The executive director of Stranger Than Heaven has addressed concerns around the casting of Tupac Shakur.
One of the most bizarre reveals from Summer Game Fest last week was that Tupac would have a supporting role in Stranger Than Heaven, despite the fact he has been dead for 30 years. To be clear: Tupac isn’t playing himself in the game. Instead, the character that uses Tupac’s likeness will be voiced by an actor without the assistance of AI. So really, the character is just a guy who looks like Tupac, making the situation all the more baffling.
The decision to feature a dead music star so prominently in the game has raised a lot of eyebrows, especially after it came to light that Tupac’s estate is managed by music executive Tom Whalley — a situation that has been the subject of legal disputes between Whalley and Tupac’s family. However, IGN spoke with executive director and RGG studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama who addressed these concerns, and claimed that both Tupac’s estate and family approved of his role in the game. Yokoyama also noted that Tupac isn’t the first instance of the team using the likeness of a deceased actor.
“We already have had a character like Tupac, who had passed away before the game was made [the character Genzo Iwaki with the likeness of actor Bunta Sugawara]. He’s a really famous actor in yakuza movies and Japanese film history. But it’s kind of the same situation, he’s this famous actor who passed away. But we made sure that we talked to his estate and family and got their permission; not just their permission, but we talked to them about what we wanted to do. They not only said okay, but they were really excited about the opportunity. We wanted to give their characters a role that would do other justice to the people themselves as well. If we didn’t, we think that would be extremely rude, so we definitely wouldn’t have done it otherwise. So we did our best to make sure that any role we create for these characters would honor them and their families.”
Yokoyama also addressed how they went about casting someone to actually voice this character.
“The next barrier we faced when we were bringing them back for these characters for these roles was their voice, right? We probably couldn’t replicate their voices with AI if we went for it, but we’re a studio that has really valued acting, not just movie acting but also drama acting. And we’re really careful about the voice actors we chose in the past as well. So, we wanted to focus on getting a real person to put their own spin on that character. We didn’t want to have them just do an imitation of that character, we wanted them to try to bring out that character’s personality, but with a different voice. So, we did our best to pick an actor that would fit the role and fit that character, and some of these people might be related to them or have some sort of relationship to them.”
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The director also understood that people will be critical of the decision to feature Tupac’s likeness, but welcomed that and believed in the creative choice the team made.
“I think when you’re creating any product in the entertainment industry, there’s going to be criticism,” he said. “You can’t really say, ‘don’t criticize us’ that just doesn’t make sense. Criticism is a freedom that people are free to have. But, this is something that we thought was a good idea. That this would be something that would add value to our game, which is why we chose to do this. I mean, we had a similar issue with this when we announced the casting of Sugawara as well. He’s obviously a very famous actor in Japan, and there were a lot of people who responded saying like, ‘maybe you should have left him alone.’ For Tupac, he’s a person who’s well known outside of Japan, and we expected those voices. But in the end, we are creating something we think people will enjoy and like. We think it’s something that will add value to the game we’re making. So, we have no real regrets or worries about what we’re doing.
“For me personally, I think trying to make everybody happy is the job of a politician. For a person who makes games, I think our job is to try to give an inspirational, emotional, or deep experience to as many people as possible. And if you try to make decisions just to avoid criticism, you will end up with something that can’t do that.”
It’s unclear how big Tupac’s role will be, but his character will have overlap with Snoop Dogg’s character, Orpheus, a smuggler aiming to make a name for himself in Japan.
Stranger Than Heaven releases on January 15th, 2027 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
