There’s now a mod for Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties which swaps out the likeness of actor Teruyuki Kagawa. Kagawa’s casting in the remake, which saw him lend both his voice and likeness to secondary villain Goh Hamazaki, caused fan backlash due to a 2022 report from Shukan Shincho detailing sexual assault allegations against the actor.
Kagawa apologised at the time, but didn’t specify what he was apologising for or confirm the events reported in the article. Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties director Ryosuke Horii recently said Kagawa’s casting was the result of developers RGG Studio having “tried to think of someone who makes you go, ‘This guy’s a creep'”.
Now, as spotted by TheGamer, a modder going by Subcio060 has released ‘Goh Hamazaki Restored’. As of writing, all it does is swap Hamazaki’s in-game model from the default Kiwami 3 one which resembles Kagawa to one mirroring Hamazaki’s appearance in the original Yakuza 3 (the latter is shown in the featured image of this article). In the 2009 version of Yakuza 3 and its 2018 remaster, Hamazaki was voiced by a different actor, Joji ‘George’ Takahashi.
Subcio060 wrote that they’ve got a host of future plans for the mod which go beyond just bringing back the old model in cutscenes and menus. Most intriguing of these is a hope to restore Hamazaki’s original voice as provided by Takahashi, while also adding facial animations which match the PS3 version of Yakuza 3 and either replacing or removing the Kagawa version of the character in pre-rendered cutscenes.
The biggest dilemma they’ll face to my eye is how to handle the different ending scene Kiwami 3 features compared to the original Yakuza 3, since Hamazaki’s a key figure in both and says totally different things. That said, given how polarising this change to the narrative’s been, I’d not be surprised to see those modding the game push to find a way of just restoring the original ending with Kiwami 3’s swankier visuals.
The modder also revealed they’ve got plans to deliver “Yakuza 3 accurate shoes” to their creation down the line. If you fancy giving the Hamazaki swap mod a go, you’ll need to grab the Shin Ryu Mod Manager first, as it’s a hard requirement.
Those still on the fence about Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties can also consider giving my review of it a read.
