Today Sega released another video about the upcoming action game Like a Dragon: Ishin!, which is finally coming to North America and Europe fulfilling years of requests from the fans of the Yakuza series.
As you may already know, this is not exactly the same game titled Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin! that launched exclusively on the Japanese market in 2014 for PS3 and PS4. It's actually a subtantial remake similar to the Yakuza Kiwami games. As a matter of fact, the Japanese version is titled "Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin! Kiwami."
One of the many things that this remake changes, is the recasting of a few of the actors to give them the likeness and voice of popular characters from Yakuza 0, which was released after the original Ishin. One of these is Takechi Hanpeita, who is played by Hideo Nakano, replacing Katsunori Takahashi. This creates a parallel with Nakano-san's character in Yakuza 0, Keiji Shibusawa, who also plays a very similar role in the story.
It's a similar change to what we have seen with Takeda Kanryusai and Ito Kashitaro.
In today's video, we get to see a conversation between Ryu Ga Gotoku studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama and Nakano-san who provides his impression on the extremely extensive script of the game and talks about the reaction of the fans both in Japan and in the west.
Interestingly, we also hear that Nakano-san and Katsunori Takahashi are friends who go way back, so there is no feeling of competition between them. Nakano-san believes his predecessor'ìs performance was excellent and despite the remake, the original is still available and isn't going anywhere (at least for Japanese fans):
You can watch the video below.
Like a Dragon: Ishin! releases on February 21, 2023 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
