As the release of Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut approaches, Sega’s RGG Studio has published a pre-launch interview with longtime Like a Dragon series’ cast members Takaya Kuroda (Kazuma Kiryu), Hidenari Ugaki (Goro Majima), Kazuhiro Nakaya (Akira Nishikiyama) and Hitoshi Ozawa (Daisaku Kuze). The voice actors shared their impressions of the upcoming re-release of Yakuza 0, including how they feel about its new scenes.
Kiryu’s voice actor Kuroda comments that the original Yakuza 0 left many fans, himself included, curious about some loose ends. But when he received his script for the new scenes appearing in the Director’s Cut, he found them very “refreshing.” Kuroda thinks that both veteran and new Like a Dragon fans will find a convincing sense of closure from these additions.
Going into more specific detail about his own role, Majima’s voice actor Ugaki says that the new scenes really drove home to him “how dearly Majima holds Makoto and how much he wants to protect her.” According to Ugaki, Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut establishes even more strongly that Majima, despite his scary yakuza outer shell, possesses a kind and caring core.
The new scenes added to Yakuza also help define the relationship between Kiryu and Kuze more clearly, according to the latter’s voice actor Hitoshi Ozawa. “There are things Yakuza 0 mentioned but didn’t delve into very deeply – Kuze’s new lines gave me a sense of Oh, so that’s how things are between them.”
As confirmed previously by Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut producer Makoto Suzuki, the new scenes being added this time around are, as the title “Director’s Cut” implies, episodes that were cut from the original game, totaling around 26 minutes of extra scenes. Aside from these story-related additions, the new release will come with Red Light Raid – a brand-new online multiplayer mode with 60 playable characters. The game will support 4k graphics and run at 60 frames per second.
Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut releases on June 5 for the Nintendo Switch 2.
