Yakuza, I mean Like a Dragon fans, have a lot to look forward to next year. Along with the upcoming 8th installment of the series, there’s also the forthcoming remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin! A remake of the 2014 title set in feudal Japan instead of modern. So it looks like it’ll be the same zany series we all know and love, but just with more samurais. There is one curious detail about the upcoming remake. It won’t be made with Ry Ga Gotoku’s famous Dragon engine.
In an interview with Crunchyroll, producer Masayoshi Yokoyama revealed that the upcoming remake will instead run on Unreal Engine 4. Why? Apparently, the Dragon engine doesn’t work well with daytime scenes. You can check out the full explanation below.
The engine was born to create a nighttime mecca, so it is more specialized than other engines in expressing the neon district of Kamurocho and other such areas,” explained Yokoyama. “However, in the Like a Dragon series, there were no real daytime scenes, so we didn’t need to develop an engine that could do that.
When we were developing the original Ishin!, we didn’t even use the Dragon Engine, but rather we used our older in-house house engine. At the time we were working on the original version of Ishin!, we were faced with the challenge of expressing daytime. Sunlight, for instance. Light coming in through windows.”
I knew that the Unreal Engine was better than the Dragon Engine for the quality of expression. So, when we said we were going to remake Ishin!, we decided to use the Unreal Engine rather than the Dragon Engine because we thought Unreal Engine could express Ishin! more elegantly.
Via Crunchyroll
That might seem like a small reason to change engines, but I get it. From the first trailer, it looks like Like a Dragon: Ishin! takes place mostly in daylight. If that’s the case, you need to work with an engine that can nail that aesthetic consistently. If the Dragon engine wasn’t built to do that, then the change to Unreal Engine 4 is a smart call.
Like a Dragon: Ishin! is set to release on February 21, 2023, for PS4/PS5, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One, and PC. What do you think about the engine change? Do you think it will be noticeable? Or is it not a big deal? Let us know in the comments below!
Via Wccftech
