 'Agent' fighting style, which relies on gadgets rather than pure brute strength.
"We figured he’d need a new way of fighting... we thought it’d be good to give him a new vibe and that’s what the Agent style was... it was definitely our vision of a spy fighting style".
Another major addition to this title is the giant team battles in which two groups go head to head in a WWE Royal Rumble-like brawl. Sakamoto explains that RGG Studio was inspired to make this addition to the series' typically smaller battles "because the coliseum also takes centre stage to the story in many ways, we felt we really wanted to work it and make it really interesting".
Passing the torch
Ichiban Kasuga and Kazuma Kiryu are sharing the protagonist role in the upcoming Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Sega)Ichiban Kasuga is the new hero, and as someone who adored the newcomer (perhaps even more than Kiryu himself) I was a bit worried about Kasuga being pushed out of the limelight by the original protagonist's return. I asked Sakamoto how the team is striking a balance between the two so that Kasuga doesn't get overlooked going forward.
"The way we determine how the protagonists are going to, y’know, be the protagonist, really comes down to the story. Not just the story of each character, but the overall story of the world that they’re involved in". Sakamoto assuaged my fears of Ichiban getting overlooked by promising that Like a Dragon Gaiden is "going to make it very clear how the story is going to move on from here".
During Kiryu's tenure as the main character of the series, he was occasionally joined by other characters, like Majima in Yakuza 0, Akiyama, Saejima, and Tanimura in Yakuza 4. Sakamoto hinted that this may end up happening with Kasuga's story too saying "depending on how the story of the world is going to continue we might end up having different playable characters".
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Asked if he personally had any desire to create more Like a Dragon Gaiden games focusing on other returning characters – specifically Majima, Saejima, and the legendary comic relief character, Gary 'Buster' Holmes – Sakamoto said he doesn't "have any intention of going back and creating a side-story for a character like Gary 'Buster' Holmes" but that he's open to more titles like this.
"If it was another main character like that who would really benefit from being fleshed out in the story, then it kind of would be worth making".
He doesn't have anyone specific in mind for a Gaiden-style tale but that says he has "a lot of ideas" – although nothing he can really focus on enough to talk about due to how busy the team is with this game and Infinite Wealth.
Of course, I couldn't end my time without throwing Sakamoto a hardball question: what's his favourite karaoke song in the series? Yakuza 3's 'I Wanna Change Myself'. I'm a 'Machine Gun Kiss' man myself.
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