Sega has officially taken the wraps off the next Yakuza game--and it contains a major change for the action series. During a press conference today series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi unveiled the new game as Yakuza 7. It aims to be a "watershed" moment for the Yakuza series, Nagoshi said.

The game, which is set in Yokohama, features Ichiban Kasuga as the main character. Kasuga apparently is a big fan of Square Enix's Dragon Quest series, and Sega was able to work out a deal to be able to talk about the Dragon Quest franchise in Yakuza 7.

In a big change for the Yakuza series, it appears the combat now plays out in a turn-based system. You can see this in action in the video below. Interestingly, the developers, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, released an April Fools video this year that joked that the Yakuza combat would change to turn-based. As it turns out, it really is.

Nagoshi said during the press conference that he hopes fans will welcome the change to the combat system, and if they don't, the developers will consider switching back with the next release.

Nagoshi: classic Yakuza game format reached one complete style so wanted to try totally different to jump. Our experts of action game creation made this RPG with their flavor; hope fans welcome this change. If not, happy to change back to action game for future releases. — Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) August 29, 2019

Yakuza 7 will release on January 16, 2020 in Japan for PlayStation 4. The game will be released in the West later in 2020. You can check out the first trailer in the embed above.

The newly launched Yakuza 7 website contains numerous new images for the game. Click through the images in the gallery bellow to see them full size.

We'll have more details on Yakuza 7 in the time ahead, so keep checking back for more.