1) No autistic Ryo and NPCs thanks an incredible amount of dialogues. Never the same sentence in a row.

I see...

Ren either sacrifices himself or betrays Ryo in a way that he's forced to kill him.

I kind of think that with Yu Suzuki's statements about Ryo not being driven by revenge later in the story, and how much the theme of the games themselves seems against the idea of Ryo killing Lan Di to avenge his father, that Ryo will defeat Lan Di and stop his Chi You plot without killing him, and soon afterwards there's a twist where Ren betrays and ambushes him and Ryo is forced to counter in a way that's fatal, despite not having wanted to kill, and this has a deep effect on him afterwards. Ryo has never killed, is probably unlikely to kill anyone in Shenmue III, and I think there's strong indications that he won't deliberately kill Lan Di, so it would be a pretty strong twist.

One of the biggest reasons I think this is the case is because in the final chapter card, Ryo wanders off into the desert in Northwest China, presumably leaving Shenhua and Xiuying behind. To me that suggests a kind of bittersweet or not entirely happy ending.

Before I saw the chapter cards I kind of assumed the final chapter would end with Ryo returning to Yokosuka and taking over the Hazuki dojo, and that all the good guys back in Hong Kong and China also lives happily ever after, but I guess the story is more complex and interesting than a standard RPG.

I think we all assumed Ryo is holding Ren in that postmortem art we saw a few years ago. But could it be Lan Di?
Ren is a good guess, but I think if anyone will die it'll be Xiuying.
If Xiuying dies, which would be most fitting after being reunited with Ziming, I can imagine the latter being sent over the edge, turning his back on the Chi You Men; if Ziming dies, of course after being reunited with Xiuying, I can imagine the latter going nuclear. I wouldn't be surprised if Niao Sun was responsible for either case. It's something she would enjoy to no end.
Either way, the fallout would make for some very interesting developments indeed.

Looking again at the concept art 'cards' from the postmortem , there is absolutely no doubt Ren is the one in Ryo's arms in the second-to-last image. It's him 100%.

Xiuying is alive in the final chapter card. It's not proof that she's alive at the end of the story, but there's certainly nothing to suggest that she dies either. Whereas with Ren it's more than suggested that he dies, and that Ryo wears his bandana as a headband afterwards.

Shenmue wasn't a flop, Shenmue II was, because of Xbox exclusivity. Microsoft basically killed Shenmue when they made Sega cancel the North American Dreamcast release, although because of the console's discontinuation and launch of PS2, a worldwide Dreamcast release probably would've sold about as much as the Xbox and EU Dreamcast sales combined, which is about 500,000. However, the only sales figures that were consideredin the end were the 320,000 sold on Xbox, which makes it look like a total flop.

If it had been released on the PS2 or Gamecube however, especially if bundled with the first game, it would've sold 1 million at least.

Sega made the mistake of going with Microsoft instead of Sony, and Microsoft made the mistake of being shitty at publishing software exclusives unlike Sony and Nintendo.

Now that being said, the teaser trailer and the character models have alienated most mainstream gamers that don't care enough about Shenmue to follow it. I've seen a lot of people say it looks shitty, and with those character models lacking facial animation it's going to be hard to change those perceptions. it doesn't matter what the reasons are and how we know that it's a work in progress, etc. that teaser shouldn't have been released except on kickstarter for the backers.

the good news is, people that like indie games will like Shenmue III, and i'm confident that once the game properly takes shape it will attract new fans from that demographic.

and that's a different market from people who say they'd rather play Yakuza instead because it looks like "a way better Japanese culture fix" which is literally what I saw someone say in reaction to that teaser trailer.

Well it was a net-negative and wasn't there some crazy statistic out there that everyone who owned a dreamcast would of had to buy two copies of shenmue for it to of been profitable?

I wonder if Sega even intended from the beginning for Shenmue to make any money and instead was developed to be a shield to protect the dreamcast upon the looming doom of the ps2,how Yu managed to swindle so much cash out of Sega and keep the development going for 5 years is quite remarkable

they would have recouped most of the investment by Shenmue II and turned a profit by Shenmue III (hence the whole everyone would have to buy 2 copies thing. the budget was the groundwork for 5 games, not 1 game) had the Dreamcast not failed.

it's the failure of the dreamcast that brought the series down more than anything, because the game was supposed to be part of Sega's massive library of exclusive titles. for what it's worth, Virtua Fighter, the Sega Sports published NBA 2K games, Sega GT and other first party titles like Jet Set Radio and Sonic, were all industry leading games at the time in terms of innovation and critical reception. There were also a lot of innovative titles that, while not great, were certainly more unique than any other console's first party lineup, like Space Channel 5 and Seaman.

In the context of that suite of exclusive first party titles that dwarfed other console's first party exclusives, Shenmue was also an investment in the console itself. but it was just one out of many. it was not a hail mary pass or Sega putting all their eggs in one basket.


I don't think Shenmue was the one game that was supposed to save the Dreamcast. They didn't see the console's failure coming. I think that their calculation was, based on the assumption that the console would survive, that even if they were third behind Sony and Nintendo they would still be in the hardware market and it would be a strong addition to the console's exclusive library, and because it had a major industry company behind it rather than just a game developer, they could recoup the profit over 5 games instead of one, thereby creating a series on a bigger scale than anyone else could. which would have been an achievement both in terms of software project of its own, and the cachet it would bring to the console. Sega was in both the hardware and software business. but I doubt they assumed everyone who owned a Dreamcast would buy the game, or that it was the singular main attraction on the console.

basically, Shenmue needed the Dreamcast to be possible more than the Dreamcast needed Shenmue.

it had a good chance of being adopted by the fanbases of other consoles, (PS2 and Gamecube) had the first game at least been ported to another console.

by only releasing the second game on the Xbox, they fragmented the market multiple times- by region, by the majority of the dreamcast fanbase being more likely to have a PS2, and by the game already having been released on different consoles in Europe, Japan and the US.

if you look at every other Sega franchise and Dreamcast exclusive from that era, like Virtua Fighter, Crazy Taxi and Sonic all the games ported to PS2 and Gamecube did well, while the Xbox exclusives like Jet Set Radio flopped. i don't think it's an unreasonable assumption that neither Shenmue nor Jet Set Radio would have been flops on PS2 or Gamecube.



the strategy of trying to reach new fans with just the second game was the first mistake in trying to keep the series going after the Dreamcast, and this was made much worse by xbox exclusivity.

fortunately Shenmue III is on PS4 and Steam, and is releasing to a totally different market landscape for games, so at the very least it's going to do better than Shenmue II.

it's unfair to say that Shenmue was responsible for bankrupting Sega, because they were invested in developing and publishing so many big budget first party titles, way more than Sony Microsoft and Nintendo had, so Sega's strategy of investing extensively in software, perhaps at the expense of developing a more powerful console or making sure that other developers supported their console more, is a much broader issue of strategy than whether Shenmue was a colossal failure or not.

a look at the wikipedia article for the Dreamcast seems to bear out my theory-

"Sega spent US$50–80 million on hardware development, $150–200 million on software development, and $300 million on worldwide promotion—a sum which Irimajiri, a former Honda executive, humorously compared to the investments required to design new automobiles.[32][45]"

if shenmue was a failure, then so was every other Dreamcast exclusive. really the failure was the console's hardware and marketing. it was the weakest of its generation of consoles, and the extent of sega's software strategy, where they were investing heavily to be competitive in genres that other first party developers wouldn't go, like sports, ended up alienating EA which was a pretty decisive factor in the console ultimately failing to gain widespread popularity.

it turned out a lot of developers didn't want to have to compete with that many first party titles in a marketplace where the first party manufacturer is that deep into the software market, with that much of a competitive advantage in software development resources as well as marketing if they were going to invest in supporting sega's console. First party developers don't have to pay themselves royalty fees either, which also worked against developers' perception of Sega and the Dreamcast.

Nintendo had first party franchises that no third party developers really saw themselves competing against directly, Sony and Microsoft had only a handful of major first party exclusives- they opted for the more ultimately successful strategy of subsidising other developers' games in exchange for timed exclusivity.

if you're namco developing Tekken 4, you're probably not going to want to have to pay royalties to the company that makes Virtua Fighter 4 and still have to compete against that game when Sega has more resources than you and doesn't lose any profits on royalties. I guess this was the issue a lot of developers had with the Dreamcast, and with the level of investment EA needed with licenses for their sports titles, there's no wonder they didn't want to support the Dreamcast. Who wants to put money in their competitor's pockets when there's that much investment at stake?

Sega tried to take the best of Nintendo and Sony's approaches to the PS1/64 generation, but unfortunately the market trend away from the primacy of first party games and towards third party titles solidified with the PS2 generation and the Dreamcast had the wrong approach.

it's probably small consolation to Sega, but all that investment in software is also the Dreamcast has more of a cult following than any past console aside from the NES/SNES.

Everything sounds really good from the interview, however this part...

"
You have to remember that all the city / village residents in 1 & 2 had a "real" simulated life, thats a really complicated and tough quest and the budget for Shenmue 3 is probably not big enough to do that again.

Question 3 to Yu:
Will there be voices and sound for everything in the game?

Yu's answer:
We don't know yet. To tell the truth - the amount of text is getting bigger and bigger and not all of it is planned, so we don't know if all of it will be available with sound.
"
It will be very rare seeing a lot of NPCs in the villages but few of them doings their rutines or none of them, standing in their positions. Will they be there at night too?

Another thing is voices, Will Ryo ask a question to a NPC and this one would not speak and only a text will be displayed?

it sounds worrying, but if you think about it Shenmue II only had individual schedules for a few characters- Fangmei, Joy, Eileen, etc. I don't think you saw Jianmin anywhere except the park, you wouldn't see him walking home. Most shopkeepers, unlike Shenmue I, didn't have names, and were pretty much only seen at their shops and then they'd be gone at night time

In the first game you'd see the shopkeepers and all NPCs go about their personal lives, eating at specific restaurants etc, and since Shenmue II was structured around traveling rather than living in your hometown, you didn't really notice the difference, and mostly just noticed the few characters that did have schedules. another difference was that Shenmue II had quite a few characters that mostly couldn't be found during regular gameplay, like Xiuying and Ren.

also, I think Shenmue III was always intended to be a departure from the environments of the first 2 games, and the lack of detail in the NPC's would be made up for in the depth of interaction between Ryo and Shenhua. Hence the idea that the game would expand inward rather than outward. I think nostalgia for the first 2 games compelled him to make Choubu the size of the areas from the second game when it was intended to be set in pretty small scale settings.



if none of the characters had schedules that would suck. but i'm pretty sure that what he means is that it'll basically be like wan chai in shenmue ii in terms of character detail.

as for voices, the lack of npc voice in Yakuza is one of those things that makes it feel less special than Shenmue. So I hope they voice as many characters as possible.