Yakuza 5 Developer Interview: Found in Translation

Sega's 2012 open world action game will finally hit Western PS3s this year, giving us a look at Japanese culture and its criminal underworld.

Sony has posted a new video of Yakuza 5, featuring Gio Corsio of SCEA Third Party Productions speaking with the director of the Yakuza series, Toshihiro Nagoshi, and Yakuza 5's producer, Masayoshi Yokoyama. Both visionaries had some excellent insight about Yakuza 5, though they both seem kind of annoyed throughout the video (maybe because the game is finally launching in the West three years after it launched and they already finished developing Yakuza Zero for PS4). Yokoyama and Nagoshi ensured that the entire game, along with its variety of downloadable content, has been fully localized for Western audiences.

Yakuza 5 takes place across five different Japanese districts (bigger than a town, smaller than a county). Kazuma Kiryu, the protagonist of the last game, has left the yakuza life, changed his name and became a cab driver. As you would expect, laying low and the big yakuza families' ceasefire doesn't necessarily stop the violence. A lot of gamers will likely compare Yakuza 5 to Sleeping Dogs, as both games offer a variety of freedom and open world things you can do on the side, such as karaoke and dancing, while you're not getting your mob-work on, but the two are very different in terms of the cultures they present.

While no release date has been set for Yazuka 5, but Sega claims it will launch sometime by the end of the year for PlayStation 3.