JUDGMENT: Head Of Yakuza Studio Talks About Replacing Voice Actor In The Game

Last month we found out that actor Pierre Taki had been arrested in Japan for alleged use of cocaine, which was later confirmed to be true, and that Sega had halted shipments and digital sales for Judgment; their newest intellectual property in which Taki played an important role.

Sega even went as far as pulling every trailer for the game as they cut all ties with Taki. Since the actor's arrest, Sega has already reinstated all of the trailers and media for Judgment, with Taki not being part of the game any more.

In a recent interview with IGN, Head of Yakuza Studio Toshihiro Nagoshi has revealed what the developers went through when they found out about Taki's arrest, and how they went about the whole issue.

"I heard it on the news just like everyone else, at about 12:30 at night, and within 5 minutes I was bombarded with phone calls and emails. Within 30 minutes I had suggested various options, and within an hour we had a firm plan (to replace the character). By the following morning we had an estimate for the cost," explained Nagoshi.

Japan has some very strict laws about drug abuse, and most companies tend to cut ties with anyone involved in such practices, which is why Nagoshi and the people over at Yakuza Studio wasted no time in figuring out what they wanted, and felt like they needed to do to address the situation.

Nagoshi also reveals that they have already replaced the actor and that, this time around, it will be an original character and not a performance capture, telling us that we'll "have to wait to see what he looks like."

Replacing a character in such short notice, especially one that was essential to the game, was not an easy task — saying that they had to meddle with a bunch of pre-rendered cutscenes that featured Hamura(Pierre Taki's character in Judgment) in order to fully remove the actor, as explained by Judgment producer Kazuki Hosokawa.

"First of all we had to replace the character model and re-record all of the dialogue. But replacing the character model is only the start: We had to change all of the pre-rendered cut scenes Hamura appeared in; also, his face appears on some of the evidence that you present on your smartphone, so we had to replace those textures; and some trophies had to be changed too."

Judgment's release date, here in the West, will not be changed, and players should expect to play this thrilling Yakuza series' spin-off when it releases, exclusively for the PlayStation 4, on the 25th of June.

SEGA of America is proud to announce that the new courtroom thriller from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios, Project JUDGE (working title), will release in 2019 on the PlayStation®4. Project JUDGE will feature the voice acting talents of Japanese actor/artist Takuya Kimura as the game's main protagonist, Takayuki Yagami.