PLAY
Post Script
Ishin’s casting conceit is its trump card, but does it go far enough? (Contains spoilers)
At the heart of Like A Dragon: Ishin is an ingenious idea that doesn’t have any real precedent in videogames – or at least it didn’t upon release in 2014, before Immortality and The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story featured real-world actors playing multiple roles. In both of those cases, though, that was within a single game. Just about all of Ishin’s main cast have appeared in other titles in the series, playing key roles in those games – but, since this is set in the 19th century and the rest in the 20th or 21st, entirely different ones. Freed from the constrictions of the mainline narrative, these established characters are effectively cosplaying as historical figures, with major liberties taken with their real-world activities and personalities, partly with a view of bringing them closer to their contemporary parallels.