Shenmue 3 is one of those games that is going to have a very loyal following when it finally officially launches. Among the people who are going to be quite excited when it finally goes live will beYu Suzuki the director and the designer of the game who will be making his rather triumphant return to big time video games when this game hits the market.
Suzuki recently sat down with Eurogamer in order to explain his feelings about the game and his rather long time away from the spotlight. Part of the excitement surrounding the game is that for the longest time, Shenmue 3 was nothing more than a myth. Then the game got its own kickstarter and broke records for the amount of money it raised in a short period of time. Suzuki wanted to make it clear Kickstarter still wasn’t the only funding route the game has taken. There is backing from a big company. “There’s also funding from Sony and Shibuya Productions. Before we started Kickstarter, we had goals set around the budget – so if we only got $6 million, we’d create Shenmue 3 based upon what we could do with that $6 million.” He said.
Suzuki also talked about one piece of the story that still won’t be completely wrapped up. Shenmue 3 won’t conclude the story of Ryo.”Originally, as you know, there was going to be 11 chapters. It was only ever going to be two games. When we began development, the volume of the story was too big for one game. When we decided it was going to be two games, most of the story was already complete. To fit all of the rest of the 11 chapters into Shenmue 3, it could help the story progress, but it’d lose it’s playability. Shenmue’s a game, not a novel – if it loses its playability, it loses its purpose, so it’s not the final part.” Suzuki said. While there is now a playable version of Shenmue 3 for testing purposes, an official release date is still a ways off.