You’re happy about the divisive response!? About the reaction to the release—— How has the reaction to the release been?There’s been two main reactions. One is basically “It’s great!”, then on the other side, some didn’t agree with what happened to Haruka. Between them, they created the biggest reaction in history ever, sending it straight to the top rank in search trends.
I expected opinions to be divided from the start, and I thought that would be a good thing, really. The fact that I can elicit such strong reactions from people, that honestly makes me very happy, you know.
—— Meaning?This is just my personal opinion, but I think that in the entertainment business, it’s the controversial products that stay with you longer. When your players aren’t just saying “Yeah, it was cool,” but screaming “The best!”, “The worst!” at each other, it makes for a lively community.
And then you get all the players expressing their strongly-held opinions to outsiders, and maybe they start writing detailed reviews asking, “I wonder why I thought that?” I’d much rather see someone sincerely engaging with the work like that, rather than vague impressions like “I just kind of hated it,” or “Yeah, it was good”. As a creator, that’s what makes me happy.
And you know, looking at reactions to the stories in the series until now, for example, the story of Ryu ga Gotoku Zero: Chikai no Basho was highly praised, while Ryu ga Gotoku 5: Yume, Kanaeshi Mono had a mixed reaction. Nevertheless in reality, we can see from the user data that 5 was overwhelmingly more long-lasting, with many people continuing to play it.
For us, when we’re making a game, more than sales, though those are important, we want to make something that will stay with the players for a long time, that’s what pleases us more than anything else.
—— So that’s why it doesn’t worry you if some of the players have negative opinions about 6.For different people to have strongly different reactions is really typical of Ryu ga Gotoku. Honestly, when Ryu ga Gotoku released 11 years ago, that was even our intention.
Before Ryu’s release, I said something very like, “We don’t have to get 8 out of 10 from everyone. 4 or 5 is fine, as long as lots of people give us 10 too.” Since then, over time, the series has grown to become one of the biggest titles in the country, but even now, we feel like we’re “making a cutting edge product”. That’s why I say I’m happy to have been able to elicit such strong reactions with this one.
This time, even among the really hardcore fans who come to every event, the kind of people who’ve named each successive game as their number one, I’ve heard basically that they didn’t like it just because Majima and Daigo are hardly in it. Even so, they played the game to the end and gave me their impressions, and for that I can only offer them my gratitude.
Is having a single protagonist very different from having several protagonists?—— I’m going to ask about the story. Since this time we only follow developments with Kiryu Kazuma, was your writing method different from how it was for the previous stories?Oh yes, I remember that time well. I’d gotten used to writing multiple protagonists recently, so going from that to being focused on one person, it required a completely different approach.
When there’s a lot of people, it takes time to draw out the essence of those newly-introduced characters. It’s hard to show their full character in just the main story part, it isn’t long enough. That’s something I’ve felt since Ryu ga Gotoku 4: Densetsu wo Tsugumono.
—— Can you be more specific about those feelings?When you introduce a new character, you have to show why that person is there, what he thinks, what his appeal is, all those things.
Speaking of 4, in the Akiyama part we ended up including more than we’d planned, so when the Saejima part was finished and this was only meant to be half the game, we’d gone way over that. We had to rush the Tanimura part to make up for it, and adjust the Kiryu part to take it into the final chapter, that’s how it went.
But when you have a single protagonist, you can allocate a certain amount of characters surrounding him and a certain amount of enemy characters. It makes it easier to create charismatic enemy characters like Ryuji in Ryu ga Gotoku 2 and Mine in Ryu ga Gotoku 3, I think.
—— So did having two protagonists in Zero allow for more detail than in 4 or 5?Since it wasn’t necessary to depict Kiryu or Majima’s background in great detail, creating the new characters involved in the events that happened around the two of them, though there were a lot of them, it was pretty easy. With this one, 6, returning to a single protagonist for the first time in a long time, I think that allowed me to properly depict new characters from Kiryu’s point of view.
—— How long did it take to develop the script?I started on it when Zero was finished, it took more than half a year. While that might seem short, it took almost twice the amount of time of any other game so far. And this time, after I finished writing, editing and rewriting took a considerable amount of time, so in the end I think the total was more than a year.
Also, something particular to this one was the time it took before I could actually start writing. Of course, with the story’s main pivot being “Haruka’s child”, that was a big deal, so it took time to talk all of that through and discuss it with Nagoshi and the team.
—— Had you decided at that point to have Haruka having given birth and Kiryu searching for the child’s father?I decided on that from the very beginning, in my first proposal. The first story concept I pitched to Nagoshi was “Kiryu Kazuma takes Sawamura Haruka’s child on a journey to find the baby’s father.” While it might be shocking to some of the fans, for me, this person called Kiryu Kazuma, he’s always in a situation where to stay alive he absolutely has to confront someone.
He’s a man who always before resolved these situations through violence, so what I wanted to show was him confronting a “journey without an answer”. For a man who’d never known traditional family love, I wanted to see how he would confront the big topic of experiencing how “a new life” changes your life.
—— I was surprised when I found out, but it’s a normal thing that happens, isn’t it.You could say that we gave the players a shock with the existence of Haruka’s child, but that shows they’ve been kind enough to become attached [to these characters], which is a good thing for us. My starting point was my wanting to show the end result of everything we’ve built up over the last decade.
Because this episode could only be made because the Ryu ga Gotoku series has characters age a year for every year that passes in real time, I decided I really wanted to depict that passage of time accurately.
Still, as the objective with this one was to complete the story of the man called Kiryu Kazuma, with 5 having such a complete ending for Kiryu, I had to find a second “irresistible motive” to drive him to action again.
—— “Irresistible motive”?I didn’t want to just repeat what we’ve already seen Kiryu Kazuma go through in previous games, as we’ve already seen him in turmoil, becoming weak, enduring heartbreaking incidents, all that kind of thing.
For example, if you have “Haruka being taken hostage” you know he would frantically rush to save her, it’s something that’s happened before. It’s the same with enemies. With a highly organised overseas organisation sweeping in, he wouldn’t hesitate in facing up to them.
When it comes to depicting the man called Kiryu Kazuma, I wanted to show his conflict and suffering, and then his determination. For Kiryu now, because it’s something he’s never experienced, wouldn’t the thing most troubling him be “the connection to a new life”? So following on from that, if we make Sawamura Haruka’s child his only partner in this, I thought that would enable us to show a never-before-seen side to this Kiryu Kazuma.
—— So it’s because of that you decided on “a journey in search of Haruka’s child’s father.”Kiryu and Haruka’s relationship, are they parent and child, are they in love, are they something else … for me, I don’t have anyone like that, so I can’t fully understand it. But, yeah, I think they’re more like parent and child than lovers.
Anyway, if Haruka had a child, there’s no doubt that that child would be really special to Kiryu. So I thought about how to have that happen in a believable way. So basically the whole purpose of the backstory was to get to him meeting “Haruka’s mystery child”.
—— So that’s how it came about.Though we had an amazing group of actors, it’s not like we created this story just so we could use that cast. When the scenario’s done, we ask people we think will be a good match for the characters to play them. With the story revolving around yakuza conflict, it’s bound to involve a lot of yakuza, you know.
—— What else did you have to think of when creating the story?I wanted to do something to surpass the impact of splitting Osaka Castle. Personally, I think it’s important to do something that you can only do in a game. Though I don’t discount the concept of playing “an emotional movie”, I think a game shouldn’t just be a thing you can say “Ooh, it’s like a movie,” about, I want it to do things it can only do because it’s a game.
We’re also determined to keep evolving. Game shops, websites, game media, TV commercials, the coverage we get ends up following the same basic framework every year. We’re working hard to find ways of breaking out of that framework.
I think we have to break out, to “take a step outside”, so we can make people understand just how good the games are. It’s always been our policy to get people who don’t really know the games and people who don’t play to take a look, that’s something we’ve been thinking about from the beginning. Actually, by the way, that applies to the story and casting, the idea for a new system etc., as well.
How Kuroda-san confronted the script as Kiryu—— What was Kuroda-san’s reaction like when he read the story?When we were recording, we didn’t tell him this was “Kiryu Kazuma’s final chapter”, so that when he found out later he could be surprised. Kuroda-san, until the midpoint, seemed to be performing with the attitude, “Well, Haruto might not even be Haruka’s child”.
He only saw each chapter of the script when the time arrived to record it, and when recording was finished each day, though he always asked me, “Yokoyama-san, when will I find out who the father is, in the next chapter? The one after?” he really didn’t want to know until he read the conclusion in the script. Reading it in the end, he was able to say, “Thank goodness. I’m okay with that.”
For him to have a reaction so close to Kiryu’s, that’s amazing empathy, isn’t it.
—— What were other people’s impressions [of recording] like?Ugaki-san, who plays Majima Goro, was pretty surprised. He was in and out of the booth in two minutes (laughing). He said, “That’s amazing, when the Ryu team decides to go for something, they really go for it, huh.”
Then, Fujiwara-san [Yuuta] and Dronz’s Ishimoto-san [Matsunaga] enjoyed their time recording. [note: Ishimoto is a member of a comedy group called Dronz, that’s why he’s referred to in this way.] Only Miyasako-san [Nagumo] had a hard time, because he really struggled with all the Onomichi dialect.
—— So his comment at the launch, “It was so hard,” was really true then.That was absolutely his honest opinion, you know. Every single line, he was being coached by Onomichi-ben teachers, so by the time we recorded the endgame, he was exhausted.
—— On the other hand, who did recording go smoothly for?Maybe because he’d played the series up till now, Oguri-san [Someya] gave a performance which really drew out the contrast between Kiryu and Someya, he was amazing. However you judge them Kiryu wins, on strength, and status. It’s hard to find a way for a performance to be able to compete on equal terms with that, but he did it so well, I was surprised.
The thing is, Oguri-san made regular appearances in the anime RAINBOW: Nisha Rokubo no Shichinin. He and Kuroda-san were both on that show, and I think he had Kuroda-san’s performance in his mind, that he didn’t want to be outdone by him. Really, he had almost no questions about the script, and he hardly had to do any retakes at all.
—— I heard that Morita Junpei-san’s [Big Rou] reaction was impressive too …For Morita-san, the first time he worked for us was when he played the Nagoya Wyverns’ Fujita in 5. Fujita was only in the Nagoya part, so he was only given the script for part 4, but he went around actors in the other parts asking for their scripts because he wanted to read the whole thing so much. He enjoyed the story that much.
—— That’s a great anecdote.Then he went on to play and read the series up till then.
In this one, when Big Rou’s recording was over, I was so happy to hear him say “That was really great reading material!” For an actor like Morita-san, who gets to see so many stories, to say something like that, that made me breathe a sigh of relief.
The secrets of matching the lines to the cast—— It felt like Hirose’s lines, at some points, could have come from one of Beat Takeshi-san’s movies. When you were writing the script, were you influenced by the cast?Yes, I was. With the overall story decided, when I came to start writing the script, I tried to imagine the cast when I was writing the lines.
In Takeshi-san’s case, he’d already signed on before I wrote his lines. Since Hirose makes his entrance in Chapter Four, from the moment it was settled I tried to write lines that Takeshi-san would feel comfortable reading.
—— He was a really key figure in the story, wasn’t he?The usually easygoing Hirose House boss, a key figure in the story … of course, with someone like that in the cast it’s obvious he’s going to be key, isn’t it? When you cast Takeshi-san, you’re not going to give him a bit part.
—— Playing the early part of the game, overall I felt many characters were a bit weak, you know. Like if Someya’s just being used by Sugai, that would be disappointing, I thought.Oh, I see (laughing). His first line, “I’m Someya, the head of Someya House,” he delivered it really lightly. After that, you’re like “What? What?” as his true character is quickly revealed. And then before you know it, you love him, that’s what I was aiming for.
—— I was totally taken in, huh. (laughing)I wanted Someya to be someone Kiryu could respect as an equal rival. Actually, in the scene where he comes all the way to Onomichi to see Kiryu, feeling it’s his duty to explain things to him, it’s clear that Kiryu’s attitude to Someya is already changing. Well, he took a four or five hour journey on the bullet train to see him, didn’t he? (laughing)
—— He did, didn’t he. (laughing) And then he turned round and went straight back.Personally, I really like how after that Someya has no more interest in listening to Sugai. Once he understands what’s going on, what Someya does … for me, I wrote him as Tojo Kai’s last hero.
—— I was surprised at Nagumo too. I grew to love him more in each chapter.That’s what I was talking about before, how when you have a single protagonist, you can dig deeper into the characters surrounding him. Hirose too, as we learn more about him in the second half, as the story progresses, players can’t help getting absorbed in the story I think. And speaking of Hirose House, for me, you can’t leave out Matsunaga and Tagashira.
—— The two of them really were solid, reliable characters.Tagashira frankly is Usami Yuuta’s backup … Tagashira is smart, reliable, that’s the kind of feeling I wanted to get over in the writing. He supports the other members when they mess up, he’s in the background but he’s crucial to the organisation. He’s my favourite.
—— None of the Hirose House boys are actually from Hiroshima, is that right?We looked for people who speak Hiroshima dialect and Onomichi dialect, but unfortunately none of them were right. It’s a shame, it would have been nice to have someone local.
I knew the voice of Hosoya Yoshimasa-san, who plays Tagashira, and I thought it would really suit him. Dronz Ishimoto-san, who plays Matsunaga, until the last minute we had a different person, a Hiroshima dialect test voice, you know.
—— What’s a test voice?It’s the voice we use for doing the lip-sync in editing, to show the cast how they’ll look in the game.
It was only in the final editing we had Dronz Ishimoto-san do it. Ishimoto-san’s voice fit the image from the test voice really comfortably, it went smoothly.
—— Nakamura Yuichi-san’s Han Jungi was the kind of character we’d never seen before. I was surprised.His character is really pretentious and affected, he works hard to be so cool … Han Jungi was a great character. Since I heard that Nakamura-san played a lot of Ryu ga Gotoku, I thought he’d bring a good attitude to it. Of course, he didn’t need the world explained to him, post-sync was no problem.
However, Han Jungi isn’t your typical Ryu ga Gotoku series character, he’s so over the top, we had to get the seasoning right. So I think he was a bit taken aback when I told him, “I want you to overdo it.”
—— I felt like, throughout the game, the characters were a lot more expressive than we’ve ever seen up till now.Since we got the Dragon Engine on the PS4, we’ve added a lot to the characters’ bones … and very much to the facial movements. It’s not like they didn’t move before now, but we’re able to do a lot more with the movement of the skin now.
While the facial motion capture team is in charge of the facial performance, the data can hold more details, so it’s a really faithful reproduction. Because of that it’s even possible to do silent acting now.
—— Not only are conversation scenes now fully voiced, the camera can move too. How much did that add to the workload, in comparison to the previous games? I’ve never really done a precise calculation … but I think it takes several times the amount of labour to create the same amount of content. Previous games had the same kind of camera angles and camera work. But that in itself doesn’t make the characters look real, it was still somewhat unnatural, you know.
To get it to really look natural, everything was done by hand. And that raised the quality of the whole thing.
Creating a town to enjoy window shopping in—— You’re completely recreating Kamurocho from scratch. While the area you can explore is smaller, it didn’t really feel like that, because it was so immersive.Regarding the feel of volume, the team had been conscious of that since the time of Ryu ga Gotoku: Ishin!. When you get the right balance of story and play etc., without expanding the area of the stage, you can create the right feeling with “tight tempo”.
In Ishin, the place called Rakugai wasn’t that big, and it wasn’t that dense either, you know. But that means you don’t get tired of running around in it, you can enjoy exploring and it feels good to play.
—— So it’s not good to make things too vast.When you mix up the various components, encountering multiple missions and playspots etc., I think a smaller area makes it more immersive than if you have everything widely spread out.
In 5, we had five big cities, when we reproduced the Nagasugai riverfront area of Fukuoka and the area of Sapporo symbolised by the signboards and big clock, we tried to capture the essence of those towns. But just doing that doesn’t guarantee that the game will be fun, you know.
With buildings you can’t go into, no back alleys, when you change towns only the scenery is different. When that happens, it’s just a running marathon, and that’s no fun. But when it’s not like that, when you can walk around town and go into shops, that kind of window shopping is the charm of this series.
—— Of course, when all you’re doing is running around, you lose interest in the scenery, don’t you.Rather than making you concentrate on running 42.195km, it’s much more fun to, say, have just the main street of Ginza, but you can go and play in every building. That’s why we do what we do. And the end result of us really going for that in development is that not many people disagree any more when it’s called “the greatest series in history”.
—— I see.With Park Boulevard before, it was just the street you used when you were going to Kamurocho Hills, nothing else. That being the case, we decided it would be better to concentrate on adding more buildings in other places. Because of that, we shifted more towards creating a feeling of density.
Of course, there’s still a lot more we can do, I think. But this time we decided to go with making the play experience deeper.
—— Was that the only reason for the reduction in the number of minigames?There’s two reasons for the reduction in minigames. One is that there was no need to implement the playspots that were in areas of the town you couldn’t currently play in. The next was the shift to PS4, giving up the thoughtless re-use of one-time past assets, trying to get away from the game just being like an overstuffed bento of playspots.
That way of thinking was a big factor in our decision to create a place like Onomichi, which isn’t a town centre, I think.
—— Onomichi, Hiroshima definitely felt like the kind of town we’d never seen in the series before.The places that have appeared in the series so far have all been central, busy areas. And of course we show they have a different appeal from Kamurocho, with the scenery, the people, the language, the culture etc., but frankly, that all falls down when you go to a playspot, and it’s exactly the same as it is in Kamurocho.
Approaching the Onomichi setting in the beginning, it was “karaoke” and “game centre” etc., the typical things you have in a town centre, but I kept thinking can’t we somehow do something different here, so I did a complete 180 and decided that in this town we would only have new things to play. The end result of that being things like the “snack” and the “free diving”.
—— The playspots in the temple etc. made it feel like going to Onomichi for real.As it’s a game, it’s a bit different from the real town, and it’s reduced in size. But I think we managed to capture the look of it really well.
I went to Onomichi so many times during development. The other day, I went there for the first time since the game was finished, and I saw it differently from before. It was so much fun exploring the town after having the experience of the game. So I’d really like you to visit Onomichi after playing the game.
—— Was that why you had the photo contest to win a “travel card”, because of feeling like that?It was. Playing the game, you get to enjoy going to Onomichi. As the town isn’t big, you can get round it in one day. The food’s delicious, it’s not windy and the humidity is good, so it’s a nice place to spend time. If you can enjoy the town in both the game and in reality, that’s one of the real pleasures of Ryu ga Gotoku, so I really want you to go.
—— It seems like, as you walk around the town, you’ll be able to remember all the things that happened in the game in those locations.We were able to do certain things because the tourist office in Onomichi was kind enough to collaborate with us. That’s how we could use Senkoji Temple and the ropeway in the game. Because making it feel as real as possible makes the game so much more enjoyable, it makes it memorable. Having such a realistic experience makes the game unforgettable, I think.
—— Was it difficult getting the appearance of the town right?The designers were excited, they enjoyed developing it. That said, for the staff who all through the series till now had only made concrete buildings, when they had to make a town entirely constructed from wood, that caused them some trouble.
—— I imagine it was hard to make such a hilly town too, how was that?Yes, that was hard too, and you can also see the whole town from the highest point in Onomichi. Looking down on the town from that high place, we could have cheated it with CG, but we didn’t really want to do that.
Still, they were able to summon more fighting spirit than expected, and they really enjoyed it, I think.
—— How many people did you have doing research?I think it was five or six people, doing background research for Onomichi, staff and art directors. They took a lot of photos before building it.
Comparing the research for this to the five cities for 5 – though that was hard – since this time we wanted to build a really detailed town, the research had to be detailed too. Walking around the real town, you get to feel how dense, how closed-in it is, and I think our team did excellently in representing that so well in the graphics.
—— The setting and the character of Iwami Heizou are so intertwined, where did that come from?“Onomichi” is a town that prospers because of Iwami’s business. I considered them inseparable in that sense. But it’s not just about Iwami, it’s more than that. The story grew from me thinking about the history and culture of the place where it’s set, and it ended up being deeply influenced by that.
About Yokoyama-san’s connection to the Ryu ga Gotoku series—— The series has been going for a long time, how many of you from the early days are still a part of it?There’s been four or five people who’ve been with the series from the beginning, and I think I’m one-quarter of that. Ever since I joined Sega as a new hire, pretty much my entire career has been working on the Ryu ga Gotoku series.
—— From the past series, what title stands out?For me, it’s linked to the context, it doesn’t just depend on the product, so … it’s 4. When we made 4, it was the one that made me think the series could continue. It was a big turning point for the series, I think. We took on big challenges in continuing to expand the scope of the city from previous games, as well as adding more protagonists, and I think we succeeded.
There were various problems we faced while making 4. And I really wanted Akiyama to be a well-rounded character. If it hadn’t gone well, I think the series would have been finished.
—— So you really like 4, I guess.As a game, the one I found the most exciting to experience was 5. The gameplay is packed with variety, so as a complete package it’s unsurpassed, a marvel.
After a crash in the snowy mountains, you’re into idol activities … idol culture and fashion, gourmets. It’s beyond all your expectations, all the fun you can imagine from every part of this country called Japan, it ended up being our busiest game, I think.
—— So it’s full of all kinds of entertainment.Since 5 was the first one I produced, when I had a congratulatory phone call from the executives on the release day saying, “It’s going to be hard to equal this debut in future!” I was racking my brains thinking, “Who are you calling for?”
But I think that about every one I make. Right now I’m thinking, what if I don’t hit the target because I didn’t throw on all the toppings, that’s something to think about tomorrow. (laughing)
—— If you’re looking after the scenario while also being the producer, you have to be able to judge your own writing. That sounds to me like it would be difficult, am I right?Certainly, you have to make all kinds of judgements yourself. The budget is definitely one of them.
Up to and including 4, because I was in charge of the script, I always felt like I wanted to make all the scenes I’d written myself. If I thought I’d written good lines for Akiyama, for example, I wanted them all to be spoken. But there weren’t enough event scenes. So I’d go to Nagoshi and the producer, yelling that I wanted more budget. (laughing)
On the other hand, since 5, I’m handling “people; things; money”. When that happened, I was the one who had to calmly analyse 5 as a product myself. Once I started to think like a producer, I think I became able to take an objective, calm look at my own scenario.
—— A specific example of that?Up till 4, as scenario writer, as director, all I wanted was to make good scenes. While I didn’t want spoilers in the promotional videos, if they didn’t want to use scenes from the second half, the only thought in my mind was “How is the scenario coming across?”
But after I became producer, I switched to deciding what went into the promos based on how best to represent the game, not on whether I liked the lines or the character.
Honestly, when it came to 5 I was fighting with myself over what I wanted to do and what I wanted to cut, it was quite a conflict (laughing). But now I don’t get confused like that any more. Now I can decisively throw away stuff from my own scenario without resenting the time I spent on it. It’s like, “Ah – I can’t … ah, but I have to!” (laughing). Of course it’s hard, but I think I like taking those two roles.
—— Since you’ve been doing this for more than ten years now, you must have seen a lot of changes?Ryu ga Gotoku was the title that made me think, “Making games is one hell of a big job.” If it hadn’t been so popular 11 years ago, then now the scale and contents of promotional activities would be completely different. And I think naturally for me too, the way I think about the “product” has also changed.
—— Even with the tie-ups, the other parties’ responses are very different too, I think.That’s part of the series’ history too, yes. There’s various things to consider there too, because the response wasn’t great in early development. When we went to meetings to discuss tie-ups, we were really closely scrutinised. I feel like what we managed to pull off back then, in securing those tie-ups and campaigns, it makes everything we’ve done since then look easy.
—— Anything else that’s changed?Even in casting, now I get to hear many voices saying they want to appear. On the first one, I couldn’t even get them to listen to me.
Bringing in tie-ups that reflect the times!—— There’s various tie-ups in this game, what stands out?Rizap!
—— No hesitation there.To be honest, we didn’t just want to get Rizap on board because of it being a popular trend, it was also because of the gamified nature of the program itself. But I thought it would be a great tie-up to represent a slice of this era, modern Japan in 2016.
—— “A slice of this era”?We used to think that the more games represent their times, the less relevant they would be as society moves on. We thought a game set apart from its time could be longer-lasting, you know.
But I gradually started to see things differently, and when we made Ryu ga Gotoku Kiwami, Ryu ga Gotoku allowed me to see the “value of representing the era” in a new light.
—— For example?Playing 1 again during Kiwami’s development, the town of that time was even older than I thought, 2005 Kamurocho was interesting, you know. Date-san saying “Nowadays, even the kids have them,” when he gave Kiryu his cellphone, it was a bigger shock than I’d expected, remembering how far things have come.
—— Hahahahaha.Even in ten years, the people change, the town changes. Ten years on, those small changes make things more interesting. So the more accurately we represent now, the more interesting it will be to play in the future, that’s why I think it’s so important to represent the era.
—— I see.Speaking of the situation with Rizap, as well as it representing 2016, the thought that we could use this system to have Kiryu, who’s already the strongest man, “break his limits” and become even stronger, made me want to talk to them about a tie-up at the earliest possible opportunity.
—— It certainly gave the impression of being more involved than any tie-up in the games up till now.Even now they have billboards all over town. Of course including such things is essential in making the town look real, it’s something you pass by all the time. Because they’re so involved in the game, you’re left with the impression of having experienced it, and I’m really glad we managed to do that properly.
And as for the significance of being a slice of the era, the cabaret clubs are an opposite example. They don’t have that powerful glamour they had at the time of 1 any more, and that bothers me.
—— Eh? Really?Back in 2005, cabaret clubs were “the latest thing”, real hotspots. While they were already the craze in Tokyo, and lots of people were hooked on them, they were something that wasn’t really known to the mainstream yet, they had an “unexplored territory” charm to them.
Since then they’ve gradually spread so they’re even in provincial towns now, some cabaret girls have become famous, everyone knows what they’re about now.
And because of that, since 1 we’ve had to change how the cabaret clubs play in the games. To begin with, just having an exciting conversation was enough to make it interesting. But when you know real cabaret clubs, you want a different type of excitement from what you get in reality.
That’s why the cabaret clubs have gradually become more and more gamified, until you suddenly realise it’s become completely “unreal”. But still, as cabaret clubs are a feature of nightlife districts, we have to continue including them as playspots in the games. So I’ve been racking my brains all these years to find ways of keeping them going. (laughing)
So it’s like Rizap now offers the same kind of excitement as the cabaret clubs offered in 1.
—— For sure, though I know what Rizap is, I’ve never been there.I think apart from the adverts, you might have heard of a friend of a friend or someone who’s said something like “I think you go there to lose weight”. But you’ve never been in reality. I thought it might be an exciting playspot to access, even if it’s just for a while in the game, and that it might even get people fired up to try it in reality.
—— How does Rizap feel about it?Extraordinarily happy. To be honest, some of us thought it might be a no-go because of the dragon on Kiryu’s back, but they gave us the OK.
—— Apart from that, there’s various other things appearing in the game, isn’t there.There’s items worn by characters in the game, like the Saiou Kai members’ accessories are IVX, the watches worn by Akiyama and Someya are Tendence, the disguises worn by Hirose House are Alpha Industries.
It’s not just that having characters wear real items makes it more realistic, it adds to the character’s appeal. As graphics improve, that really helps in making these things look realistic too.
—— What you were saying earlier about making the town seamless, was it the PS4 that allowed you to implement that?Making the town seamless was something I’d wanted to do for a while. If only the data load was lighter we could have done it on PS3, that in itself was nothing special. But then, looking at the PS4’s abilities, we got to the point where we wondered if we could eliminate loading. At that point, if we hadn’t been studying the hardware and made the plan, it would have stopped with the processing drop.
With Ishin, Zero and Kiwami, which were developed for both PS3 and PS4, they used the same PS3 engine, so the PS4’s abilities weren’t needed. With this one, doing it in the Dragon Engine, the questions became how far we could take it, and how to do the processing.
—— With no loading, you can really enjoy hanging out in the town.Because in this one we split experience points into different sections, you might think “As lean tuna only gives me power, maybe I should eat something else,” when you come to choose your food. If people do Rizap properly, I think they’ll enjoy the quiz and get to learn about the menus of all the shops.
—— You really thought this out.If you get the advice “People can chomp it up whole” then you might think “Sashimi’s no good … grilled fish, maybe? I wonder where I can eat that?”
I know people like to play in different ways, some people eat the whole menu straight away for the achievements and the trophy, but personally I don’t like that. I want you to think about what you’re eating in town.
If you let the food you eat in the game spark your imagination, then when you get hungry for real you’ll want to eat the same menu. During development, so many times I thought, “I want to eat Ikinari! Steak,” so I’d go to their Kamata shop, eat, and then go back to work.
—— It really does make you want to eat. This time there’s no check mark against what you’ve already eaten either, so I guess that explains that too.The restaurants in the game before only really existed to fill up the completion list, and I wanted to turn them into places people actively wanted to go to.
—— With the experience acquisition system this time, the way you gain experience points from eating, was that something you came up with in the beginning?I wanted to stress the connection between eating and experience, so I asked for it right at the start of development. It’s like I keep saying, “I don’t want you to forget to play this town.”
Truth is, in the first demo for 6 that came with Kiwami, it was very different. In that first demo, when you were fighting all you could do was punch and kick, you couldn’t hold anything in your hands except cones.
—— I remember.That was because of the development team though, while they’d got through the punching and kicking part, when it came to weapon handling, it was really rough to play so they cut it. But for me that was a big negative.
The theme of Ryu ga Gotoku could be “Enjoy playing the town”. And because it’s about enjoying modern Japanese town centres, there’s bicycles lying around in town, signboards, things like that. So, I think you have to be able to use these items lying around in the town in battle.
Also, since in this one you can move around as much as you want during battle, that made me want it to be possible for you to carry things even more.
—— If you couldn’t, that would really have been a negative.If you don’t have that feel of playing the town, it’s not Ryu ga Gotoku, so we had to do it, even though getting it to work while complying with the basic system was hard work.
—— Because the item in your hand gives you power, I get the feeling it helps people who aren’t good at action.That’s also true, yes. Rather than people who are bad at fighting just having to mash buttons, if you skilfully use the environment it’s easier to get through. But if that’s the only tactic you have, you might get into trouble in boss fights when there’s no items around, you know.
—— Speaking of weapons, the series’ familiar “Golden Gun” is no more, huh.While the “Golden Gun” with unlimited ammunition has been in the series up till now, because you can’t equip weapons in this game, we couldn’t include it. Regarding the lack of special items, we actually looked into the possibility of having something like a “Golden Bicycle” appear somewhere, but it kept appearing in places where it shouldn’t have, so we sadly had to cut it.
About substories and sideways expansion—— With the substories, it seems there’s a lot of them that are linked to previous entries in the series, was that deliberately planned?There are a few reasons for that, but the main one was to reward long time players of the series.
—— With Munancho Hepetonas, since it was formed in Osaka, there’s the small detail of Kiryu not knowing about its origin.As much as possible, we chose things that had been popular in the series up till now. Spanning the whole series, though we narrowed the amount down bearing in mind there would be things people who haven’t played the previous games wouldn’t get.
We split the substories into different categories. For example, five moving ones, five to reflect the spirit of the times, that kind of thing.
—— So that’s where the drone and the video guy came from?Exactly. After that, things to make you remember old characters, things to remind you of past substories, etc. When we were deciding what to include, we looked to bring together all the favourite types.
—— Speaking of substories, Ono Michio made a lasting impression, didn’t he.Because in the end it was a great story, that might be why he stands out. When I first suggested it in the initial stages, I said that I wanted to make a “yurukyara” [local mascot] that would be memorable to the players. I was thinking we could use it in promotions, and maybe even produce merchandise as well, if possible.
—— His design, with all the local specialties, it was so spot on, it made me think “I could believe he really exists”.That’s because the creator really studied yurukyara. And because Kiryu gets inside the costume, him speaking from inside it just makes it funnier. Even during development, he made us feel like “Let’s take this even further!” (laughing).
—— The photo competition you’re doing, how’s the response been to that?We’ve had plenty of entries. As you can take pictures with the smartphone, I thought that would be a good way to use it.
Because this time you can capture the reactions of passersby in town, people have managed to take even more amazing photos than we expected. The developers have been trying things out too, it was a fun test.
—— It seems like different people focus on different things.As you can see on Twitter and Instagram, it’s a tool for bringing things from the past ten years back to life. It’s all about using the smartphone, and like we discussed earlier, we want to put things that reflect the times in the game. Please take lots of pictures and enter the competition.
Even the people who send stuff the developers really didn’t want you to take pictures of, we want to give you something. (laughing)
—— Did you also want to encourage taking photographs of the characters with a grudge from previous games who appear too?Ghosts appearing in photographs is a classic, but it’s still a trend, isn’t it? In this game, the spirit photographs are there to allow you to enjoy the series’ history, something only aimed at fans. Something we could only do because we’ve been making this series for 11 years. To be frank, when it comes to Kamurocho, the whole town is a crime scene, you know.
—— “The whole town is a crime scene” describes it perfectly. (laughing)We put them in so you could be like, “That character died here,” and think back on those episodes. And if any of the fans get angry thinking, “This means that character is officially dead!” please feel free to just think of what you see as a doppelganger. By the way, it was a fan at Tokyo Game Show who suggested thinking of it that way. “You can interpret it that way too!” they said. (laughing)
Wanting to see for yourself the end of Kiryu Kazuma—— What’s going to happen to the series from now on?I don’t think this will be the last chapter you play of Ryu ga Gotoku. I’ve been saying it for a long time, that if it ever happens that Kiryu ends up holding all the aces, we might have to make something new for it to still feel like Ryu ga Gotoku.
Of course, because our team exists to make games, we’re going to continue being creative in some way. I have a hunch this year [2017] will be the year we do something new.
—— Would you like to say anything to people who haven’t played this one yet?These days there are all kinds of enjoyable ways to play, you can watch films outdoors, go to amusement facilities, and you can even enjoy games and videos on devices like smartphones wherever you are. You have so many options, but even though you have to be at home to play this game on the PS4, I still think that’s the most exciting way to play now.
Like I’ve been saying, as well as it being a deeply moving experience, I think this one is unsurpassed as an entertainment product depicting “Japan in 2016”. Because it’s packed with all the fun of modern Japan, you really should check it out.
—— And now a message to the series fans, please.It’s a title where the contents of the story have elicited strong opinions for and against, I accept that. A year and a half ago, when I finished the script, the only thing I could do was steel myself for when we told the fans it was “the final chapter for Kiryu Kazuma”.
You don’t have to imagine what happened. However, I did it to show the characters called Kiryu Kazuma and Sawamura Haruka as “individual human beings”, their essential strengths and weaknesses, as they confront this unfair reality head-on.
Watching Kiryu endure this ordeal, or perhaps I should say crisis, and then even though he makes bad decisions, when you see him and his friends standing up and fighting back, I think every player will find something, even if it’s just one thing, that’s strongly moving and stays with you.
I want as many of the series fans as possible to play it and then later for them to talk to each other about Kiryu Kazuma’s final battle, that’s my message. All I want is for you to be thinking of Ryu ga Gotoku 6 for many years to come, if you would be so kind.
Original:
Dengeki OnlineTraducción:
Dojima's Dragon Girl y mientras voy a ir reservando yakuza 6 y Kiwami 2...
![[carcajad]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani2.gif "carcajada")
![[+furioso]](/images/smilies/nuevos/furioso.gif "muy furioso")
![[beer]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/brindando.gif "brindis")
:
![[babas]](/images/smilies/babas.gif "Babeando")
![[snif]](/images/smilies/nuevos/triste_ani1.gif "llorando")
. O no sé leer, o he ido demasiado rápido o lo han modificado (apuesto a lo primero ![[+risas]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani3.gif "más risas")
). 
![[angelito]](/images/smilies/nuevos/angelito.gif "angelito")
.![[facepalm]](/images/smilies/facepalm.gif "facepalm")
![[buuuaaaa]](/images/smilies/nuevos/triste_ani3.gif "a lágrima viva")
Y aahora, aunque me muera de ganas de seguir con el 6, le daré unos meses de descanso a la saga y me pondré con el 0. 
luego espero volver con fuerza e iré por el 100% del zero, que se nota que tiene su miguita. 
:![[mad]](/images/smilies/nuevos/miedo.gif "loco")
![[maszz]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/dormido.gif "otro q duerme")
así que toca lapso temporal merecido por mi parte ![[burla2]](/images/smilies/nuevos/burla_ani1.gif "burla2")
![[fiu]](/images/smilies/fiu.gif "disimulando")
![[flipa]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/flipando.gif "flipando")
![[poraki]](/images/smilies/nuevos/dedos.gif "por aquí!")
emmm na es bromaa 
estaría bien pero a ver si los traen, que ya les vale currarse el remaster hd de yakuza 1 y 2 para ps3 ¡y para wiiu! y no trajeron NINGUNO a occidente los muy marranos. 