Don't get me wrong, DOA is kind of fun, but why use the copy if you have the creator of the original as your director and producer?

Haha, I was just joking about DOA. :) I can't remember a fight against any women in Shenmue anyway. There was Yuan, but as you know it depends which version of Shenmue you were playing. That would leave Dou Niu's breast physics.

I think moves that have potential against multiple opponents would be interesting. Like throws that worked on two or three enemies simultaneously. I know some techniques tended to accidently hit multiple people sometimes. I think I knocked out three attackers in 70 man battle with a well placed elbow assault once but, besides that, I'd love to see some moves with those kinds of proficencies intentionally. I remember Wild Throw was also meant for multiple opponents since you could use the falling body as a shield/knock down tool when surrounded - more stuff like that y'know. :)

When it comes to fighting games; DOA's simple rock-paper-scissors based movesets (strikes-throws-counters) is astoundingly good, because it's simple yet adds depth - simplicity that lends to depth is always the pivotal key with gameplay in fighting games. The designs of DOA can be silly and overly sexual sure, but it's a lot smoother than Virtua Fighter, though Virtua Fighter's block system and combo restarts are very technical in higher level play. I never liked Tekken because the juggle mechanic was so exaggerated, but I guess that's its original mechanic - the exaggerated juggle. It always seemed odd when Hwoarang's flick of the knee could keep you in the air for eight hits. I mean that knee must have a gorilla's pelvic strength.

I also hope Yu attracts other investors (should be able to thanks to the Kickstarter's success) and we get the high battle ground mechanic which is probably Virtua Fighter 3's layered tier stages. I suspect the Shenmue team probably had tried this mechanic earlier but ran into bugs with it.

http://www.shenmuedojo.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=16&pos=14

This old beta screenshot on the Dojo website shows what could be an early high ground battle (Ryo is fighting on the uphill road to his house) which obviously changes the timing and distance with moves in free battle moves. What was it Musashi Miyamoto said; "You must look down on the enemy, and take up your attitude on slightly higher places."

I think Awesome Japan actually hurt the campaign. Things mentioned above like the Sony funding should have been put to bed within hours and not weeks. It felt like no preparation had gone into making the campaign at all past writing up the Kickstarter page and interviewing 5 people. I honestly think you could have just put up a page with a title just saying Shenmue III and got the same amount of money.

In regards to that misinformation thing, I think Sony have more to answer for there. Cedric Biscay himself said (I'll try and find the place/link tomorrow - think it was Twitter?) that he was irritated at Sony's statement. Sony obviously wanted the good PR without any of the risk: They knew it would be considered a low move.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful that Sony gave Shenmue a chance, but they should have been straight with their statements and said "we've got the marketing but the most of it has to be done through the Kickstarter ie. the Kickstarter is no gimmick." Sony themsleves should have put it to rest. Sony's guy in that early interview saying "we're behind Shenmue all the way" was just a vague brush off which was easily misinterpreteted. I'm sure Yu can't criticize them publicly for risk to the project so he has to just go silent. Awesome Japan may have been able to address this somewhat and sooner but hell, even today there are articles going up post-Kickstarter claiming Sony are backing the majority of the project. What was that Forbes one? -$20 million they said.

The bottom line for me: I'm not fond of either Sony, the media or Awesome Japan. Two failures by greed and one by incompetence. Thankfully, Yu, Cedric and the fans were so capable they made up for those three miscarriages and then some.

Forbes are still spreading a little negativity... smh. Still, I'd be interested to know if there's any truth in that "$20 million funding secured" claim and who their source(s) are.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/07/18/shenmue-3-kickstarter-campaign-ends-on-6-33-million/

'Shenmue 3' Kickstarter Campaign Ends On $6.33 Million

Following the surprise announcement at this year’s E3, Shenmue 3 has managed to amass $6.33 million for its Kickstarter campaign becoming the most funded game on the site.

Considering that many thought that Shenmue 3 would never get made, from a fan standpoint this is all rather amazing. However the important thing to realize is that a lot of crowdfunded games use the initial fan based investment to bankroll the actual game’s budget from private venture capitalists.

In the case of Shenmue 3 it sounds like the success of this Kickstarter campaign is being used to underwrite a far larger sum to get the game made.

Specifically that the main privately funded budget will be in the ballpark of $20 million (according to my sources at least) in addition to the already amassed Kickstarter sum, which would make sense considering that this will be an open world game.

While studios like CD Projekt RED were able to fund games like Witcher 3 for a similar amount of money, they were entirely self-published. In this case, Shenmue 3 will receive most of its budget from a third party and they will likely have ideas on how the game should be made.

It’s this top down and detached decision making that can lead to dangerous results – as those making the decisions don’t understand how the game has been built.

To give you an analogy, it’s like someone ignoring the architect of a house and changing the layout. Then getting surprised when the whole thing comes crashing down as the foundations couldn’t support the changes.

A lot of budgetary overspend tends to occur due to this in game development and I am hoping that Yu Suzuki and his team will be able to fend this type of interference off. In some ways the popularity of the Kickstarter should give the team more bargaining capital in terms of high level decision making but we shall see.

Regardless of all this I am just glad Shenmue 3 is finally getting made and obviously wish the team the best of luck in their endeavors.

According to my source his source was his arse. He bent over and stsuck his head as far as he could up there and asked about Shenmue 3's budget. The resulting echo kinda sounded like $20 million. Hey, at least, that's what my source said.

Really ? I remember Shenmue I & II had impressive positive critics despite a lot of weaknesses spotted by the reviewers. Considering the modern gaming has not evolved that much, Shenmue can still distinguish itself from the competition if YsNet make it right.

I agree with this.

I think it's too early to tell what kind of game Shenmue 3 will be like. Certainly, if the game is going for intrinsic detail rather than wide expanses of area we might find it holds significance for the industry regardless of its scope.

When you look at a game like Fallout and Elder Scrolls, the last versions of those games had so many repeated textures. There was certainly an impression of scope with those games. Yet every cave, every house, was just so similar that the sandbox started to become more and more transparent. You could really feel them pasting these assets in their own level editors. Some of the ruined building models in Fallout 3 were repeated endlessly. It was immersion breaking for me.

Shenmue 1 and 2 had their own share of repetition, I'm thinking of the warehouses and perhaps the kowloon buildings, but those areas would realistically be unitary. Poor rural villages, such as the ones potrayed in Skyrim, would not be.

If you've ever lived in a rural community for a while you'll know how individualized people's lives are in those areas. They build their own huts, cabins and barns. There are no fast regulations. They collect things - oddities. They have a lot of character. It's not like a city where the premises are exact in measurements and in the plots of their land. From my own experiences with poor, rural communities, I remember one family who had saved in their barn loft the shedded skin of a black viper that some grandfather had killed out in the woods on a fishing trip when he was a young man. It had spat at him and lunged whilst he knelt by the water. The way they'd told it, the grandfather managed to block the snake strike with the fishing rod, scamper away, and then return to pulverize its head with a stone. The family kept the skin nailed to the dry wood in the attic space as a reminder; had this viper killed the man in his youth, none of them would have been born. They kept this piece in the attic next to a deer skull and an empty honey comb, both of which also been picked up over the years by some ancestor. Amongst these items there was also an early television from the 1920s one of them had bartered for at a recent market.

For me, this rural village setting gives Shenmue 3 great potential where orginal assets are concerned; personal touches on the houses, slums/grottos, natural scenery. I think it could do nicely. It would be a great contrast from the sprawling sandboxes prevalent today that feel so empty. I think that all it would take would be the love and attention of a great team, and that's what we've got. There will be critics, there always are, but Shenmue 3 has plenty of potential. I can see reviews being good at least, or, hopefully, great.

While it's clear that the journalist that wrote this had no idea what he was talking about, it's pretty cool that they had Aberdeen, Guilin, and and Kowloon in these screenshots. I can't tell where Ryo is in the two pictures that are farthest left.


On those shots I'd guess:

The furthest left is an early design for the thin street which you pursue Zhu's assistant first time you meet him when he gets captured by Yuan's thugs. Think it's called White Dynasty Qr. That's the street with the long QTE amidst the market stalls in S2. It's also the place where you can do the Chawan Sign and get the cutscene with the abused boy.

The second is another early scene from S2. It's where Ryo jumps the fence following Wong at the beginning. (Notice how the fence is broken underneath which is where Wong crawls in through). Early textures. Fence looks amateur. Gives hope to those early concept renders for Shenmue 3 eh?

F***CK Sega I'm not supporting this. They blocked me from facebook for asking about Shenmue 3 several years ago.

Hahaha, is that true? What did you say exactly? Was it abusive? I hope it was.

When Shenmue is finally over perhaps we should all just block Sega. A timed blocking much like 30onthe3rd was. We could have banners.

Love the new avatar Techno ;)

You beat me to it.

I was going to say: I'm loving these Yu's stare of death images the fans have been producing from all his various livestreams.

EDIT: The feigned enthusiasm from that girl is amazing. Her reaction goes kind of blank after the female boss dressed in lingerie turns up for a while.

5. Was Virtua FIghter 3 for Saturn actually completed? I've heard rumours that AM2 ported the game in some fashion to the Saturn before Sega pulled the plug on it and got Genki to do a rush-job port to the Dreamcast.

I think this video has some footage at one point. Or a still. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hk84nSsAv4

I'll add my own questions for the OP a little later. About to go to work.

Don't have much time so I'm going to boil this down.

Shenmue is a great game. Even after all this time it's still one of the most engrossing games I've ever played. A new Shenmue is exactly what this stagnant industry needs. No idea if it'll be great again, but if there's anyone who can pull it off it's Yu Suzuki. Peace.

I have said all I wish to or will say on the subject. Carry on.
Hey, you mind me asking you a question? It's completely fine if you don't, given that you have said all that you wanted on the subject but I'm just curious.

Do you feel Shenmue so far did have bad representation of the fairer sex? Personally I feel there's a good range in Shenmue. I mean the women are all different from each other. The only one that might possibly be a danger so far is Joy, but it's not impossible to imagine the daughter of a well to do business empire get involved with the wrong crowd. Everything about her, from her scant clothing to her over the top dyed hair, screams a desire to make an impression. I also think that some women are like that, not every one of course, but some may be. Teenagers especially can be.

What are your thoughts on Shenmue's depiction of women so far? (It's hard to talk about this new ChiYouMen leader since we haven't really seen her yet properly) But only if you don't mind me asking, of course.

Also, every time I see your avatar I want to play Skies of Arcadia again.

I don't personally mind the depiction at all. But then, I'm male, and not really the one who would be impacted by the depiction. Even among women, not everyone will mind it either. But for those who do, I advocate their right to voice concerns about it - just as I advocate Yu's right to depict his characters however he wants - I actually feel Shenmue has some decent to good depictions of women personally. But I think a lot of women would like to see characteristics other than simply "strong and beautiful" in video games.

Someone (can't remember who) once said something (poorly paraphrasing from memory) along the lines of, "Batman gets to be strong, handsome, scarred, dark, conflicted, a brilliant detective, intelligent, haunted, and arguably psychotic. But somehow just being 'strong' is considered enough when it comes to most female characters." I may not personally feel that way about Shenmue or other games, but I can totally understand some women feeling that way.

The reason I don't want to talk about it further though, is because I've been through it many times and been called a "white knight" or a "social justice warrior" for my trouble. So while that may or may not happen here, I just don't have the emotional or mental energy to engage with the topic and really discuss it frankly. Online debates never result in anyone changing their views anyway (not that I want to change anyone's views) and it's such a controversial issue that my social anxiety and depression don't really allow me to brave the storm of discussion for long before I feel overwhelmed and sad, so I just don't usually.

So with that said, I will bow out of the discussion again.

P.S. I play SOA at least once every couple of years on Gamecube. :) Wish they'd release it again, in any form.

Oh, I ain't going to call you a SJW or anything like that. If you feel compassionate about how it may affect others there's nothing wrong with that. I don't see you throwing abuse or anything. Wasn't Elaine, (can't quite remember the spelling of that name) the tai chi expert in Shenmue 2, a fairly good portrayal of a 'normal' woman?

Come to think of it, there was actually a fair lot of NPCs which also seemed 'fairly adjusted/unsensationally designed'... I suppose. :) Never really thought about it... :-k Yeah I agree with you. I think Shenmue's pretty good with that kind of thing.

In regards to SoA: I remember the game actually having a feasible difficulty level as well. Like it was a fair challenge, although the dungeon grinding was on another level. God, I remember looking for that earth dungeon after the tribal village. It took me so long to find the two markers. One I found straight away but the other... man I was just sailing around for about 5 hours of world map grinding to find it. I thought ship battles and the sense of freedom were excellent in Skies. I loved the VMU stuff as well. So good. God I want to play it now.

But please do not fall in the trap of a headline crying sexist / misogynistic game when in context for Shenmue, these are adamantly untrue. They have not been sexist in the past and I don't doubt Suzuki will remain consistent with his portrayal of women for the future.

I think Anonymous81 is okay with Shenmue's depiction of women for the most part. I don't think you have to be concerned.

I'd agree with you Ben. I don't much mind Moore attacking Naka since I think they're both shallow, like two wild dogs ripping away at each other. However, businessmen like Moore really get to me since they prey on the talent of others and everything is a commodity for them. No respect for the human condition. A bit like Nietzsche's lion but a little disorientated and carried by the strength of others primarily.

Some of you get real mob-like when it comes to newcomers.

Yes. In the other topic there was a difficulty in translating some of the language. I believe Rakim had trouble with, "モノ作りは本当に作りたい人が作るべきで、それが鈴木裕氏を中心としたクリエイターだということです。"

Let me put my translating skills to use.

It means: "I ain't gonna do shit for Shenmue but please love me. I'll only take a stand on things that graphs allow me to love and I have no imagination. If I was a bird I wouldn't use my wings; I would crawl with my beak through the dirt. Sometimes it is cold at night."

Hope this helps everyone.

Thanks Yokosuka. Puts me at ease. That was one of the best parts of Shenmue. I always thought that the free time between appointments and events literally forced the player to spend some free time at least in an arbitrary direction. That was why the free practice was always very satisfying, felt like you were putting extra time in, "getting work in" so to speak, in the moments you couldn't advance. Felt realistic to practice in life in that respect. You never knew when it was going to come in handy and it felt like you were preparing for the future. There was a kind of balance between the skill of pulling the move off manually yourself and a grinding mechanic in which the move got stronger. Satisfying for the achievement to be balanced between skill/automatic-power in that respect.

The ambiance and atmosphere in those car parks was always great. Never seen anything in any other game quite like it. Peaceful.

I saw the topic of this title and thought someone would be complaining about Shenmue's animation but then I saw Sonoshee was the poster and knew it wouldn't be negative.

As for the animation it looks like it would have been pretty crisp. Shenmue doesn't really get enough love from independent animators. I suppose we could ask him to finish the animation but it takes to months to make cartoon shorts so I guess he'd have to really want to. Luckily, since he seems like he's inspired right now maybe we should take the opportunity to ask him now.

A bit of speculation beneath.

I imagine the time skip is to compensate for the fact that Shenmue 2's ending can be anywhere between January to? (June perhaps?). Considering the range of Shenmue 2's ending date, I would imagine the time skip will be set after the last possible date you could finish Shenmue 2 in order to have a fresh start in regards to the date the game starts on.

That could potentially mean, for the people who got through S1 and S2 quickly, that Ryo would appeared to have spent several months around Shenhua's house before the start of the game. (Since the start dates of Shenmue 3 players have to be the same regardless of the date S2 players finsihed the game - especially since we've skipped a generation, have no save files and we're on new consoles.)

Most likely it means Shenmue 3 will, just like S1 and S2, have a time cap and bad ending to prevent players from taking Shenmue 3 past its allotted months. From the screen shots we've seen so far many of the plants/flowers are in full bloom, so we're looking at Summer (1987) when the game starts. June-July-August. Perhaps late Summer. This matches the ending dates for Shenmue 2. Anything past this would have Autumn colors. Since the earliest footage has full bloom colors rather than an Autumn set, it seems this is the case.

The only other alternative would be literally an entire year, to allow the game to begin in the Spring in 1988, which seems a little far fetched. The significance of discovering another culture for Ryo, and for the player simultaneously, would have less of an impact if he's lived there a whole year. That synonymy between Ryo and the player in S2 allowed the experience to be new for both of them, Ryo can be surprised for the player as he stands in for the player, to some extent. I'm pretty sure it will be the Summer of 1987.

Now let's take bets on the day everyone. Saturday... no Sund-

If any of you get the chance and you're on twitter send Huber a tweet in support. He's having a tough time, looks like it took him by surprise. Says he appreciates the messages.

sand4fish wrote: In short, no one is entitled to a Shenmue 3 footage in E3 or PSX 2017 unless Yu says so.

Who? Me? You? Anyone seen Rush Hour 3?

My two cents:

In Yu I trust. It's like that thing that Xiuying says in Man Mo Temple, "Stop crying and wait for Shenmue 3 ***."

ChiefNeo wrote:The whole concept of backer NPC's and faces leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I get it, kickstarter...but the average white teenager has no place in 1980s guilin...NO PLACE.

Would probably be better in the credits IMHO.

Oh well, better start growing a 1980s haircut to get ready.