Yakuza 5 — latest in Sega and Toshihiro Nagoshi’s series of free-running Japanese mobster action games — is a long way away. Nagoshi’s team dropped the Yakuza series’ traditional yearly release schedule for the numbered titles with this one, something that raised more than a few eyebrows over in Japan. There’s a reason for that though — according to Nagoshi and producer/scriptwriter Masayoshi Yokoyama, Yakuza 5 will be to the series what Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was to GTA, a massive expansion on the core concept that takes the franchise to new heights.
“I’d like for people to wait for further announcements for the details, but we’re taking a completely different approach with this title,” Nagoshi told Famitsu magazine this week. “We broke the tradition of releasing one numbered Yakuza title per year because we wanted to reconsider the design from the beginning. If Yakuza 5 was a building, then this would be a complete rebuild instead of an expansion. It’s a game in the series, of course, so in terms of style it would be a Japan-style house made by Japanese people, but we want it to be a noticeably different experience, inside and out.”
