The producers of Yakuza: Like a Dragon recently announced they’re confident in the switch to RPG, that the game will be getting a demo and that we’ll learn much more about the story soon. Both promises came true on November 13, when a press conference was held to announce Yakuza: Like a Dragon‘s development is completed. Moreover, a ten minutes long story trailer was released, and the demo launched on the Japanese PlayStation store. Here’s the story trailer along with an explanation of the most important points we learned with it.
The trailer focuses on Masato Arakawa, who seems to be the big villain of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The “light” and the “darkness” in the game’s Japanese name refer to Masato and Ichiban, and the two are bound by fate. Masato is the son of Masumi Arakawa, Ichiban’s father figure who seemingly betrayed the Tojo clan. Masato and Ichiban were basically brothers, but Masato ended up passing away.
However, 18 years later, after Ichiban got out of prison, he realized Ryo Aoki, the current governor of Japan and founder of a political group named Bleach Japan, is actually Masato Arakawa, who is still alive and changed his identity. Moreover, Ichiban and his friends discover Masato is behind certain incidents and isn’t as clean as his public persona implies. Ichiban decides to stop his brother before he sinks even more into darkness.
The trailer also shows a scene with Ichiban meeting Masumi Arakawa again, implying Masumi “betrayed” the Tojo clan for a good reason, just like what his actor implied in the video interviews we translated.
The other big reveal in the trailer is how Ichiban and his friends will seek some kind of “treasure”, and that treasure’s guardian will be turn out to be Kazuma Kiryu, the previous protagonist of the series.
The trailer and the final boxart for Ryu Ga Gotoku 7 Hikari to Yami no Yukue also confirm two more characters who will join Ichiban’s party. There’s Joon-gi Han, the Korean mafia boss from Yakuza 6 voiced by the awesome Yuichi Nakamura. And we Tianyou Zhao, the leader of the Chinese mafia Yokohama Liumang. Tianyou Zhao is a brand new character appearing in Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
The last interesting piece of info in this new Yakuza: Like a Dragon trailer is Bleach Japan itself. It’s a group against illegal activities and claims many entertainment businesses violate the fueiho, or the “Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act” law. This law is basically what permits all these businesses in Japan. Things like cabarets, host and hostess clubs, and sex industry-related businesses like soaplands, are all regulated with this law.
The trailer also heavily implies, and I think it’ll turn out this way in the game itself, that Bleach Japan is also discriminatory against Chinese and Korean people living in Japan. Believing they’re the main reason behind illegal activities linked with the entertainment business. This would also fit with Joon-gi Han and Tianyou Zhao playing important roles in the game’s story. Joon-gi Han’s cover is a host club.
Speaking of which, a video interview with Joon-gi Han ‘s seiyuu Nakamura was published. He most notably mentions how he wasn’t told what kind of character he was recording for, and initially thought it was a new character. However, he realized through the script he was reprising the role of Joon-gi Han. Nakamura also mentioned how hard it is is to voice battles scenes in Yakuza games. For example, grunting sounds when receiving damage. Usually, in games, seiyuu will only get asked to make different sounds when receiving low, med and high damage. In Yakuza games, they get asked to make different sounds depending on where they were hit + the level of damage. This is really hard to voice according to Nakamura.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon launches on January 16 in Japan and later in 2020 in the west, exclusively on PS4. Toshihiro Nagoshi explained at TGS 2019 why the game isn’t named “Yakuza 7” in the west. You can also watch some gameplay here.
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