Lost Judgement: The last of it's kind?

Dig two holes

The Ryu Ga Gotoku series, better known under the name 'Yakuza', is a very important series of games to a lot of people out there, not least of all me. It is a crime drama, semi open-world, combat-ridden extravaganza that is a feast both of spectacle and outright lunacy in equal degrees. A long while back, when I still thought that open-world games were the pinnacle of the industry, I remember lamenting the loss of that perfect balance between silly and serious which I thought Saints Row 2 had coveted all those years ago. Were I but a bit more cultured, I'd have know there were another series who mastered that formula far before Volition, and who could replicate it with far more reliability. RGG Studios are unchallenged at this craft, in my eyes, and it's what makes their games a simply irreplaceable boon to the video game landscape. Slowly and slower still, people are beginning to open their eyes to how truly magnificent this franchise is, and that is something I must laud every opportunity that I can. However, the games themselves have changed of late.

You see, besides the balancing-act of a story tone and the compelling nature of the characters and their narratives, one of the key components of the Yakuza formula is the bombastic, explosive and so very responsive combat system which has evolved for better and for worse throughout the years but has never deviated too much from being just a blast to play with. Beating up Thugs, Men in black and 'Menacing men' using the variety of weapons, techniques and super powered heat moves at your disposal never fails to be a thrill; and the ludicrous martial styles some characters have (Majima's Breaker style comes to mind) reinforces the over-the-top eccentricity of Yakuza franchise. In many ways, the brutal but silly fighting is a part of the Yakuza identity that it is impossible to be divorced from. Until it was, for 'Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon'. Don't get me wrong, it's not as though the entire cast suddenly became conscientious objectors for that game, but everything about how the series was played changed for that game.

As the legend goes, the team put out an April Fools video in the year before release showing off the new Yakuza game but as a turn based RPG rather than a real-time fighting game. It was meant to be a big "haha, imagine if that actually happened..." sort of scenario, but then something strange happened... people actually liked it. They really responded to how the mock-up video looked, the way a simple street fight could utilise mechanics to become an RPG boss showdown and they really wanted to see this game made. And in a move that you would never see in any other industry, or by any other producer backed development studio, that's exactly what they did. They made that April fools video into the RPG 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon'. (And people seem to think it worked really well) For my part I'm not sure if I completely buy that story, if for no other reason than the short amount of time between the April Fools video being released and the actual game coming out. You're telling me they rebooted development in that time and still got out a great final product? Either RGG are lying and they were working on an RPG from the start, or they tore their hair out working overtime to make sure that Yakuza in RPG form would be successful.

Whatever the case the deed is done, Yakuza now has a successful RPG under it's belt and many were left wondering what comes next for the games? Back to realtime action? Apparently not, SEGA themselves confirmed that Yakuza is an RPG franchise from now on, and all the realtime fun would instead go towards the spin off franchise Judgement, the first of which just came out the year before Like a Dragon. Judgement takes much of the world and mechanics that we'd come to love from Yakuza and turned them completely on their head for now the main character was a cop. You know, instead of a Yakuza family man so magnanimous that he'd probably have been better off being a cop. (No offense, Kiryu. But how does someone go several decades in the Yakuza without killing a single man? You were clearly meant for something else.) 

However, now even this new order seems in for disruption only two entries in as of the Judgement Sequel, Lost Judgement, there's already rumours flaoting about that it's going to be the last in the franchise thanks to, of all things, a likeness dispute. (Of all the stupid reasons to kill a series, that has to rank up there with the head-slapping dumbest.) If this really ends up playing out like some think it will, that will spell the end of realtime Yakuza combat games as we know it, ending a Sega institution. The name will live on, and the new games will undoubtedly attract a whole new audience, but something inexplicable will be lost along the way. And what is the catalyst to all this turmoil? What was the stick that broke the camels back and woke the sleeping dragon all in one? Well, according to reports, it was the PC market.

Hey wait, what? I literally wouldn't have been able to play these games if it hadn't been for the Steam release, I fell in love and have continued to finically support every single Yakuza launch on Steam, and now apparently I'm to blame for the death of the series? (subseries, whatever) Apparently this goes to the lead actor of Judgement, one Takuya Kimura, who's said to be a big star in Japan, and his talent agency. They keep a close reign on the rights to his likeness and want to make sure that, for whatever reason, his face stays on consoles. As such, the talent agency have been actively trying to stop Sega from pursuing a Steam release for Judgement, which obviously doesn't go in line at all with their business strategy, which has seen great success for the Yakuza series since touching Steam. So you can see the conflict, even if you can't understand all the side involved.

I will say it's a little bit drastic on Sega's part to just go "Well, if we can't have the games on Steam then we're cancelling the whole franchise, screw you", but perhaps this is a power play on their part, I don't know. Either way, as things currently stand, some Talent Agency out of Japan is stopping PC gamers all over the world from meeting and coming to appreciate their actor and in doing so might be costing him a series he's working in. This just seems like such a self sabotage move which I'm struggling to come to grips with. Some have inferred that this could relate to a general dislike for PC gaming over in Japan, but I don't see why that affects this actor's likeness rights. I sense that someone, somewhere, isn't telling us the whole story right now, and it's making everyone look dumber than they supposedly are because of it.

And so that's where we are right this second, the future of Judgement hangs in the balance of a nonsensical power struggle between two utterly distinct industries that seem not to understand each other's business. Of course it's the consumers who end up getting the raw end of the deal, because that's just the way business works nowadays. Unless there's someone down our end getting stiffed, they aren't doing their jobs right. On Mr Kimura's end there's been some talk that he is rather disappointed that the series could be over, so perhaps star power might sway the pendulum towards the hand of the reasonable, but if these guys run their businesses anyway like how Konami run theirs, we're probably looking at business men who would sooner watch their entire family slowly drown in a vat of hot sauce before admit they were wrong about anything. Seems no matter which way of the entertainment industry you turn, it's always the one's in suits ruining the fun for everybody else, huh?