This wildly ambitious Yakuza 5 co-op mod lets you play together as Kiryu and Ichiban, even folding Like a Dragon's protagonist into the game's cutscenes

Typical, isn't it? You wait ages for a wildly ambitious cooperative mod to arrive, then two come along at once. This week already brought us a refurbished co-op campaign for the original Command & Conquer, and now some bright spark has reworked Yakuza 5 to make it playable with a pal.

That modding whiz is Jhrino. They're responsible for Intertwined Fates, a mod that gives a multiplayer makeover to Kiryu Kazama's penultimate adventure as Yakuza's lead character. The mod enables two players to experience Yakuza 5's entire story together, with player two assuming the role of the series' new protagonist Ichiban.

Intertwined Fates doesn't just drop Ichiban into the world and then pretty much ignore him like the Sonic games do with Tails, either. It does its utmost to integrate him into every part of the experience. Alongside letting Kiryu and Ichiban explore and fight together, the mod adds playable co-op dance battles and co-op hunting. Moreover, it folds Ichiban into Yakuza 5's taxi minigame, idol battles and handshakes, although he isn't playable in these sequences.

The mod even adds Ichiban into the story's cutscenes, and aims to do so as naturally as it can. You can check out the cutscenes below. In the video's description, Jhrino says that they "decided to make [Ichiban] an extra muscle for Shinada and Haruka", so he mainly appears in cutscenes relevant to them.

Admittedly, some of Ichiban's appearances do look a bit contrived in the demo video, but Jhrino also explains that they are "new to animation", and that the quality of the cutscenes improves as the game progresses. This is partly thanks to their own increasing experience, but also due to the help of another modder who goes by Janfon1 who joined the project later.

Still, it's an impressive bit of work. Download and installation instructions can be found over on Nexus Mods. Intertwined Fates is intended primarily as a local co-op experience, but Jhrino says it can be made to function online with a little extra work. And if you don't have another person to play with, the mod supports Ichiban's presence as an AI character, so you can enjoy fighting alongside him even while flying solo.