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wildweasel
@wildweasel

People once compared the Yakuza series to the Grand Theft Auto series. This seems like a farfetched comparison now, especially with more than passing familiarity with both series, but let's put both of them side-by-side, just for the sake of entertaining the thought.

SubjectYakuza/Like a Dragon seriesGrand Theft Auto series
Main character(s)Kiryu, an absurdly powerful former officer of an organized crime family who absolutely refuses to die, raises orphans on the beach, and has been trying to retire for 7 games now. Also a loanshark with a heart of gold, a huge guy who escaped prison multiple times, and a wacky dude who thinks life is an RPGA mute player-cipher, a loudmouth mobster, a west coast gangbanger, an ambiguously Slavic man with an unclear criminal past, a guy from a motorcycle club, a prizefighter/club bouncer, another west coast gangbanger, a retired bank robber under witness protection, and a wacky dude who is the worst person anybody will ever meet
Action scenesBrutal martial arts film setpieces pitting one man against hordes of goons with his bare hands and whatever is lying around, rarely overtly lethal and somehow more impressive for it, heavy emphasis on cinematic finishing moves and epic, emotionally charged boss fightsHighly scripted car chases where the player is actively punished for missing their "stage directions," awkwardly controlled shoot-outs with whatever guns are on hand, maybe some wobbly melee combat in early game before it forgets your punch button even exists and hands you enough machine guns to outfit an army
The worldRoughly 9 square city blocks, jam-packed with random people, where about 30% of the buildings can actually be entered and patronized, and about half of those might actually have story content associated with themRoughly 10-15 square miles of city, painstakingly designed to look like real-world photos of an American city where you can't really tell what any of the buildings are for, and if you're lucky, you might be able to walk into 2 or 3 of them if it's relevant to the story, or press a button to buy them but it doesn't really matter beyond there being a number hovering over it now that represents how much money it's making you whenever you walk over the icon
Food and drinkcopious product placements of real-world restaurants that are all too happy to describe the ingredients of their health-restoring meals and the histories of all of the booze brands on offer. you are actively rewarded for trying every item on the menu and sometimes it boosts your stats toofictional brands that sound similar to real-world food, drink, and restaurant brands but are unsubtly jokes about how unhealthy they are for you, or sex puns, or unsubtle jabs at other companies' games. buying a bucket of fried chicken will sometimes cause clerks to say "hope you choke-a-doodle-doo!"
MinigamesVideo arcades with fully emulated sega classics, fishing, the driving range, an entire golf course in a couple of games, slot car derbies, kart racing, fast-paced noodle cooking, watching cheesy movies with your buddies and trying not to fall asleep, pac-man except the ghosts are homeless guys on bikes, at least 6 different ways to gamble, pachislot machines, karaoke, and oh yeah, drive people around town in a taximaybe one video game, play golf, surf the internet for no reason, steal a police car and kill criminals, steal an ambulance and drive people to hospital, play cards with the guys, and oh yeah, drive people around town in a taxi (that you stole)
Dating and nightlifeMultiple girls per game based on real-world adult performers and actresses with their voice and likeness, with branching conversation trees, side missions, and storylines. this is relevant to the main story exactly twiceMaybe a couple of girls, who don't really talk to you much, judge you based entirely on what you are wielding in your hand when you walk up to their door, and invite you to play one of the 3 or 4 existing minigames sometimes. or you can throw money at strippers or have dubious health-restoring sex in your back seat. also the one the game requires you to date in a tutorial mission winds up being a plant who has been ratting on you to the feds the whole game, which is treated about as sensitively as a political cartoon
The main storyGrim, but emotional, dark, but hopeful; tales of men who cling to life from the fringes of society, and just how hard it is to leave the criminal life behind. treatises on how society is failing the people living at its bottom-most rungs, homelessness, the myth of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, even if a lot of this largely leads to people getting punched a lotWe watched a lot of movies like Scarface, Heat, Falling Down, and American Psycho and we decided they'd make really fun video games and it also informed our entire point of view about what crime fiction is meant for, with copious references to current events because we feel that satirizing it is our right and duty as video game designers no matter how much it pisses people off

wildweasel
@wildweasel
SubjectY/LADGTA
Supporting castOther current-and-former members of the yakuza, police detectives, homeless people, bartenders, and other such regular people, at least one that's been voiced by Michael Madsen, each with extensive and interconnected backstories and arcs that can span the entire series, and a certain on-again-off-again rival/stalker/fanon love interest who has also been playable a few times. Also, women, but only one per game at most, and it's 50/50 whether they'll die or be made irrelevant by the plot by next gameA lot of caricatures of men from existing crime films, at least one that's been voiced by Michael Madsen, including corrupt policemen, drug dealers, gang leaders, criminal masterminds, overbearing women who are unerringly either cheating on you or actively annoying to be around (and if they are not, the story will probably kill them off for a cheap emotional shot). Odds are good that all of the above will have, at some point, served as the writer's political mouthpiece
Side questsWin a pet chicken in a bowling game, meet a mob boss with a diaper fetish, take a Korean movie superstar on a grand tour of the adult shops while avoiding his rabid fans, buy a magazine from a vending machine without getting caught by your secretary, fight some ghost pirates in a cemetery, meet (and dance with) Totally Not Michael Jackson, accidentally burst Japan's economic bubble, help a dominatrix feel better about herself, and learn the finer points of "kabedon"Help an out-of-town couple stalk some movie stars, run a dope-dealing business out of an ice cream truck, commit burglary for no good reason, shoot every single pigeon in town until they are extinct, intercept the "yay" convoy when it comes around, get your pilot's license, save a taxi business by engaging in a lethal game of bumper-cars with a rival company, play the stock market while ruining the companies whose stock you're trading, participate in a repossession racket, and steal a laundry list of specific cars for a dockside chop shop
Release scheduleRoughly one new game every 14 months, owing to the fact that most new games in the series take place in the same locations and a lot of things can be reusedOn average, roughly one new game every 8 years, using almost no content from previous games at all and leveraging the thousands of employees who will have undoubtedly burned out by the end of one development cycle
Remasters/RemakesAlmost every single game in the series can be comfortably played on a single platform, whether that be PS4, Xbox, or PC. Remakes available of the first and second games, albeit contentious ones that overhaul a lot of things.A lot of the early games are effectively locked to older platforms. "Remastered" editions are hideously broken ports to completely different engines with a laundry list of major issues and game-breakers
Mod sceneModders have successfully ported entire playable characters from one game to another, created entire new move sets, altered costumes, and reintroduced cut music tracks that were lost in localizationModders have successfully incurred the wrath of the publisher, and have been harassed and silenced by torrents of takedown notices and threats of lawsuits

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