Like a Dragon Gaiden was apparently originally planned as DLC, and only took around six months to develop.

In a recent interview with Automaton, Like a Dragon Gaiden writer Masayoshi Yokoyama was asked about what it was like managing both it and the upcoming Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where he explained that there isn’t a “huge difference” between the two. “By this I mean that, in a sense, Like a Dragon Gaiden was derived from Like a Dragon 8. We could have just told of Kiryu’s past through a thirty-minute interlude as part of Like a Dragon 8, but we decided it would be a lot more interesting as a game of its own, which is how the project came to be.

“Though this meant having a whole extra game to make, it still uses the same engine, so we thought ‘It’s not like we have to make it from scratch,’ and decided to go with it. In the end, it took us about half a year to make it.” That’s obviously a ridiculously short time frame for a game to be made in, and feels like it might be a bit reductive, but Yokoyama did also note that it was originally planned as DLC.

“I’m the one who first went, ‘Let’s make it.’ I said, ‘If you’re going to make an episode about Kiryu’s past, it’s going to be much quicker to make a game about it.’ From there on, we first considered making it as DLC, but then decided it was engaging enough for a physical edition.” An important thing to note there is that over in the West, Like a Dragon Gaiden isn’t actually getting a physical release, so it’s slightly ironic that the extra effort was put into fleshing the game out for a physical edition in Japan.

We’re not that far out from Like a Dragon Gaiden now either, with the game release in just a few days on November 9. It will be available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, but those on the latter two platforms will be able to play it through Game Pass on launch day.