The Yakuza series has spawned well over a dozen games since it debuted in 2005, and I haven't included any of the substantial remasters in that figure. As prolific as Ryu Ga Gotoku is, they're also remarkably consistent: the same bonkers mix of melodrama and absurd humour is threaded through every one of these games, even the ones set in the 17th century.
It's a formula that took a while to cotton on outside of Japan: it didn't really land as a big commercial success in the west until 2015's Yakuza 0. And that game landed loudly, despite making no overt compromises for western audiences.
But now that western audiences are paying attention, will Ryu Ga Gotoku indulge them more? It seems unlikely, according to a new Automaton interview with three RGG Studio big wigs. Asked whether the studio might abandon its credo of "making what feels true to RGG Studio" in the event that their games became huge global concerns, series executive producer Yokoyama Masayoshi was unequivocal.
"No, it won’t," he said. "If we really wanted to make a game for overseas audiences, it would obviously be better to make a foreign protagonist and set the story overseas. But if we did that, it wouldn’t be Like A Dragon. There would be no point in us making it."
He went on: "Instead, we have to preserve what makes us us, and communicate that to the world. If we’re not doing that, we might as well dissolve the team right now and make a totally different game."
Masayoshi sees it as RGG Studio's job to make Like A Dragon games and to "spread it globally", adding that "I think people start making strange things when they misunderstand what their business is supposed to be." (If those strange things come in the form of Binary Domain, though, I'm inclined to say they should give it a shot more often.)
The way the Yakuza series has evolved since 2015 is solid evidence that RGG Studio doesn't care about selling countless million units in the west. It controversially pivoted to a turn-based format with 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon, before controversially pivoting to a Hawaii setting with 2024's Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Hawaii has a huge Japanese population). Earlier this year, they released a pirate spin-off. Oh, RGG Studio, you genius loons, whatever will you think of next?
It's well worth reading the full Automaton interview for some interesting—and unusually candid—insight into how and why RGG Studio makes its peculiar Japanese crime capers.
