Shenmue 3 Is Coming!
Jennifer
Moderator
There's a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter by Yu Suzuki's Ys Net studio, and they already hit their goal. Sony's also providing money for this, as they revealed at E3, so it's actually going to get made. 
I've been waiting for this for over a decade, as I played Shenmue and Shenmue II on Dreamcast when they first came out (and I played Shenmue 2 on Xbox a few years later). I'm super excited. 
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Since Sony is funding will it be a PS exclusive?
On consoles, most likely. The Kickstarter states it's coming out on PlayStation 4. It's also coming out for Windows PCs though.
Is shenmue series good? if so ill for sure have to try it i saw it on the e3 stream the announcement of shenmue 3
Yeah, it's quite good. The voice acting in the English dubbed version is not that great (the voice acting, especially that of the main character, Ryo Hazuki, is really wooden), but everything else is really good. It's one of the first true sandbox games, where you can do whatever you want in the city of the game, as every business can be entered as long as the game time is at a point where it's open. The second game also added in a really fun fighting method based on the Virtua Fighter mechanics. It's also the game that popularized the term quick time event (it might have even coined that term, as I don't remember hearing it before it), like those found in Telltale's games where you hit a button when a prompt comes on screen sometimes when you're in an action sequence (used mostly in Shenmue when Ryo is crossing dangerous terrain, or at the end of a boss fight).
TBH i played both , and don't really remember them. I do remember that you could drive around in Fork Lift Races in number two, but that is all.
I don't wanna be that guy, but what even is Shenmue and why should I play it?
its a game before your time. It is for us old people.
Um george its not like younger folks like myself cant uh u know learn about older games from older eras in modern day its not like you older folks are only allowed its best if we younger folks from the late 90s-year 2000 learn about these classics since older eras of nes/snes/n64/dreamcast all that kind of stuff has classics we should know about just saying infact i have a nes from my step sister and a n64 i got from gamecrazy years ago and i love the heck out of em
The storyline is Ryo Hazuki trying to find the man who killed his father, but he's just a teenager, so he needs money to leave Japan in order to track the man down. You get to pretty much live Ryo's life throughout the couple of months that it takes to get that money, and then you leave Japan for China. It continues in Shenmue II, where you arrive in China, and have to find shelter and money there, as well as having to track down the whereabouts of your father's killer, and begin to unravel a mystery surrounding that man, your father, and a mysterious cartel known as the Chi You Men.
As for the gameplay, I'll just quote the WIkipedia article, as they sum Shenmue up well: Yu Suzuki coined a genre title for its nonlinear gameplay, "FREE" (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment), for the game, based on the interactivity and freedom he wanted to give to the player. Suzuki intended to achieve this by simulating aspects of real life through the game, such as the day and night system, real-time variable weather effects (unheard of in a game of this kind at the time), fully voiced non-player characters with their own daily schedules, quick time events, and various other interactive elements such as vending machines, arcades, and convenience stores.
Upon typing this, I just realized that I was around Ryo's age (just a few years older than him) when I first played Shenmue, and I'll be much older than him when Shenmue III comes out (as it's slated to come out in 2017, which is 16 years after the release of Shenmue II), while he'll still be the same age. Actually, since it takes place in the 1980's, technically he is much older than me, rather than the other way around. It's weird how fiction works some times.
This is actually funny really!
I believe a few days before E3, @Cope49 and I were speaking about Shenmue needing a New game or at least a Remaster. I guess we forum users have the power to predict the future.
Shenmue is one of Sega's greatest releases of all time. You should definitely play it, It's action packed, badass, and it's quite fun to play... Unlike a certain Wii U made mistake of a good 3DS game, also made by Sega...
George, you're in your damn 20s.
Looking forward to this game. I'm backing it on Kickstarter.
I never played the second one. The first game was fun but the mechanics were pretty screwed up.
Yeah. The tank controls weren't too fun. The second game still had the tank controls, but the fighting mechanics made up for it, as they were based on Virtua Fighter, and really helped to make the fight scenes actually be a lot of fun to play. I dreaded fighting in the first game, but in the second I actually wished there was more of it. Plus, they added the ability to ask a character to take you to a location in the second game, which made going through the area a lot more fun than having to stop and hike back towards the You Arcade all the time to look for the map.
So...I'm pretty annoyed that the game was apparently already funded by Sony...
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/208625-the-kickstarter-for-shenmue-3-broke-records-because-sony-lied-to-backers
The Red Dragon did a video about this that I watched earlier today, maybe you'll reap some enjoyment.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ehvy_7gfEcE
Sony isn't the only source of money available to the project though (and the fact that Sony is providing some money towards the project is not new, as I mentioned it in the opening post of this thread when I posted it last week). The Shenmue 3 kickstarter mentions that there are multiple sources of outside funding available to the team, but Ys Net can't reveal them due to contractual obligations (there are likely grants or angel investors involved as well as Sony and the kickstarter funding). The Shenmue games were notorious for costing a ton of money to make and then not recouping even a fraction of their cost. It's not surprising that Sony wouldn't be willing to foot the whole bill.
It's no different than many game Kickstarters who went on Kickstarter to get additional funding to make a game after already getting a grant to pay for a portion of the game. The only difference is that it's Sony that's providing money towards the project, and people are blowing things out of proportion because they think that just because Sony is a giant corporation they're somehow willing to completely pay for everything. That's a very naive view, and isn't true of how the video game industry works (there are often multiple sources for games, even those funded by major publishers, such as additional funding by angel investors. Costume Quest 2 is a good example of this, as the credits reveal that it was partially funded by Majesco, a major publisher, but it was also partially funded by Dracogen, an angel investor).
Judging from the wording by Ys Net that mentions that there is more than one funding source, the Sony money and the Kickstarter money are likely only a piece of the larger pie, and all of those pieces are likely needed to make the game of a level of quality that Yu Suzuki is happy with.
In fact, according to Sony, their involvement in this game was simply to provide a platform to advertise the game at E3 and to help with marketing (so their comments about wanting to gauge fan reaction to the Kickstarter isn't nefarious, as it simply has to do with how they market the game for Ys Net, and that's a perfectly reasonable approach toward the Kickstarter campaign when your role in the project at that point is simply as a marketing firm). They're not even contributing money towards actual develpment costs at this point.
Sony explains involvement with Shenmue
Thread: Shenmue lll
Anyone here looking forward to it?
Played the first two back when they were released and was gutted when SEGA pulled the plug on it. Seems like Kickstarter will bring it back to life in some capacity. I can't see it being as detailed as the first two as that would require more money, but I do see it as the precursor to many other games Including the style Telltale now use. So I do suspect we're in for something similar, but with a more open world element.
I'm surprised more people on here aren't not into this. It's basically like a Telltale game only with actually gameplay. The story is pretty basic, but the sheer scale of the world and story a lot of the characters in it have make it something completely different.
It just shows how dumb people are in the media to be honest. Adam Boyes stood on stage and explained all when he announced it.
A lot of people weren't around for the Dreamcast and Xbox releases. It's been 12 years since the European Xbox Shenmue II release (and 13 for the North American release), and longer for the original Dreamcast releases of the two games. That's a long time to be out of the public eye. And without a re-release, it's unlikely most people will get a chance to play the saga until Shenmue 3 is released.
Hopefully the success of the Kickstarter will make Sega go back to their long rumored plans of making an HD remake of the original Shenmue, as it would definitely help to raise awareness of the series.
Yeah, the thought had crossed my mind. I forget how long that actually is...heh, I was a kid back then!
I think SEGA would be crazy not to re-release them at this stage.
Yu Suzuki has explained the Rapport system:
"It will be a feature that governs Shenhua’s attitude towards you, depending on your conversations or actions you take. I believe it will provide a new twist to Shenmue."
So, there's going to be an aspect where you can choose Ryo's responses and she'll respond to them depending on what you choose, similar to Telltale's tailored dialog choices. This is the number one aspect I'm excited for about this game. I've said before that the reason I like Telltale's games, even though they don't affect many major events, is that they affect the way the people in the group treat the main character. I've always given Shenmue as a specific example, as I always wished I could change the way Ryo interacts with Nozomi. Now that aspect is actually in the sequel.
Is Shenmue and Shenmue 2 worth playing? I've never played them before.
There are some things that didn't age too well. They have tank controls, where you press up to have Ryo walk, although you can hold the shoulder button to run which helps elevate it a bit over Grim Fandango's tank controls. The first one also made you wait for the next day in the game for the in-game time for when you have to do a quest by requiring you to either idle in the game or busy yourself with minigames. This was fixed in the sequel. Most of the first game's fights were also quick time events. There were some actual fighting, with Virtua Fighter style fighting, but it didn't occur too often. The sequel expanded this by having street fights, which actually used the VIrtua Fighter fighting (from VF3, which was new at the time). They still had quick time events in fights, but these were mostly done at the end of fights (which, unfortunately, could be even more frustrating). The voice acting in the English version also was always pretty terrible. In the 1990's and early 2000's, Sega's games never had good voice acting in the English versions (House of the Dead's "suffer like G did?" is a meme for a reason), and Shenmue and Shenmue II were no exception.
The sandbox gameplay, story, music, and artwork makes up for the flaws though. They're flawed classics (as many classic games are), but they definitely deserve their space among the other video game classics. They're both well worth playing (especially since a lot of the story of the third is set up in the first two games, considering the third game is set to continue right on the cliffhanger left at the end of the second game). I'm actually replaying through the first Shenmue now.
Don't buy the first two off ebay etc. Not yet at least. I'm certain SEGA must of seen the backing for S3 and I'm hoping, that means they'll release the first two in HD shortly. They'd be leaving easy money on the table if not in my opinion.
It's a shame to see SEGA the way they are now. They still throw out the good game here and there, but...well, it never seems enough.