Stranger Than Heaven's Act 1: Kokura Trailer Follows Makoto Daito to Japan

SEGA has released Stranger Than Heaven’s Act 1: Kokura story trailer, beginning a series of previews devoted to the game’s different eras. The October 16 upload focuses on Makoto Daito’s journey to Japan and the difficult arrival awaiting him in Kokura, Fukuoka, in 1915.

This is a closer introduction to the beginning of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s five-decade story. SEGA’s accompanying description identifies Daito’s passage aboard the merchant Orpheus’s ship as the starting point; the game follows his life through 1965, rather than remaining in this first city.

Watch SEGA’s Act 1: Kokura trailer

The video above is the original SEGA upload, published October 16. Its story focus is the crossing to Japan and the first destination. SEGA says further era trailers will follow, but has not supplied their individual release dates in this announcement.

Why does Makoto leave for Japan?

SEGA’s September character and story introduction gives the background to this journey. Daito has an American father and a Japanese mother. After suffering discrimination in the United States, he takes the risk of stowing away on a ship leaving San Francisco for his mother’s homeland.

On board, he encounters Orpheus, the merchant who commands the vessel, and Yu Shinjo, another stowaway seeking a different life. These relationships belong to the publisher’s established premise; they are not all new character announcements made on October 16.

The three central cast pairings are Yu Shirota as Makoto Daito, Dean Fujioka as Yu Shinjo and Snoop Dogg as Orpheus. SEGA describes Shinjo as a resourceful companion who joins Daito in trying to survive. Orpheus challenges Daito’s expectations of Japan and recognizes his musical ability, connecting the arrival story to the game’s later entertainment-business thread.

Where does Kokura fit in the five-era story?

The official game site names five settings, each tied to a different point in Daito’s life:

Act 1 introduces the first of those settings. The list describes the wider game, not five locations all newly revealed in this trailer. SEGA’s era-based presentation also does not establish the number of playable missions or how the finished game divides time between them.

Release date, platforms and Game Pass

SEGA’s announced release date is January 15, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC through Steam and Xbox on PC. Its original trailer description also lists Xbox Cloud and Xbox Game Pass, and the Xbox announcement confirms Xbox Play Anywhere support.

Those are publisher-announced platforms and services. The sources checked here do not establish one universal unlock hour, identical regional store timing or eligibility across every Game Pass tier. Check the official listing for your platform and country for those details. Our release calendar tracks the announced date alongside other upcoming games.