When the Stranger Than Heaven trailer at Summer Game Fest first revealed the inclusion of the late rapper Tupac Shakur in the cast, alongside other performers like Snoop Dogg and his son, Cordell Broadus, I immediately thought about Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum. The infamous 1997 Dirt Devil commercial saw the musical star—who died nearly a decade earlier—dancing with a vacuum, setting off a national debate over the appropriateness of using someone's likeness posthumously. Tupac himself, now dead for nearly 30 years, has already been center stage in this debate, first following a 2012 holographic appearance at Coachella with rappers Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, and subsequently over the executorship of his estate and his likeness adorning everything from T-shirts to NFTs.

When I asked RGG Studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama about the reveal, and whether or not they anticipated the skeptical response from a Western audience, he said, "In Japan, there isn't really so much sensitivity over this issue because this is something that's kind of part and parcel of the Japanese gaming culture for 20-plus years. There's been a lot of people who have modeled their characters after actors alive and passed away."

After he said this, another person in the group interview chimed in saying, "Onimusha" to which Yokoyama laughed. This year's Onimusha: Way of the Sword is a reboot of Capcom's 25-year-old franchise, and it features a protagonist modeled after legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, who died in 1997. "Yeah, I can't say that out loud myself. Thank you," Yokoyama said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVDWs_yaf2Y

As for why Tupac in particular when there are so many other not-deceased people to choose from, Yokoyama said it was Snoop Dogg himself who suggested Tupac for the role. "Hey, we want to have this person who has a relationship to you like this [in real life] to play this role with this character that has a relationship to your character. Who would be a good person to fit that role?," Yokoyama recalls asking. "And the name Tupac came up from Snoop Dogg. In our studio, we have a lot of people who have their own images of Tupac that really fit that as well, and so that's why we discussed it with Tupac's estate and his family. We got their approval, we negotiated, and everybody was okay with it."

Tupac isn't the only deceased person whose likeness will greet players in Stranger Than Heaven: legendary Japanese actor Sugawara Bunta, famed for his role in Japanese yakuza films, appears as character Genzo Iwaki. "We already had another character who had passed away who is in the game," Yokoyama said of Bunta. " [He] is a famous Japanese actor of ninkyo, which are like these Yakuza films from Japanese cinematic history. He kind of occupies a place in the Japanese overall cultural lore like Marlon Brando in that sense. He passed away, I think it was like 15 years ago, but we wanted to have him in this game as well because he fitted it as well."

Like with Tupac Shakur's likeness, Yokoyama said they wanted to be respectful to his family. "When we did it, we wanted to make sure that we did it with respect and to honor his memory, not just kind of throw him in there. So we made sure that we talked to his estate, we talked to his family, we got their approval, and we had them for every step of the way."

While Bunta's inclusion might make a lot more sense given the subject matter, Yokoyama insisted that selecting Tupac wasn't simply stunt casting, but that the understood relationship between Snoop Dogg and Tupac mirrors the relationship between the characters of Orpheus and Amaru. "Tupac's character, Amaru, is a character in the game. So Orpheus and Amaru have a relationship, but there's also a lot of other characters we haven't seen that have relationships," Yokoyama explained. "And we wanted to make sure that all of these characters had not just a relationship to the character of Orpheus in the game, but something that if you know Snoop Dogg and you know these characters and you know their relationships, it would feel really right to have this person in this role, because their relationship with both Snoop Dogg is mirrored in the roles in-game."

As for whether RGG Studio would use AI to replicate the late stars' performances, Yokoyama said, "We have not used any AI for this at all. I can't speak to the future, but we're not using any AI right now for these characters. For both Sugawara Bunta and for Tupac, the voice actors that we picked to play them are somebody who had a relationship with these people, both those people, before they were deceased, and made sure that both them and the family were okay with the casting and that everyone would, once again, do full, due respect to those people's memory."

It's worth pointing out that Amaru is not only a notable name for Tupac's legacy (see here for more on the origins of Tupac's name) but is notably the very name of the company originally created by his mother that not only administers his music but also manages the trademark for his name and the posthumous use of his likeness. "Tupac’s portrayal of the character Amaru in Stranger Than Heaven is made possible with the permission and ongoing supervision of his estate, Amaru Entertainment," Sega wrote in a press release.

Stranger Than Heaven will be released on January 17, 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles.