1980s Tokyo—the glitz, the glamor, the excesses of the postwar economic miracle, the… genetically enhanced super soldier from 2551?
Modder Kashiiera over on Nexus Mods (opens in new tab) has traded one gaming sex symbol for another, replacing Yakuza 0’s sensitive hunk Kiryu with Halo’s sensitive hunk, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117. Thanks to a simple model swap, you can now rough up thugs, teach important life lessons, and unravel the mystery of the Empty Lot as a 7-foot-tall, one-ton killing machine from the 26th century.
I almost forgot to upload this pic.twitter.com/DD0cgmdgfDAugust 9, 2022
Kashiiera specializes in modding the Master Chief Collection (opens in new tab), mixing and matching assets and maps across the various games in the pack. Their other projects let you play through the entirety of later Halo games with the weapons and HUD from Combat Evolved (opens in new tab), for example, or transplant weapons and vehicles (opens in new tab) from Halo Reach into Halo 3.
The modder used that expertise to hack Mister Chief’s Halo 3 character model into Yakuza 0 in playable form. They also seem to have tried out porting the Arbiter in similar fashion, but his gnarly alien proportions make for a less clean transition, and so far Kashiiera just has a short demonstration of the idea up on Twitter (opens in new tab).
Honestly, the Chief fits into Yakuza pretty well—it’s already such a fun, absurd romp, and you get the added benefit of seeing the stoic future warrior going clubbing and doing karaoke. That’s way better than seeing him have sex (opens in new tab).
