RGG Studio‘s Masayoshi Yokoyama has revealed during an interview with Automaton that the upcoming Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name took around six months to developer, and was originally considered to be a DLC release.
Like A Dragon Gaiden depicts the events between Yakuza 6 and Yakuza: Like A Dragon, with long-time protagonist Kazuma Kiryu having faked his death and is living a new life away from those he loves. Yokoyama-san explained that the game’s development was made easier as it uses the same engine as Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth.
There isn’t a huge difference between Like a Dragon Gaiden and Like a Dragon 8. By this I mean that, in a sense, Like a Dragon Gaiden was derived from Like a Dragon 8. We could have just told of Kiryu’s past through a thirty-minute interlude as part of Like a Dragon 8, but we decided it would be a lot more interesting as a game of its own, which is how the project came to be. Though this meant having a whole extra game to make, it still uses the same engine, so we thought, ‘It’s not like we have to make it from scratch,’ and decided to go with it. In the end, it took us about half a year to make it.
Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is scheduled for release on PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One on November 9, 2023.
[Source – Automaton]