There’s a lot of excitement around the newly announced Like A Dragon titles. Revealed this past week, Like A Dragon: Ishin! will be heading onto Xbox, PlayStation and PC next February. However, in a return to form from developer RGG Studio, the Yakuza spin-off title will not feature voice acting in English. Instead, the characters will be voiced in their original Japanese, with English subtitles provided as an option.
The confirmation comes from Like A Dragon executive producer and RGG Studio head, Masayoshi Yokoyama. Speaking in a new interview with Yakuza fan website Tojo Dojo, Yokoyama explains that Like A Dragon: Ishin! will not be getting any voiceover dubbing in English for Western audiences. The game’s complex dialogue and historical vocabulary will instead be translated into English via subtitles.
Explaining the reasoning behind this decision, Yokoyama explains RGG Studio’s shift back to the use of English subtitles over a dubbing option, which was used most recently in Yakuza: Like A Dragon. According to Yokoyama, western audiences “don’t really watch subtitled content. Especially in English-speaking countries.” He continues, explaining that “That’s why they prefer to have voice-overs.”
This point of view is debatable, however. It’s also something Yokoyama goes on to acknowledge by referring to the success of other titles in the Yakuza series that didn’t offer voice acting in English. “However, we didn’t do voice-overs for Yakuza 0,” he admits, adding that “it was subtitled. And despite that, it was very popular. The fans overseas who’ve been playing since that era still play the games like that even now, in Japanese with English subtitles.”
Yokoyama then confirms that Like A Dragon: Ishin! will be a return to this subtitle-based format. He explains that “there are a lot of people who play with the settings on Japanese voices and English subtitles. For the Ishin remake, we’re using subtitles. We’re not dubbing voiceovers.”
Part of the reasoning given behind this is to do with the historical linguistic differences in Japanese speech during the game’s Bakumatsu era setting. As Yokoyama reiterates, “we’re translating the game into English, but the specialized vocabulary and the way people talked during the Bakumatsu era would make the lines incredibly long so it just wouldn’t work. So this time we’re doing subtitles.”
Like A Dragon: Ishin! will take players back to a fictionalised version of Kyoto in the 1860s and features Yakuza series characters in entirely new roles. The game’s protagonist Sakamoto Ryoma will be played by Yakuza lead character Kazuma Kiryu, whilst other series regulars such as Goro Majima and Hiroki Awano will also be taking on new personas in the samurai-style action title.
The game is set to be released in February next year and will be available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4 and PC via Steam and Windows.
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