Post Script

Ishin’s casting conceit is its trump card, but does it go far enough? (Contains spoilers)

At the heart of Like A Dragon: Ishin is an ingenious idea that doesn’t have any real precedent in videogames – or at least it didn’t upon release in 2014, before Immortality and The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story featured real-world actors playing multiple roles. In both of those cases, though, that was within a single game. Just about all of Ishin’s main cast have appeared in other titles in the series, playing key roles in those games – but, since this is set in the 19th century and the rest in the 20th or 21st, entirely different ones.

Freed from the constrictions of the mainline narrative, these established characters are effectively cosplaying as historical figures, with major liberties taken with their real-world activities and personalities, partly with a view of bringing them closer to their contemporary parallels.

From a newcomer’s point of view, that won’t mean a great deal. But for those who were following Like A Dragon long before it adopted the more literal translation of its Japanese name, it has a similar effect to seeing a favourite actor show up in a TV series or film you weren’t expecting to find them in. In a dense narrative, it has the bonus effect of providing a certain familiarity. If keeping up with all these characters – there are over a dozen high-ranking officers within the Shinsengumi alone – proves challenging, then they provide a welcome shorthand, because you recognise their faces and voices.

And in some cases, their roles, too. As in the original Yakuza, the inciting incident is a murder for which the protagonist is blamed. Here, though, it’s the main character’s adopted father who is killed, and rather than being imprisoned, he commits dappan, illegally leaving his feudal estate to go into hiding in Kyo while trying to find the assassin. Already we’ve met Ryoma’s sworn brother Takechi, who many will recognise as Yakuza 0’s

main villain Shibusawa. (The one side-effect for longtime players is that you’ll occasionally be tempted to refer to them by the name by which you’ve come to know them, and not the one they’ve been given here.)

That gives their relationship an unusual dynamic: we are used to these characters being antagonistic towards one another, yet here they’re friends. Previous entries have, of course, had their fair share of doublecrosses and sudden character pivots, but this gives Ishin a different kind of energy, adding an extra note of discord to the bubbling tension. That only grows when Ryoma infiltrates the Shinsengumi, and is promoted to captain of a unit within the organisation. Here, he is steadily introduced to his fellow captains, each of them a familiar face from a previous game. Where the original Ishin used characters from earlier entries, RGG Studio has made some shrewd casting changes – using voices and likenesses that relatively recent converts to the series are more likely to know. Ah, there’s Yakuza 7’s Han. And there’s Yomei Alliance Captain Koshimizu from Yakuza 6.

But these are not like-for-like replacements, and that flash of recognition in most cases proves misleading, allowing Ishin’s unfolding plot to subvert your expectations of certain characters. In some cases, it’s a subtle change: Yakuza 0’s gruff, forthright Kuze is quieter and more diplomatic here; the same game’s party-loving Awano has become the more cynical Takeda, though both have hidden secrets. The casual cruelty of Todo may come as something of a surprise to those who recruited Zhao to their party in Yakuza 7, where his initial callousness was revealed as a front. But the same game’s Adachi plays a very different character here; likewise, it becomes abundantly clear that 6th Unit Captain Inoue is not the Kashiwagi we’ve come to know.

As a result, Ishin has something of the restless, squirming tension of Infernal Affairs, though it perhaps has more in common with Korean drama New World, in which Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae plays a police officer who has been undercover in a major crime syndicate for eight years, whose chief threatens to expose him when he decides he’s had enough. Certainly, there is a similar sense here of a rope steadily tightening around our antihero’s neck: as Ryoma refuses orders to kill, and the whispers that he’s not who he says he is grow louder, in many of the cutscenes we’re left holding our breath in anticipation of the shoe finally dropping, only for an unlikely saviour to keep his identity safe.

At least, that’s true up to a point. When it comes to the cast members who have appeared as playable protagonists in previous games, there is no such doubt. When 2nd Unit captain Nagakura (who we know best as Saejima) starts a fight with Ryoma, we know they’ll soon be friends – or as close as Shinsengumi members get, at least. And when Katsura (Akiyama) shows up, appearing to be on the opposing side, it’s obvious the two will join forces before long. Even the wild card that is Majima (here known as Okita, his blue haori stained with the blood of his enemies) holds few surprises: when he announces he’s the man who assassinated Ryoma’s mentor, you know full well he’s not telling the truth. As you’d expect from his eyepatch-sporting counterpart, he’s just doing it to get a rise out of his best frenemy.

So while there is a certain pleasure in watching characters we know and love playing to type, in these moments the air is let out of the balloon. This is an opportunity for RGG Studio to declare that all bets are off: these characters are, surely, surplus to sequel requirements, so why not shock us some more? Ishin might be a reminder that there are precious few thrillers around these days, certainly within videogames. But, like our stoic lead, it lacks that killer instinct.

It has a similar effect to seeing a favourite actor show up in a TV series or film you weren’t expecting to find them in