Binary Domain and Yakuza: Dead Souls are two understated gems of the seventh console generation. Both helmed by Ryu ga Gotoku Studio, these experimental projects toyed with existing ideas while branching out in a direction the development team had never considered before. Even today, Binary Domain is a strange departure for a studio that has cut its teeth on semi-realistic depictions of the Japanese criminal underworld. With Binary Domain, it was hurling us into the future to fight against hostile robots in an effort to save humanity.
Yakuza: Dead Souls was equally as unusual, building off the resurging popularity of zombies brought about by The Walking Dead with a non-canonical adventure that took existing characters and hurled them into the apocalypse. Fists and kicks were swapped out for guns and grenades, with the studio jumping into a genre it previously had no experience with. As you’d expect, swapping out street thugs for flesh eaters didn’t have the desired effect, and closing off the streets of Kamurocho as the infection worsened only served to highlight how empty Yakuza can feel when you take away the urban authenticity that helps it shine so brightly. That being said, it remains an enjoyable romp, retaining the lovable characters and overblown melodrama of the main games while trying and failing to take gameplay in a new direction. Despite its flaws, I admire it – a notion echoed by the game’s director, Kazuki Hosokawa.
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“[Dead Souls] was the first game I directed and it was filled with learning experiences,” Hosakawa-san explains. “I learned how to manage a game and bring it through the initial stages of development and properly wrap things up for release. There was so much I learned for my personal growth, even if business-wise it might not have led to much. Personally, it was an experience that I wouldn’t be here without.”
Hearing Hosokawa-san reminisce about the game’s creation is oddly sobering. He recalls working on it with a sense of admiration, like it was a time fraught with compromise that allowed him and his team to take Yakuza to creative places it had never been before. Unfortunately, Dead Souls was a commercial and critical failure in the West, and didn’t fare much better in Japan, leading Sega to cease localisation of the series for several years. If it wasn’t for vocal fan support, I’m unsure Yakuza 5 would have seen a digital release at all. Without Dead Souls, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
“This is a little bit of behind the scenes stuff, but the team was also working on Binary Domain, so resources were limited when creating Dead Souls,” Hosokawa-san says. “It was a very small team with other limitations, and so we saw it as a testing ground to see what we could do with [Yakuza]. It was a great environment, and there wasn’t much pressure because it was such a small game. It’s something that still resonates with me a lot today.”
I’m told that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is accustomed to sharing team members across multiple projects, largely because games like Yakuza and Judgment reuse a number of locations, assets, and mechanics that developers are able to easily access. There’s a reason we see a new game from this studio every year like clockwork – it has established a consistent workflow that balances familiarity with innovation.
This method was first implemented at the time of Yakuza: Dead Souls and Binary Domain, so there’s a likelihood the studio was stretched too thin as it pushed forward with two titles that were both trying new things far outside its usual wheelhouse. While the latter is still viewed as a cult classic by many, it’s easy to see why each of them fell short of expectations. Still, this willingness to experiment ultimately pushed the studio forward, even if Yakuza would continue to falter in the West for several years before finding its feet again.
Yakuza: Dead Souls remains exclusive to the PS3, so you’ll need to dig out an original console to play it nowadays. If you’re a newcomer to the series curious about its history, I still think it’s worth tracking down, if only to learn how Ryu ga Gotoku Studio wasn’t afraid to try new things even at the risk of failure. Be sure to check out our full interview with Kazuki Hosokawa where we talk about Lost Judgment, development during the pandemic, and learning to leave Kazuma Kiryu behind.
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