Tupac is being digitally resurrected again, this time in a video game. Not everyone likes it

Jeff Gerstmann couldn't facilitate but express mirth disbelievingly endure hebdomad at the announcement that the late, legendary rapper Tupac Shakur would make a digital appearance in an upcoming video game.

"It's a fairly absurd thing to happen," the longtime games journalist and commentator said. "It struck me as like, 'Oh, what are they doing? This is ridiculous.'"

He was far from the only one. Gamers and influencers watching Summer Game Fest, an annual smorgasbord of video game trailers and marketing hype, mostly expressed shock and confusion at the inclusion of the influential American rapper and political activist, who died in 1996.

The game, Stranger Than Heaven, is under development by the Japan-based Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, owned by publisher Sega. Set over a roughly 50-year period in the early 1900s, it serves as a prequel to the long-running Like a Dragon series of games, also known as Yakuza.

But the announcement was the latest in a series of creative decisions that have earned the studio a growing amount of skepticism — as well as questions about whether Shakur's estate has the rapper's lasting legacy in mind.

No further details about Shakur's role in the game were revealed, other than he's an original character named Amaru, after his real middle name.

"RGG Studio is treating this integration with the utmost respect for his legacy, crafting every aspect in close collaboration and without the use of AI, including his character design based on archival footage and photographs," the developers said in a press release.

Snoop Dogg, who also appears in the game along with his son Cordell Broadus, said he is working "very closely" with the Tupac estate on the project.

"It just made sense to put him in this game, because his likeness and his spirit still lives on. I just felt like it was so connected to what we’re doing," he said.

RGG Studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama told Game Informer magazine that the team sought approval both from the estate and Shakur's surviving family.

Tupac's inclusion is less surprising to Gerstmann given the involvement of Snoop, who has been omnipresent in pop culture over the years, from Super Bowl ads to carrying the Olympic torch.

"As much as Snoop Dogg has had a storied and legendary career and put out a lot of great music, he has not been the most choosy with the projects that he affiliates himself with over the years," he said. 

Gerstmann worries, though, that if Shakur's likeness were to make more frequent posthumous appearances, "it cheapens the mystique" around even such a legendary artist.

Shakur's estate is currently controlled by music executive Tom Whalley, who worked with the rapper before his death. Shakur's mother, activist Afeni Shakur, was the estate's previous executor before her death in 2016.

In 2022, Shakur's sister sued Whalley, accusing him of "blatant violations" of his executor's duties, including embezzling millions of dollars and withholding personal items of "tremendous sentimental value," according to multiple reports.

That estate has been behind some of the more controversial recent uses of Tupac's likeness, including a series of photos sold as NFTs in 2021.

"You're left with the impression that Tupac's estate is not being governed with the most respect and care for that legacy," said Gerstmann.

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Lex Luddy, a games journalist based in Ireland, says RGG Studio's games have built a reputation over the years of making games that are "inherently very cool."

But that reputation has taken a hit in recent years, and its output has become less consistent since the departure of its previous designer and chief creative officer Toshihiro Nagoshi in 2021.

"The featuring of Tupac feels very out of touch in a way that ... Doesn't make them look good," she said.

Luddy noted that this isn't the first digital recreation of Tupac, pointing to the artist's infamous so-called hologram performance at Coachella 2012.

But she said these conversations are becoming "a lot more contentious" now that AI-generated videos have become more advanced, and anxieties have grown around just how widely the dead can be reanimated into the future.

Jeffrey Ogbar, a history professor and founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music at the University of Connecticut, says it's not unusual to raise questions as people find new ways to represent larger-than-life personalities who have since died.

"As these new technologies emerge … it may take some adjustment to become comfortable with how we might re-imagine deceased figures. But we've had this, I think, all through history," he said, pointing to portraits, sculptures, even poems and songs as similar expressions.

Luddy also noted that featuring Shakur in a game like Stranger Than Heaven could be read as distasteful, given its focus on gangland crime, even if early 20th-century Japan is a long way from the U.S. West Coast in the '90s.

"I don't think they've fully thought through the implications of that," he said.

Ogbar — who met a young Shakur at a college event in 1990 — has expressed disappointment at Shakur's outsized popular association with his years focusing on gangster rap, compared with his earlier work, which rang louder with his socially progressive, revolutionary politics.

But he said Shakur's complicated history "allows us to, in some ways, pick and choose what part of his politics we want to amplify."

Ogbar said Shakur's "hyperbolic and boastful" gangster rap persona could be a good fit with Stranger Than Heaven, which previews show to be full of stylish, yet bloody street-level brawling.

Gerstmann came away impressed after playing a demonstration of the game that was offered to games media, saying it's offering a new and "dramatically different" approach to hand-to-hand combat compared with RGG Studio's previous titles.

"I think they're doing a really neat thing here, and maybe once people are done talking about Tupac, we'll have some actual interest in the game itself."

Journalist

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