Polygon与GameSpot前瞻《Stranger Than Heaven》

RGG Studio's Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe and lead actor Yu Shirota both drew on their own outsider backgrounds to shape protagonist Makoto Daito. Abe lived abroad and had to relearn Japanese, while Shirota is of mixed Spanish and Japanese heritage, and both tied that experience to the idea that music can break barriers. Music thus became central to the game's story, characters, and the Showbiz management side activity.

Stranger Than Heaven's prologue is set in old-timey San Francisco, but the area isn't explorable and its buildings and narrow alleyways feel more generically East Coast. The author notes that RGG has vividly captured real-world neighborhoods like Waikiki, Kabukicho, and Dotonbori in past games, and expected more here given the time period. Only the heavy fog and miserably cold nights ring accurate.

Ryu Ga Gotoku's next major game, Stranger Than Heaven, hopes to live up to Like A Dragon's legacy. Its story is built on "fictional realism," according to this preview.

GameSpot played a three-hour demo of Ryu ga Gotoku's Stranger Than Heaven at New York Comic Con, split into five parts set in 1915, 1929 Kure and 1943 Osaka. After the demo, the author spoke with director Minikobu Abe about feedback from earlier demos and the fictional realism behind the story. Protagonist Makoto Daito is half-American and half-Japanese, caught between two cultures.