{"id":698145,"date":"2026-06-11T17:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T17:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/698145\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T17:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T17:41:08","slug":"stranger-than-heaven-devs-say-adding-tupac-to-the-game-was-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/698145\/","title":{"rendered":"Stranger Than Heaven Devs Say Adding Tupac To The Game Was A ‘Good Idea’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryu Ga Gotoku studio, the developers of upcoming Yakuza prologue game\u00a0Stranger than Heaven, are standing by their decision to resurrect Tupac Shakur<\/a> as a character in the game. In an interview with IGN<\/a>, studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama said, \u201cWe think it\u2019s something that will add value to the game we\u2019re making.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the interview, Yokoyama discussed how the team came to the decision to add the rapper who was shot and killed in 1996, nine years before the first Yakuza was released. The development team had first settled on casting Snoop Dogg as the smuggler Orpheus. Working with Snoop, they workshopped ideas for characters that might play well with Orpheus, and Snoop brought up Tupac as a potential character, an idea RGG was excited by and decided to pursue.<\/p>\n

Yokoyama said the notion of reviving deceased characters for video games is more the norm in Japan than elsewhere, pointing toward RGG\u2019s decision to use the likeness of Japanese actor Bunta Sugawara<\/a> as one example. He also said they worked to get proper permissions from both Sugawara and Tupac\u2019s estate and family. \u201cWe got their approval, we negotiated, and everybody was okay with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yokoyama said he understood why there\u2019s been so much backlash against Tupac\u2019s reveal. He acknowledged that even when Sugawara\u2019s character was announced, he received comments suggesting they should have let the dead rest. But he doesn\u2019t seem to care about those comments. \u201cCriticism is a freedom that people are free to have,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this is something that we thought was a good idea.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryu Ga Gotoku studio, the developers of upcoming Yakuza prologue game\u00a0Stranger than Heaven, are standing by their decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[271683,74,27724,105853],"class_list":["post-698145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-stranger-than-heaven","tag-technology","tag-tupac-shakur","tag-yakuza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}