- Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe explains why the game's story spanning decades is being told in one game instead of multiple titles
- Abe says it was "a week isn't enough to tell the story" of how a yakuza organisation is built
- The director says the era-spanning story worked best when framed around a man's life
Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe has explained why RGG Studios chose to tell an era-spanning story in one game, rather than across multiple titles.
"The whole starting point was that we wanted to depict why, or how, someone would create such an organisation like a yakuza organisation," Abe said in an interview with TechRadar Gaming.
Stranger Than Heaven centers on the main character, Makoto Daito, and the origins of a Yakuza organisation spanning 50 years across five cities in Japan, and Abe explained that the initial idea of containing the story within a smaller timeframe simply didn't work for the team's vision.
"We started from there, and while we were creating the narrative, we started to slowly realise that a week isn't enough to tell the story," he added. "We then explored how much time we needed to tell the narrative of a man who's going to build a gigantic yakuza organisation."
Abe went on to explain that this story worked best when framed around a man's life (Daito's) and realized it was the best outcome instead of splitting the story across multiple games, despite how long the narrative is.
"It was really important for us that the player experience the whole life of a man, because we wanted to tell this epic story of how the organisation became an organisation," he said.
"The timespan needed for that was basically a man's life. So, if we split it, people are going to experience it separately. But again, the main focus of the narrative was to tell why he created this organisation, and the timespan needed to tell that story was a life."
The director added, "So we just decided to create it and do it in one game. I will also say that the game itself is pretty long, but I'm quite satisfied with what we’ve built."
Stranger Than Heaven launches on January 15, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.