As reported by Gematsu yesterday, SEGA have filed a trademark in Japan for the term “Yakuza Wars”. This happened on July 26th, and while Gematsu speculate this might be related to the next game in the Yakuza: Like A Dragon series, I have other plans. For the imaginary game.
That I have nothing to do with. SEGA are also the parent company of Total War studio Creative Assembly, who earlier this year put out a survey asking fans about potential settings they’d like to see for the strategy series. Lord Of The Rings and Marvel were among the options, as was the rumoured-to-be-in-development Star Wars .
Sigh, said I. Why dally with all these expensive, obvious choices when the real answer was in front of you all along? Then I realised that Total War: Crazy Taxi would be a shitshow, so I set my hopes on the next best option. The concept is bountiful, and the foundations of it exist in the Yakuza games already.
I’m picturing something similar to Yakuza 0 ’s Real Estate Royale, where settlements are different chunks of Kamurocho, provinces are entire streets, and individual buildings represent different specialisations. Want to recruit some high level thugs? Build a soapland. Want to rake in the cash? Gambling den.
Need some morale buffs before you go into battle? Build a SEGA arcade and let your dudes play Space Harrier, then buy them some Takoyaki. Actually, Takoyaki can be its own resource. A Takoyaki-based economy.
Practical. Delicious. Public order can be fleshed out as an extortion system where you ‘tax’ the locals.
Diplomacy writes itself. The main obstacle I can see to this sort of thing working is scale, but the Total War series has always been a bit inconsistent on this front anyway, and I see no reason why Kamurocho’s carparks and alleys can’t be magically altered, on a whim, to allow 2000 men to hit each other with baseball bats. You’d of course be able to get in the series’ rotating cast of miscreants as heroes, commanders, and other special units.
And, if you worked in Twarhammer’s magic system, there’s no reason why you couldn’t get Like A Dragon’s summoning system Poundmates in there too. Again, this is just me taking the flimsiest of threads and spinning a glorious web of bountiful bullshit from it. It is probably just a mobile game, perhaps one rushed out to capitalise on the upcoming TV Show , or something related to the Japan-only Ryu Ga Gotoku Online .
It’s also possible RGG do not want to release their franchise into the dark underbelly of the Steam workshop, where mods to craft an entire army of differently-costumed Majimas will no doubt exist within a week. I'll just have to keep on hoping Yakuza Empire turns out good, I think..
