People can’t seem to agree on whether or not they want their games to have a gargantuan amount of content, but the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series has usually been one to consistently deliver meaty, lengthy experiences. And though the recently-released spinoff title Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name was obviously a shorter game than most of its siblings, the series’ next mainline instalment, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, isn’t going to follow suit.
Speaking in a recent interview with Game Watch, series producer Masayoshi Yokoyama called Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth a “monster-class” game that will be longer than anything Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has made in the past, to the point where if try to marathon it, “you’ll get sick”. According to Yokayama, though the development team is aware that that might turn some players off, it’s solution to that seems to be to “get everyone hyped up enough to play it” regardless of its length.
“The games take a long time to clear, don’t they?” Yokoyama said (translation via Automaton Media). “Gaiden not so much, but Infinite Wealth is a monster-class game longer than anything we’ve made so far. If you go at it continuously, you’ll get sick, and it won’t end with just one or two all-nighters. This means that a lot of people are going to hesitate to play the game or will end up having it wait on their shelves. I found the possibility of that kind of outcome sad, so I thought, we have to get everyone hyped up enough to play it.”
“We have to get people to play the game in about a week or a month, even at the cost of their health, which is why it’s our duty as creators to generate enough to be excited about,” he added. “I’ve thought this way for the past year or two – for a game like Infinite Wealth, we have to get a festival going on. It would feel kind of rude to just drop such a long game and be done with it (laughs).”
Of course, this series has had no shortage of unusually large games in the past. For instance, Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Yakuza 5 are probably among the lengthiest games in the franchise, and both can take up to 80-100 hours depending on your play style (if not significantly longer in the latter’s case). Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth being an even longer game than those two is certainly an intriguing prospect.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is due out on January 26 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
