We’re just a few short months away from the next installment in the Like a Dragon series, entitled Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. While technically a spinoff game, it stars long-time series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu in a new adventure bridging the events of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
Naturally, we have a lot of unanswered questions about this. What’s Kiryu doing here? Why is he back and starring in a game again? Will we see more of orange-headed mascot Ono Michio?
We sat down with Like a Dragon series producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto at gamescom 2023 to get some answers to our questions on Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, including new details about the game’s setting, fighting styles, battle arena, Kiryu’s fashion sense, and more. Here’s the full Q&A:
IGN: I have a burning question about when this game takes place? Because we thought we’d seen the last of Kiryu in Song of Life, and then he showed up in Like a Dragon in seven, and this is going to be setting up the next one. I guess, what kind of time period does this span and less, where does it end off? More, where does it start out?
Hiroyuki Sakamoto, Series Producer: So, actually, initially when we said goodbye to him, we were still planning to have him appear as a double protagonist for Eight. So, this has been kind of a long time something that we’ve been thinking about.
So, also in Seven, Kazuma kind of appeared as a sort of backup character, and a lot of people who played Seven but weren’t familiar with the previous games in the series are probably still wondering, “Who is this character and what’s his role?” within the series.
So, this game was kind of invented as a spinoff, a Gaiden, but what we really wanted to do with it was talk about what sort of life Kazuma had from the end of Six to the events in Eight. So, what he was doing in the background and what he was up to. This is kind of the goal for this whole game.
Now we know we’re going to be returning to Sotenbori and Ijincho, and this is a new location we’re checking out right here. Can you tell us about it?
HS: So, this is a location called The Castle, and we’ve already talked about it a bit on the game trailer that has come out before. And actually, here at Gamescom, we have a demo where you can play through it as well. But yes, it’s called The Castle.
Now, Kiryu has multiple fighting styles against… Sorry, Joryu, my bad. He’s got Agent style, which is sort of a faster paced one, and Yakuza style, which is, I think, one we’re more familiar with. I want to talk about his gadgets. Can you tell me a little bit about the new combat abilities he has as a spy with rocket boots?
HS: So, at the end of Six, Kazuma decided to become an agent, kind of in the event of Daidoji and everything. But at that point we decided, “Well, how are we going to show off how this has changed him, how this has affected his fighting style?” And that’s what, kind of, we’re showing off here.
Now, I got to ask something about the glasses because it’s like the Clark Kent disguise. When he’s wearing them and people who knew him as Kiryu see him, do they know that he’s Kiryu or do they buy that he’s Joryu, a whole different person? Is it like when people see Clark Kent and they don’t know that he’s Superman?
HS: In this game there’s actually a kind of customization feature, so you can change the way he looks. So, if you wanted to kind of pretend… like mess around with his outfit and kind of change around to make him look even less Kiryu if you wanted to, that’s cool. And in the game itself, he kind of walks around and he pretends like he’s not Kazuma, but this is something we want people to look forward to. At some point it’s going to be pretty obvious and there’s going to a lot of characters who are going to recognize him. But I mean, we can pretend as Clark Kent.
Now, one of the first looks we had at him in Infinite Wealth, he’s got this crazy new hairstyle with the silver. He’s getting on in years, but I have a feeling that’s sort of not a natural decision. Will that be explained in Gaiden or is that something we have to wait for Infinite Wealth for?
HS: So, we’re not going to go into too much detail of it in the game, but it’s not just fashion, is where we’ll leave it at today.
Interesting. Okay. Can you tell me how much Ono Michio is in this one? Are we going to get some more fun action?
HS: Oh, yeah, yeah. You like him that much?
That’s what I like to hear. Now tell me [about the Coliseum]?
HS: So, the Coliseum is a special battle kind of arena within the Castle. So, we’ve always kind of had a battle arena within these games, but for this game specifically, the kind of relationship of the battle arena to the game is a lot more deep, it’s a lot more involved. We can’t go into too much detail right now, but what we will say is that there’s all sorts of different things that this game… this battle arena does.
You can not just play as Kazuma, you can actually unlock and kind of use other characters as your playable character while you’re fighting through the arena. And so, that’s kind of one… There’s also like a team battle section where you can add more different team members to your battle… a party. It’s really cool.
Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for coming by and chatting. I’m really looking forward to this. I really miss Kiryu. I’m happy he’s back. I miss that guy.
HS: For more from gamescom 2023, you can catch up on all the news with our roundups of day one and Opening Night Live. And for more Like a Dragon Gaiden, check out our first preview of the game right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
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