Yakuza 7 was unveiled just yesterday during a press conference with series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi. Titled Yakuza: Like A Dragon in the West, it aims to be a `watershed` moment for the long-running series, introducing a major change to its usual action as combat switches to a turn-based system akin to JRPG games such as Dragon Quest--which new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga is a big fan of. It`s a surprising and drastic change straight out of left field... except we`ve all been here before.Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio released an April Fools video earlier this year that joked that the Yakuza combat would change to a turn-based system. We already knew that Kasuga was taking over protagonist duties after Kazuma Kiryu bowed out of the series in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, so his appearance in the April Fools video wasn`t anything noteworthy. In truth, the prank-filled day is a bit of a nightmare, with hoax after hoax guaranteeing that you can`t believe anything you read or watch. Occasionally a company will put out something funny, but that`s usually as far as it ever goes. The Yakuza video was one of the better examples, elaborately reshaping the series as a turn-based JRPG complete with a four-person party, character levels, and skill moves that drink from a pool of SP. It still had that outlandish Yakuza charm, but framed it in a different way where over-the-top attacks are picked from a menu as opposed to being something you activate with Heat and a weapon in-hand.Now we know why it was elaborate enough to look like an honest-to-goodness video game: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio was showing us Yakuza 7 the whole time. It`s a bold move, sticking a four-minute video for your next, series-altering game up on YouTube five months before officially announcing it. But it worked. No one suspected a thing and now it comes across as an act of sly genius.Conan Chop Chop, a hack-and-slash action-roguelike with couch co-op, was also announced as an April Fools joke before developer ...
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