Yakuza 3 Gaiden: Dark Ties was just going to be a video until RGG Studio decided to make it a full spin-off game
Dark Ties will be bundled with the upcoming Yakuza Kiwami 3
The upcoming spin-off game Yakuza 3 Gaiden: Dark Ties was originally just going to be a video until Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio decided to make it a full game.
The developer announced last week that it’s working on Yakuza Kiwami 3, a modern remake of the action adventure game Yakuza 3 which was originally released on PS3 in 2009.
However, it also announced that it will be accompanied by Dark Ties, a separate and entirely new spin-off adventure starring antagonist Yoshitaka Mine.
According to the studio, players will be able to choose between Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Yakuza 3 Gaiden: Dark Ties upon booting the software.
In an interview with Famitsu (via Automaton), the game’s director Ryosuke Horii explained that the original plan was that Dark Ties was going to be a non-interactive video bundled with Yakuza Kiwami 3, which would tell Mine’s story to give players more insight into the character.
However, realising that players might want to take control of Mine, the studio realised that “if we were to tell his story, it would be best to make him playable”, Horii said (via machine translation).
“We thought that would increase player satisfaction, and it was a subject that we wanted to try as well,” he explained. “We also thought ‘if we miss this opportunity, we won’t have another chance’, so we decided to go in that direction.”
Series producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto added that even though Mine only appears in Yakuza 3 and doesn’t feature in any of the other main Yakuza / Like a Dragon entries, he “always ranks in the top five of the series’ favourite characters” among fans, so this encouraged the decision to make him playable.
Announcing the game last week, studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama said Dark Ties will “tell the original story of Mine, who’s the antagonist standing in the way of Kiryu in the original Yakuza 3, and it’s about how he begins to step into the underworld, where schemes and bonds unfold”.
“So you’re going to be playing as Mine, as previously stated, and the setting is going to be Kamurocho, Tokyo,” he added. “And of course there’s going to be a lot of different play spots, and we’ve prepared a lot. So you can focus on a lot of the side content, which focuses on his bond with Kanda.”
Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Yakuza 3 Gaiden: Dark Ties will launch as a bundle on February 12, 2026, on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PS4 and PC via Steam.
