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Nearly every console Yakuza game is part of the same chronology, series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi revealed to Siliconera during a recent chat. During our talk, we asked Nagoshi if Yakuza Kenzan (set in the 1600s), Yakuza Restoration (1800s) and Yakuza (2000s) all take place in the same chronology, and Nagoshi confirmed that they did.
“Yes, they do,” Nagoshi replied. “Since in the past, real-world Japan was a place where samurai roamed, to Japanese users it makes perfect sense [that Kenzan and Restoration take place in the same chronology as the present-day Yakuza games]. Even with the differences between Yakuza Kenzan and Yakuza Restoration, to a Japanese user the differences are quite obvious.”
“But maybe for gamers outside of Japan who do not have any understanding of Japanese history, the differences between the titles and their time periods might be perceived differently.”
Nagoshi also touched upon how the development team went about putting existing Yakuza series characters into historical roles in Yakuza Restoration.
“For the most part, we cast the characters into the historical roles we need in the game based on the image of the Yakuza characters,” Nagoshi said. “But if that’s all we did, then there wouldn’t be any surprises in the game at all, in terms of, ‘well I’d never have thought that this character would play this role!’”
“As creators, we want to have that element of surprise, so in coming up with the roles for the characters, we tried to make it a balance between fitting the character images, and surprising the fans.”
Yakuza Restoration will be available for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on February 22nd in Japan.
