Somehow I never imagined Ryo and Shenhua becoming a couple. This theme of romance is a bit of a surprise.
We don't really know the extent of the romance, but Yu has talked about the romance being platonic in interviews from last year (or slightly before?), so I dunno if they're going all the way. I believe he cited the film Roman Holiday as something he was using for research, and could want to model Ryo and Shenhua's relationship on that.
I kind of figure the maximum peak of the relationship is genuine romance, but that's kinda it. It'd be an interesting counterpoint to most other explorations of romance in video games, where the end goal is basically just sex.
There's also the behind the scenes of Mega64's "How Shenmue Ends" video where they recount talking with Yu Suzuki who said Ryo and Shenhua can't have sex, but they can "fool around". Hahaha.
Either way, pretty typical of Yu the "romance" option in Shenmue III seems to subvert and move away from what a lot of other games are doing. There's likely to be only one option, Shenhua (rather than a list of characters like other games, where the designers are pretty transparently asking the player who they'd like to fuck), and the maximum will probably be a genuine emotional relationship.
Wow, thanks man. You're always very informative! Come to think of it I do remember him citing Roman Holiday being one of his many inspirations for Shenmue 3, the romance thing probably just didn't officially 'sink in' until now.
I guess we've already had a sneak peak into their relationship from Shenmue 2: that awkward moment when Shenhua tried to kiss Ryo after he helped her pick some flowers. I interpreted that as Shenhua liking him (because what woman in Shenmue doesn't fancy Ryo aside from Ine-san, honestly?) and Ryo had no time for it. Maybe that sort of thing might resurface and Ryo will warm to it. Or...who knows? I'm sure it will be nicely done, just never really envisioned the possibility of them falling in love all this time.