Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s devs packed Dondoko Island with so much content its scale grew beyond what was originally planned  

When Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth just released back in January, there was a lot of talk about the RPG’s massive volume, but the new Dondoko Island game mode particularly struck players with how it almost felt like a standalone game. Its sheer size and number of activities had players hypnotized for hours, crafting and managing their new dream resort. However, Dondoko Island was initially not meant to be quite that big – it turns out the developers kept adding to it and things just kind of… got out of hand.  

AUTOMATON recently had the opportunity to talk to the good people at RGG Studio about the behind-the-scenes work that went into Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. In an interview about the team’s efficient reuse of past assets (which will be published in full at a later date), Infinite Wealth’s art director Nobuaki Mitake and lead designer Michihiko Hatoyama talked to us about the roles they played in Dondoko Island’s massive scale. 

According to Hatoyama, “At first, Dondoko Island was a little smaller, but it kind of grew larger before we knew it.” The reason the developers ended up going well beyond what was originally intended is simple – Dondoko Island allows you to place furniture anywhere, and the team thought that more space to place furniture = more fun for the player. But why does the game have so much furniture? Also because it’s fun. 

Anyone who’s played Dondoko Island knows that its list of DIY furniture recipes is extensive – and thanks to the Yakuza series’ rich library of past assets, the developers were able to create individual pieces of furniture “in a matter of minutes.” While a typical development schedule would define a certain number of assets per day or month, RGG Studio’s schedule defined a per hour pace of asset creation, Hatoyama says. It seems that the availability of past assets to edit and reuse allowed the team to go the whole hog on furniture recipes, and they definitely took the opportunity. 

This goes in line with Like a Dragon developers’ past comments about each RGG Studio section and individual member having the liberty (and responsibility) to make independent decisions for the better of the game – as art director Mitake jokingly put it, “We never end up making the game exactly the way planning initially proposes.” 

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is available for the PC (Steam), PS4/PS5 and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S