Like a Dragon Creator Confirms New "High Age Rating" Game

Like a Dragon video game series has been one of the most successful and beloved franchises to come out of Japan Now, the visionary behind Like a Dragon, Toshihiro Nagoshi has announced his next game concept which, I have to say, is a bold new direction for the creator.

Three years after leaving his longtime home at Sega and establishing his own studio, Nagoshi has assembled an 80-person team of veteran developers and is quietly cooking up what he promises will be a “high-end” action-adventure game with a laser focus on human drama.

In a recent interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu (translated by Clawsomegamer), Nagoshi shared some tiny tidbits about his new game and unlike some of his previous work, Nagoshi says he is completely in control of forming the very DNA of this new game; writing the scenario himself and taking the lead on the core gameplay systems.

To achieve what he describes as “a high level of expression,” the team is even turning to high-end motion capture studios in the US, pulling out all the stops to bring the human drama to life.

And the scale of this undertaking is nothing to scoff at either, with Nagoshi confirming the game will boast an impressively expansive game world and content volume.

While speaking about the scale of the game is acknowledged the current glut of the gaming industry, commenting that “the era of high volume being the selling point is coming to an end.”

What he means high volume is the current state of large-scale video games where everything crammed in. While his game is a big production, he wans to make sure the player can complete the game in a “sensible amount of time.”

And who exactly are those players? According to Nagoshi, this one’s strictly for the adults, with a “rather high age rating” in the works. The creator is determined to conjure a wholly unique world and narrative that will make players do a double-take, much like the groundbreaking Like a Dragon series did in its early days. In his words, “I want people to think ‘What’s that? I need to see more’ when they first see it.”

So, what we do know about Toshihiro Nagoshi’s new game?