Remember when, during Stranger Than Heaven’s release date reveal at the Summer Geoffs, the word TUPAC flashed on screen in big capital letters during the climax of a trailer running down the history-hopping yakuza brawler’s cast? Remember how afterwards, as you’d expect given the whole digital resurrection of a rapper who was murdered nearly 30 years ago thing, 99% of the chatter about the game was focused on that rather than the date or any other aspects of it? Yeah, well, that apparently isn’t the goal of developers RGG in making the choice to cast celebrities like the deceased rapper.

That’s according to RGG studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama, who continues to be grilled about Tupac’s inclusion. Having recently said the cameo will see the devs try “to envision who Tupac might be now” if he were still alive, Yokoyama’s now striven to make it clear to Automaton that he and RGG aren’t just chasing famous faces for kicks.

“To be completely honest, my intention as a game creator isn’t to make our casting choices take the spotlight and overshadow everything else,” he said. “I want people to focus on the gameplay and the narrative experience itself. To the audience, it may seem like we’re only doing it for attention, and I may end up being perceived as someone who’s just getting a kick out of being surrounded by celebrities. But that is absolutely not my intention. We continue to create games drawing on the experience we gained from Yakuza 0 – that actors’ performances can elevate the entire work.”

Yakuza 0’s memorable trio of Dojima lieutenants – Hiroki Awano, Keiji Shibusawa, and topless sewer biker Daisaku Kuze – are Yokoyama’s go-to example of celebrity cameos working out as planned in a Yakuza/Like A Dragon game, because the actors who portrayed them were simply the perfect fit for the characters. “When you see the three lieutenants appear in Yakuza 0, you don’t really recognise them as famous Japanese celebrities,” he said. “When Daisaku Kuze (played by Hitoshi Ozawa) appears on screen, you’re just going to think – it’s Daisaku Kuze. Also, if I happen [to] come up with a character I’d like a specific person to play, I sometimes write the script as if it were addressed directly to that person.”

I’d agree in that case. Kuze is cool because he’s Kuze. There isn’t a shadow cast over his scenes or the game as a whole by the fact he’s unmistakeably being played by Ozawa, right down to his face closely mirroring the actor’s. When it comes to Tupac in Stranger Then Heaven and RGG’s casting of Japanese actor Teruyuki Kagawa in this year’s Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, however, that shadow is there and it’s suffocating.

In Stranger Than Heaven’s case, you can’t not see Tupac and you’ll almost certainly have an opinion one way or the other on the decision to include his likeness in the game. For Kiwami 3, fans who unsuccessfully petitioned RGG to recast Kagawa due to reported allegations of sexual assault had the game defined in their eyes by that controversy, especially given director Ryosuke Horii went on to say the actor had been cast in the role specifically because RGG wanted “someone who makes you go, ‘This guy’s a creep'”.

These two casting choices have unquestionably taken the spotlight in both RGG’s most recent game and the next one due out of their door. If Yokoyama and co aren’t aiming to have the presence of those controversies both detract from the amount of focus players give to the rest of the package and come to define the impression left by these games, they should reconsider their approach to deciding whom they cast and in what roles.

You’re far less likely to end up being perceived as someone who’s just getting a kick out of being surrounded by celebrities if your release date reveals don’t put the surprise digital resurrections of world famous dead rappers front and centre.