Given that Stranger Than Heaven is a prequel to the Like a Dragon series, it’s no surprise that RGG Studio plans to re-cast past talents in the new game. Studio head and executive director Masayoshi Yokoyama recently posted a short dev vlog confirming that Shunsuke Daito, who voiced several Like a Dragon characters, will be returning for an undisclosed role.
On the other hand, Kazuhiro Nakaya, known for major roles like Akira Nishikiyama and Ichiban Kasuga, also made an appearance in the dev vlog, but was confirmed not to be appearing in Stranger Than Heaven.
The main focus of the dev vlog was on Daito’s character who, according to the VA, appears around the middle of Stranger Than Heaven’s main story and “will turn it (the story) on its head” (although, Yokoyama later countered Daito’s statement, suggesting the character doesn’t introduce that big of a twist). Daito also highlighted that he shares the same surname as the game’s protagonist, Makoto Daito, and jokingly expressed frustration at Yu Shirota (Makoto’s VA) having a lot more lines than him.
Daito (the VA, not the character) provided the Japanese voices of Todo Heisuke in Like a Dragon: Ishin!, Shigeki Baba in Yakuza 5, and Mortimer in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Like in his past roles, he will be appearing in Stranger Than Heaven only as a voice actor, so the character model will not be based on his likeness.
While Kazuhiro Nakaya’s appearance in the dev vlog seemed to be happenstance, it was enough for Yokoyama to confirm that the voice actor will not be appearing in Stranger than Heaven. Nakaya would repost the announcement soon after, confirming his non-appearance before laughing about the strange nature of the matter:
An announcement has been made about my non-appearance (lol)
Yokoyama then joked that this might be the first non-appearance announcement made in RGG Studio’s history, and Nakayama was pleased with claiming the honor. Whether this is a red herring or not is up for you to decide, but many Like a Dragon fans were excited just to see Nakaya crop up in an announcement related to Stranger than Heaven.
Stanger Than Heaven is set to release sometime this Winter for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows (Steam).
