The showcase focused on their recent reveal of Like a Dragon: Ishin! from the recent State of Play hosted by PlayStation, alongside other announcements and interviews. The interviews were done by RGG Studio’s executive producer Masayoshi Yokoyama, with several voice actors from the upcoming titles. Here’s what we know so far about the upcoming RGG studio games.
New Trailer and Info for Like a Dragon: Ishin!
The first game showed off at the RGG Summit was Like a Dragon: Ishin! with a new extended trailer. Titled “Ambush”, the new trailer focused on revealing more characters from the Shinsengumi faction, including new familiar faces. We saw classic Yakuza characters Saejima, Taiga and Majima Goro mercilessly kill their targets while Kiryu talked upstairs.
During the interview, Masayoshi stated Like a Dragon: Ishin! will be getting the Kiwami treatment, including the addition of popular characters from Yakuza 0, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon taking on roles from the original Ishin game.
For the first time ever, RGG’s samurai spin-off will be available for the west
Like a Dragon: Ishin! takes place in the 1800s during the end of the Bakumatsu Period, before the Meiji era. Kiryu takes on the role of Ryoma Sakamoto, a historical samurai who was instrumental in the defeat of Tokugawa. Alongside the new footage for the game, we also had the release date revealed as February 21, 2023.
Like a Dragon 8 Revealed
RGG revealed our first look at the next entry to the main Yakuza game series titled, Lika a Dragon 8. This will be a continuation of Yakuza: Like a Dragon and will feature the return of Kasuga Ichiban. However, the bigger news from the reveal is that joining Ichiban is past Yakuza protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. Strangely though, Kiryu appears to look a bit different, now rocking grey hair. Masayoshi said the new look was a necessary change but the reason wasn’t made clear.
Outside of the trailer, RGG stated that the gameplay for Like a Dragon 8 will remain the same from the change Yakuza: Like a Dragon provided, changing the action brawler to an action RPG. lastly, RGG has now decided to officially rename the Yakuza series moving forward to its Japanese title, Like a Dragon. This was done due to some upcoming games like, Like a Dragon: Ishin! not involving the Yakuza in its story as well as the mainline series stepping away from involving the Yakuza as the core part of the narrative.
Kiryu will be teaming up with Ichiban and a team of new and old characters in Like a Dragon 8.
At the moment, Like a Dragon 8 has a release window of 2024.
A New Spin-off Game Revealed
After the Like a Dragon 8 reveal we all thought it was over for new games from RGG. However, then they sprung the trailer for a new spin-off game starring Kazama Kiryu just after the events of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. The title of the new spin-off is Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and will feature the return of Yakuza‘s traditional gameplay.
Discover what happened to Kiryu between the 6th and 8th entry in the mainline series.
The new spin-off game will cover the unknown events of what Kiryu was up to during the time between Yakuza 6: The Song of Life and Like a Dragon 8. In the trailer, Kiryu now goes by the name Joryu and is spending time at the Daidoji Temple. He interacts with two characters in the trailer, with one giving him a task to protect an unknown individual.
RGG has said that the spin-off’s story will be half the size of their traditional games similar to the DLC for Lost Judgment. Currently Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name has no official release date but will arrive in 2023 for the last and current generation of consoles.
Judgement Coming to Steam
Finally, as a post-stream bonus, RGG revealed that their detective spin-off series Judgment will be heading over to Steam. Titled The Judgment Collection, this port contains Judgment, its sequel Lost Judgment and the story expansion The Kaito Files. Last year, SEGA wanted to port the spin-off series to steam but was blocked by actor Takuya Kimura’s management agency. Thankfully the dispute appears to be over and now both Judgment games are available for Steam users.
Play both Judgment games as Yagami and then take a spin on the Yakuza side with Kaito in the Kaito Files.
Judgment and Lost Judgment are available now on Steam and can be bought separately outside of the collection.
SOURCE: RGG Summit Stream
