The official Red Steel website was just updated with a new trailer, which is also shown below for your convenience. The Wii-exclusive has gotten a big budget in order to be a Wii launch game, it’s costing Ubisoft €10 million ($12.7/£6.8 million) to create with a 100-headed team.
Developer Ubisoft released new info about the game’s storyline and characters…
The storyline explained:
How do you discover the Japanese mafia in Red Steel?
To save his fiancée caught in the middle of a war between two generations of Yakuzas, ancestral and modern Yakuzas, the player will have to fly to Japan and fight his way through the Tokyo Mafia. During his journey he will come face to face with their codes, have to learn Asiatic fighting techniques and understand their ethics.
Is it a game about the Japanese mafia?
The setting of the game is Japan. But the goal is not to make a realistic Japanese game. This will be perfectly done by Japanese people. As we were an occidental team, the goal was more to work on the occidental perception of Japan, the Japanese clichés, and how a “gaijin” (meaning stranger in Japanese) is immersed in a new Japanese universe and must adapt himself to the “local rules.” This will bring more fun as we are not Japan experts, anyway.
We want to put the player in the same situation as the character, asking him, “why is this happening to me?” and having to learn skills and rules
What about the storyline and the clans?
The story of the game is of an American man who is engaged to the daughter of a powerful Yakuza leader who has in his possession a great sword known as Katana, katana-giri – a leadership symbol in Japan and in the Japanese mafia particularly. A rival Yakuza leader has set his eyes on it and launches a failed attempt to steal it so as to increase his power in the organization.
Everything happens during a diner in a Japanese restaurant with your girl and her father. Though the attempt fails, your fiancé gets kidnapped and her father fatally wounded. Just before he dies, the girl’s father gives you the sword and asks you to go to Japan and rescue his daughter.
You now have to go to Japan to rescue the girl. To achieve this, you’ll identify the Yakuza which kidnapped her. Thus starts your life of duelling with various high-ranking Yakuza leaders and sparing their lives in order to earn their loyalty and various other weapons. That corresponds to several missions based in Japan. With your katana, you’ll have to learn the honor code of the Yakuzas and the fighting techniques, in order to get the respect of the mafia. At the end you’ll gain respect and become a modern samurai. You’ll organize a family council to defeat your enemy.
In-game characters:
ISAO SATO (Miyu’s father, an important Oyabun, saved by the hero in the first sequence)
Isao Sato is the father of Miyu, your fiancé. During a meeting in a Los Angeles restaurant, you help to prevent an attempt to assassinate him. He is Oyabun to one of the most important Tokyo families and, for the last several years, has attempted to carry out his business dealings in a more legal fashion. His sword, the Katana Giri, is the traditional symbol of Oyabun’s power in his family. The attackers fail at their attempt and kidnap Miyu, with hopes of putting pressure on him. Wounded during the attack, Sato hands his sword to you. Your promise is to return his daughter and your fiancé to him before he dies.
TOKAI (Main enemy)
Tokai is the main villain in Red Steel. A young Yakuza godfather (Oyabun), he is driven by a thirst for power and the desire to tear apart the Yakuza system. He is a brilliant archetype of modern change and wants, above all, to bring about the downfall of traditional constraints, in order to rise to power through illegal activities, in all possible markets. Despite his goals, his official stance is one of respect towards tradition. His attempt to take power hides a strong personal ambition and an implacable obsessive desire for revenge. To achieve his desires, he must have the Sato sword.
OTORI (Your Japanese mentor)
Your first contact in Japan, Otori will become a veritable mentor. An ex-Yakuza who left the organisation for moral reasons and for his daughter, Mariko’s, future, he owns a Dojo, where you will spend a lot of time. Along with other traditional martial arts, he is a sword master and will share his wealth of knowledge with you. For him, the sword is not a weapon, but a necessary tool in learning self-mastery. The reasons for using it must be noble and justified. Having already been involved with the Japanese mafia, he refuses to help you directly, by implicating himself in that world.
HARRY TANNER (Boss of the Club)
Tanner is your first real link with the Japanese underworld. He runs a club in which the Yakuzas spend a lot of time and has quite a few connections with them. Because he is a victim of Tokai’s campaign and is friends with Sato, he agrees to help you in your quest. Tanner organises a meeting with the distressed Yakuzas. You will often return to see him in the night club, to obtain information and for weapons training.
His club attracts not only the Yakuzas, but also members of the jet set, who enjoy slumming it in a decor which contrasts modern Japanese design with the by-gone charm of the American gangster era. The main attraction is a private shooting range where VIPs come to have fun and test any weapon they like, with the advice of the revered Kajima.
MOTHER REIKO (Legitimate Geisha Boss)
Mother Reiko is one of the Yakuzas who meets in Harry’s club. Shocked by the disappearance of Sato, she comes to ask you to free the Geisha neighbourhoods from the clutches of “Mama San†and Tokai’s pimps.
MAMA SAN (Tokai’s Mistress)
Mama San is Tokai’s mistress. Head of the Geisha district, in the chaos following Sato’s kidnapping, she elegantly manages to change some of the Geishas’ strict esthetic codes, modernising their look and making them sexier. Beautiful, but venomous and fatal, they become the modern “female Yakuzasâ€.
Mama San recruits shibouya girls (bad girls in the Shibouya Street) in the street to work for her.
KENZO (Financial Clan boss)
Kenzo is the boss of the Shiba Financial Group bank. Although he is powerful, he is very cowardly, even paranoid, and easily falls into Tokai’s clutches after Sato’s disappearance. You will have to get to his office, fending off Tokai’s men along the way, to convince him to join in his effort.
As he is powerful but handicapped, Kenzo has a lieutenant and many yakuzas working for him.