How do you feel about the Like a dragon/Yakuza series?
Cause on a surface level at least, it has all the elements many take issue with in modern big budget games
A big focus on a cinematic experience and realistic looking presentation.
But I rarely hear that criticism for those games.
I dunno. They have different feels than what I'd consider a "cinematic" or "prestige" game.
For starters, Yakuza games aren't really any more cinematic than, say, an typical JRPG. You get a lavishly produced cutscene every few hours, but a lot of your dialog interactions aren't even voiced, as far as I remember.
A lot of scenes are classic scrolling text and canned animations.
Two, I think it's important that the Yakuza games do not take themselves seriously. Even Uncharted, with its pulpy adventure, still takes itself seriously.
The primary Yakuza game I've played is the first Judgment, and that's a game with claw grabber (UFO) machines, arcade games, drone races, there are questlines advertising real Japanese restaurants that are full of cheeky product placement dialog, there's a whole quest where you're photographing stray cats, a quest that's a big parody of Phoenix Wright where you have to gather evidence and make a case for who stole a cake, etc.
Like those games have a very serious core, make no mistake. but there's a lot more going on that runs a wide gamut. Prestige games mainly seem focused on being real, and dramatic, and "epic." Yakuza games will do whatever they want as long as its fun and interesting.
Prestige games are also seemingly in a race to see who can spend the most money. Again, we can go back to the Insomniac leaks to reveal Spider-man 2 cost half a billion dollars and they'll be lucky to break even, for a game most people might not even notice is any better looking or more technologically complex than the last one.
Meanwhile I think someone at Sega said "The Man Who Erased His Name" took them 18 months to put together, and since probably 50-75% of the game's story sequences don't even require voice acting or complex animation, they both go together quickly and don't cost much to make. That's not to say they're cheaply made games or that it's totally problem free, far from it, but they are more economical than something like a Horizon, or The Last of Us 2, or whatever.
I mean, Digital Foundry noted we haven't actually gotten a proper new Naughty Dog game since The Last of Us 2 in 2020. But in the last four years, we've gotten two Yakuza games? Three? Maybe even four? That's not to say quantity beats quality, and I think to some degree Sega should be careful about burning people out on this series and its spinoffs.
But whereas Spider-Man 2 could be a game that sinks Insomniac if it doesn't meet its nearly impossible sales figures, I don't think Sega's in too much danger if a Yakuza game under performs.
A cinematic/prestige game is something trying to pretend it's not a game at all and is an interactive movie. Very little about the Yakuza franchise has ever felt ashamed to be a video game.
