Here we go with part 2 of this huge, spoiler-filled interview. This time: casting, substories, Dondoko Island, combat, and more!

Source: https://dengekionline.com/article/202406/6882

Read Part 1 first if you missed it: Part 1

~ The perfect casting of the new characters ~

—— Now I want to focus on the new characters, and ask about the concepts, what recording was like, and so on. First of all, I was really surprised when you announced King Gnu’s Iguchi Satoru-san was playing Eric Tomizawa. And that you made him an offer after seeing one of his music videos?

Yokoyama: It was the video for Teenager Forever. I happened to see it on a music show, and thought he was the best fit for Tomizawa in terms of looks, so I talked to the scenario team, and we decided to ask him if he was interested.

—— Iguchi-san himself doesn’t have that image, but I get it, how he looks in the Teenager Forever video is spot on (laughing).

Yokoyama: Tomizawa’s young, a bit grubby, sort of the Hawaii version of Nanba, and in that video he fit the image perfectly. So I went to Sony Music Entertainment, spoke to King Gnu’s manager, and told them, “I want Iguchi-san with the grubby look he had in that video for this role.”

I got the reply, “He’s actually just started to move into acting, so your timing is perfect,” so that was great. And Iguchi-san’s acting got better and better with every recording session. When you played the game, didn’t you get to love Tomizawa by the end?

—— I did! He was totally charming.

Yokoyama: He had a lot of lines too, recording took a long time, but I think we really brought out Iguchi-san’s charm, so I’m really glad we decided to approach him.

—— So then next is Fujinomiya Chitose, which was almost a double role for Inami Anju-san.

Yokoyama: Actually, when she came to audition, we had already done test tracks [with her] for the VTuber role. 

Takeuchi: What’s more, we had her play “the fake Tatara role” too.

—— I see, so it was three roles then.

Yokoyama: Inami-san has been a huge fan of the Ryu ga Gotoku series for a long time, so she had a good sense of what we were looking for. Just from reading the script, she already grasped the core of the character.

Takeuchi: I think it was a hard task we gave her, to somehow distinguish the character from Saeko and Seonhee, the existing female characters around the same age, with her voice and performance, but Inami-san just got it, on an unprecedented scale. She’s incredibly intelligent, I definitely felt that.

—— Speaking of Seonhee, she continues in her role from the previous game, but she’s now a full party member, so I felt she came into focus a lot more this time.

Yokoyama: Takeda Hana-san also did a lot of preparation for her role. By the way, you know we do our Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio live stream every month, called RyuSta TV? Sometimes there isn’t any game information to report on, so one time we just all played Mahjong! [RyuSta TV 10] Takeda-san appeared, in Seonhee cosplay, to play Mahjong with us. She sourced the clothes herself, and played Seonhee playing Mahjong, gloves and all (laughing). 

I’m always moved by these people who take the time to research Ryu ga Gotoku and play the games so far. And after that live stream, I asked Takeda-san to be in Ryu ga Gotoku 8, and told her we were going to make Seonhee a party member. I remember she was so surprised, and so happy too.

—— I loved seeing Seonhee as a Kiryu fan.

Yokoyama: That was adorable, wasn’t it? (laughing)

Takeuchi: She was an enemy to begin with in Ryu ga Gotoku 7, and then always an outsider. But she’s been around for a long time now, her relationship to the main characters has changed, so now we can see a different side to her. 

—— So let’s move on to the antagonists. First tell me about Ebina, played by Hasegawa Hiroki-san.

Yokoyama: Ebina is sort of inhuman in a way, isn’t he? Like he doesn’t understand emotions, you know? I think it’s part of Hasegawa’s appeal that he can play that kind of character. Not just cool, but you get this feeling like “he’s right in front of you but he’s really somewhere else”. 

And Hasegawa-san himself is like that in real life, you know. Talking with him in a meeting room, I had this weird sensation, like, “That really is Hasegawa Hiroki sitting there listening to me, right …?” (Laughing) Actually Hasegawa-san and I are the same age, so we bonded over that a bit.

—— I see.

Yokoyama: Anyway, he really makes an impression, completely different from that of normal people. Like actors from the past like Takakura Ken-san had, “an aura like they’re not really real,” you know. Like, does this person on the screen really exist in real life? And that’s unusual for actors to have that kind of presence these days. So that’s why I thought he was perfect to play a role like Ebina.

—— He’s also like that in the drama Anti-Hero, which started broadcasting in April this year [and is now on Netflix in the west], isn’t he? 

Yokoyama: Yes, you all see what I mean, don’t you? I noticed it in the 2017 drama Chiisana kyoujin [Little Giants] too, and I mentioned it to Hasegawa-san. I told him, “I want you to play it like that, with that way of speaking.” He was perfect for the role.

—— And then there’s Mitamura Eiji, played by Narita Ryo-san.

Yokoyama: Eiji as a character was part of the plot from the beginning. But his dual nature made it really hard to cast him from the Japanese entertainment world. Where Narita-san is great is that, with Eiji in his wheelchair wearing that white polo shirt, he’s not in the least bit cool. But when you see him later in the bar in a black shirt, he’s suddenly looking really cool. When his clothes changed, the whole feeling of his performance changed, you know.

—— Right. He suddenly feels like a boss at that point.

Yokoyama: And Narita-san was the one to portray that astounding duality. He does a lot of modelling work too, and he’s incredibly stylish. He’d come to recordings looking casual, and all you can see is an ordinary guy, but then he’d come out of the booth, say, “See you later,” throw on a shirt and he’s pure model, it was shocking. Super-cool, super-scary, super-pathetic. His range as an actor is incredible.

—— So finally, I want to ask about Yamai Yutaka, he’s basically in the same role as Majima is with Kiryu, right?

Yokoyama: Totally. But the reason we made him obsessed with Kiryu, not Kasuga, was to give him a reason to act at the end. Yamai is responsible for the same crime as Kiryu — killing his patriarch — but while Kiryu didn’t run away, Yamai ran away to Hawaii. 

Yamai has an inferiority complex due to that, so it’s like a miracle for him, to meet Kiryu, who he admires so much, in Hawaii, where he ran away to. That makes him start to think, “Maybe I can change my life, even now,” and that’s why he takes action to help Kasuga and the others. 

We talk about this in more detail on our official YouTube channel in a members-only video, but Yamai’s story is a story about what happens to someone who lives by logic when logic fails them. 

When Yamai is in Hawaii, he’s always completely logical, like, “I will help them, and this is the reason why.” He always takes action based on creating an advantage for himself and a disadvantage for his opponents. But that one conversation with his Anesan [Yui] destroys that. Following that destruction,Yamai becomes the logical person who ends up acting more on emotion than anyone else. I think Takeuchi created an incredible character there.

Takeuchi: At the start of development, I had a vague image of him in my head, of Vicious from Cowboy Bebop. 

Yokoyama: Right, right. When we first got Yamadera Koichi-san to play Akiyama Shun I asked him to play him like Spike, who he played in Cowboy Bebop. Vicious was played by Wakamoto Norio-san, not Koyasu Takehito-san, but you do get an impression of Vicious from him.

—— And Koyasu-san gave a fantastic performance as Yamai.

Yokoyama: Koyasu-san was really great. Without that voice, I don’t think he would have become the character he did. That’s definitely true.

Takeuchi: Yamai was a new character, so we didn’t start by recording Koyasu-san straight away, we do test recordings with temporary voice actors as part of the production process. We got some great performances, so much so that we were considering using them in the final version, but when Koyasu-san came to record, from the first line it was like, “Oh yes, this is the one.”

Yokoyama: You’ve never seen anyone as cool as him when he says, “I’m not cold any more.”

—— That line really got to me. By the way, because Koyasu-san was in Ryu ga Gotoku Kiwami 2, playing Ibuchi Kei, I hadn’t expected him to be in another one, so I was really happy when he appeared.

Yokoyama: Oh, we ignore that now (laughing). We decided that Koyasu-san was the only one who would do for Yamai.

~ Substories developed with respect for Hawaiian culture ~

—— Next I want to ask about substories. Did the Hawaii setting cause there to be differences in the development of substories this time compared to the previous games in the series?

Chiba: In the substories set in Japan, like in Kamurocho and Yokohama, I felt like we’d done everything we could to find material in everything a human can possibly do. So with the new setting of Hawaii, I was really excited at first, like, “Yay! Hawaii! We’ll be able to do loads of stuff we couldn’t do in Japan!” But when I really thought about it, I ended up like, “What do Hawaiian people worry about, what do they think …?”

—— Yeah, that kind of thing would be hard to imagine.

Chiba: In a lot of situations, it ended up like, “This story would work in Kamata [Tokyo], but it totally doesn’t work in Hawaii.” So I ended up talking to people in the company who’d been to Hawaii, and collecting their memories and disaster stories to get ideas. 

For example, the substory “The Person who was Kind to Me” [“Saved by Kindness”] is about charity fraud, but the guy in the story who forces people to have their picture taken with a parrot, that came from a colleague who’d been a victim of that in real life (wry smile). 

—— That’s something that really happened there!

Chiba: So we got ideas from stories like that, and built on them in various ways. Then we added in those things that are different from Japan that we could write about as being characteristic of the location, with substories like “Love and Punishment”. In Japan, social services helps single parent families, but that’s something that’s not really highlighted much in that region, so we looked into things like that to write about too. 

Aside from that, we had to be very careful, because when we just dreamed things up out of nothing we ended up creating a lot of inaccurate representations, you know? We had a lot of debate with the character team and the ethics team, and ended up taking as our rule, “We’ll respect the culture, avoid causing any misunderstandings, but definitely won’t change the things we want to express.”

—— By the way, what was your favourite substory, Chiba-san?

Chiba: You know, the main story and the substories this time were both the highest quality we’ve ever had and I’m really proud of that, but the one I worked the hardest on was definitely “Snow Smile” [“Let it Snow”]. The last scene of that was so hard to put together. 

To make a dying old woman happy, Boss Gondawara and his nappy-wearing yakuza are stood on a rooftop making snow, but we had to quickly cut between the two scenes too. If we got the timing wrong, the whole thing would have been ruined, and we were actually making tiny adjustments to the framing right up to the last minute.

Sakamoto: That’s a really long substory, it took a lot of work, didn’t it?

—— It really made an impact, what with the scene with the runaway shopping cart and so on.

Chiba: I was all over the place to different departments, bowing and begging them, “Sorry, but please let me have this special gimmick, I promise it will be funny!” 

Horii: When Chiba asked me, “Can we include a story about making it snow using nappies?”, never mind thinking whether that would be a good idea or not, I was just baffled, wondering what kind of story that could even be (wry smile). I was thinking, “Chiba’s losing it, maybe I should make him take a couple of days off.” (Laughing)

Everyone: (Laughing)

Horii: We’ve had games with around 100 substories in the past, but lately we’ve been tending more to the more elaborate substories rather than separate short ones, so the overall numbers have been lower. But that means we’re able to pay closer attention to things like the characters and what kind of emotions we want to make the players feel. 

Even then, I think “Snow Smile” is particularly Ryu ga Gotoku-like, in how it combines being funny while also being deeply moving. 

—— And then there’s the ones that are memorable because of the gameplay, like the stuntman substory “The Pursuit of Realism”. That car-dodging minigame was damn hard …

Sakamoto: You know, we actually made a special stage just for that substory. And yeah, we did get a lot of feedback saying it was “difficult”. 

Chiba: At the planning stage, we had all the staff play it, and then when we had a version that almost everyone could clear, we had Horii play it for a director check. He cleared it on his third try, so said it was okay, and that’s the difficulty level we released it with. 

Horii: Basically, I’m really bad at action, so it’s become a rule of thumb in doing balance adjustments, that if I can clear something anyone should be able to clear it (laughing). 

—— Well, at least you can lower the difficulty level after you’ve failed once.

Chiba: We put that in just in case, but even so it was still too hard for some people, I think (wry smile).

Horii: Well, though, if it’s ridiculously hard that can be funny too, so I think it was for the best in the end. It is funny to see everyone getting repeatedly flattened by trucks, after all (laughing).

~ Being confident that Ryu ga Gotoku 8’s combat would be fun ~

—— Next I want to ask about combat. The battle system in this game is a significant evolution from Ryu ga Gotoku 7, and it was extremely well-received, with comments like, “It’s easier to play, and it’s more fun”, so I’d like to ask what you focused on most in development?

Horii: We already knew what we had to improve on from the previous game, so we continued working on it right after the release of Ryu ga Gotoku 7. I had a lot of discussions with Minami and other people responsible for the combat about things like how we could improve the tempo and so on.

Minami: In the Live Command RPG battle system we made for the previous game, the physics calculations were affected by the location etc, which meant each time you fought different things could happen, and everyone in the team agreed that was one of the best things about it. But there was a lot we were unable to achieve in the development time, so that was frustrating. 

For example, we wanted to make it possible for players to deliberately aim for an advantageous position, but in Ryu ga Gotoku 7’s combat the randomisation was strong, making it difficult to fight strategically in that way. So we took care this time to really think about changes we could make so the players could move around to create a strategic advantage. I knew that if we could only do that, it would make it much more fun.

—— You figured out as you played that depending on where you moved, “Now I can use that skill to take out all the enemies at once, nice!” It feels good, and it makes you want to keep trying things out each time you fight.

Sakamoto: We worked on it a lot, making all kinds of adjustments.

Horii: Deciding how far you should be able to move took a lot of trial and error.

Sakamoto: One time we tried making it unlimited, so you could move as far as you wanted. But it turned out that ended up making the battles take a ridiculously long time … We also tried the opposite, making it really small too.

Horii: Then we realised that made moving pointless (wry smile). But that’s what trial and error is for, isn’t it. And it’s also pointless moving if there’s no strategic advantage to it, so we added things like items you can pick up and so on for that. And then Back Attack, we had a lot of arguments over whether we could put that in.

In the end we put Back Attack in, allowed you to move around fairly freely … and that’s how the battle system ended up in its current form. In the end, we hope that means you’re less likely to feel annoyed like, “Why can’t I go over there?” and “Why can’t I pick up that signboard?” in comparison to the previous game. I think everyone’s agreed that being able to move strategically makes it less stressful. 

—— You can also autoplay, but you get better results if you do it yourself, right?

Horii: We had to pay attention to that, because we didn’t want it to end up like, “Fine, I’ll just autoplay the whole thing!” When you’re doing it manually, you have more chances to benefit, we hoped it would make people think, “It’s more fun moving around than autoplaying.” 

—— The limitation on ranged attacks isn’t too harsh either, and to an extent it felt easy and intuitive to play. Was that something else you were careful about?

Minami: Yes. But since the enemies move as well, not just the allies, getting the balance right for that was hard too. Having everyone stop and stay still could make the gameplay more simulation-like, but having the enemies move in real time is more attractive in terms of the “living world” we wanted to present. So we made adjustments so that, as much as possible, the player would send the enemy flying in the direction they aimed for even if the enemies had moved. 

Sakamoto: It’s important for realism that the enemies don’t just stand around like statues, but at the same time, if they’re constantly crowding you that’s no fun either. All you can do in a situation like that is declare, “gameplay tuning here!”, decide where to draw the line and stick to it.

—— So even if it’s not perfect, you want to put those fun things in the game.

Sakamoto: As for fun things, we added a lot more kiwami skills this time too. The battle team came up with plenty of different and unique skills to use in all kinds of situations, they did even better than expected in creating things to surprise the players.

—— You can also choose for yourself which skills to carry over between jobs this time, and trying different things with that is a lot of fun too. Did that cause you problems with balance adjustments though?

Minami: One skill here and there isn’t really too much of an issue in itself. What we were thinking more about was the cumulative effect of combining different skills, that’s where we focused our efforts.

For example, Marine Master [Aquanaut] has no skills with heat damage, so you can use this skill from this other job to cover for that, and so on. What was more difficult for us was the overall job design and keeping a good balance of skills within each job.

Sakamoto: Because you’re doing party battles, we want to avoid having situations that can be handled by just one character as much as possible, and instead encourage people to think like, “If I give status abnormalities to the debuff role, this job’s special skills will be more effective.” Ryu ga Gotoku 7 was just about one-shot skills but this time you can combine them and try out all kinds of different strategies. For example, if you hit enemies with water then electricity attribute attacks are more effective on them, and so on. 

—— I remember in Ryu ga Gotoku 7 you could set shortcut buttons for skills, but you can’t do that now. Is there a reason for that?

Horii: Due to the fact that you couldn’t really move the characters around last time, a pattern developed where people knew, “If I use that skill it will always be effective.” That’s why we put in the shortcuts, but this time the same skill can have a very different effect depending on the situation. 

So when you use the same ranged attack, depending on conditions you might get a different effect from what you were expecting. So we decided to remove the shortcuts, as the game design this time doesn’t encourage using the same skills every time.

Sakamoto: But we do have Quick Battle, so for those who think “I want to use shortcuts to speed things up,” that covers for that.

—— Quick Battle was really handy. I used it a lot when I was grinding for materials and so on.

Sakamoto: Actually, we only put Quick Battle in at the last minute. We didn’t want just a simple blackout, fight over, because that would be boring so we puzzled quite a lot over what the final form should be.

~ Dondoko Island took by far the longest time to develop ~

—— So now we come to the biggest playspot ever, Dondoko Island. Can you tell me how you came up with the idea for that, and what were the difficulties you faced in developing it?

Horii: At the same time as deciding on the setting of Hawaii we were thinking about what could take the place of the Business Management from last time, as a core gameplay component outside of the main story, and Dondoko Island was what we came up with. One reason was that when you think of Hawaii you think of beach resorts, but our areas around Waikiki Beach were more town than resort, so this could be somewhere we could really bring out that resort feeling. 

So we included a resort where you can enjoy nature, and then decided to have it focus on “customising your island”. But there’s tons of games like that, where you just create islands or villages. So then we spiced it up with using the bat to cut down trees and smash up garbage, and added enemies to fight, and eventually ended up with what we have now. 

—— So you started from the premise of island building and then fleshed it out with story and characters, I see.

Horii: Yes. But we’d never made an island building game before, so first we had to make an island, and then we started by putting a cabaret club on it. 

—— Straight in there with the cabaret club (laughing).

Horii: We went on to figure out how big we could make it, what size buildings we could put on it, and so on, but to start with just putting in the cabaret club filled it up (wry smile). So we kept testing, and eventually ended up with the size we have now.

Sakamoto: Dondoko Island took the longest time to develop out of anything in Ryu ga Gotoku 8, didn’t it?

Horii: By far the longest, yes. (Laughing)

—— Being able to visit islands made by other players in Dondoko Island was fun too. Have you seen anything that really impressed you on players’ islands?

Horii: I remember seeing one where they had the Ono Michio standee in the middle of the island, and lots of little Ono Michio figures hidden around the island they challenged you to find. 

Yokoyama: Did you find them all? (Laughing)

Horii: I couldn’t (laughing). Then there was someone who made a maze, so it was like an escape game. That was interesting, seeing people having fun with it in different ways. It was something we’d never done before in the series, having an online component like that where we could also enjoy the islands the players had made. 

Yokoyama: Yeah, the most we’d done in the past was online Mahjong and stuff like that. It reminds me how much times have changed while we’ve been making this series. On the PS3 the series was strictly single player, all standalone. When we got to PS4, at last it felt like more people were starting to download updates and free DLC. The percentage of players with an online connection back then was 10% at the most (laughing). But it’s pretty much 100% now, and so that’s why we’re able to have that kind of thing now.

—— And you could play Sujimon Battles against other players on their islands too, of course. By the way, Sujimon appeared in the previous game, but now you’ve added the ability to fight battles with them. Can I ask why you decided to do that?

Horii: Sujimon were a standout part of the last game as well, but we did have people saying things like, “Collecting them is fun, but I want to make them party members too.” Making your enemies into friends is one of those cathartic things you have in RPGs, isn’t it? So that’s why we decided to take that challenge when we were in the planning stages for Ryu ga Gotoku 8. 

In a story-focused game though, it would have distracted from the drama if you were able to use them as party members in the main story. So we decided to include a separate mode where you could manage them instead. That’s how Sujimon Battle came about. 

—— Offering them New Year gifts when inviting them to join you is so Ryu ga Gotoku I burst out laughing (laughing).

Sakamoto: In the English version, you know, they just call them “Suji Gifts”.

Yokoyama: Right, because they don’t have that culture of New Year business gifts there. But then we’re in the land of endless summer in Hawaii, so it might be better if they were “midsummer visit” gifts instead anyway (laughing).

—— Among the other Hawaii activities, I really enjoyed Crazy Delivery, which was kind of like Survival Can Collecting crossed with Crazy Taxi.

Horii: That was another activity we planned in the very beginning. At that point in development, delivery services were having a boom because of Covid, and that’s where I got the idea from. We also had someone on staff who’d worked for a delivery service before, and I got ideas from listening to his stories too.

Yokoyama: That was a freelancer we had helping on the event team, he’s an interesting kid. He’s also been a film director, and has helped us out quite often on Ryu ga Gotoku. He joins the project partway through development, and leaves it at the end.

—— Sounds like one of those people who can turn their hand to anything! (Laughing)

Yokoyama: So when I asked him, “What were you doing before you joined this project?” he said part-time delivery work.

—— And that experience helped bring Crazy Delivery to life.

Yokoyama: He had so many funny stories. At the company he worked for, the delivery person’s name is shown on the app, and when he was delivering to a child in a rich area, this kid was shouting out a window at him, “Hey, [name], over here!” So he was fuming, like, “Some damn kid calling me by my name with no honorific…!” Just great stories (laughing).

—— It’s like a substory in itself (laughing). As for other activities, the Matching App [Miss Match] minigame and its reveals made an impact.

Yokoyama: The Matching App came out of looking for a more up-to-date version of a cabaret club type of thing … But though we had the material, we then had to think, “How exactly do we make a dating app into a game?” (Laughing)

—— When I did it the first time and went to meet someone in real life and it was a joke, I thought, “Ah okay, this is one of those gag things.” So then when I played it again and it was an actual girl I was honestly surprised.

Sakamoto: We planned to have both types from the beginning. In particular, we knew we wanted to have Etsuko (the Obatarian from Sotenbori) appear in it. Well, of course she’d turn up in a dating app, wouldn’t she (laughing).

Horii: You hear all the time about people lying in their online profiles and using fake profile pictures, don’t you? So that was the idea we built the game around, “How many lies will you tell to get a match?” I think we did well in managing to make it feel like a real dating app, even for people who’ve never used a dating app in real life. 

Yokoyama: Looking back, we used similar material in the Telephone Club in Ryu ga Gotoku 0, but that was set in 1988, something like 35 years ago now. When I thought about that, I just felt like, the more things change, the more they stay the same … (laughing)

—— People’s enthusiasm for that kind of activity will never change, I’m sure (laughing). And then in connection with activities, you added a lot of great new songs to karaoke this time, Honolulu City Lights and the rest, that was impressive. 

Horii: That song’s been particularly popular, hasn’t it? City pop was having a boom during development, so that’s why I put that kind of song in. It suits the Hawaii, beach atmosphere too.

Sakamoto: For obvious reasons (laughing).

Yokoyama: That song’s one example, but I was really pleased that the things we’d hoped would be popular were popular this time. Usually it ends up being the things we never thought of that get picked up instead (wry smile). 

~ The story trailer that marked a turning point for the Ryu ga Gotoku series ~

—— So finally, I’d like to have you each tell us your favourite thing — scene or contents or whatever — in Ryu ga Gotoku 8, please.

Minami: For me it’s the battles with Yamai. Once the story’s decided, the battle team discuss what kind of battles we want to put in, but the whole team knew straight away we wanted the battle with Yamai to be really cool, and so that’s what we made. You end up fighting him five times in the end, but I’m satisfied that the battles all turned out great.

Yokoyama: You fight him five times! That’s even more than Kuze! (Laughing)

Minami: It was both difficult and fun, thinking of ways to make it different for each battle. 

Takeuchi: Calling it a “favourite” feels like taking it too lightly, but for me it has to be the last scene. When I wrote that, I thought that Kiryu in that scene is the strongest and the coolest Kiryu he’s ever been. If the players feel that too, I’m delighted.

Chiba: They’re from the parts I wrote, I’m afraid, but my favourites have to be Kizuna Bingo [Bond Bingo] and Party Chat. In the previous series, we didn’t really explore the main characters’ personalities in the side contents, but this time they’re front and centre, and there’s lots of parts I really like.

By the way, at the end of Kizuna Bingo, in the “Kizuna Stroll Finale” [sorry, I have no idea what they called this in English lol], sometimes it feels like some weird adult game with geezers hitting on geezers (laughing), but I think those scenes do feel like we created a new type of bonding event.

—— I like that you get the photograph to keep too.

Chiba: I really wanted to have them take a picture, so I squeezed it into the final motion capture session (laughing).

—— I imagine the amount of voice recordings you had to do for Party Chat was huge.

Chiba: It was. I gave the main actors the script for the Kizuna parts after their recording for the main story was over, and was like, “I’m sorry … please can you do this for us too?” In the end though, I’m glad we were able to dig down into the characters like that and bring them closer together as well.

Horii: As director, the whole game is my favourite, so it’s really hard to choose just one thing … But if I pick the scene that made me cry the most, it’s the part with Pokesa [Pocket Circuit] Fighter in Ending Note [Bucket List]. I wrote that script myself, but it still makes me cry, even now.

—— Pokesa Fighter’s stories always manage to be moving, whichever game he’s in.

Horii: I was in charge of substories in these games for a long time, so I’m just as attached to some of the substory characters as I am to the main characters. There’s a lot of substory characters who are hopeless losers, they just can’t catch a break. But I think that’s what makes them good to write about. 

Pokesa Fighter is the epitome of that. He was just a part-time worker being made fun of by children, but after meeting Kiryu he starts to be more positive and try harder … and then in the end he’s the one giving Kiryu hope. 

And it’s because it’s a substory. Because Kiryu’s not the legendary dragon, he’s just a Pokesa buddy, that’s why it’s so moving, that’s what makes it great drama, in my opinion. 

For the same reason, I love all of Ending Note’s Reminiscence Diary [Memoirs of a Dragon]. All these people who only had small parts in the series, they all have their own lives, we see how they all developed a more positive outlook on life after meeting Kiryu, and then meeting them again helps Kiryu, who’d given up on life, begin to become stronger and more positive himself. Even I have to think, “What a beautiful game system this is!” (Laughing)

—— How about you, Sakamoto-san?

Sakamoto: Mine isn’t actually from the game, my deepest impression comes from when we released that 10-minute story trailer at the announcement. I thought, “This is a different Ryu ga Gotoku from how it’s always been,” and I felt strongly that the world sees us in a different way now. In all the time since I first joined the Ryu ga Gotoku team, that’s what I feel has been the biggest turning point.

Yokoyama: That’s true. I find the story trailer and the opening credits very memorable too. Of course the game itself is a proper Ryu ga Gotoku game, same as always, but when we released the story trailer, I felt like that moment opened up a world of possibilities for Ryu ga Gotoku.

And the opening, when you include how it was made by the younger staff, made me feel, “Ah, it’s changed, hasn’t it? Ryu ga Gotoku.” The music, the direction, it’s all bursting with young talent. So yeah, I think the long trailer and the opening credits are where my heart skipped a beat most of all because of that.

—— So then finally, can I ask about the future of the series?

Yokoyama: We’re making a new game, and we’ve announced auditions for it. By the way, it’s called the “audition to play a Minato-ku-style girl [the type of young woman you see in Minato ward, an affluent area of Tokyo] in the next Ryu ga Gotoku game”, but I don’t think you’ll be able to guess anything about the game from that (laughing). Well, all I can say right now is, “We’re creating a lot!” 

I know a lot of fans would like to see Ryu ga Gotoku Kiwami 3 or other remakes, but first we want to bring you all “a new game you would never have expected”, so please be patient and look forward to that!