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“Lost Judgment is a very personal thing to me, because you can’t really call something intellectual property until it becomes a series,” Lost Judgment director Kazuki Hosokawa tells me of the sequel. coming, the second chapter of a spin-off from the beloved Yakuza franchise.
After spending years as a niche Japanese property, the latest generation of consoles has seen Yakuza explode in the West, embracing millions of new players and allowing Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio to push the series in untold new directions. As Kazuma Kiryu’s story drew to a close, experimental versions like Yakuza: Like A Dragon saw him adopt an RPG model in the same vein as Persona, while Judgment struggled to keep the brawling combat going while moving away from a narrative defined by the criminal. underground world. The spin-off was a huge success because it was so different, and the team weren’t afraid of criticism for rocking such a stable boat.
“For the past six or seven years, I just worked on Yakuza and always thought about wanting to create new intellectual property,” Hosokawa-san explains. “There were definitely a lot of ideas that weren’t approved, but one of the ideas that got pitched was judgment. There wasn’t a lot of uncertainty in my mind that the fans wouldn’t accept something different, it was more of a mindset of really wanting to create something new, because I want to present an experience to players that is totally different from Yakuza. There are a lot of limitations, because the framework is based on Yakuza, so it’s not an entirely separate universe, but I’m so happy that I was able to pull this off and create something.
Hosokawa-san’s first time in the director’s chair came with Yakuza: Dead Souls, a critical and commercial failure in the West that went rather well in Japan. This was before the property became a global blockbuster, and weak sales saw Sega put Yakuza on the back burner for the foreseeable future. Yakuza 5 was released in the meantime, and it wasn’t until three years later thanks to the incredibly vocal support from fans that it would receive a digital release outside of Japan. For so long, Yakuza has fallen into obscurity, but Hosokawa-san shares no regrets about his time on Dead Souls, but recognizes the limitations he has had to work with. “[Dead Souls] was the first game I led and it was filled with learning experiences, ”says Hosakawa-san. “I learned how to run a game and get it through the initial stages of development and finish things right for release. There was so much that I learned for my personal growth, albeit to the point. from a business perspective it might not have led to much, personally it was an experience I wouldn’t be here without.
“This is a bit behind the scenes, but the team was also working on the binary domain, so resources were limited when making Dead Souls. It was a very small team with other limitations, so we looked at it as a testing ground to see what we could do with it. [Yakuza]. It was a great environment, and there wasn’t a lot of pressure because it was such a small game, and that’s something that still resonates a lot with me today. Hosokawa-san has since directed Yakuza 5, 0 and Judgment, all of which are beloved by fans and have helped shape the studio into what it is today. Dead Souls might not be huge among fans, but it remains a milestone in the history of the series, and for that very reason, it shouldn’t be seen as a dismal failure.
Lost Judgment is also a proving ground in many ways, acting as Hosokawa-san’s first sequel as director and a way for the team to build on ideas from the original game. “The themes and the dramatic storytelling have been very well received globally, so once again we want to have a really good script, and maybe even go beyond the original judgment,” Hosokawa-san tells me. “In terms of the different elements and features of the game, Judgment was the first time that we made a lot of them, so we got a lot of feedback from fans on what could be different or improved a bit. We have tried to make everything more intuitive and more fun. While Judgment still focuses on combat, significantly more time is spent solving puzzles, hunting down suspects, and donning disguises – all of which the studio was playing with for the very first time. For the rest, all these elements seem more fluid, as if they belonged.
However, much of this sequel was also developed while the world was on lockdown, with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio having to work together remotely as Japan enters and exits national lockdowns and mandatory restrictions. “Lost Judgment has been directly affected by the global pandemic,” says Hosokawa-san. “Yakuza and Judgment have overlapping team members and we’ve worked together for so many years and one of the reasons we work so well together is the way we communicate. Our usual style of communication when we were in the studio was not possible when we were working remotely, so it definitely cost us money.
“About a year ago, when we were in the initial stages of development, there was no foreclosure in Japan and the situation was not that bad, but once we got into the final stages of production, things got serious and it became more difficult to communicate. . There was a slowdown and we would have liked to be able to discuss things more quickly. If we were in person we could have done it so it was definitely stressful. ideas with other team members is just not the same as talking in person, unfortunately it could happen for the foreseeable future as things are slowly but steadily returning to normal.
The pandemic has been accompanied by a continued increase in the popularity of Yakuza and Judgment, with a large number of games in the series arriving on new platforms over the past two years. As a manager, Hosokawa-san is keenly aware of this worldwide success and the impact it could have on a team that is arguably used to working with smaller parameters. Given the toll that the simple life has taken on people’s sanity in recent months, he wants to be there for his team. “I’m the show’s producer, so I take care of the development team and make sure their working environment is healthy,” Hosokawa-san tells me. “I want to make sure that they can come to work motivated and do their jobs. Having [Yakuza and Judgment] on different platforms around the world, it was not only the workload that was putting pressure on the team, but mentally it was stressful to manage not only for me, but for the whole team. It was a difficult experience, so much so that I felt so stressed that I wouldn’t want to go to work some mornings.
During the panel interview, Hosokawa-san talks about the future of the studio and how he hopes to continue global launches of future titles while possibly exploring the games in the Yakuza series that are leaving Japan behind. , taking characters to new lands with new places to explore, battles to fight and mysteries to uncover. Much like Tales of Arise, Japan is now looking to the bigger world with a solid understanding of why its games are so appealing. People love Yakuza for the way he portrays iconic Japanese landscapes and understands its culture, all told from a touching and melodramatic perspective.
To end our conversation, I decided to turn things around in a rather silly direction. John Wick is a powerful man, but could he win in a fight against Kazuma Kiryu? “So [Kazuma Kiryu] isn’t really a human, so it’s hard to have an even battle with John Wick, ”Hozokawa-san said with a laugh, remembering that I asked him the same question a few years ago. “I think Kiryu is probably stronger than John Wick, because you can’t kill him even after you shoot him with a gun.” The protagonist of Judgment isn’t so lucky: “On the other hand, Yagami is human, he’s not superhuman like Kiryu, and since John Wick is pretty good with knives and guns, I don’t think he is. ‘he’ll have a chance against him. ”Let’s put Keanu Reeves in Yakuza 8 and settle this once and for all.
Lost Judgment is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S on September 24.
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