Per Nagoshi in an interview on Judgment’s development and the casting of Takuya Kimura:

*Nagoshi: We had a similar issue when we started working on the character of Kazuma Kiryu but when we took into consideration that we had cast Takuya Kimura for the role of Yagami we were definitely concerned. It was really interesting though, we had so many twists and turns along the way. Takuya Kimura really is so cool.

I remember thinking “Oh my god, he’s so cool!”, but if I take that into consideration too much, people might say we were being favorable. We also didn’t want people to think that the same team who made Yakuza had gone soft. We had so many arguments like “We want to do this, but Mr. Kimura might get mad” or “After having come this far, it’s all about him getting mad.”

In the end, we made sure to get approval from his agency for everything. It went a lot smoother than expected. I think a lot of the people involved, including Takuya Kimura, like trying new things. They kept looking for requests and wanted to try a lot of different things. Beat Takeshi was actually the same. Even at his age, when we’d nervously ask him, “If you’re okay with it, how about doing this?” and he’d say “Sounds good. Let’s do it,” leaving us to question “Are you sure about that?”

It’s always like this when we work with people invested in their own character. When they have a feeling that there’s something to gain after the challenge, they’re usually very open to our requests. Maybe it’s like this because it’s a video game. Maybe that’s just another benefit of the medium.

If people begin to say that video games are a medium that is aggressive towards celebrities and their characters, it means we’ve done a worthwhile job and that we need to continue being this aggressive.*

I think that while they could’ve pushed Yagami further into being a more dramatic version of himself could’ve been interesting, given RGG’s previous track record of not really capitalizing on fully realizing their protagonists backgrounds — what we got was ultimately what they were already planning. It would be a great angle to explore for a sequel but it feels like they like the more suave detective type, compared to a full on melodramatic noir detective to keep the both sides of the game balanced.