Like a Dragon series producer assures localization does not alter game content or characters
Yokoyama Masayoshi, the director of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and executive producer of the Like a Dragon series, made a series of posts on his personal X account on January 31 addressing the series’ localization. He assured players that what they see in the games is exactly what the RGG team intended, regardless of the language they’re playing in.
After Sega’s official X account shared a PR article with The Japan Times on the topic of game localization on January 28, many users interpreted comments made by the Sega of America localization team to mean that localizers are given free rein to make cultural and ideological revisions to original Japanese scripts, resulting in a lot of dissatisfied responses.
Although the Like a Dragon series is generally known for good quality localization, this also led to discourse about the Like a Dragon series’ latest entry, Infinite Wealth, intensifying. The effects of the previously mentioned article, combined with recent claims that a certain dialogue at the start of Infinite Wealth is “too woke and feminist,” caused enough commotion to reach the ears of Masayoshi Yokoyama, who immediately addressed the issue.
Explaining the Ryu Ga Gotoku team’s localization policy, Yokoyama assures users that the only thing being revised in the games is content that the writers themselves did not intend to come across as derogatory or offensive. He also adds that such revisions are made to the original Japanese script, which means that no significant changes exist between different versions.
Yokoyama clarifies that while high-context Japanese phrases such as proverbs are approximated to local equivalents for clarity, the team does not allow any changes to the characters and their personalities.
Finally, the Yakuza series producer states that localization is a means of conveying the games’ meaning correctly, and that the team’s approach to localization has been this way ever since Yakuza 0.
Likely addressing suspicions that Infinite Wealth has been woke-ified against the creators’ wishes, Yokoyama followed up with a post explaining that Ichiban Kasuga is a character who is unprejudiced in terms of age, gender, status etc., but that, “This is not out of any kind of consideration. We just wanted to create a character like that.”
It also might be worth mentioning that Yokoyama’s general stance towards exporting the Like a Dragon series overseas is very uncompromising in terms of the series’ Japan-centric themes and sensibility. In an interview with our Japanese editorial staff, Yokoyama explained his views in the following way: “(…) this is not to say that I am in any way conscious of the overseas market. The staff over at the Sega overseas offices always tell me ‘Don’t change anything.’ For things like adding foreign characters or foreign stages, they tell me not to do it unless it’s absolutely necessary. ‘Just do things the Yokoyama way, as you have been till now,’ I’m told. A lot of people are warning me not to be influenced in weird ways, and I place a high importance on that too.”
As Yokoyama mentioned, The Like a Dragon series has a reliable history with localization too, leaving English speakers with many memorable quotes and moments. One particularly masterful example is the Yakuza: Like A Dragon scene in which Ichiban Kasuga (who is bad at English) is asked for directions by an English-speaking foreigner. The English localization did not go for the expected route of making the foreigner speak another foreign language, but instead settled for a comical “American man in a foreign country” moment, with the foreigner speaking unnaturally slowly. Additionally, the developers added a 4th wall-breaking gesture by which Kasuga signals to the player that even though he’s technically speaking English, he doesn’t know it (Source: Kotaku).
Perhaps due to past occurrences of excessively biased localizations in Japanese anime and video games, players have grown wary of inauthentic translations and often plead for developers to keep cultural adaptations to a minimum and leave their games “as Japanese as possible.” (Related article) However, it seems that in the case of the Like a Dragon series, what we are getting in the localized versions is exactly what the developers intended to convey, especially in terms of core values and characters.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is available for the PC (Windows/Steam)/Xbox Series X|S/Xbox One/PS4/PS5.