Interview: Yakuza: Like a Dragon Localization Producer Scott Strichart

Sega's highly-anticipated Yakuza: Like a Dragon hits digital and physical stores in North America next week, introducing old and new fans alike to an RPG-flavored spin on Sega's long-running crime drama series. The last few years have seen Yakuza transform from a localization longshot into one of Sega's most visible franchises in the west, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon seems poised to become the series’ biggest hit yet, with launches across multiple platforms and a huge marketing push. We sat down with Yakuza series localization producer Scott Strichart to talk a bit about Yakuza games old and new, and the challenges his team has worked to bring these very Japanese games to the west.

We've seen a surge in Western popularity for Yakuza in the last few years. What role do you think localization and marketing has played in that?

Scott: I think the marketing efforts are 90% of that. We changed the style of the localization a little bit  after Yakuza 5, but it's not like people weren't buying the games before – I don't want to take too much credit here. When Sega USA merged with Atlus, the marketing shifted – we embraced what Yakuza as a series is really about. It's a series with a lot of heart – previous promotional campaigns played up the series as something grimdark, more crime simulator and less crime drama. With Yakuza 0, a shift happened, and showed that Yakuza is more of a wild, insane romp though Japan. I feel like it's something pretty unique in the market.

It felt like this “Yakuza Renaissance” happened with Yakuza 0. Why did you pick that particular game as the title to restart a Western-focused push?

Scott: Yakuza 0 came out in Japan in 2015, and at that time, Sega of America was essentially closing, going through a massive restructuring. Yakuza 5 was releasing in North America during that time as well, and that's probably where the lowest point of the franchise was – fans weren't even sure they were going to get Yakuza 5 in the west because there was nobody left to do it. That's when Sony stepped in and said, “hey, we'll help you get this out.” Then the merger happened where Sega moved in with Atlus, and the franchise moved to being handled by the combined Sega-Atlus powers out in Irvine. That's when they brought me on, specifically – they were way behind and needed someone to look at the series’ localization in a new way. So, I came on and did just that.

We rebooted the localization style from 0 because it offered us an opportunity to look at the way it had been done, and figure out how we wanted to do it from that point on. We consider it very much a “soft reboot” of the series.

Did a goal to attract new players affect how you approached the localization at all?

Scott: We knew Yakuza 0 was a great onboarding point, because it was a prequel, but we didn't really think that we needed to treat the localization any differently. It was more about bringing up the quality a bit – we did all the graphics, we revamped how they did honorifics, we reworked the subtitle styling, we changed the fonts, we did everything we could to really make the localization sing, and hoped that it would be enough to bring in more fans. But coming off of Yakuza 5, nobody was expecting the series to really take off like it did in 0.

Is there anything in particular about Yakuza 0 that you think helped it become a touchstone for the series here?

Scott: There's no one thing where you can really say, “this is the cause.” We told that to RGG Studio, too – they were like, “how did this happen?” and we told them that relaxed streaming rules, viral gameplay clips like Nugget the chicken… it's so sharable! It's one of the best games in the franchise, a great starting point, launched at a good time. It really was a perfect storm of re-discoverability.

When you were localizing Yakuza 0, was it already decided that the Kiwami games would be coming over, too?

Scott: We looked at Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and 6 as a three-game reboot plan. We knew that Kiwami was coming, and we actually started on that one before 0's localization was finished, hopping between the two games at some points. We also knew that 6 would be using the new engine, which was exciting. Planning from this three-game perspective was great, because we could say, “in this game we'll do this, and in that game we'll do this, and then for Yakuza 6 we'll launch a premium edition and do a live event.” It was all planned and executed perfectly. Then Kiwami 2 joined in later. That was a surprise, because we weren't actually expecting RGG Studio to make Kiwami 2.

Oh, so you didn't know Kiwami 2 was going to happen when you were working on those earlier titles?

Scott: Yeah, they were like, “Oh, we're probably not going to do 2, nobody needs 2 again. *laughs* and then they were like, “let's do it!” With the Dragon Engine, they were super-excited at the prospect.

Looking at the Yakuza remasters, they had a few gameplay and localization tweaks. Can you talk a bit about touching up those titles for a reissue?

Scott: I'm actually not the localization producer for the remasters, because I was working on Judgment at the time – that would be Jon Riesenbach, who was one of my editors on Judgment, became the lead on the remasters. (Riesenbach is currently working for localization studio 8-4. - Ed) He'd been gunning for a lead position for a while, and that gave him an opportunity to really step in there and do it. I think he looked at those and said “there's so much we can do and fix,” in ways that I probably wouldn't have bothered with. *laughs* Like doing all of the karaoke lyrics in English and Japanese, or revamping the entire way the manzai substory plays out in Yakuza 5. All those little tweaks were really beneficial for the overall package, and I think he did a great job.

So he re-localized all the bits of Yakuza 3 that were originally cut, then.

Scott: Yeah! It was really cool to finally be able to present the whole game. There was the cabaret stuff that had been cut out, a lot more substory stuff they had to do – that was done while touching up the localization, which was a bit iffy in places just because I think sensibilities were different at the time. The old loc also used different terminology, like “Fuma” for “Kazama” and “Sunshine” for “Morning Glory,” those kinds of things.

Looking at the series as a whole, can you give specific examples of times when the localization was really challenging?

Scott: It happens at least once a game. “They didn't think about the way this would be translated into English at all!” I would point to a specific instance being the bar chat minigame in Yakuza 6. All of the responses in that are just like… “Ah. Sou Desu.” *laughs* From a Japanese conversational perspective, you can pick out which response would be most appropriate, but the responses in English – “Yes.” “I see.” – you could say any of that. And you had to identify these correct responses while the clock was ticking. The entire crux of that minigame had to be revamped for English. So it became, “Can you identify the correct response that's not a joke? Can you eliminate the response that looks almost exactly like the correct response?” The localization there changed a lot, because we were essentially rewriting every response and tweak some of the lines leading into those responses.

I was thinking back to Yakuza 0, remembering a sidestory involving a crossword puzzle and the phone club minigame. I was thinking, “Man, I bet the loc team went through hell working on these!”

Scott: Yeah, the phone club minigame was interesting because in Japanese, you can kind of identify when the girl on the other end of the line is stringing you along. It's a lot easier for native Japanese speakers to pick up on nuances in speech to figure out when they're going to get an actual date versus a no-show or something else.

I don't know if the statistics are available to you, but do you know how many folks go into the traditional Japanese games like shogi and mahjong during play?

Scott: I don't have access to specifics, no. We do ask in surveys, “What's your favorite mini-game?” And those never rank. *laughs* It's clear that they're not favorites, but they're also part of the completion list, which means the more hardcore players do have to engage with them. I can sense the online frustration in that! We've tried to ease that over the years – we rewrote the entire mahjong tutorial for 0, Kiwami, and 6. For 6 and Kiwami on, we added numbers over the kanji so you can at least identify what the tiles are without having to look it up. You can now, I think, successfully play mahjong content without a second screen. *laughs*

It does feel like there's something of a mahjong movement rising in the west, though, and videogames are helping to push it.

Scott: Yeah, Final Fantasy XIV added mahjong, too! When they did that, I was baffled. “You guys don't know what you're getting into!” But their tutorial is amazing, as is everything they did to hep guide players onto that easy mode table. They also have an achievement called “Kiwami,” which I like to think is a nice nod to us. *laughs*

In regards to Judgment – what did you think about the fan reception to that game? Will we see more spinoff like that in the future?

Scott: I hesitate to comment on what RGG Studio themselves are thinking, but from a fan perspective, the Yakuza community embraced that game. RGG Studio just writes such compelling stories, characters, and narratives with so much thought put into it that they can make a spinoff game like this without many of the familiar characters from previous titles and knock it out of the park. There's probably some game mechanics like tailing that aren't super Western-friendly, since Western games tend not to put you in a passive position of just following someone. But a lot of fans looked past that into the characters and narrative, which is one of the selling points of Yakuza to begin with. So it's cool that they came to bat so hard for Judgement.

One thing I notice a lot about Japanese media is that the tone can oscillate wildly between being dead serious and being extremely weird and goofy. In Yakuza this is very prominent, since the main story is often very serious crime drama while the substories are supremely offbeat and wacky. Do you find it challenging as a localizer to ease people into that?

Scott: I think that's one of those things where “with experience comes power.” RGG Studio does that so well – they know exactly when the player needs some levity and when the player can suspend belief enough to do some crazy side stories… then give it time, and it's suddenly back to hardcore crime drama. It was resonated in the West, too – you say that it isn't that common here, and you're right. Most games lean heavily in one direction or the other, like Saints Row – it's clearly a joke-y game. It's meant to be absurd and ridiculous. And then you take something like Uncharted – it's still got humor with Nate's one-liners, but the overall mood is more serious. That's something that I think is one of Yakuza’s big points of appeal over here – you never know when it's suddenly veering into the absurd.

As a localization team, we love that shift in tone – when we can identify that it's happening, we just go with it! You notice that things are going off the rails, and then you can help guide it, in a way, with the writing. I love writing humor – I started with a game called Izuna 2 on the DS, which was totally tongue-in-cheek, and followed it up with 3D Dot Game Heroes. Being super-sarcastic, but also wearing your heart on your sleeve at the same time – it's just hilarious to me. So writing for Yakuza is just totally my niche.

So with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, did the shift in gameplay provide any localization challenges?

Scott: It affected us in that there was a lot more to do – more main party characters, status ailments, things you didn't have to account for before. But JRPGS are kind of the Atlus-Sega wheelhouse, so we just shifted our mindset and applied that to the Yakuza formula. We just added to that in our own way, and ultimately, the marriage was really beautiful.

Like a Dragon's hero, Ichiban Kasuga, is super into JRPGs, specifically Dragon Quest. Given that Dragon Quest is an IP from a different company entirely, did this present any issues for you?

Scott: I knew RGG Studio had discussed this with the IP holders of Dragon Quest in Japan, so I asked them if we had the ability to present the same references in the English version. I was told “as long as you don't change additional things to Dragon Quest references without letting us know,” so the DQ references in the English version are basically the same ones as in the Japanese version. One thing that wasn't off the table, however, was paying homage to the Western versions of Dragon Quest. There were little ways we could make allusions to the DQ localizations fans in the West have been playing, like monster puns – our monster puns are absolutely ridiculous. To even call them “monsters” is a little crazy… also, the way we use language in battle. To use those references to tread into DQ territory while knowing what DQ means to fans here was pretty cool.

Without spoiling too much, is there a particular part of the game that you really enjoyed localizing and writing?

Scott: I've always gravitated towards Majima, but he doesn't have much of a role in this… *laughs* In the grand scheme of things, I liked working with the English VO, writing lines of dialogue for them and making them laugh at their own stuff with their own performances. It was great to write for Greg Chun, for instance, who plays Namba. I knew where his sense of humor lie, and how he would read a line – you kind of get on the same wavelength with these folks, and you can make better content that way.

Speaking of English VO, can we expect a full English dub for all RGG Studio games going forward from this point?

Scott: Good question! *laughs* It's a thing that has to be budgeted for, in time and money. I'm always down to do it if they tell me to!

Was Judgment's English dub well-received? I'd be interested to see the amount of players who played with English dialogue versus who played with Japanese dialogue.

Scott: I can tell you a bit about that, actually! We added an English dub to Judgment as a test, essentially. From people who had played Yakuza games before, about 30% converted to English dialogue. Not high in the grand scheme of things, but when you look at a 30% conversion from people who have been playing nothing but Japanese, that's actually pretty good. When we asked Judgment players who weren't familiar with the Yakuza series beforehand, however, 65% of those players used English dialogue. That was really telling: having Japanese dialogue only was presenting something of a barrier to entry, which was something we had suspected for a while. That made it so that we could carry on doing a full dub into Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Do you have particular favorite mini-games in YLAD that you suggest players check out?

Scott: Obviously, there are the big-ticket mini-games: Dragon Karts and Can Quest will probably be the most entertaining for a lot of players. My personal favorite is the movie theatre mini-game, though: I just love how ridiculous and nonsensical it is. Being able to hear all the movies Ichiban and friends are watching is also hilarious – it's classic Yakuza in every way you think of.

Thank you for your time, Scott. Do you have any parting comments for our readers?

Scott: Thank you all – for all of the fans who have been waiting months for this localization, I greatly appreciate your patience and support of the franchise in the West.