Perhaps the most surprising part of Yakuza Kiwami 3's announcement had nothing to do with Yakuza Kiwami 3. It was when Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio announced that, in addition to an up-rezzed redo of the third Yakuza, it was going to release an entire bonus Gaiden game as well: Dark Ties , starring Y3 bad guy Yoshitaka Mine.
I've played a little Dark Ties , and it's good fun going absolutely ham on the unsuspecting punks of Kamurocho as Mine, but there was almost a world where we would never have gotten to play him at all. RGG's original plan was for the Dark Ties' story to be, uh, basically a video they bundled onto the Kiwami 3 disc.
It was "something that could be viewed like a video," Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties director Ryosuke Horii recently told Famitsu (translated by Automaton ). So, you know