Stranger Than Heaven Preview – A sprawling crime drama of fighting and showbiz

It’s difficult to know where to begin when talking about Stranger Than Heaven. Here’s a game that’s within Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s long lineage of crime dramas, but stands apart through its time-skipping narrative, embrace of music throughout its story, gameplay and cast, and a distinctive new riff on combat. I guess the only thing to do is to take it from the top.

We first meet Makoto Daito not in Japan, but in the dockyards of 1915 San Francisco, as he’s trying to make it to a ship to reach the land of his birth. A Japanese-American orphan, he claims he’s been wrongfully accused, needing to evade and fight the uncaringly prejudiced police, and eventually stow away on a totally different boat. That boat? Well, it’s owned by Orpheus (Snoop Dogg), a smuggler who takes Daito and his fellow stowaway Yu Shinjo on as disciples.

For each of the characters, Director Mikinobu Abe explained to us, they always had in mind the people that could portray them, leading to Snoop taking on this role. “Orpheus is a really complex character, that is a smuggler, but at the same time, he is the first person that Daito is going to meet during his journey, and he is going to be the person who’s going to show the ropes of how to survive in this environment, especially through music and showbusiness. So we really wanted to make sure that we have someone cast that represents that character and we really thought that Snoop Dogg was a great fit for the character. We knew that he’s a huge gamer, and he likes to play the games, so we brought the story in, explained everything. And he was very– we worked really, really close to creating a great character, Orpheus.”

Make it to Kokura and Daito is an up and coming member of one of the local crime families. There’s a blend of intrigue and scrapping through what we experienced here. Daito is looked down upon by the locals, easily spotting his mixed heritage thanks to his bright blue eyes, but he’s still tasked with tracking down and seducing the mistress of a rival yakuza boss – a waitress at a local café bar called Tae Matsumoto.

Clearly still out of his depth within this culture and obviously shy, it takes a while for him to loosen up, sitting and chatting one-to-one with Tae as his hostess. There’s a genuineness to this, as they share their backgrounds. You learn of her being sold into work at a young age, see signs of physical abuse, her dreams of escaping this town and making a living as a singer, and perhaps that’s why she’s the one to be the first person to welcome him “home” to Japan.

Abe said, “I had a close experience, I would say. I had the experience living abroad and coming back to Japan, so I kind of knew the feeling that what he has to go through emotionally, almost physically wanting to make a place where you can basically chill out. So that experience alone really helped me shape this powerful narrative of Daito wanting to find a place to call home within the story.”

Daito’s almost too naive at this point, innocent and earnest. The rumours spread like wildfire, though, and the rival gangs get the war they’ve been itching for, with Tae caught in the middle.

Fighting in Stanger Than Heaven is something very different to previous RGG games. You fight with your left and your right side independently, using the controller shoulder buttons and triggers for light and heavy attacks respectively, while also being able to hold and charge up a strike. When brawling it’s a bit like an adapted fighting game with punching and kicking, but it can also be described as a lighter riff on the directional combat seen in a bunch of different RPGs. You also need to block incoming attacks to the correct side (or dodge out of the way) and with good timing, and can then counter with the opposite to deal more damage.

And then there’s weapons, whether it’s an adapted tool like an sledgehammer, crowbar or yariganna, or an actual fighting weapon, like a katana. They’re broken down into categories including Smash, Strike and Slice, and that determines how they’ll fight, the combo moves you’ll pull off, and the skills you can build up to master each discipline.

I’m not going to lie, this combat system won’t be for everyone, and I feel the structure and repetition through my hands on demo, but I also appreciate it for doing something different. It’s slower and feels more deliberate as you time blocks, and then unleash your own fury with a variety of different weapons. Faster blades do feel better than sluggish sledgehammers, but there’s obviously the trade off to grant you greater damage, and each individual weapon can have special effects, like draining enemy Willpower when performing special attacks, or regaining health from downing enemies.

It works well for small street fights, and you can honestly just clatter through base enemies if you’ve levelled up the power of some weapons far enough, but there’s still plenty of challenge in other situations. One-on-one street fights against a bare-chested weapons-master can have all the ceremony of a classic cinematic samurai showdown as you approach. Similarly, there’s then the larger brawls, potentially with hulking foes within the crowd of enemies and a need to prioritise who you’re striking down. It’s a bit easier when you’ve got friends alongside you though, such as when raiding the Oki family stronghold at the Steelworks – a lengthy and cinematic story mission filled with ostentatious cutscenes and some light QTEs as Daito works through the innards of the working factory.

There’s a grim tone to the fighting here, with so many bladed weapons and finishing moves that smash heads or stab through the guts of your opponents, but also moments where you feel a cinematic intent shining through.

Abe said, “One of the concepts when we started making this game was we really wanted to go back to the roots of sokoi ninjo genre, which is a Japanese term for Yakuza-themed cinema, and take a lot of inspiration from them. One huge inspiration was Battle Without Honor and Humanity. It is a masterpiece within that genre. So those kind of movies really inspired us both in cutscene direction, but also the gameplay mechanics as well. For example, how actions feel really raw and heavy – those kinds of aspects were really inspired by those movies.”

All of that, of course, can be in stark contrast to the glitz and glamour of putting on a show.

This aspect grows through the game. Music is key to this experience, a major part of this game’s identity, and you can see it through many of the casting calls and the original soundtrack. From Daito and Shinjo wandering through the streets humming and breaking into a big musical number – their actors Yu Shirota and Dean Fujioka both have musical backgrounds – when someone drops a coin by their feet, through to featuring Tori Kelly and Ado to lend their voices to characters and music later into the game.

And then, of course, there’s Snoop Dog’s character Orpheus. Of course Orpheus is going to be the one in the game who tells Daito about rolling his own cigarettes, and that if you “start blending different leaves” then things “really start gettin’ interesting.” If you know what he means.

Producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto told us, “We always wanted to have some kind of modern touch and feel so that we can really relate as a gamer living in modern times to those feelings of the characters. And Orpheus, of course, wasn’t there in 1915 – there was no rapper in Japan in 1915, but Snoop Dogg is, so some of his style and his attitude and his vibes can come through.

“We also wanted to play around with the question of, what if a kind of person like Orpheus was in 1950s Japan, how would his music maybe influence the Japanese style of music which evolved at that time?”

Showbiz is world apart from running protection rackets and smuggling, though. Stranger Than Heaven tries to capture a bit of that creative spark that goes into creating the next hit show in an interesting way. As you’re wandering around town with Daito, he can hear sounds and music that serve as inspirations. Take those to his in-house composer and you can blend together a new musical number that evokes a particular feeling and style. Then, sit down to piece together a venue, pick the band members and instrumentation, put together a set list and visuals and put on your show.

It reminds me a little bit of the classic Lionhead game The Movies, where I didn’t quite know what I’d get out the other end of picking these options, but enjoyed seeing the show being put on. There’s a light hint of the Yakuza series staple karaoke, as you try to hit the lighting and effects cues on time, each one ramping up the earnings and rating as you try to break even. I do wonder how this side of the game will really grow and evolve through the eras, the productions you put on growing and growing in size and spectacle.

I’m also really fascinated to see how RGG is capturing the passage of time through the five decades and cities, and how Japanese culture changes massively through that time. Just on the surface level, you see it in the clothes everyone wears, from the branded kimono uniforms for the rival gangs in the 1910s to the much more individualistic and Westernised clothes that Daito is wearing (along with bright blond hair) by 1929. And then there’s the shift from towns through to bustling electrified cities with globe lights alongside all the banners strung up across the streets of the early 1940s.

There’s still some rougher edges to the game, both in terms of just still being in development and some of its design, and I hope that these can still be refined in the few months left before release. Yet, Stranger Than Heaven is a truly fascinating project from RGG, with Director Mikinobu Abe describing this as being a game led by the younger generation of developers coming up through the studio. It might be exploring similar themes of organised crime and personal dramas, but there’s a different style, tone and showmanship running through it as well, making it one of the more intriguing games set to arrive next year.

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