For the most part, Like a Dragon's story has been built around one man: Kazuma Kiryu. As the protagonist of almost every game in the series, players have gotten to know Kiryu extremely well over the years, playing through some huge moments in his life. Like a Dragon 7 was seen as the beginning of a new era, in which Kiryu's torch would be passed to a new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga. Somewhat surprisingly though, recent announcements from developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has confirmed Kiryu will continue to be the protagonist for Like a Dragon's next three games, including the mainline entry Like a Dragon 8, where he will share protagonist duties with Ichiban Kasuga.
Like a Dragon 8 will need to balance its protagonists carefully. Luckily, the series has some experience in this area. Several games in the series see the player controlling multiple characters throughout the story. The 4th and 5th entries in the series both take this multi-protagonist approach, to varying degrees of success. The 2015 prequel Yakuza Zero chose to focus on two protagonists: Kazama Kiryu and Majima Goro, with the game switching perspectives between the two every couple of chapters. This approach didn't work for everyone, though, and there are a couple of pitfalls learned from this that should be avoided in the upcoming game.
Yakuza Zero Took An Interesting Approach to its Dual Protagonists
Acting as a prequel to the original game, Yakuza Zero takes players on the journey of Kiryu's early years, offering an insight into events that helped to shape the man he became when players first met him. Goro Majima, a fan-favorite anti-hero who has served as one of Kiryu's main rivals since the series began, is also playable for the first time in a dual protagonist role. The game adopts an interesting approach to this, with the two characters each having their own separate stories that only mildly interlink occasionally.
After every two chapters, the game switches to the other protagonist, and this pattern repeats over the course of the game's 17 chapters. While this allows both stories to continuously flow almost simultaneously, it does mean that the player is not able to fully engage with either Kiryu or Majima for long before they are switched. Short recap videos at the start of every two chapters do their best to mitigate this, but ultimately the game's narrative feels disrupted with this constant switching. Both stories are entertaining in their own right, but would probably have benefited from being told separately and uninterrupted, perhaps with Majima's campaign unlocking once Kiryu's is complete. This approach was used in Yakuza Kiwami 2, with Majima's short campaign serving as a standalone adventure.
With Ichiban and Kiryu primed to share a student-teacher dynamic in Like a Dragon 8, Yakuza Zero's approach is unlikely to work. The story that Ryu Ga Gotoku decides to tell in the next entry of its franchise should see the two men having to work closely together in a singular story. Factoring in the plethora of party members likely to return from the previous game, having Kiryu and Ichiban on two separate adventures would make little narrative sense. For Like a Dragon 8 to really tell a compelling story featuring the past and present faces of the franchise, they must share in this adventure so that Kiryu can finally pass the torch on to his younger compatriot.
With Like a Dragon 8 arguably one of the most anticipated releases in the series, fans will be eager to learn how Kiryu and Ichiban cross paths again, and how their roles as protagonists play out. If this is to be Kazuma Kiryu's last outing as a protagonist in the mainline series, it is crucial that his story ends on a high point, and Ichiban Kasuga is likely to have a big say in that, providing the narrative is balanced correctly.
Like a Dragon 8 will launch in 2024 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.