The Importance of Asking For Help: My Experience With ‘Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’
When a new Ryu Ga Gotoku game releases, it’s my equivalent of a religious holiday. I’ve struggled, however, with the series’ recent tendency to incessantly indulge in navel gazing nostalgia at the expense of moving the franchise forward. After the successful experiment of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, it has felt like the series hit a creative wall where retreading tropes from the series is more of a focus than exploring something new within this universe. Nevertheless, there were two primary takeaways from Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth that deeply resonated with me after the credits rolled: (1) a reexamination of the role that alcohol serves for the game’s mature tonal aesthetic, and (2) a stubbornly optimistic declaration that everyone, no matter how strong, must rely on others for help sometimes.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth perfects nearly everything about its predecessor, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, except for the story. Like an elderly person who recounts glory day stories instead of forging ahead to make new memories, the Like a Dragon series seems stuck in a narrative whirlpool where the writers don’t have anything fundamentally new to say. I’m still a die-hard fan, but there are only so many times that Daigo, Majima, and Saejima can show up to save the day for our heroes, for example, before my eyes roll out of my head from the predictability of it all. This specific nostalgia grab worked wonders as a surprise in Like a Dragon, but I have to wonder when the series will be ready to take another step with confidence – because I don’t think Infinite Wealth did.
This lack of confidence aside, the two thematic takeaways I alluded to above were resonant enough that I walked away from Infinite Wealth feeling personally touched, like I had just engaged in a passive therapy session. I am a firm believer that fiction reads you as much as you read fiction. This inverted principle guided my interpretations of Infinite Wealth, and the lessons it wants to impart in its more unique moments.
Revisiting “Feud of the Ages”
I wrote last year about my favorite scene, “Feud of the Ages,” from the remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin! In that discussion, I argued that alcohol played a central role in Ishin’s overall narrative in a way that was previously relegated to aesthetic “maturity” akin to the sex workers and violence also present in the game’s world. Since then, a year has passed and I have completely reevaluated my relationship to consuming alcohol. Thus, playing Infinite Wealth has made me revise some assumptions and correspondent conclusions about alcohol’s significance in that article. Since I have personally decided that alcohol is no longer a source of comfort or pleasure for myself, this difference creates a distance between myself and Like a Dragon’s characters that previously didn’t exist. I thus felt outside of Infinite Wealth’s narrative presentation, like I didn’t fully belong, on regular occasions when I never had previously.
Luckily, I didn’t have a personal reckoning with alcohol because of something catastrophic or dramatic – a “rock bottom” moment, as they say. Rather, after several years of treating alcohol like a part of my daily routine, I reached a point where I decided that it was not a habit that served me. It’s an enormous shift in how I manage my stress, how I unwind after a long day, and how I find relaxation when I have free time. But I would like to be the type of person who can learn, grow, and change. When it comes to alcohol, there is, dare I say, an Infinite Wealth of opportunities to grow and change by removing it from my life: in terms of money, bodily health, mental health, social anxiety, quality of sleep, and so on. If I want to become the best – or at least, better – version of myself, I concluded, then I need to take a serious step back from drinking. And so I did.
I don’t want to cheapen my current experience with sobriety and make it seem overly facile. Abstaining from alcohol after about ten years of near-daily drinking is a drastic change, and one that hasn’t felt simple or easy. To an outsider who doesn’t drink, going sober for a week must look like a raindrop in the ocean of time; to someone like myself, it was one of the toughest weeks of my life. The physiological dependence, the incessant neurological signals screaming “crave, crave, crave,” the habitual longings of walking to the fridge or scanning the drink menu at a restaurant, the sleepless nights that would undoubtedly be eased by some midnight oil – each of these aspects were far more persuasive than I assumed when I made my decision, and were things that I had to undergo alone.
When I decided to stop drinking, I felt like none of my closest loved ones could relate to the struggles involved. My best friend, my girlfriend, my writing partners at Epilogue – none of them drink, and luckily none of them have developed a dependence on a substance like I had. No amount of sympathy could help them properly understand the carousel of repetitious rationalizations that I experienced in my first week of sobriety. It was a microdose of hell. From the moment I awoke to the moment I went to sleep, there was an active hamster wheel in my head testing out convincing reasons why I shouldn’t care so much and should just go back to alcohol where life was much simpler and easier. This mixture of feeling isolated from understanding in my closest circles as well as the constant temptation of giving in and giving up was exhausting, to put it mildly. It was embarrassing to even talk about. I felt like the burden I had shouldered was, whether I liked it or not, a burden I would be forced to shoulder alone indefinitely.
Drinking Alcohol While Playing the Yakuza Games
Realizing how psychologically brittle I was feeling during the initial days of sobriety, I was incredibly careful to avoid situations that would trigger additional urges to drink. This level of care manifested in neurotic ways, like taking a different entrance into my local grocery store where I’d previously buy alcohol, to more obvious ones, like pouring out anything alcoholic in my fridge. This intensified level of self-awareness should have prevented me from starting Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, considering its characteristically indulgent depictions of heavy drinking and the uncritical role with which the game revels in the “adult” nature of such activities. But when the choice was between sitting out my favorite game series and testing my inner mettle, I figured I would be strong enough – or, at least, that the temptation was worth the risk – somehow.
By pure coincidence, I stopped drinking the weekend that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth released, and the naivety that I could indulge in this alcohol-heavy game while not feeling tempted was one of my biggest mistakes in my path to sobriety. Miraculously, however, I didn’t catch myself in a situation risking relapse until my third weekend with the game – after a particularly stressful trip back to Florida, where sleep deprivation, my relentless focus on self-improvement, and consistent lack of comfort zone led me to a regrettable bout of day-drinking just shy of 21 days without alcohol. The morning of my relapse, I had a perfectly sound explanation in my head that felt borderline logical in nature. That explanation brought me to the local liquor store and back, prompting me to boot up an eight-hour session of Infinite Wealth, where I figured I’d finally feel at home, back with my comfort beverage, in this universe. The regret I felt the next day was debilitating in a way that I foolishly didn’t foresee.
Drinking alcohol while playing the Yakuza games is a unique kind of comfort that I haven’t thought about critically before Infinite Wealth. You might say that I have traditionally felt like I am a part of the story, one of the regulars at Revolve or Survive, if you will. My moment of relapse was a mixture of letting unacknowledged stress build to a breaking point, but it was also a twisted way of feeling more engaged with the game’s world.
Not only is the central locale of each Like a Dragon game a literal bar, but one of the most rewarding portions of optional content in Infinite Wealth, “Drink Links,” involves drinking together with your party mates while their unique stories unfold. (A humorous exception to this rule is Nanba, a former nurse, who chastises Kiryu to drink tea during these sequences since, y’know, Kiryu has cancer.) It sounds ridiculous to write, but I’ve told myself that I feel more connected to the characters and their stories when I am drinking, too. And as my article from last year reveals, there’s some nobility and even heroism in the glorified depictions of the stoic Yakuza protagonists drinking their troubles away and fighting to see another day. My sober experience playing Infinite Wealth was my first true test of those hollow explanations of my drinking behavior and how transparently barren they are, revealing them to be what they have always been: excuses.
Examining Your Triggers
Readers of Epilogue will know that I’ve struggled with motivation to even play video games for the past year or two, much less finish and write about them. This is largely due to increasing political hostility towards transgender people that rendered my home state unlivably cruel for people like myself, causing me to escape before such laws took full effect. I’ve been lucky enough to land on my feet, despite indelibly traumatic circumstances that caused me to uproot my life last year. And I’ve been luckier still to have gotten off the waiting list for a therapist in my city, offering me a healthy outlet to work through those traumas one by one, as I’ve adjusted to this new home. In speaking with my therapist, I’ve noticed that I struggle with allowing myself time for fun, as well as a cynical resistance to allowing myself to experience joy, as though I deserve to dwell on the circumstances that led me here. I’ve also realized that one of the ways that I mask that all-too-human desire for fun, joy, and rebellion is by dulling those feelings with mindless, habitual alcohol consumption. Hence my desire to reevaluate my relationship to alcohol; I refuse to allow it to be my primary outlet of joy in life.
From the intense melodrama that reliably brings me to tears each game to the hilarious absurdities that have me routinely shrieking with laughter, the Yakuza franchise is a reliable source of escapism that I can depend upon for that fun I’ve been recently lacking. It’s the one video game series that, no matter what, shakes me out of my rut and returns me to a place of excitement about this creative medium. Having relapsed during a period of intense self-examination, I suddenly felt alienated from this video game series that has for several years felt like a comfortable, safe place. I knew that I couldn’t trust myself to play Infinite Wealth with the same carefree attitude that I had previously.
Tragically, in finally breaking free of the constricting confines of alcohol abuse, playing my favorite video game series without the crutch of inebriation felt like I wasn’t able to become fully enveloped within it. Or at least, my enjoyment of the game’s world was always at a distance during the initial days of sobriety. This is why the ending of chapter three, “The Fool,” hit home so hard during my playthrough. Not only does this chapter end with a gut-wrenching realization that inextricably pulled me into the narrative, it was a ‘right place, right time’ external depiction of the worries and struggles that led me to make such a different and altering decision in my own life.
It’s Never Too Late to Start Over
In the conclusion of “The Fool,” longtime series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu reveals a secret that has been informing his covert actions since the tide-over title Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name: he has been diagnosed with cancer. This revelation happens after a series of liberating triumphs within an otherwise humbling chapter that begins with Ichiban Kasuga waking up naked on Aloha Beach from, ironically, a night of drinking. After a rather lengthy segment, Ichiban, Tomizawa (a new party member introduced in Infinite Wealth), and Kiryu retire to a hotel room where the three revel in their day filled with new beginnings. Tomizawa has just escaped the torturous role as the villainous Yamai’s obsequious pawn, and Ichiban relates that he spent eighteen years locked away in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. What both men have in common, Ichiban observes, is the realization that it’s never too late to start over.
Kiryu, listening while pensively staring out the hotel room window, has been suspiciously quiet during this otherwise celebratory scene. While Tomizawa grabs three glasses and a bucket of ice with which to pour their victorious drinks, Kiryu remains standing idly, not joining the others on the couch to relax. Instead, when Kiryu finally chimes in, he says something that couldn’t have been more relevant to the circumstances of my sobriety and shame about relapse:
“You just have to give it all you’ve got. That’s the key.” Kiryu then finally takes a drink with the others. “You can always start anew, but you can’t erase what’s been. Life is written in the single stroke of a brush. That’s why you’ve gotta make every moment count.” Kiryu then pauses to reflect that he should have known this aphoristic observation already, but the recent revelation in his life – his cancer diagnosis – has reminded him that he still has a lot to learn.
These words from Kiryu were the words of self-talk that I desperately needed but for which I couldn’t find. They are the words that I yearned to hear from a reassuring loved one but lacked people with lived experience similar to my own to draw from. In the same astonishing way that a video game helped me find the courage to share my gender identity years ago, once again a video game articulated a piece of advice that I needed to hear if I was going to stay the course and avoid relapsing again.
The morning that I awoke from my ill-advised day of relapsed drinking, I felt all the immediate negatives of alcohol: my brain felt foggy, I had a mild headache, waking up was more difficult, my gastrointestinal system was bloated and inflamed, my mood was more irritable, my patience was thinner, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of “hangxiety” in my gut like I had done something horribly wrong. Even though I spent the day peacefully in my apartment, my decision to drink transgressed my values, disappointing myself. That next day, I felt like a complete failure. My daily progress with sobriety had been for nothing because the clock had reset to zero.
These words from Kiryu were, like they were for him, words I should have known. But like Kiryu, this is knowledge that I hadn’t internalized fully as wisdom. Some knowledge has to be lived to be understood; other lessons take repetition to become inculcated. In returning to drinking alcohol, I hadn’t irreparably failed, doomed to fully slip down the slope towards drunken oblivion. Rather, as I’ve tried to remind myself, failure is when you give up. The fact that I felt guilty the day after drinking again meant I had motivation to keep trying, to get back on the course that I had successfully set myself on for three weeks prior.
I hadn’t failed. “You can always start anew,” I heard as I started over. “You can’t erase what’s been,” I heard as I tried to weave my point of ‘failure’ into a larger tapestry of my success. Giving it all I’ve got, making every moment count – that was what I needed to push forward. Relapsing towards alcohol meant that there was still more work to be done, that I still had some fight left in me to keep going. I didn’t have a diagnosis of cancer like Kiryu, but seeing someone in his position resolve himself to such an unwavering determination to live fully was infectious: I knew what I had to do. “Life is written in the single stroke of a brush,” I heard as the tears rolled down my face.
I don’t feel like I have the luxury to make any declarations about how difficult the remainder of this journey may be, but through my initial stumbles, I’ve learned important lessons about how to treat myself kindly while still meeting my own standards. Kiryu was correct: the brush stroke continues.
Rediscovering the Desire to Live (with Sobriety)
In digging through the guilt of relapse, one of my burning questions was to investigate why I was so eager to drink that day while playing Infinite Wealth. Between late night journaling and a few therapy sessions, I uncovered the unsavory fact that I struggle to treat myself like someone worth caring about. When I was feeling overwhelmed by responsibility, I rebelled by being irresponsible and returning to my drinking habit. When I was feeling burned out of taking care of myself, I self-destructed and reverted to coping mechanisms that I unwittingly developed as a young adult. It’s like there’s an adolescent part of me that refuses to grow up in the moments where the demands of adulthood appear unceasing. I don’t want to be governed by my inner teenager, so the question of why my response was to self-sabotage has lingered with me since.
I recognized the question of viewing yourself as expendable or not-worth-caring-about in Kazuma Kiryu’s battle with cancer, of all things. Throughout Infinite Wealth’s narrative, Kiryu stubbornly refuses to engage in cancer treatment. Kiryu’s friends like Ichiban view Kiryu’s lack of determination to stay alive and battle his cancer with disbelief. Kiryu, on the other hand, practically gives up on himself, willing to throw his life away at a moment’s notice in a way that he never displayed earlier in the series. It’s as if Kiryu wants to die, Ichiban observes, given the callous disregard with which he treats himself.
Much of Infinite Wealth’s narrative becomes a covert plot to motivate Kiryu to care enough about himself again to keep living. In a similar way, much of my journey to sobriety thus far has involved motivating myself to treat myself like someone worth helping. Ichiban’s solution for Kiryu is to have him reminisce by making a bucket list. I realized during this sequence that I’ve always felt pretentious condescension about bucket lists, having never written one myself. The idea in Infinite Wealth is that Kiryu will regain a zest for life by engaging in thrilling activities and bringing closure to his relationships.
In withdrawing alcohol from my life, I tried to heed the words of behavioral psychologists, that if you remove an addictive comfort, you should find substitutes that replace the feelings of pleasure that the now-absent comfort brought you previously. I thus found myself scrawling out bullet-pointed lists of things I’ve enjoyed in the past that might bring me joy now. One of these sources of enjoyment is obviously video games, and as I found myself playing more of Infinite Wealth, I couldn’t escape the deeper parallel between Kiryu’s bucket list and my own list of replacement behaviors. In the same way that Kiryu finds his will to live over the course of the story, I have found – or have begun to find – a will to live with sobriety.
Despite the reclamation of his will to live, Kiryu still faces one final internal battle throughout the rest of Infinite Wealth. As the Dragon of Dojima, Kiryu possesses a unique aura of power and independence. Known for his strength, Kiryu relies on no one. Faced with cancer in Infinite Wealth, Kiryu’s power and independence are severely challenged, both in combat-heavy scenarios and his everyday well being. Without either, it’s as though this legendary brawler has had his hands tied behind his back, for who is Kazuma Kiryu without his unquestionable authority?
The Importance of Relying on Other People
In reckoning with the question of a newly found motivation to live as well as a willingness to seek help from others, I couldn’t shake my connection to Kiryu’s own journey in Infinite Wealth. While I am in no way undergoing a struggle similar to that of a cancer patient, the attitude that Kiryu displays towards his seemingly terminal indictment of fate is nevertheless relatable. In coming to understand the day I turned back to alcohol, I’ve encountered a part of myself that’s willing to cynically throw everything away when things get too difficult. In truth, much of the difficulty of sobriety is initial; the rest seems to be communal. That is, like Kiryu’s reaction to his cancer diagnosis, my relationship to sobriety has been especially difficult because it often feels like something I have to endure by myself without asking for help. I’ve been fortunate enough to feel successful in my own practice of sobriety, but I recognize the ways in which this life change has been doubly difficult in how I’ve shut out the possibility of relying on other people.
Towards the end of Infinite Wealth, Kiryu repeatedly tries to take matters into his own hands, either because he views himself as expendable or he doesn’t want to involve other people in his own violent affairs. Should a villainous character threaten Kiryu’s life, he would rather face that threat alone, even if doing so puts him at a distinct disadvantage that risks his life. I found it almost comical the way that Infinite Wealth used Kiryu’s hermetic stoicism as a punchline for other characters to berate him into submission: of course his friends are going to stick with him when things get tough, when things get deadly. Over and over, Kiryu has to be practically undermined with love, reminded that his strength alone is not enough to overcome his situation. Relying on others for help, he eventually confronts, is its own kind of strength.
When things have gotten tough in my adult life, I have acted like Kiryu throughout Infinite Wealth. Last year, when the state of Florida filed more anti-transgender bills to the house and senate than any calendar year in history, I had to grit my teeth and figure out a plan by myself. No one was going to be able to fight hard enough to overcome the legislation driving me out of the state. No one was going to move across the country with me as I sought to simultaneously preserve my career and healthcare. No one was going to uproot their life, change their trajectories, and become a full-time activist just because my existence was, for most intents and purposes, criminalized. My safety was on the line, so relying on others to step up for this extraordinary occasion was a pipedream that I couldn’t afford to entertain.
Moving across the country by yourself because you are simply trying to survive is not an experience I would wish upon anybody, not even the cultish leader of the Palekana. More than anything, I wished I could have taken somebody with me during my flight from Florida, someone to keep me sane and feel connected. But when my fate felt so unique, localized to my experience, it felt almost irresponsible to let my worries weigh upon other people. When my colleagues asked if there was anything they could do as I packed up my office to leave, I said no. When people asked why I was leaving and said they were sorry to see me go, I tried to minimize the existential terror I was feeling and make it more palatable for others who were not already going through these stages of grief. When my new colleagues introduced themselves, I tried to keep the story vague. (Usually the word ‘Florida’ was enough.) I didn’t want other people to have to feel the pain that I was struggling to endure every day, because it felt somehow selfish, even narcissistic, to trauma dump on everyone I had this conversation with. At some point, I developed a brief explanation that addressed their concerns without dragging my emotional baggage through the airport of their questions.
Most of the sources of my emotional turmoil were out of anyone’s control, and they seemed to only impact someone like me, so if I could throw my body on the grenade and take the blow myself, I concluded, then that was better – stronger, even – than everyone else sharing in my suffering. Even though I couldn’t control the situation I was escaping from, I could control how I responded to it. Fast-forward to the finale of Infinite Wealth and it seemed silly that I could recognize the silliness and immaturity to Kiryu’s obstinacy but couldn’t recognize it in myself until I was looking back at the situation. I watched Kiryu try to jump on this metaphorical grenade only for his many friends to question his actions, causing him to reflect and learn that another kind of strength was possible: the kind of strength that can only be found in community with other people.
Asking For Help is Not Weakness
Kiryu’s reminder that both kinds of strength are necessary to live a meaningful and fulfilling life are reminders for me, too. I desperately don’t want to rely on other people when I need to vent, because I don’t want to look like the friend who is constantly negative. I don’t want to rely on other people when I want to make a big change in my life, because I want to take pride in my independence and inner strength. And I don’t want to rely on other people when I am struggling on my own, because I have internalized the wrong message at some point in my life that asking for help is weakness. I don’t view other people as weak when they ask for help, I’ve noticed, so I have to continually wonder why I view such behavior as weak only when it applies to me. I have to speculate that Kiryu operates on a similarly false assumption since the entirety of the Yakuza series is basically him helping others out of distressing situations. Hence the constant ribbing from Kiryu’s friends every time he tries, as Zhao teases, the lone wolf routine.
I guess it’s self-evidently silly to see Kiryu vainly try to shoulder his impossible burdens alone because he is a cancer patient who has been recklessly and repeatedly pushing past his limits. Anybody would be worried about him. As a player, I would obviously caution Kiryu to take it easy, like the other party members do. Despite that seemingly obvious outsider’s perspective, it didn’t seem so self-evident when I was in a position similar to his – needing to ask for help but being too proud to do so.
Knowing what the right answer is but feeling too emotionally trapped to work your way out of it is something that I have struggled with my entire life. Sometimes you know that focusing on your breathing will help calm yourself down, but you are trapped by anxiety and forget this advice. It’s like being caught in the middle of a raging thunderstorm at sea; anyone in a nearby boat would be able to tell you to steer your ship out of the storm; in the moment, however, all you can see is the next wave threatening to overtake your vessel. Kiryu doesn’t see the possibility of relying on his friends when it’s time to scale the Millennium Tower because all he can see is the enemy threatening his way of life. The silver lining for me is that Kiryu learns this lesson in the latter years of his 50s, whereas I just turned 30 this past year. Ideally, I have a lot more of life’s curriculum to live.
There are so many occasions in Infinite Wealth where characters turn directly to face the camera and pontificate about their perspective on life, whether Kiryu’s brushstroke metaphor or otherwise. These moments are clearly the developers passing along their philosophical tomes to me, the player. Even when I trip and stumble, like in my fleeting retreat back into alcoholism, Infinite Wealth’s characters serve to remind me to get back up and keep going. And when getting back up seems too difficult, like moving forward is impossible, Infinite Wealth’s supporting cast claps me on the back and reminds me to ask for help. If even the Dragon of Dojima has to learn this lesson, who am I to pretend that I’m above such humility?
Lingering Ideas About Alcohol in Gaming
When I think of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the lesson I would like to learn is to practice kindness to myself instead of the guilt-tripping of my first relapse. It was uniquely strange to write this article and then attend PAX East, an event that reliably ends in afterparties at the Westin hotel bar and, this year, hosted an on-site “beer cave” partnership with Voodoo Ranger. I knew there would be temptations. One of my favorite panels of the entire event, for example, featured impressively crafted video game cocktails; attending this panel was an obviously touchy subject but I’m glad I went because it was a laughter-filled memory I was able to make with friends that I rarely get to see non-remotely. In the end, I decided to drink in the evenings after PAX – but this time, with self-compassion, articulating these boundaries in order to keep myself accountable. My journey with alcohol may not be complete, but my month with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth reminded me that it’s okay to start over and try again.
There’s certainly more to be said about the role of alcohol in the Like a Dragon video games, not just examining the before-and-afters of being a player who drinks and then doesn’t drink while playing them. Entire discussions could be had about the glorification of red-light behaviors in gaming, how alcohol informs my understanding of protagonists like Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher series or Harry Du Bois from Disco Elysium. Examining this portrayal of protagonists then opens up the question of scrutinizing the presence of alcohol for characters that are, as my friend Matt Storm said about Kiryu when speaking to them about this article idea, an “avatar with fists,” versus characters we make role playing choices as like Sheperd from the Mass Effect series.
I think there’s a need to examine drinking culture in the games industry more generally – not just in the fiction we consume, but in the social spaces we gather as fans and professionals to commune around the games we love. In the same way that we once discussed Loot Boxes as a form of gambling that may be dangerous to expose to people who are recovering from gambling addictions, there might be something to be gained by opening up a similar conversation about alcohol in the games we love. Not that we need to censor artistic expression; rather, we benefit from discussing how it impacts us. Only then can we take that first big step forward.
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