Shenmue 3

After Shenmue goes on sale in 2017 and if it sells well, I expect a "Director's Cut" version in 2019 before Shenmue IV

 

I'd actually be quite happy if some of the extra side stuff that he couldn't afford to put in on the current budget be added in as a DLC pack later down the line.

 

Twitch livestream to celebrate the end of the fundraiser is going on right now:

http://www.twitch.tv/shenmue3official

 

Paypal confirmed!
(It probably will be implemented soon.)

 

It apparently tapped out at 6.3 million.

Just a shy away from that new battle system implementation at 6.5 apparently.

 

The advanced battle was 6 million. 6.5 was just rag doll physics for battle, which is built into the Unreal Engine that they're using anyway. Not sure if Suzuki-san was aware of this, but maybe they'll end up playing with those options anyway to see if it can be done for less money than they expected.


Post kickstarter thoughts:

1. Echoing some previous comments, I don't think Paypal will help them much. The people who wanted to spend a lot of money on this had the means to pay via Kickstarter. The minority that's stuck with Paypal are probably just going to buy the game, and they'll be lucky if they manage to get a thousand more people interested.
2. I think the people that wanted them to fire Awesome Japan and thought the game could have earned twice as much without them were completely wrong. They pretty much saturated the numbers of people willing to back the project. It had more backers than Bloodstained and Mighty Number 9, two of the biggest and well known kickstarter projects to date. The average amount spent per backer was $91.36, higher than both of the previously mentioned projects. I'm impressed by the numbers considering the limited fan base, and I don't think they could have done much better than this.
3. It's a shame that the trolls managed to snatch up the 1 of a kind items (the watch and original jacket tiers) then cancel their pledges in the last 5 minutes of the campaign. Those items could have gone to people who actually wanted them.
4. My pledge was collected this morning. I pledged more on this than any project I've backed in the past, so I hope everyone enjoys the game. (Including me)

 

I'm not sure. Paypal could help at least a little bit. There are people in the comments who are interested in donating more later, so $6.5 million is probably still attainable.

 

Dreamcast console sales spike following Shenmue III reveal

This is going to massively increase the chance of an HD remake of the original games.

 

I got one for a fiver at a convention a few months back. 3 controllers, 4 VMUs and a handful of games!

Luckily I still had my copy of Shenmue so was able to dig it out right away

 

If that's something they want to do, we'll probably hear more on September 17th or 18th. That's when Tokyo game show starts, and it seems like an appropriate place to announce it. They've been silent regarding Shenmue 3 since the project kickoff meeting on July 29th. It's so early that they won't really have much to show at this point, but since they haven't even dealt with Paypal yet I'm wondering if they're going to wait for something else to happen first.

Another point of interest to me is the "exciting announcement" that the creator of the Yakuza series intends to make. (Source) The article sounds more enthusiastic than usual, which is odd because Yakuza 0 just came out in Japan less than 6 months ago. They won't be announcing another main title in that series yet since that's probably another 2 years out, so I'm not sure what he could be so excited about. It could be another Yakuza spin-off, but I'm hoping that Sega suddenly decided to let one of their teams take a shot at doing something with Shenmue. I wouldn't mind if they let the Yakuza team remaster it, since in ways the series feels like a spiritual replacement for Shenmue that did better for them. This is unlikely, but I wanted to throw it out there anyway.

I'm glad I held onto my Dreamcast all these years, and that it's still in working condition. I'll probably play though Shenmue 1 and 2 again sometime in the next 6 months, since I finished my last play through around January of this year I think. Managed to get the technique scroll from the nearly impossible lucky hit stand after a few hours of playing it.

 

The Yakuza Team are fast workers. Their last two games in the series, Ishin and Zero, were released just a year apart. They likely have multiple teams working on these games though. It seems likely that it could be something non-Yakuza though. I'm guessing that it'll be something original or a Binary Domain sequel. I doubt that they'd just do a remaster, though I guess the Yakuza engine could be used for remakes.

 

Just wanted to follow up on this. There's a thread on Shenmue Dojo that sort of clears it up:
http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48975#p1115057

Summary: There were 11 chapters from the beginning when it was VFRPG, per the GDC Retrospective slides. There were 5 extra chapters were actually bridges, or sub-chapters between the main ones. One of those sub-chapters was the boat chapter that got cut. They mention the train chapter as actually being Chapter 3 which was between Hong Kong and Guilin and also cut. You can see a brief 2 second clip of the train about in a minute or two into the original Project Berkley unveiling video. So it looks like Shenmue 2 leaves off during Chapter 6.

I had seen the Project Berkley video maybe twice, but I didn't know that the train chapter was a thing until just recently. The 3 screenshots that had been floating around since 2002 or so that people thought were of Bailu Village running on Dreamcast were actually of the cut Miao Village on the way there, the loading screen from that is still present on the game disc. (Source)

 

While streaming, sync and I (and others) had a chat about this. There are a few things I'd like to add/correct from that thread:

"Aberdeen" and "Wan Chai" were never separate chapters. Even if they were, it wouldn't make sense for them to be in that order - the first disc takes place primarily in Wan Chai, and the second primarily in Aberdeen. Sometimes references to a "Wan Chai" chapter are made, but never to an "Aberdeen" chapter - it's merely using shorthand to refer to both areas.

The "Chapters 3-6" thing is an oddity. As you mentioned, Miao village was cut from the journey. I believe the journey was originally much longer, for a number of reasons:

Firstly, there's a distinct jump between the scene in which you leave Languishan and the scene in which you meet Shenhua - the surrounding landscape changes quite dramatically, and most noticeably, you've only walked a few hundred metres in-land but manage to end up miles up-stream.

But it's not merely circumstantial - this video shows concept art from Shenmue (used for Shenmue Online), and at the 0:27 mark shows a map of the Shenmue story. Some chapters are numbered:

I can't read (1), but I'm guessing "Yokosuka, Japan" or something along those lines.
(2) reads "?" (boat).
(3)(4) are combined, and I can make out "??" (Wan Chai) and "??" (Kowloon - by the way, this means 'nine dragons').
(6) reads "??" (Bailu).

(5) is the interesting one. It reads "??", Li River. I believe that this was a cut transition chapter, with the train not intended to be a chapter (although it was probably still planned). It also fits geographically, and would explain the jarring transition between scenes.

Chapter 5 would've been the first few scenes of Shenmue II, Disc 4, followed possibly by another boat ride? I think it'd end upon meeting Shenhua, with Chapter 6 continuing from there (Bailu, the journey to).


Note that this is using the 16-chapter model. Using the 11-chapter model, it'd fit exactly as shown in Ryo's notebook:
Chapter 1: Yokosuka
Chapter 2: Hong Kong
Chapter 3: Kowloon
Chapter 4: Guilin

With more to come.

 

I agree with that, and I've never heard anyone suggest otherwise. Per my views earlier in this thread, I had always thought of each region as a chapter. (Yokosuka, Hong Kong, Kowloon, Guilin, etc.)
I always found the weird scenery jump in Guilin to be odd, but I never thought of it as the place where Miao village got cut out. That makes perfect sense.

In somewhat related news, I've hacked some long-needed Codebreaker codes recently. These codes correct the aspect ratio when played on a 16x9 TV. People have been hacking widescreen codes for PS1, PS2 and Gamecube, not sure why nobody has attempted Dreamcast before now.

Shenmue (US version)
Widescreen:
02230250 43800000

Shenmue 2 (EU version)
Widescreen:
0231186C 43800000

Tested on actual hardware.

Go from this:

to this:


Now that I see the screenshots side-by-side, I may have slightly overcompensated. I was testing in an emulator and realized my aspect was set wider than 16x9. If Ryo is too thin, try 43880000 or 43900000 for the second part of each code.

 

I personally look forward to seeing the game being released. I personally contributed on the old SaveShenmue Twitter flooding back in 2012-2013...

 

Everyone who cares has probably seen this already, but I felt it was important to keep this thread floating around with related news.

Shibuya Productions, (who is responsible for the PC port and funding much of the game for an undisclosed amount in the millions) sponsors the annual MAGIC conference in France. There were some screenshots released yesterday, but the real amazing stuff was shown exclusively at the conference yesterday. They showed two videos yesterday; The first was shown during a special Shenmue 3 presentation, and shows off the scenery around Bailu village including the fishing area. Later in the day during a different presentation where they made some miscellaneous announcements about other things, they showed the following video which should be very recognizable to anyone who has played through Disc 4 of Shenmue 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IZ0dub39zY
There are a few versions of this video floating around online, this one seems to be the only complete capture of it right now. It was mentioned that they're not ready to show the updated character models yet. They confirmed (again) that it is their intention to have Ryo look the same as in Shenmue 2. (I'm guessing they're probably saving the unveiling for the first actual trailer.)

Details from the conference are still slowly coming out. A translation of the Q&A with Yu Suzuki is expected in a few days.

 

That's been my fear, as well. I really hope that Yu Suzuki understands that we live in an age where combat and world movement can totally mix.

 

Last week's presentation at MAGIC has been subtitled, you can find it at the usual Shenmue sites.

It doesn't really help you figure out how the game will flow, but Suzuki mentioned he wants to make it less like Virtua Fighter and more like real life. The analogy he gave was something like fighting games move a lot faster than people do in real life, and he wants to make the movements timed more realistically. He also wants to add a lot more close range combat, instead of a lot of fights being in open spaces in the previous game. It sounds like he might want to make battle more realtime though too, which could be closer to what you're looking for. They gave an example of walking around and an enemy starts following you, you can lure them into an area you're familiar with before you let them catch up to you and start fighting. That kind of reminds me of the recent Yakuza games where random enemies on the street will follow you for a bit if you run away from them.