RGG Studio’s director and executive producer Yokoyama Masayoshi recently sat down with GameWatch for an interview before the “Like a Dragon: The Four Ceremonies of Life Exhibition” opens in Tokyo on November 28. He shared thoughts on where the Yakuza series is heading and looked back at key moments from its 20-year run.

In February, the studio will launch Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties, a bundle that packages a full remake of Yakuza 3 with an original spin-off game starring Yoshitaka Mine. Yokoyama says this release matters a lot for the series’ future.

“It contains some major hints about the future direction of the series. We haven’t officially announced anything related to that yet. But once you play it, I think you’ll get an idea, or rather, a pretty solid sense of what we intend to do with the series going forward.”

While Yokoyama didn’t share more details about what RGG Studio has included in the game, he made it clear that players shouldn’t see this as just another remake. “If you think Yakuza Kiwami 3 is just a remake, you’d be hugely mistaken,” he said. He also mentioned that Dark Ties will feature “extremely shocking” events. The game’s directors, Ryosuke Horii and Hiroyuki Sakamoto, have called it the “darkest story in the series’ history.”

Looking back at the series, Yokoyama named the introduction of Ichiban Kasuga as the biggest turning point in the past 20 years. While switching from action combat to RPG gameplay for mainline games was a big change, the new protagonist was an even tougher challenge in his view. “It’s because players accepted [Ichiban] that we’ve been able to continue the series,” he explained.

RGG Studio is also working on other projects beyond Like a Dragon, including the brand-new IP Stranger than Heaven and the sixth mainline entry of the Virtua Fighter series. Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties releases February 12, 2026 on PC via Steam, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.