The Most Interesting Video Game Franchise
Kazuma Kiryu is the only truly good man in gaming. Sorry Mario.
For the readers who know me (that’s… all of you), it may come as a surprise to discover film is but one of my pop-culture fixations. After dipping my toes in the waters of football, I’d like to write about video games next. I was going to cover something music-related today, but Tim Cook had a different idea! Gone are the hay days of my Apple Music free trial. As of last week, Laurence’s Daily Mix consists of four Florence + The Machine music videos and one Paramore music video; all excellent, all circa 2012. Instead of expertly curating the finest playlists any streaming service has ever hosted, I have been filling my free time with something equally perfect and well-rounded. The latest Yakuza installment. So, what is it that makes these games so interesting?
Like a Dragon: Ishin! came out a mere fortnight ago, and already it’s become my newest time sink. The game is a remake of a spin-off from 2014, that had never been released outside of Japan. This most recent release also marks the official rebranding of the franchise. Outside of Japan, the series has always been called Yakuza, while in the franchise’s nation of origin, it has always been called Ryū ga Gotoku which translates to Like a Dragon. Ryū ga Gotoku is also the name of the game’s developers, so for the sake of clarity, I will be using the game’s official western titles throughout - to avoid confusion.
I have played a fair amount of video games in my life, ranging from the big guns like Call of Duty, to the more surreal Katamari Damacy. Video games, to me, have a unique position in the world of art. The basic fundamental of video gaming is interactivity; the audience, is also the artist. Even that interaction can unfold within a range of forums. A game like Gears of War, for example, where you spend your time shooting through hoards of creatures on apocalyptic earth is no more or less a video game than something like Tokimeki Memorial, where you navigate the school year as a high school boy.
Of course, cinema is similarly wide in its scope. But the way you consume film is consistent: you sit and you watch. Video games mix that up; you have to be an active participant, and each game has different rules of engagement. Different mechanics, controls, and viewpoints. A game is also unique - no one will have the exact same experience. Granted, imagination exists, but the plot of a movie or book will never change. Aside from the warp of a record, the notes and lyrics that make up an album will never change. A game will change each time you play it.
Now that I’ve converted you, let’s discuss Yakuza. In a nutshell, Yakuza is gaming’s most interesting franchise, because it comes closest to capturing the video game experience as a whole. It is an abundance of bespoke entertainment. Admittedly, I have an ongoing debate with myself about which video game franchise is my favourite. It’s between Metal Gear Solid and Yakuza. Metal Gear Solid is perhaps the more important franchise, and the one I have more of a connection to having discovered it at a younger age. But, Yakuza is the one I return to time and time again.
Like a Dragon: Ishin! shares the same core gameplay as all the previous Yakuza games (bar one). You walk around and beat baddies up. That’s the main action, be it with your fist, a sword, a trout, or a bicycle. The main thrust is getting into fistfights and showing the local thugs why they should never cross your path again. Nevertheless, when I sat down to play last night, I didn’t get into a single fight. I played the game for about two hours and filled my time with farming, karaoke, poker, fishing, and delivering mail. Scrapping is still your main directive, but the key to Yakuza’s joy is realising brawls are not the only way you can interact with the games.
Like many, I often jump between different games. One night I’ll maybe play a few games of FIFA, and the next I’m hopping back into the boots of everyone’s favourite Italian plumber, Chris Pratt Mario. But each new Yakuza release holds my undivided attention. Because, within a single package, I have endless options.
Other games of course have options. Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are recent plays that have also provided vast spaces to explore and things to interact with. Progression, however, is a little more one-track. You go to a place and shoot a guy, or go to a place and stab a griffin. However, Yakuza will let you progress a story by getting really good at serving Udon, or playing Outrun in an arcade.
2017’s Yakuza 0 was the tipping point for the franchise in the west. Prior to 0, games in the series would be released years later outside of Japan – if at all. 0 changed that, and since then the series has grown and grown outside of its home country. Not to blow my own opinion trumpet too much, but 0 really encapsulated the multiplicity of Yakuza that makes them great. It also acts as a perfect point to dive into because story-wise it’s a prequel to all the previous games. Here’s a small list of things you can do in Yakuza 0 that isn’t throwing hands at fools:
Dancing
Pool
Karaoke
Shogi
Pocket Circuit Racing
Managing a Real Estate Empire
Running a Hostess Club
Fishing
Bowling
And that’s just 0. And that’s not even half of them! Yakuza 5 lets you be a cab driver, Judgment lets you play a VR dice board game, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon lets you attend a vocational school or race go-karts. For the sake of comparison, here’s a list of things you can do in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II – which was the best-selling game of 2022:
Shoot Guns
Now, this isn’t to say Call of Duty is bad. Shooting things in those games is tight and responsive in a way few games could hope to achieve. But that’s literally all you can do. I could tell you right now what the next Call of Duty game will be like, from start to finish. But Yakuza? Who knows where it’ll go next? Maybe we’ll be treated to a chicken racing minigame. Oh, wait! You can already do that!
The series has already taken two large pivots. One into the world of serialised detective stories, with Judgment and Lost Judgment. The other, into a turn-based RPG with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. There’s no reason to think it won’t do so again, which is a rarity among big-budget video games.
2023’s Yakuza journey is just beginning, with Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name potentially coming to a PlayStation near you later this year. The best part? I have little idea of what to expect. Maybe you’ll become a bass player for a local struggling rock band, or maybe you’ll join an amateur football team, or maybe you’ll finally get ever-stoic protagonist Kiryu to smile. Ryū ga Gotoku throws curveball after curveball. Both literally, in the baseball minigame, and figuratively in terms of redefining what exactly you can be limited to doing in an “action” game. Their most impressive move is never making Yakuza games feel washed out. You have endless options, but all of them have body; dilution of activity is never an issue.
I haven’t even touched on the story of these games, which again, have similar diversity to their gameplay. One moment you’re ripping your shirt off in slow-mo to reveal a massive dragon tat, whilst fighting your former best friend on top of a skyscraper. The next? You’re filling in as the producer on a music video directed by Steven Spielberg Stephen Spinning, starring Michael Jackson Miracle Johnson.
Yakuza is not the only franchise to offer choice. To say so would be ignorant of the wide world of games out there. Some games let you decide the way a story unfolds, some let you choose the path of non-violence. Many games also offer a huge amount of content. But none of them blend everything together as well as the Yakuza franchise. Each piece of side content feels just as integral to the experience as its main path. Yakuza doesn’t offer you games, it offers you the world of video gaming. Maybe through a Yakuza mochi-making minigame, you discover other cooking games. Who knows, maybe you become a chef. Maybe you discover golfing games, singing games, racing games, games where you fight a bear on a mountain… you get the point. Maybe I finally understand the “art imitates life” adage. Ryū ga Gotoku studios have built a series designed to show you how deep the gaming rabbit hole goes.
Perhaps that’s why the developers wanted to change the name from ‘Yakuza’ to ‘Like a Dragon’. The title Yakuza was originally chosen by the publisher SEGA to market the game as a Grand Theft Auto-esque experience in Japan. Which is both overselling and underselling the series. Yakuza has never been an “open world game” in the traditional sense. It’s more of a detailed open neighbourhood. There isn’t crazy open-world chaos with rocket launchers and driving cars off of mountains. But there is more depth, more reason to engage with the world. A developer-guided-hand to show you the true wonders and intricacies of its geography and systems. You’re not just a yakuza in these games, you’re anything you want to be.