Well, the Yakuza fanbase has finally lost it. The mad lads have somehow gotten the idea that Ryu Ga Gotoku studio is set to announce a prettified, Kiwami re-do of Yakuza 3. Why? Well, uh, because Ryu Ga Gotoku studio went and wrote the words “Kiwami 3” on its website.
Spotted, as ever, by enterprising Redditors, the words “龍が如く 極3″—Japanese for Yakuza Kiwami 3—briefly appeared on the RGG studio site’s news page. It’s since vanished, but you can easily verify that it was there with Google: the search engine’s all-seeing eye cached the page and will still surface it if you ask nicely.
With an RGG Summit event happening next week, it didn’t take much for those same Redditors to start theorising that someone at RGG had gotten a little ahead of themselves with an announcement pencilled in for the show. “The summit is next week so they will announce [it] there,” wrote Ahokai.
“I think Kiwami 3 will be revealed at the RGG Summit next week. But, since RGG is busy with Virtua Fighter 6, Stranger than Heaven, and presumably LaD 9, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a few years for it to be released,” wrote a user named Blue_Sheepz.
Which is certainly where I’d announce it, but I gotta be honest: I had previously thought RGG was done Kiwami-fying its games after Kiwami 2, which originally hit PS4 in 2017. The original Yakuza 2 was the last game made in the heyday of the PS2. Everything after it feels a lot more modern, and Yakuza 3 through 5 have all gotten HD releases on modern platforms (save Switch) since their original launches.
Still, it’d certainly be a welcome surprise, and might finally kick my ass into playing through Yakuza the Third. I certainly enjoyed Kiwami 1 and 2 enough to give it a shot.
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