Stranger Than Heaven sets Jan 17 release, Tupac to appear
RGG Studio and Sega confirmed Stranger Than Heaven will launch on January 17 and announced Tupac Shakur will appear as an in-game character. The publisher said Tupac joins a cast that includes Japanese actors Takashi Ukaji and Kohei Tsuji. Featuring a deceased music icon in a major RGG action title spotlights legal and ethical questions about using real-world likenesses in video games, making Stranger Than Heaven a likely test case for how studios handle historical figures.
The Tupac stuff in Stranger Than Heaven was already gross, but its way worse now that I know his "estate" is just this one random rich guy, and not Tupac's surviving sister.
C H A I177I feel like maybe some guy completely unrelated to a dead person shouldn't be allowed to own the rights to that person's likeness, actually.
CrumbedUp - Billy Bat English Vol 1 Out NOW117oh, not just a random rich guy he's the guy who signed Tupac to his label he's also the executor of his mom's estate and Tupac's sister sued him saying he was embezzling from it
xjkappax48When Ed Gein props a corpse on a stick and make it dance people call it illegal when billionaires do it they call it a technological advancement.
Camila con C (y el libro misterioso)35Its funny how capcom has gone full redemption arc, meanwhile RGG is doing a full villian arc. things were so different back in 2017....
DaysAhead❔🌌27knowing this: snoop's super generic answers (outside of not knowing/caring about what's going on) feels like a lie by omission
The Bardess19This whole "digitally resurrecting" dead celebrities and icons is very gross to me and I'll never get over that. Let them rest for fuck's sake.
Comfortable Creatures12Honestly Yakuza Kiwami 3 was already the sign for me that the RGG we once knew was just gone so we're not even putting the final nail in the coffin here, we're encasing the coffin in cement.
shintigercurl11i wouldn't want my friend's likeness used like this. especially if said friend was murdered. pac doesn't deserve this kind of disrespect.
Greenalink⚔️10I was really anticipating a "shit hits the fan" moment that Tupac as a digital AI (hologram) was coming on stage instead of Snoop Dogg.
Benasaurus Wrex6I've completely checked out on that game. Seeing Tupac in it today just reinforced for me that this was the right decision.
The Azure Guardian 🔵🛡️6The Yakuza Kiwami 3 situation made me not want to touch any future games from RGG. This shit with Stranger Than Heaven makes me wish I could refund all the RGG games I have from my Steam library.
Richard The S🌀d4Cannot support anything Yakuza or Yakuza adjacent under Yokoyama. The series ended with Nagoshi.
Accipitrina3Holy fuck are they doing horrible things to the legacy of the freedom fighter for the sake of quarterly profit So when do we break out the molotovs
EJ The Third3RGG Studio really thinking they're hot shit to act like they can do this and the kiwami 3 thing without consequences, forgetting the fact that the yakuza series struggled to attract a western audience for several years until 0 came out.
moodytenure.bsky.social2No wonder drake ended up with that ring
Papa Bearman2From the instant that presentation started, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Just Brian2Jesus Christ that’s even more disgustingly worse
Cryptic in QA2It's so genuinely soulless of anyone involved with this decision to even think of green lighting such a thing. Like you aren't endearing me to your studio's work if you're willing to drag corpses on stage for marketing purposes.
ThePatKelly2I swear if Tupac is the first chairman of the Tojo Clan…
Tu Pac announced Stranger Than Heaven, game out Jan 15th, 2027
Wario64108Snoop Dogg on stage for Stranger Than Heaven. "I'm a big fan of SEGA" - Snoop Snoop Dogg says he works very closely with the Tu Pac estate Death Row Games - "bringing to life in a couple months"
porkfriedrice.bsky.social74this is how I find out Tupac is alive???
Queso39God I hope they don't use AI for his voice or something
yeaitsme1015.bsky.social36That honestly is a bit disturbing to me. Also Lap Dogg in the game is also disappointing.
sean24Confirmation Tupac went to Heaven
90daysensei.bsky.social20Hate to be the friend that’s too woke but i don’t love that choice
👾LockeWick👾14The moment any interest I had for the game completely faded away.
wawahoagiefest.bsky.social13Um... Don't know how I feel about this
Zac!9Snoop helping a bunch of dorks make money off a dead artist makes perfect sense.
RealBoomerghost8we got Tupac back before gta6
Cold stone Steve ice cream8I really don't think he did
Now watch Nagoshi add Biggie Smalls to Gang of Dragon.
Dom Rocco7I was really psyched for this game and if this is some AI bastard Tupac I'm out
Chiropi_NocturnaVT6I honestly feel so disturbed by this. Like idc if Snoop is "working closely" with Tupac's estate or whatever; this seems just straight-up disrespectful to me. They're puppeting a dead man as entertainment. How is that okay?
Goblin In A Jacket4tu pac didn't announce shit, he's been dead for decades.
🍉wooooooooods3Either he is completely mute or Snoop’s joining Drake at Oakland
Blaster13603Well, I guess that's one way to piss on someone's grave.
Oddash3Wow. Can you imagine? If the world had spent half the amount of effort and time in keeping Tupac Shakur alive and safe- or hell, even protecting his master recordings from a fire- we could have had Tupac for decades to come 😡 But no, no. This is sooo much more respectful to his memory.
Watcher at the Gate2So dumb and so shady
HeckmanFT7 🐰2sega with all due respect wtf are you doing
I was pretty bummed out by the Tupac reveal for Stranger Than Heaven. Sat down and recorded my thoughts youtu.be/T2pZep-s0Ug?...
Stabbity Style8Kinda just done with RGG at this point. Between this and the Yakuza 3 stuff, not really interested in their games going forward.
gtr63.bsky.social5The fact his reveal at Summer Game Fest was followed by Keighley and the head of RGG on stage just laughing about it kinda says everything about it & both of them as people tbh.
Chris Scullion3Picture Me Rollin' in my grave, basically
The inclusion of Tupac in Stranger Than Heaven alone was already gross enough to make me think it was gonna be a pass but this just confirms that. RGG is so fucking cooked.
DunnieBITES!6I already knew RGG was falling off pretty bad given everything else they’ve been doing, but like This is such a genuine deeply unpleasant surprise and *nobody* seems pleased about it. Like they went “how do we piss off the most amount of people at one time?”
CDJohnny4This just confirms to me that the ONLY true prequel will always be Yakuza 0. Fuck RGG and their new bullshit.
collectaBK73The game would've sold like crazy without him in there??? Like why stake everything on this?
i still can't believe snoop dogg said it just, quote, "made sense" for tupac to be in stranger than heaven. how does it make sense. what the fuck did he mean
PenguinMayhem7The man is 90% weed by volume okay we really need to just stop listening to him and just let him have his weird cooking mama show with the convicted felon.
Grant White4Snoop Dogg sells out for anything, so...
Koter4He’s aware that RGG Studio in the modern era specializes in unnecessarily retconning deaths and figured that Tupac would be a good fit
This isn't the first time something like this has happened in games (Bruce Lee) but somehow including Tupac in Stranger than Heaven who will likely give a performance and have voice lines feels pretty ghoulish. And Snoop on stage claiming "it just makes sense" in no way explained how it made sense.
screaming until the void tells me to shut up5snoop has become a corporate shill in his old age. way more focused on making a buck than having any sense of ethics for the tragically murdered dude that was supposedly his friend 30 years ago it's gross
MellowMagog2To be fair, Snoop is more weed than man.
Curagea Crafts2Dear God, first a on-stage hologram, now this. What happened to Tupac was a tragedy, but people need to accept that, not get involved in digital necromancy. Apparently Ozzy Osbourne’s widow is considering an AI avatar of him for a tour. Milking the dead is so damn appalling.
Not looking forward to when Stranger Than Heaven launches and there's gonna be people going "Yeah I know they are puppeteering the decaying corpses of two beloved celebrities but if you look past that it's a good game!!!!"
- ̗̀ 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️Tuddy ̖́-13Remember when Disney used an earlier iteration of all of this tech to put Peter Cushing in Star Wars Rogue One and people acted like you were overreacting even if you rightly pointed out "hey that's a bit weird"?
Melos 🌟9Like I get it man it's entertainment no ethical consumption under capitalism yadda yadda and all that but people will just uncritically consume the most nakedly evil works and then act sanctimonious when you think that's weird
It's Kero2It was so wild seeing some streamers I like be weirdly dismissive of people bothered by it? Like not actively defending it, just "well it's stupid + funny, and there's so much worse happening in the world to focus on!" Idk, I can dislike multiple things at the same time very easily to dif degrees
HakethKOTB2Wait, I know Tupac but who's the other one
