I Hate What Stranger Than Heaven Is Doing With Tupac

The developers at Yakuza studio Ryu Ga Gotoku have repeatedly explained why Tupac appears in their next game, Stranger Than Heaven: it was Snoop Dogg’s idea, Tupac’s family and rights holders were involved, and no generative AI was used for his voice or likeness.

In a Game Informer interview, studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama added that the character won’t be a replication of the man as he was. “We wanted to not kind of recreate who Tupac was when he passed away,” he said. “We wanted to try to envision who Tupac might be now.” Yokoyama said Tupac’s family participated at every step of creating the character.

“We wanted to say, ‘Okay, if he was still alive now, thirty years later, how would he act? How would he express himself in that way?’” That approach has its defenders, and RGG’s effort to be respectful of Tupac’s legacy and living family is clear. Still, projecting a living person’s words, actions and emotions onto a digital character decades after their death feels problematic.

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