With the release, and critical success, of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth the disparity between the western content farm franchises and the eastern content farm franchises is reaching a point of frank parody. How can it possibly be that the ludicrously over saturated Like a Dragon games are somehow increasing in quality despite being shot quicker than your average 100 Meter sprinter? In an industry filthy with production hang-ups and bloat, resulting in ever longer slogs between major releases that disappoint more and more often- to such a point where some superstar developers are having to weigh up the time they have left on this planet with what they want to work on next. (I'm pretty sure Kojima's next stealth-game after Death Stranding 2 is probably going to be his last, or penultimate, game. As sad as that is to say.) In this industry, what right does a AAA franchise like 'Like a Dragon' have to go on gallivanting like it's still the 2010's?
Especially when you compare this franchise to likes of the biggest perpetrator of 'diminishing returns' such as (Give me a second to riffle through my catalogue of dead horses real quick...) Ubisoft! Can you believe that Assassin's Creed is actually two years younger than the Yakuza franchise? That's right, the first Yakuza launched back in 2005! And do you know what? I think Assassin's Creed's first outing actually holds up better! It's still dated and clunky, but the core of what the franchise would become is spelled out there, whereas Yakuza was just kind of messy in execution at it's start- there's a reason why Yakuza took so long to get it's footing. But Assassin's Creed is increasingly becoming a symbol of everything wrong with modern game design, whilst Like a Dragon is becoming a paragon of all that can go right- so where's the disconnect?
First off I think the mistake that the production of Assassin's Creed makes is in their desperate search for 'relevancy'. What Assassin's Creed currently has in the modern age that is unique to it can only be it's history-jumping setting that promises to take players on a journey to new locations. I've always praised the Ubisoft asset designers because they've never not delivered the top-most possible content, even when recycling assets they never deliver a low-effort outing. However what else does Assassin's Creed offer as a USP? It's unique blend of visually appealing power-fantasy combat? Stealth based stalking mechanics? Robust metagames? All gone. They used to have a place in this franchise, and were probably brought together at their best in Brotherhood, but since then they've fallen for the Ubisoft plague of trying what everyone else is doing in hopes of leaching off of their success.
Yakuza (or 'Like a Dragon'), on the otherhand, knows exactly what it's niches are. Like a Dragon is a franchise that celebrates Japanese culture, leans on romanticised mobster-movie aesthetics and cliches and provides ever-improving combo-based combat schemes. The difference between knowing your strengths and fruitlessly searching for them is clear- RGG can hone on what they're good at and improve rapidly with each outing, whereas Assassin's Creed is stuck dipping their toes into different fields praying one pops off for them enough to warrant sticking around. Origin's slightly positive reception doomed the next two games (at least) to pathetically undercooked RPG-light gameplay which has bloated each entry worse and worse. They're not sharping their toolset, they're blunting their instruments and perfecting their flaws.
Assassin's Creed also suffers narratively thanks to the conceit of their own concept. Hopping to new time periods and characters with each games makes this something of a anthology franchise with only the modern day story to connect elements. Unfortunately, Ubisoft have absolutely no interest in championing narrative in their core franchise to such a degree that the audience often feels disrespected or ignored. Modern Assassin's Creed narratives consist of a couple of set-pieces that are built up to by comics and books released between games read only by die hard fans. Let me remind you that I used to replay the entire franchise before every release like a madman, and I still am not diehard enough to put up with Ubisoft's slop writing for the most basic amount of context. Which means I don't ever get character motivations or relationships presented appropriately to me, which means I end up either not caring or actively hating the cast. (Layla deservers that hate, to be fair. She's awful.)
And what about the assassin's themselves? Well, despite having 100 hour long games now, remember that Ubisoft have turned these into RPGs which translates to- character writing is too hard now. Seriously, their last two major protagonists after Bayek have a grand total of one motive at the beginning of the story and a couple of character traits that usually add up to variations of 'sarcastic' and 'begrudgingly virtuous'. These traits and motivations so rarely come into play that they don't really feel like building blocks of a character but rather bullet points that the script writers need to keep reminding themselves. Most of the time events just kind of happen around them and these characters react, usually by killing the people in front of them, and then they're shuffled off towards the next task. Sure, RPG options means we get to make a choice every now and then- but consequences for said choices are typically either immediate or ephemeral- essentially making them meaningless choices to being with.
Like a Dragon, on the otherhand, never fails to tell character/action hybrid narratives, introduce vibrant fore and background characters, moves the needle in some significant fashion and wows with substantive growth and spectacle by the end. Who could forget the four way duel at the end of Yakuza 4? And who can remember what the finale of Assassin's Creed Origins was? (It couldn't have just been the Caesar assassination, could it? The one that low-key broke the lore of the franchise because we didn't get to see Brutus in the assassin gear we know he owned from Brotherhood.) It's hard to tell stories with characters iconic and static like Kiryu, and RGG have been doing that for nearly 20 years at this point. They're just better at telling stories, to be honest.
All that Assassin's Creed has at this point is legacy. No one sticks to those games for their quality, but because they're comfort food. But the problem with comfort food is that it does start to bore after a while, and all it takes it for anything with a bit of flavour to waft across your way and you drop the comfort food in an instant. Yakuza is like a plate of Pasta al Nero di Seppia. Your brain tells you that is a weird dish of inky noodles your going to be spitting out in a couple of hours, but then you've finished 6 plates, stuck into your seventh with another ahead of you and the spin-off plates piled around that. (Think that analogy got away a bit, but you see where I'm going with this.) The moral of the story is- I'm hungry.
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