Following from Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2, RGG Studio recently announced Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties – a long-awaited remake of the series’ third mainline entry, bundled with a brand-new Mine-centric spin-off game. Talking to ThisIsGame at TGS 2025, the developers say that the meaning of the term “Kiwami” has changed with this entry. In other words, their approach to remaking Yakuza 3 has taken a different path compared to past Kiwami titles.
Since Yakuza 1 and 2 originally launched on the PS2, their subsequent modern remakes brought a very dramatic change. “The gap in hardware was so big that simply rebuilding the graphics based on modern standards made a huge difference,” says RGG Studio director Yokoyama Masayoshi. But that’s not the case for Yakuza 3, which was developed for the higher-spec PS3 to begin with.
“For us, the term Kiwami no longer means just a technical upgrade. It means redefining and reinterpreting the legacy and assets we’ve built so far into an entirely new piece of entertainment. Yakuza 3 will be the first project to represent this new philosophy.”
As for what “redefining and reinterpreting” entails, Yokoyama clarifies that this doesn’t mean altering core story beats or characters, but going back in and refining details that were left out or felt ambiguous, such as parts of the story that left the player wondering why a character would act a certain way.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 director Ryosuke Horii adds, “With this remake, we’re revisiting a game we made not long after the Yakuza series’ very beginning, so we had all these lingering feelings about it like, “I wish we could have done this differently,” or “I wish we could have fleshed out this character’s drama more thoroughly.” To make up for such inconsistencies and missed opportunities, the developers added a “significant number of new scenes that make the story more passionate and moving.”
Aside from new scenes, Yakuza Kiwami 3 adjusts the delivery of existing scenes, such as the tone of actors’ performances, for example, “making sad scenes even more heartbreaking.” Yokoyama also promises some “surprising” sides to the remake, but that wouldn’t be a first for the series.
As far as the more technical sides of the game go, Yakuza Kiwami 3 will have a completely rebuilt Okinawa map that corrects issues the developers became aware of 16 years later. This includes reducing needlessly spacious areas, packing in more side content, and making movement and spacing feel more comfortable.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties launches on February 12 for PC (Steam), PS5/PS4, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.
Related articles: Yakuza Dark Ties was originally supposed to be just a viewable movie, but RGG Studio couldn’t miss out on its last opportunity to make Mine playable
