Like a Dragon, the game series formerly known as Yakuza, has been around for almost 20 years. These are melodramatic romps about the bickering and inner humanity of Japanese gangsters, one part soap opera, one part curb-stomping, one part over-the-top chair-throwing brawler, and one part strikingly realistic recreation of Japanese city nightlife. In its cities from Osaka to Yokohama, between bashing the heads of thugs and navigating the drama of the Yakuza clan, you can eat and drink in real-world bars and restaurants, sneak into an arcade and play games, visit hostess clubs and sing. karaoke For many of its foreign players, its vibrant and seedy recreations of Tokyo nightlife have been their first introduction to modern Japan.
But that was never the intention. “When we created this game, we never planned to release it abroad. We didn’t think people would like it,” says Hiroyuki Sakamoto, now series director, who has been working on the series since its first planning meetings in 2003. “So we were able to focus on our Japanese audience, on making a game to and from Japan… we thought we were creating a game that would probably only be enjoyed by the older gamers [Tokyo nightlife district] Kabukicho and its criminal underworld.
When Sega released the first game in 2006 in North America and Europe, a year after its debut in Japan, its positive reception came as a surprise to the publisher. It took even longer for sequels to come out of Japan, up to two years, but over time, as it became a huge hit at home, the series also amassed an ever-growing legion of fans who appreciated its gritty stories and storylines. unexpected and strange. humor. “Eventually, we started taking localization seriously, and a lot more people were experiencing it,” says Sakamoto. “Because of all the time and effort we have put into developing games about this side of Japan, I believe we are in a unique position to represent it to the world.”
The studio’s latest, Like a Dragon: Ishin!, is out today, though it’s actually a remake of a Japan-only spinoff that originally released for PlayStation 3 in 2013. Like a Dragon hasn’t really changed, though. . a lot in the last decade, so you’d be forgiven for thinking it was new. Set during one of the most interesting and tumultuous periods in Japanese history, the Bakumastu period, during which the shogunate clung to power, Ishin improbably transplants all the wry violence and macho stance of the Yakuza into 19th-century Kyoto. It has brothels, restaurants, even karaoke, plus chicken races and mahjong.
Ishin does for historical Japan what the rest of the series does for modern Japan: he makes you feel like you’re there. Follow the life of Sakamoto Ryoma, one of the most famous real-life samurai in Japanese history, but played by Kazuma Kiryu, the stoic gangster with a heart of gold, hero of the rest of the Like a Dragon games. . Wild characters in the series stand in for other historical figures, making Japanese history livelier and more bizarre than what you’d see in samurai movies. I’m playing it at the Samurai Museum in Berlin, surrounded by artifacts from the period in history it recreates.
This isn’t an era underexplored in fiction, but I’ve never seen it depicted like this, with weird little stories and drunken nights interspersed with the clash of swords (and bullets). In two hours of playing the game, I ingratiated myself with the shogunate’s samurai police force by cutting down one of their generals, drinking more than a courtesan, and playing rock-paper-scissors strip (the sexual humor in this series is nothing if not carefree). , and found a quiet place in the slums to fish. Even when it’s trying its hand at historical fiction, Like a Dragon doesn’t take itself too seriously.
I’ve always figured, given the joy that lurks just beneath the macho crime drama, that the development team should have fun while doing it. But Sakamoto agrees with me. “Making games is terribly difficult. I can’t think of anything I particularly enjoy about it,” he tells me, deadpan. (He’s been in game development since 2000, when he worked on Sega’s arcade games.) “All aspects are difficult. I try not to think, ‘This is fun,’ because this is all really hard work.”
I guess I leave the fun to the players. As a result of all that hard work, these games are transporting: the detail of their settings is the result of months of research and effort by the developers, who have traveled the country taking pictures and soaking up the atmosphere. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has recreated almost all major cities in the country now, and several small towns, such as Onomichi in Hiroshima, which would be hard to tell from the real place in the screenshots. If you’ve ever spent time in Tokyo, wandering the virtual streets of Yakuza feels powerfully nostalgic, like walking through a memory.
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“What we focus on the most is the atmosphere of the place,” explains Hiroyuki Sakamoto. “We want players to feel like they’ve been there, even if they’ve never been there…we play with lighting, we play with texture, we play with foot traffic on the streets…when you compare, we don’t just think about the precision. our locations to real life, but also how it would feel to play it. We try very hard to balance the real and the unreal, to make it as enjoyable as possible.”
Keza MacDonald attended a press tour to Berlin with other journalists. Sega provided travel and accommodation.
