This is Yakuza Kiwami 2, and for the last month this screenshot has been stuck to
the side of my brain. Today we’re going to figure out why this bottle says Terrified,
and then I'm going to redesign this label in a more realistic Scotch bottle style, because
Japan a couple of years ago, but apart from some classic anime in those university days,
I'm not particularly immersed in Japanese pop culture. There is something uniquely cool though
about seeing a place you've travelled to in real life recreated in a game world. Like,
hey, I’ve eaten at this sushi chain! I went to Don Quixote to get snacks! Unlike GTA V with
its satirical world design featuring shops like Cluckin’ Bell, and brands like Pißwasser lager,
the environments in Yakuza feel true to life and not tongue in cheek, even if the sub stories are
surreal and absurd. Though, since I don’t read Japanese, I could be wrong about this. What I did
notice though, was the product placement. Not only in the restaurant chains and stores, but also the
alcohol. Many scenes in the game are set in bars and nightclubs, and all the liquor in this game
comes from Beam Suntory. In fact, in Kiwami 1 and Zero, you get a little sales spiel
after you order. A number of cut scenes too, feature these real-life label designs fairly
conspicuously. However, outside of cut scenes the bottles feature generic, fictitious labels. And
Kiwami 2 sticks out for having labels exclusively in English, which is where things begin to get
weirder. Eventually, I managed to locate the texture bitmap for these bottles.
At first this seems like complete word salad. Some of them are quite funny – apart from Terrified,
we have Angel in the swamp? [Somebody once...] But taken as a group – there is a pattern. Block Party
and Cardigans are both band names – and with a little google-fu, it appears all of these are
either names of bands or tracks. Including these three track listings from the album "Black Swan"
by Story of the Year. I personally can’t recommend seeking out these tracks unless you are super
nostalgic for the hard rock of the George Bush era, but I think now we can safely conclude what
these labels are all about. The Yakuza series is designed for a Japanese audience first, most of
whom aren’t fluent readers of English. This makes a perfect opportunity for the designers to slip in
a little easter egg like this to shout out some of their favorite playlist tracks. This isn’t
exclusive to the Yakuza games – but is unusual to see in English. First person shooters like
Call of Duty often have level designs with assets in Arabic and other scripts which the majority of
their player-base can’t read, and so a number of easter eggs and hidden messages are there,
a number which you can find on Reddit. But back to this label design. Terrified Whisky just
made me laugh. Also it’s 2020 – let’s just that this resonates for some reason. Having researched
and written a cocktail book last year, I’ve become quite well versed in the style of liquor
bottle designs. So, I thought why not give this a little more of a realistic label design in the
style of a true scotch whisky? Starting with the words: single cask is a thing, but it’s pretty
rare. Not something you’d find on a mass-market 10-year old scotch. So I’ve changed it to single
malt and changed the font to Engravers Std. Whisky bottles love this style of type, always
widely tracked. Then we have the name, Terrified. I felt something a little heavier, a nice chunky
serif would be appropriate. After experimenting a bit, I went with Eczar from Rosetta Type Foundry.
It’s free to download via Google Fonts. It’s a fantastic multiscript typeface, that comes in
multiple weights and has some of the character of Harbour by Alias, which has become a common go-to
for premium packaging design in the last decade. I’ve tweaked the layout to improve the visual
hierarchy – we want the eye to go to Terrified first, then aged 10 years. At the top I’ve thrown
in a “signature” from the lead singer turned master distiller, Dan Marsala, to give things
a little faux-authenticity. And at the bottom, I wanted to keep that wonderfully obtuse copy – but
to give it a bit of visual interest, a common trope of these labels is to put a screened-back
illustration of some kind, and since the album is called Black Swan, let’s run with that theme.
I threw a few easter egg references in myself – the original bottle features the name of a real
Scottish distillery, which I changed to Glenallen, a town in the state where the band originated.
Finally, I gave the elements a bit of a shuffle – and added the mandatory label info at the bottom
for verisimilitude. Now we can mock up our label in Photoshop, to see how it might look in real
life and there. Something nobody was asking for! What am I even doing with my life? Well, this
was a weird video. Normally I make videos about design on this channel, so if you’re interested,
please do take a look around – if you enjoyed it, say good things to the algorithm by hitting the
YouTube buttons. My name is Linus, and this has been going down a strange rabbit hole.
Thank you for watching and I hope I’ll see you in a future video.