Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Devs

With the launch of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii on the horizon, it won’t be long before we’re setting sail with Captain Majima aboard the Goromaru. This new entry to the series sees fan-favourite Majima Goro wash ashore on Rich Island with amnesia and, somehow or other, he finds himself as a pirate captain at the helm of his very own ship.

At a recent preview event, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio chief producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto answered some of our most burning questions in a group Q&A. He tells us that the initial project for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii began around the time of the Tokyo Game Show in 2023.

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The Next Gaiden Title

“September of 2023, right as we were releasing Infinite Wealth, was when we came up with the project. We wanted to create this story based in Hawaii, to create a story around Majima and this whole area of Hawaii. This would let us create a very timely game and be able to create it in a shorter amount of time, and would let us focus on the story approach while using a lot of the assets from Hawaii as well.”

This isn’t the first time that the studio has created a smaller title in a short time frame by efficiently using assets it’s already made for another title. Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name also re-used assets while still adding its own spin on things with new mechanics and combat abilities. In much the same way as TMWEHN, Pirate Yakuza is not a mainline title and will be shorter in length than the numbered games, however it will reportedly be 30 percent bigger than the previous Gaiden, putting it at roughly 17 hours in length.

But Pirate Yakuza won’t have the same limitations on re-used maps as TMWEHN, which featured a smaller available area of Yokohama than in previous games, as Sakamoto tells us “you can play through all the [Hawaii] locations that you saw in Infinite Wealth”.

While TMWEHN bridged the gap between the seventh and eighth titles in the series, Pirate Yakuza will bridge the gap between the eighth and ninth. “It’s going to be somewhere in between the events of 8 and the next game,” Sakamoto says. “The plan for this one is to be a game that follows on the heels of Infinite Wealth, it’s six months later, and it is chronologically in the universe, it is canon.

“Any of the Gaiden games, the spin-off games that we’ve made that are set in the modern day, are intended to be part and parcel of the overall story that you know from the Yakuza series. When you’re talking about Ishin or Kenzan, they’re more in their own category, but [Gaiden] is all canon.”

A Pirate’s Life For Majima

Sakamoto tells us that the pirate theme was the team’s “first and last idea” about what to do with Majima. “After the events of Infinite Wealth, we were thinking ‘What did Majima do after that?’ It’s Majima, he’s in Hawaii, it’s this tropical island. What is the weirdest, most silliest, funnest thing that we could ever do that people would enjoy doing? And we were like, ‘That sounds like a pirate to me’. It wasn’t like we’d been thinking about this for a long time. It was more, ‘Let’s use the pieces that we’ve got and stick it all together’.”

The Like a Dragon series has always managed to balance good humour with heavy-hitting emotional narratives – Infinite Wealth was especially a Komaki Tiger Drop to the gut with how it tackled parental abandonment and terminal illness, so perhaps to help us cope with our tattered emotions after the last launch, RGG is setting sails for sillier shores with Pirate Yakuza.

It feels as though there’s a bit of a YOLO vibe when it comes to Pirate Yakuza, adding things in that don’t really make sense, but they don’t need to. It’s Majima and it’s just meant to be fun. When telling us about Rich Island, one of the locations in the game, Sakamoto explains, “it’s a fishing island, but there are a bunch of people there who are pirates from the age of discovery. Don’t ask, it just is.”

When showcasing the combat abilities, specifically Majima’s dopplegangers that you can unleash once your Madness Gauge is full, Sakamoto said, “You’re probably asking yourself, ‘When did Majima learn how to do ninja split-off duplicates?’ Well, it’s Majima, don’t ask. You can do whatever you want.”

However, Sakamoto clarifies that even though the team focused on “making this very over the top” that it “doesn’t mean everything should be as over the top as we possibly can make it”. Pirate Yakuza will still have that emotional and dramatic side to it, more so than players might expect from what we’ve seen so far.

“We’ve still made a lot of these character drama stories that are about people having serious conversations too. There is more of that in this game than you might expect from the visuals. The very start of the game, you have Majima who has amnesia, so it’s not like he’s starting like the normal Majima. He’s starting from a different point. We hope that the silliness of the idea helps draw people in, but then we also want to show people what a Like a Dragon tale can be by telling stories of people with strong beliefs, strong things that they feel, creeds and ways of life, and then emotional connections between these people and having these dramatic stories.”

RGG Has To “Think Outside The Box” To Surprise Fans

The concept for Pirate Yakuza leaked before it was officially announced, yet the idea seemed so bonkers that no one believed it. Sakamoto says he doesn’t “pay attention to any of that kind of stuff” and says “We’ve probably had this happen a lot of times before. We’re probably making mistakes left and right. Information’s getting out that we don’t intend. Whatever happens, happens. In the end, when stuff like that happens, and fans get really excited about it, and they have these interesting conversations, I think that’s generally a positive thing for us.”

Sakamoto also explains that because they have such a large fandom that has been following the series for decades now, fans are often speculating online about what the studio will do next, and as a result the team are having to think of fresh ideas that no one could guess. “Fan speculation has been getting more and more accurate. Because the fans are getting so good at figuring out what we’re probably going to be doing, we have to think of ways to think outside of the box and come from a different direction so that we can surprise our fans. Because otherwise, they’re like, ‘Yeah, I know what you’re going to do’.”

There are a few familiar faces that appear as part of the minigame side of things. For example, in a similar way to how Dondoko Island and the Coliseum previously has featured NPCs and characters from previous games, Pirate Yakuza’s crewmates can feature characters from the Judgment spin off series, like Fumiya Sugiura, or recognisable NPCs such as Sheep Man.

Teasingly, Sakamoto hinted that we might see other familiar characters appear, possibly as part of the narrative instead of just side content, “I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I can say that there are going to be a lot of both new characters and people you’ve seen before who are going to make another appearance in this game.”

It won’t be long before we find out just who he’s hinting about, as Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii lands on our shores on February 20 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.

Systems

Released

February 20, 2025

Developer(s)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio

Engine

Dragon Engine

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol

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