This interview has been edited for clarity.

Mention RGG Studios, and the Yakuza gaming franchise instantly comes to mind. Debuting in 2005 for the PlayStation 2, this long-running action-adventure video game series centred around the Japanese crime syndicate made its mark thanks to its distinctive storytelling. Featuring a former Yakuza member protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, his story was told through seven games, from the 2015 prequel Yakuza 0 to 2016’s Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

What made Kiryu’s decade-long journey even more memorable was the game’s expert balance of serious, heartfelt moments with wacky misadventures, as while the games usually had a serious underlying plot, there were always opportunities for goofy antics along the way, largely thanks to the franchise’s renowned side stories. Kiryu could be working to stop a bomb from detonating in one moment, caring for an orphanage of kids in another, and delivering food while avoiding dancing Sumo wrestlers roaming the streets in the next, resulting in a chaotic yet engaging mix of themes that no other franchise has yet to replicate.

With Kiryu’s journey all but wrapped up, this allows RGG Studio to go back to the drawing board for its next spin-off adventure, STRANGER THAN HEAVEN, and this time, it’s taking a bold new direction, switching up the narrative structure of the upcoming game while also presenting a complete story in just one massive title.

Centred on its brand-new protagonist, Makoto Daito, a half-Japanese, half-American outcast fleeing persecution in the US to find a home in Japan, the game’s narrative spans a whopping 50 years and focuses on the entire adult life of its protagonist in five distinct eras and regions – Fukuoka (1915), Hiroshima (1929), Osaka (1943), Shizuoka (1951), and Tokyo (1965).

With a story that plays out over such a long time, it needs to be gripping and full of hardships to overcome, something that STRANGER THAN HEAVEN hints at in its very title.

“I wanted to use the word ‘stranger’ as one of the core parts inside the title name because of what it implies – to be an outsider or a drifter,” explains RGG Studio head Yokoyama Masayoshi during an interview with Geek Culture and other members of Southeast Asia media during a preview event at SEGA headquarters in Tokyo.

“Makoto, the main character of the title, is born a ‘stranger’ as he is mixed-race, so he’s never fully accepted in either society, American or Japanese. So you could say he’s a stranger to both worlds.”

RGG Studio head Yokoyama Masayoshi (left)

And unlike the Yakuza franchise, which took seven games and almost a decade to tell the complete story of Kiryu, STRANGER THAN HEAVEN is set to offer the complete journey of Makoto from start to finish, presenting a major change of pace for the team.

“In past RGG titles like Yakuza, each game in the franchise might only show a snippet of his life, such as the events over 10 tens for a particular incident to happen and be resolved,” explains Masayoshi. “Here, our approach is completely different as it’s a deep dive into Makoto’s life from start to finish, which we have never done before.”

And who better to do a deep dive into than one of the most influential people in the Yakuza universe? For those unaware, Makoto Daito is none other than Makoto Tojo, one of the founders of the Tojo Clan, to which Kiryu was once part of in the Yakuza franchise, offering a link between the two games.

But that wasn’t the only reason for doing an origin story set far in the past, as Masayoshi expresses his love for writing historical stories thanks to one simple reason – back then, things were much more black-and-white.

“When I made franchise spin-offs like Like a Dragon: Ishin!, I’ve always felt drawn to the nature of people in the past, as things were more cut and dry. There was either good or bad, and everything had a clear motive. It was this sort of ‘purity’ that I’ve always admired,” he explains.

“Nowadays, writers who are writing crime dramas or whatnot are hitting a wall because they usually don’t have a clear motive for why these criminals did the things they did. That’s because this is reflected in the real world, where the reasons for crimes are usually very complex, and so I want to bring this ‘purity’, where every character has a clear reason for doing things, then adding flavours to explain their motives, and why they are walking the path they walk.”

With this in mind, STRANGER THAN HEAVEN is set to be a much more serious and down-to-earth experience than what most RGG Studio fans are used to, as Masayoshi further explains that the game will not feature as many side activities as past titles.

While this might surely come as a bummer to longtime Yakuza fans, this decision was not one made lightly, with the team making a conscious effort to tone down the wackiness the studio has been known for to better fit its historical setting.

“RGG is known for the comical essence and the over-the-top nature of some of our game’s side activities,” says Masayoshi. “Now that we are setting the game based on historical eras, we need to be wary of how we present our characters. 

“We could introduce joke characters and elements in our games from the modern setting as most people can recognise that these are jokes, but if you bring this same comical nature into something that’s based in the past, it might give people the wrong impression that such things did actually happen, and especially since the period between 1915 and 1965 had some really serious contents, we were careful not to leave the wrong message.”

While the amount of side activities has decreased, this doesn’t mean that the game will be short by any means. In fact, Masayoshi reveals that the main narrative of STRANGER THAN HEAVEN will be longer than any other RGG title of the past, which were already pretty substantial narrative adventures in their own right. Side content in the game is also set to be more in-depth to make up for their reduced numbers, such as ShowBiz, the overarching management activity that sees Makoto taking on the role of a promoter.

Equipped with musical knowledge, Makoto is able to produce songs by drawing inspiration from everyday sounds around him. With these tunes, he is able to put on live shows, recruiting singers and band members for the performance. This, Makoto explains, will be the game’s main way to earn valuable currency to help purchase equipment needed to tackle the game’s increasing combat challenges, but it’s not entirely compulsory; it will just make the game much more manageable.

With this in mind, the concept of music seems to play a big part in the game, with Masayoshi adding that it also forms a direct link to Masoto’s character development.

“With his mixed heritage and looks, how could a man like that make a living when he looks so different from other Japanese folks? The answer is entertainment or singing,” he explains. “Music doesn’t really have a barrier, and a good song speaks to you no matter your race or beliefs, so that’s why the industry was a good fit for the character.”

“In fact, the entertainment industry was also very much heavily influenced by criminal organisations in Japan in the past, it’s kind of a well-known thing, so it was a pretty perfect match overall, and it made so much sense as it was a place where Masoto could make a living without being judged, all while involved with criminal dealings along the way.”

“We wanted to start from the core of what the studio has been known for, which is bringing to life the story through combat, and here, it’s about surviving, life or death, and that’s why it’s a bit more difficult, as we wanted to make it gritty and realistic, with the notion that you can get murdered at any time.”

Further elaborating, he says, “In the preview, there’s a character in the last Osaka stage that holds a sword, and he’s so strong because you deal so little damage with every hit and yet he can kill you in one shot. We wanted to bring this kind of tension into the game that you can get killed at any time, because this was actually how it was in the past.”

With this in mind, the game looks to be not just the most serious RGG title to date, but also one with the longest main narrative, even if it won’t necessarily include the studio’s trademark goofy side activities. While the preview session only offered us a look at its combat side, it would be interesting to see how STRANGER THAN HEAVEN’s narrative shapes up, and whether this more grounded approach would resonate with fans, or end up being as divisive as its overhauled battle system. 

STRANGER THAN HEAVEN launches on 15 January 2027 for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.