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Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii dev on bringing new and old players into the series

Even after so many entries, Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii's Chief Producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto believes RGG Studio is still focused on bringing in new and existing players alike

[Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii screenshot]

Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is ideal for newcomers, according to Sakamoto-san(Image: Sega)

Who is that well-dressed pirate? Why is he in Hawaii? Why does that ship have a shark launcher? These are all questions a new player is likely to have coming into the latest entry in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series.

Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii may feel like a sort of sidestep, but I was curious to find out how it'll welcome new players not yet introduced to Goro Majima and his unique brand of madcap energy.

With the Like A Dragon TV show likely to pull in additional eyeballs and potentially have new fans interested in the exploits of Kazuma Kiryu, I wondered how they'd fare jumping into Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii when it launches next month.

Here's how long it took to make Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

[Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii screenshot]

Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii has a big focus on ship-to-ship combat(Image: Sega)

Speaking at the Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii preview event, Hiroyuki Sakamoto, Chief Producer on the game said the studio is always looking to bring in new fans while also catering to existing ones.

"Appealing to both new and old users is something that we're always thinking about and always trying to do as a company and as a studio", Sakamoto san explains.

"Take Majima [this game's protagonist]. He's definitely a fan favorite and people who have played the series really like him and know who he is. But if you've never played the series, he's so stupid," he jokes.

"In this game, we're starting with him having amnesia. So we're starting from scratch with this character for both people who are familiar with him and people who aren't, because nobody knows what's going to happen with this kind of blank slate that Majima has become at the very beginning."

"In that sense, it can hopefully appeal to both types of users. We've been making this series for about 20 years, and we're always hoping to find ways to bring new users in and at the same time please our old users as well. We're not just making games for core fans of the series."

"For example with Yakuza 7 [Like A Dragon] we changed the gameplay to an RPG battle system, and we got a lot of new users, a lot of new fans who are interested in the game because of that," he revealed.

"So we're always kind of trying to experiment and find ways to both make our existing fans happy and to bring it to them."

For more on Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, check out Sakamoto-san's comments on the game's development timeline.

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