Yakuza News! It's Only Been Three Days!

I'm sure you all can tolerate my extreme devotion to the Yakuza franchise and I hate that I've devoted five or so other posts to the series this month alone as you guys might be getting a little tired of it, but in the end, this is about me, about what I like and about what I get excited for.  And I get excited for anything that is Yakuza, we know this.  And this is most definitely news of the Yakuza variety if the logo wasn't a dead give-away.  As I know you can read, the logo, Yakuza:  Dead Souls, is clearly different than any other Yakuza game we've seen in the States or PAL-Land, so you might simply surmise that this is a new game announced for Japan, right?

Nope.  This is from a European trademark.  European.  As in, Not Japan.  So it's very clearly not a new Yakuza game at all, but an alternate title for one that's already out there.  One that's been mentioned before already, although with a very different name.  Essentially, what seems to be the popular (and, well, pretty much only) suggestion is that Yakuza:  Dead Souls will be the Western name for Yakuza:  Of the End which, while it makes more sense, it.....well, for some reason, I just don't like it.  Something a little more elegant could've been picked, or a little more ambiguous but neat sounding, really.  Yakuza:  Kamurocho Dusk or something, but, then again, that's more inclusive to people who are already familiar with the Yakuza series and this game is clearly an attempt to snatch new players.

Regardless, this is, clearly, great news.  Not only will we get one of the non-standard games of the Yakuza franchise (which means a very, very, very slight glimmer of hope for the others) but we got the one that was very clearly made with Western Audiences in mind.  This is why I always figured we would get it, but it being Yakuza and a Sega product, well, I could never know for sure.  However, the other good bit of it is the fact that this might also be a sneak peek towards Binary Domain as Daisuke Saito, director of said game, stated that were Yakuza:  Of the End to hit the West, it wouldn't do so in its current state, but with different, more 'western-oriented' controls which very well might mean 'better' controls.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to figure out just where "Shooting zombies with a shotgun as Majima Goro" falls on the list of things I wanted to do before I die.  Spoiler alert:  It's pretty high up there.