As Unreal Engine becomes more and more ubiquitous, players have started to appreciate some of the industry’s more unique and bespoke internally-developed game engines. RGG Studio of Yakuza / Like a Dragon fame have dabbled with Unreal in the past, though they have now reaffirmed their commitment to the Dragon Engine.

In an interview with the Japanese publication Type.jp – and translated by ResetEra user ‘Dooble’ – Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s tech lead Yutaka Ito spoke on the studio’s use of its bespoke Dragon Engine, saying:

“when creating ‘Ryu ga Gotoku’ we absolutely must not do away with the Dragon Engine , and we will continue to develop in-house engines.”

Ito continued, “Dragon Engine concentrates its development resources on the functions necessary for ‘Ryu ga Gotoku’, and the biggest advantage is that new features can be added quickly. If you are using a general-purpose engine, you can send an email to support and get a response in about 3 days, but if you ask the programmer next to you, it will only take 5 seconds. I think this difference is huge.”

As mentioned, RGG Studio have used Epic’s Unreal Engine for the 2023 spin-off / remake ‘Like a Dragon Ishin’. That said, the remainder of the studio’s titles since 2016 have utilised RGG’s own Dragon Engine to a great deal of success.

Hopefully the team continues to develop their own tech for the sake of Like a Dragon and the industry as a whole.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of the Dragon Engine? What is your favourite internal game engine? Should RGG switch to Unreal? Let us know down below.

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