Mullen: I think one of the big challenges is simply catching up with the Japanese releases. What were some of the challenges of bringing the game to Western audiences? So we brought the game over in its entirety, 100 percent of the content. If anything, when we said we were bringing over the softcore video segments, there was really nothing else beyond that, “Well, that’s too extreme, gotta cut that!” I can’t think of anything we would have cut. Were there any scenes or missions that got scrapped for the U.S.
And it’s the people who stick around for that are ultimately its cult following. And then they go, “Okay, well I don’t know if I’m interested in that.” But I feel like if most people give Yakuza a shot, usually they find something they weren’t expecting it. Mainstream folks look at it and say, “Oh it must be Grand Theft Auto in Japan,” but no, it’s not.
Yakuza 0 majima cult series#
The people who went out and gave the series a shot just on a whim, you know the people who like to explore fringe content, discovered what Yakuza is and what it has been over the past decade. Mullen: If I had to add to that, I would say that because of that market uniqueness and because of the difficulty in explaining what it is, that makes it kind of niche and cult because of that. It’s all these things going on in a single Yakuza game, and I think that’s what draws an audience to it. It’s not just an open-world game, it’s not just a sandbox, it’s not just a brawler, it’s not just a virtual tourism simulator. It’s a series that’s more than the sum of its parts. Even when we ask our own team to explain what Yakuza is, there’s just so much. There’s really nothing else like it in the market. So I think it’s that duality that’s really drawn an audience to it. So, it deals with a lot of mature themes, with a lot of heavy content, but at the same time it will absolutely flip the script on you and put you in a situation that you would have never expected to be in, like dialing up girls on the phone to chat with them or infiltrating a cult. Strichart: Yakuza has found itself in a very unique position as a game where it started as a crime simulator, but what it’s doing now is straddling the line between over-the-top absurdity and a really deep crime story. Why does Yakuza have a strong cult following in the U.S.? However, you can step into Yakuza 0 without any context and play it for what it is and get into the series.Īnd with the finale of Kiryu’s story coming soon in Yakuza 6, it felt pretty integral to allow people a chance to step into the story. Obviously if you’re familiar with the characters already, there’s stuff here and there that serves as fan service. You can walk into Yakuza 0, like not knowing anything about anyone. Yakuza 0 is the first mainline game on PlayStation 4, so by taking it back to the starting point, it gives new players a place to start and step into the series. What we can say is that the mainline games had up to Yakuza 5, released over a year ago on the PlayStation 3. It’s difficult to speak on behalf of the Japanese development team. Mullen: It’s kind of a tricky question, since obviously this game was developed in Japan and for a Japanese audience. We recently chatted with Scott Strichart and Sam Mullen, producers at Sega, about bringing Yakuza 0 West, the series' cult status, and the upcoming remake of the first game, Yakuza Kiwami. If there’s any justice in this world, that’s about to change." The Yakuza series has established a cult following in the West, but it hasn’t managed to break through to the mainstream. Our own Jeff Cork scored the game a 9.25 and said, " Yakuza 0 tries a ridiculous amount of things, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t almost always succeed in its own weird way.
The delightfully weird and heartfelt Yakuza 0 released last month to an uproar of praise and accolades.
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