SEGA’s new trademarked “Yakuza Wars” probably isn’t a Total War: Like A Dragon game, but let’s speculate wildly anyway

As Gematsu reported yesterday, SEGA has trademarked the term “Yakuza Wars” in Japan. This happened on July 26th, and while Gematsu speculates that this could be related to the next game in the Yakuza: Like A Dragon series, I have other plans. For the imaginary game. That I have nothing to do with.

SEGA is also the parent company of Total War studio Creative Assembly, which earlier this year released a survey asking fans about potential settings they’d like to see for the strategy series. Lord Of The Rings and Marvel were among the options, as was a rumor that Star Wars was in development. Sigh, I said. Why dawdle with all these expensive, obvious choices when the real answer was right in front of you all along? Then I realized that Total War: Crazy Taxi was going to be a shitshow, so I pinned my hopes on the next best thing.

The concept is a rich one, and the basics of it already exist in the Yakuza games. I’m imagining something akin to Yakuza 0’s Real Estate Royale, where settlements are different parts of Kamurocho, provinces are entire streets, and individual buildings represent different specializations. Want to recruit some high-level villains? Build a soapland. Want to rake in the cash? Gamble den. Need some morale buffs before you go into battle? Build a SEGA arcade and let your guests play Space Harrier, then buy them some Takoyaki. In fact, Takoyaki can be a resource of its own. A Takoyaki-based economy. Handy. Lovely.

Public order can be fleshed out as an extortion system where you ‘tax’ the locals. Diplomacy writes itself. The biggest obstacle I see to this sort of thing is scale, but the Total War series has been a bit inconsistent in this regard anyway, and I see no reason why Kamurocho’s car parks and alleyways couldn’t be magically altered on a whim so that 2000 men can beat each other up with baseball bats. Of course, you could join the series’ rotating cast of criminals as heroes, commanders and other special units. And if you’ve dabbled in Twarhammer’s magic system, there’s no reason why you couldn’t get Like A Dragon’s summoning system Poundmates in there too.

Again, this is just me picking at the flimsiest of threads and spinning them into a glorious web of profuse nonsense. It’s probably just a mobile game, perhaps one released to capitalize on the upcoming TV show, or something to do with the Japan-only Ryu Ga Gotoku Online. It’s also possible that RGG doesn’t want to release their franchise into the dark underbelly of Steam Workshop, where mods to create an entire army of differently dressed Majimas will undoubtedly exist within a week. I’ll just have to keep hoping Yakuza Empire turns out well, I guess.