The original Shenmue and Shenmue 2 were the most ambitious games ever made in their time—in fact, they were so expensive to produce that 20 years later, they still remain among the costliest games ever developed. And while Shenmue 3 will naturally not be as proportionately ambitious for its time as the original games were—after all, the scale and scope of development has changed, and its status as a crowdfunded game limits how big it can go—it will still be bigger than those games were.
Speaking at the G-Fusion Tour 2018 in Xiamen, Shenmue 3 director Yu Suzuki confirmed that the game will be twice the length of previous games in the series, VG247 reports. Suzuki also confirmed that the side quests will no longer be separate from the main story, and implied that it may be possible to continue playing the game upon completion of the story without having to start a new file.
Given that the original Shenmue games were already pretty lengthy—it could take a week’s worth of play time to complete them—we’re looking at a pretty meaty game here. Hopefully, it will have quality and quantity alike when Shenmue 3 launches for the PS4 and PC later this year on August 27.
