Yakuza fan sites and forums Tojo Dojo (opens in new tab) Translated parts of recently shared interview (opens in new tab) Series producer Masayoshi Yokoyama and developers have revealed the upcoming remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin! will only include Japanese voice actors with localized subtitles. Most of the series has retained this format, although the series’ first game on PS2 and its latest entry, Yakuza 7, both featured alternate English voice actors.
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That said, Yokoyama says that Yakuza 0, one of the series’ most successful games and the progenitor of explosive success on PC, has only Japanese voice actors. , also noted that the unique dialect of the pre-Meiji setting of the Restoration can introduce complications.
“It didn’t work with the specialized vocabulary and style of speaking of the Bakumatsu period, because it would make the lines incredibly long,” Yokoyama said, according to the Tojo Dojo translation. “This time it’s subtitles.”
Yakuza 0 is certainly my entry point in the series, and for my own consumption, I generally prefer subtitled foreign language media over dubbing, with a few exceptions. For example, you won’t see me claiming original Polish in a Witcher game.
As Yokoyama alludes to in an interview, it’s also easy to see that the older dialect of Japanese makes timing lip-syncs and cutscenes much more difficult. I find it particularly unnatural for samurai to speak in English with a neutral accent.
We sympathize that this isn’t great for gamers with vision problems, or perhaps those with older low-res displays, but the move makes broad sense. That doesn’t necessarily rule out dubbing in â âI’m still hopeful that we’ll see this feature in the next mainline game, Like a Dragon 8.
