I’ve been thinking about Project Century since its announcement trailer was shown at The Game Awards last December. As an avowed Like a Dragon stan (Infinite Wealth was my 2024 Game of the Year), I’m pretty sure I’ll be following Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio anywhere it chooses to go, which means that I’m already heavily invested in Project Century despite knowing very little about it.
The Most Popular Theories Are Wrong
Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out what Project Century is from the scant clues included in the trailer. Of the theories I’ve read (largely in Reddit threads like this one), the majority have linked Project Century to Like a Dragon in some way: many think that this is some sort of Yakuza -1 that explores how the Yakuza began to form after the first World War, or that it’s Judgment Ishin.
However, studio director Masayoshi Yokoyama said last month that he hasn’t seen any correct speculation online about the game, and that the studio “didn’t include any information that would enable people to guess”. All we really know is that it’s an action-adventure game in the vein of other RGG titles, but that much was already apparent.
I’ve been pretty confused that people think Project Century belongs to the Like a Dragon series. Apart from the similarities in gameplay and its Japanese setting, I’m not really seeing any substantial links. It seems unlikely that a spin-off wouldn’t be explicitly announced as a spin-off, especially considering that the series is more popular than ever on a global scale (Infinite Wealth sold a million copies in its first week) and has so much cultural cache right now.
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I’m Putting On My Tin Foil Hat Now
I’m fairly sure that Project Century is an entirely new IP. The art direction we see in the trailer is distinctly different from Like a Dragon: the colour grading, for one, makes the game feel more stylised. The reds pop, and there’s an overall blue-green hue to the game that we haven’t seen in LaD, at least not consistently.
The setting also seems more grounded – I don’t get a sense of LaD’s characteristic absurdity here, and the combat feels somehow more violent, but in a more realistic way. There’s a lot of brutality and gore, blood spraying from enemies’ wounds, less of the flashiness of LaD’s moveset and more frightening violence. Tonally, it doesn’t seem at all like other games in the series.
Now, here’s my actual loopy theory: this is a game about time-travel. Wait, don’t click away, let me explain myself. There’s something vaguely anachronistic about the protagonist – he stands out from the rest of the characters in the setting. This could be just character design, but I think there’s something more to it. His robe isn’t like anything we see the NPCs wearing, and feels somewhat modern, as does his longer hair. Everything about him, from the way he dresses and fights to his small dance at the end of the trailer (to modernised jazz music!) feels like a gesture towards the crossover of modernity and history.
Backing this up is that, as a Redditor noted, the words on his robe have words written in modern characters instead of the way they would have been written in the time the game is set. Even the name of the game seems to indicate a focus on time – Project Century.
Is this wild speculation? Yes. With no trailers or information coming in the foreseeable future, I’ve created a theory based entirely on my imagination. That said, I’m at least sure that this is the new IP the studio has been working on. Whether or not it’s a weird time-travel game is yet to be seen, but considering the absurdity inherent to the studio’s most famous franchise, I wouldn’t be surprised if I turned out to be right.