Yakuza General Director Explains Why Hokuto ga Gotoku Isn’t Made With The Newer Dragon Engine

During a recent Sega Nama live stream, Yakuza series general director Toshihiro Nagoshi shared some info on the recently revealed Fist of the North Star game, Hokuto ga Gotoku, and explained why it isn’t being made with Yakuza 6’s Dragon Engine.

Nagoshi shared two main reasons for opting out of the Dragon Engine. The first reason is that the Dragon Engine is a developing engine, and while its build is good Nagoshi says that it is peaky and handling it can be difficult.

There’s been an internal change over at Sega Games and the team now has many staff members who’ve never touched a Yakuza project in the past. That said, rather than going with the Dragon Engine that most of the team isn’t familiar with, he decided to go with the previous engine that was used for Yakuza Kiwami, which he says is more established and can do more than enough to handle the performance.

The second reason he shared was that while Hokuto ga Gotoku has realistic graphics, it uses cel shading that gives it more of an anime look to it. So rather than going with the Dragon Engine that is made more for realistic looks and is more difficult to handle, he figured that it would be much better going with a previous engine for the upcoming title.

Hokuto ga Gotoku will release in Japan in 2018 for PlayStation 4.