Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s Layoff Storyline Feels ‘Too Soon’

ign.com:

Gaming has had its fair share of moments when a new title would ostensibly be released at just the right time. The most recent example is Animal Crossing: New Horizons dropping in 2020 when the world needed a means to safely connect during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. And in 2024, for me — and maybe a lot of gamers out there — another of these games could be Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

When I first booted up the newest Yakuza game from Ryu Ga Gotoko, I planned on experiencing a new adventure starring plucky protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, dramatically imagining his foes as larger-than-life RPG archetypes while its stalwart hero, Kazuma Kiryu, serenades his companions with hours of karaoke, all while I inevitably ignore the main story. What I wasn’t anticipating was for the developers to hit so close to home in its opening moments with the game industry’s worst trend: layoffs.

At the onset of Infinite Wealth, it’s revealed that Ichiban’s no longer living constantly on the back foot because he finally has a job at a company called Hello Works. Hello Works, which was first introduced in Yakuza: Like A Dragon, is an employment office in Ijincho that Ichiban and his pal Yu Nanba utilized to gain employment when they were homeless. Gameplay-wise, Hello Work was also cleverly used to explain how each party member would earn and level up job skills with Yakuza’s new turn-based Dragon Quest-inspired battle system.

It’s also revealed that Ichiban is utilizing his position at Hello Work to assist former yakuza members fill out their resumes and applying for civilian jobs after the sudden dissolution of the Tojo clan at the tail-end of the previous game.

For Ichiban, he sees it as giving back and paying it forward to his Yakuza boss and deceased father, Masumi Arakawa, who wanted the Yakuza’s dissolution to allow his subordinates to make an honest living outside of Japan’s criminal underworld. If I recall, I wrote in my review notes “He just like me for real”