He must donate 1M if he wants to be forgiven.

Relax guys. This explains everything.

Oh thank god, my blood pressure has just been lowered.

Had the same problem here. I got confused and went to bed.

I feel genuinely bad for Joel Tess. All of these insults, jokes, gifs and memes about him are just unnecessary and cruel. All he was trying to do was lighten the mood and whilst he did come off as unprofessional, he hardly deserves to become hated and called all of these nasty, awful things.
Posting links to his Facebook and Twitter here is incredibly immature. Let's face it, he's going to get trolled on his personal social network pages.
At the end of the day, he's a human being with feelings that don't deserve to be hurt. He was clearly nervous about being on stream and was trying to play it off by overreacting. If people are going to roast him, it's just going to make his confidence worse which is really sad. I'm really disappointed with the general attitude here. I would have expected better.

It's so awesome to be part of this great community with so many people that are just as passionate about this game series as I am. Honestly, there are so many great people on here and I'm just proud to be part of it... especially during this wonderful time where we are all eagerly awaiting the sequel which has been made possible by you guys, the fans. Thank you.

Just thought it should be said... carry on

The way the Q&A was handled yesterday was a debacle, that's for certain. However we need to come together as a community and bury it. Let's push forward for the sake of the Kickstarter, Shenmue III and Suzuki-san. At this point we can offer constructive criticism (there is another thread for the Twitch stream) and continue on with our own separate efforts.

I should not need to say this, but I will. We do not support or condone any form of personal attacks within this community. Let's carry on as we always have, positively and respectfully. That is the voice other parties will pay attention to, respect and trust. Thank you.

He just said this to me:

@CedricBiscay: @mjqmjqmjq @morning_haze @yu_suzuki_jp 14 years have not destroyed faith in this project. I will not let any companies or people do it.

Cedric is a good guy. He will respond and do all he can. But he also will tell it how it is.

Doom_Infinite wrote: Cedric Biscay so far has proved to be rather awesome but let's not forget his team has a job already, they can't just take the KS organization load on, it's not even their specialty to begin with.

And yet he's already done more social interaction than AJ

Guys, I've been working feverishly today to get this site up. It's collaboration between me and my wife. She does the design, I do the coding. I think we make a good team. So, as you tweet and share about $30 on the 3rd please direct people to this website that will explain the campaign to people who may not understand:

http://www.30onthe3rd.com/

Cédric is actually answering a lot of tweets about AJ complains !

mémémargot : " Cedric I am disappointed, I know you love Shenmue more than anything else, don't let Awesome Japan destroy everything "
Cédric Biscay : " It is being looked into. "

I love when he writes like this. [-o< I don't expect so much though.

Seems my little Twitter campaign did some good.

In regards to the dinner and $10,000 tier, I emailed AJ on the Kickstarter site a week ago....no reply. I emailed them on their official site....no reply. I sent them a tweet to their Twitter account....no reply.

I tweeted Cedric about it and within 5 minutes he said he would check for me.

The next day I tweeted him again he said there had been developments and to please wait ;)

Shows you what a guy he is.

Logged back in after many years.

Only saw this great news today. I am sure many die hard shenmue fans who like me are not really gamers and don't follow E3 will still discover this little gem and contribute appropriately to their favorite game.

Awesome update! Ancient news that's sure to grab new pledges. These guys are consummate professionals.

Translation of the Interview on Twitch

Ok, I'm done! Here's a translation of Yu Suzuki's actual answers for comparison. Overall I think the translator on the Twitch session covered the information pretty well, except for maybe some minor detail.

Q: What is Sony’s involvement with Shenmue III?
YS: Sony is providing us with support in various ways including marketing, funding and promotion, and they’re our most important partner; they’re also our largest and most valued backer.

We plan to invest all the money collected from everyone through Kickstarter on development, excepting the Kickstarter fees and costs for the rewards. No portion of the collected money will flow to Shibuya Productions or Sony.

Q: PS4 physical reward?
YS: This is one of the most requested rewards, and it’s the reward I most want to make happen. Um... Please be patient!

Q: How will Kickstarter funds be spent?
YS: Please take a look at this pie chart which I’ve prepared.
[Fees: 8 - 10%, Game development: 65 to 72%, Backer rewards: 20 - 25%]

http://i.imgur.com/JtmE4vg.png

Q: Ryo’s appearance...
YS: We’ve had a lot of comments about how Ryo’s face looks, but we’ve just got started and so it is still under development. Personally, I’m not satisfied at all either, and so even now we’re continuing to improve it. Today I’ve brought a slightly improved version to show you – it’s not the final version, and we’ll be improving it even further, but I wanted to show you it.

For comparison, we’ve included two shots of Ryo from Shenmue II.

http://i.imgur.com/moKhHjb.jpg

The one at the front is the slightly improved version for Shenmue III. Again, I’m not completely happy with this Ryo – the shape of his mouth is not quite right – and I’d like to make further refinements.

As well as the shape of his face, his facial expressions and his actions also add to his personality and his attractiveness. So going forward I’d like to work on facial expressions and movements in making an attractive Ryo.

Q: Will the original voice actors reprise their roles?
YS: I auditioned Masaya Matsukaze and Corey Marshall for Shenmue I & II, and I believe their voices are perfect for Ryo’s voice. So I’d definitely like to have them reprise the role again this time. We’re currently in negotiations and I’m sure they will both be happy to do so, so please look forward to that.

Q: Can PayPal payment be added?
YS: I’m considering funding methods other than Kickstarter, including PayPal.

Q: Will a DRM-free version be made available?
YS: It’s something that is under consideration at the moment. However it’s not something Ys Net can decide by ourselves, and so discussions are taking place with various parties.

Q: Will HD versions of Shenmue I & II be released?
YS: I think that if Shenmue I and II could be released before Shenmue III, people would be able to understand the backstory and enjoy Shenmue III even more. And so I also personally strongly want this to happen, but as the rights are held by Sega I’m not really in a position to be able to comment. However I will also express to Sega that that I really would like for them to be produced.

Q: Details of new rewards?
YS: There has been feedback that there are not enough rewards, and so we have added additional rewards. We have prepared $1000, $2000 and $5000 grab bags. The bags will continue various items of Shenmue merchandise, and I think these will be quite exciting. And also at the $5000 level will the one-only prototype of the watch worn by Ryo in the Shenmue games. I have it here to show you... This is the Timex watch worn by Ryo, and it has the YS and Shenmue logos on it. It’s a very rare item.

Q: Details of the grab bags?
YS: It includes various things such as special figures of Ryo, watches... these watches are not quite as valuable as the one-of-a-kind one mentioned before; they’re more casual and they also have the Shenmue logo. Anyway, there are a variety of different items included.

Also, we have prepared some of the original art drawn by our main character designer, Miyawaki. These are quite valuable, and are a great reward I think.

In addition to the rewards we have added today, we will be continuing to add further ones in the future, so please look forward to them too.

Q: Tell us about the stretch goals up to $3.6m?
YS: Firstly, I’ll talk about the stretch goals up until around the $3.6m mark, which are the most basic goals. The stretch goals up to $3.6m will achieve a story-oriented Shenmue. As further goals are reached, the content for various areas will be correspondingly expanded, but even with the story-oriented version, the plot will develop to reach a confrontation with the 4 leaders {of the Chiyoumen}.

Also, game features like the Rapport system and the Skill Tree system will be included.

Q: Rapport system
YS: With the Rapport system, various data on your interactions with Shenhua will be tracked, such as her level of trust and rapport with you and so on, according to your actions toward her and the way your conversations progress. Later, this will affect how cooperative Shenhua is toward you, for example. I think we’ll be able to express a new and exciting angle to Shenmue that wasn’t present in the previous games.

Q: Skill Tree system
YS: In Shenmue 3, you will be able to obtain move scrolls {“technique scrolls”} in various places – for example, in shops, mini-games, part-time jobs, gambling, quest events. You’ll be able to make immediate use of move scrolls in battle QTEs – for example, once you get a new scroll, you’ll be able to use it straight away as a QTE appearing during a fight. Being able to use it as soon as you have collected it will make it easy and satisfying to use. I think it will be fun to have it appear and be used when fighting. Advanced moves and Arcane scrolls will be managed in a tree structure; these will not become immediately available after obtaining them. Instead, a likeness can be drawn with learning of actual martial arts, where you build up to reach an advanced move through the accumulation of several moves; in a similar way, you will need to build up moves in the tree in order to reach the advanced moves, and I think filling the moves in the tree will be fun.

But you won’t have to build up to the advanced moves by actually participating in fighting (which can become tiresome); instead you just need to accumulate the necessary move scrolls to fill the tree.

Q: Stretch Goals up to $5m
YS: If the $5m mark is reached, we will focus on the area of Baisha There will be new types of play here which were not present in Shenmue I & II. Typical classical war strategies from the historical Three Kingdoms period of China, such as seiges and infiltration, will be incorporated.

Features such as “infiltration” may sound as if they will make the game too complicated, but they will be implemented in a way that is in keeping with the feel of the Shenmue games and will be easy to enjoy and engage with for anyone.

As another feature, I am planning a Character Perspective system. To put it simply, it is being able to change the character you play, but in Shenmue it will be done a little differently from other games that have this: in Baisha there will be an event where you will be able to change character in order to accomplish the mission. The player will be able to control not just the character of Ryo, but also other characters such as Shenhua and Ren; Ren has his own distinct personality, and Shenhua as a female has her own viewpoints and decisions; the choices will be different depending on the character you play. So it won’t simply be changing of character, but rather each character’s personality will be expressed and I think this will make for an enjoyable experience.

Q: Stretch Goals to $11m
YS: Currently further stretch goals have been announced through to $11m (such as the expanded battle system and so on), I’d like to leave it until next week to talk about these.

Q: Shenmue III at the Current Funding Level (around $3.6m at time of Twitch) vs $10 million
YS: At the current level of funding, as I mentioned earlier the game will be focused on the story. However once we reach $5 million we will be able to introduce aspects such as the Three Kingdoms “war strategies” mentioned earlier which will set it apart from the first two Shenmue games. This is actually the part I would most like to accomplish. If we can go above $10 million, the town of Choubu will be significantly enhanced. The town of Choubu has scenery that is somewhat like, for example, the Dobuita and Yokosuka areas of Shenmue I, and this will open up various options for amusement there. So, above $10 million, we will be able to include both game features that I would like to take on the challenge of including, as well as making the game “open-world like” with an even wider range of choices available.

Q: When is Shenmue III going to be reLEEEAASED?
YS: By the end of 2017.

Q: Will Shenmue III end the story?
YS: In terms of the 11 chapters that form the basis of the Shenmue story, we have only traversed a little way through these in Shenmue I and II. I did consider completing all the remaining chapters within the third game, but it would mean skipping a lot of the good parts and would not result in a satisfactory game. There were a lot of people who want to know the ending of the story, but in order to make the game as high quality as possible, the end of the story will not be reached in Shenmue III.

Q: Release Date of Demo Version
YS: Providing this at an early stage will be difficult because we need to develop various systems and the game to a certain extent first. It is likely not to be until the latter half of the development period.

I think it won’t be until 2017.

Q: Final Comment
YS: I always love doing new things and taking on new challenges, and so I would like to aim for the goal of $10 million in order to produce a Shenmue that is both the one I want to create, and one which everyone wants. I really hope to somehow bring it to reality, and so I would like to ask for everyone’s continued efforts and cooperation. Thank you.

Shenmue Videos (English)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC38057D9B1A7E953

Shenmue Videos (English): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC38057D9B1A7E953

Shenmue Videos (Japanese)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5D819C6F41C2B4A4

Shenmue Videos (Japanese): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5D819C6F41C2B4A4

Interviews | Trailers | Promos | Retro Footage

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOMn2ijJRJPFKk7AXotcBQKXcYU5DLgVP

Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOMn2ijJRJPFKk7AXotcBQKXcYU5DLgVP

Reviews & Retrospectives

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2DB3B2B2F6BD2C2

Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2DB3B2B2F6BD2C2

Shenmue Saturn | Project Berkley | What's Shenmue

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6C3CEE910876223E

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6C3CEE910876223E

Yama wrote: Damn, we're actually looking at my new waifu..

Fixed.

Thank you SEGA for not fucking this up like you do pretty much everything else. Yours, a life long SEGA fan.

Here's an example video of some of the animation cheats in action:



I can make more videos if anyone is curious about some of the codes they can't get to work.

Either Ryo is gay or he isn't -- none of this PC everybody needs to be included crap.

A new piece of art posted by Yu Suzuki on Twitter.

鳥舞 客船 (=Choubu passenger boat)

@NeoShredder: Where did you get these 绸布 characters for Chobu from? These are not the characters used in the video. See for yourself. The video uses these characters: 鸟舞. They read niao wu - bird dance (WTF?!) - in Chinese (the first character here does not quite look like in the video tbh. That's because I cannot write traditional characters on my computer right now so I used simplified characters, but never mind. It is the same character.). Got no idea why they used Japanese (?) pronounciation for Chobu village and Chinese (Mandarin) pronounciation for Baisha and Bailu though.

Is there a reason in the game for Japanese pronunciation? Does it mean something? Guess, in the end it doesn't mean anything though. :D

You couldn't have waited til the Kickstarter was over, could you Sony?

EDIT: And here is the first comment on that article via the FB plugin...

Grant Mccarter · Manchester, New Hampshire
This is the exact thing that scared the crap outta me with the Shenmue 3 kickstarter...
Reply · Like · Follow Post · 18 minutes ago



Fuck off you Fake Manc bastard...

The girl in the first picture is probably someone else then Shenmue. I'd say it's Xiuying because he talks about her a lot too. Could be Niao-Sun too, considering that cleavage...

I'm a bit surprised to see so much negativity in regards to this update here, when this is pretty much the only thing that Awesome Japan have not completely fucked up in about 2 weeks now. When I saw this update I thought "oh wow, they're actually salvaging this."

I don't really agree with the "English dub is a waste of resources" argument. I don't like the English dub, and I will be playing it in Japanese with subtitles in 99% of my playthroughs if that's an option, but if that was the only way to play it, Shenmue III would flop ten times harder than the first 2. It's not for me, personally, but it'll make the game appeal to about a thousand times more people than a Japanese-only version, so it's money well spent as far as I'm concerned.

Yu just tweeted this out! Looks amazing! What you guys think? I guess this is going to be all part of the new kickstarter overhaul that they are putting together!



https://twitter.com/yu_suzuki_jp/status ... 4214216704

describes how they have reduced the visual age and made it appear more feminine by changing a jaw line, hair, open sleeves on the clothes etc..

Didn't notice the clothes change.

But I noticed reduced boobs.

Hello Everyone!

The power of Shenmue’s music was undoubtedly one of the big reasons that made the Shenmue series such a memorable experience. One of men responsible for this great achievement, is Ryuji Iuchi.

The composer of "Shenhua's Theme," Iuchi-san's songs have pulled at our heart strings and actually put us there, in the world of Shenmue. And now he is back for Shenmue 3 to help take us into that world once again.

Let’s give a big standing ovation for Ryuji Iuchi:

https://youtu.be/GK2UtawnJnM
English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDWWD7FGO7M
Japanese with French and English subtitles

Thank you for all of the memories, Iuchi-san! We look forward to all of the new songs, and the memories we will make with them in Shenmue 3.

To get a further listen of Ryuji Iuchi’s body of work, please visit his website at http://www.ryujiiuchi.com While most of the site is in Japanese, samples of his music are here at this link , so please have a listen!

#SaveShenmue Tweetathon on Twitter

Don’t forget that the 3rd of the month is the #SaveShenmue Tweetathon, so please send a Tweet with the hashtag #SaveShenmue to show your support for Shenmue 3.

You can still get your questions to Yu Suzuki by Tweeting to him using the hashtag #YouaskYu

Magic Weather Warning: There will be a storm of updates on the way, so bring your umbrella with you tomorrow!

Ryuji Iuchi has made a blog entry which I'm going to start working on translating. Thanks to Ziming for finding it.

http://blog.ryujiiuchi.com/?no=801

鳥舞 船着場 Choubu boat landing
posted by Yu on Twitter

Crying.... yep. Just like i was when Shenmue 3 was announced.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j290/PeterC2005/Shenmue%203%20dinner_zpsnssnyjmg.png

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j290/PeterC2005/Mobile%20Uploads/Screenshot_2015-07-03-17-11-23_zpsfisfrbbt.png

I'M GOING TO MEET YU SUZUKI IN MONACO!! FUCK!!

NeoShredder wrote: And Awesome Japan apologise!

Haha, seems like they waited for the right time to apologize I think everyone will completely forgive them now lol!

I accept the apology but to show their sincerity make Joel (Fanta) Tess an NPC in Shenmue III. He could bump into Ryo while drinking Fanta and then give a sincere apology. lol

Really happy for you Peter.

I'm disappointed you won't be joining us in Japan though. It would have been fun to visit Yokosuka bars together and pick fights with sailors.

I'm not sure how LanDC feels but I have a little bit of a bittersweet feeling of once having an exclusive dinner with Yu to now being 1 of 3 dinners. It's not overly important in the end. I don't want to be selfish. I'm more concerned with the game being made at the best possible quality, as well as having exposure to the school. Our story made the news in Guilin and we are getting ton's of interest from all over China. A lot of local gamer's are talking about the game now and wanting it to be released in China.

well for 30 on the 3rd today I upped my pledge by 3..... times



better prepare my ugly mug for people passing through Choubu

I must be insane

I remind you guys to take Neoshredder's advice and use donotclick so you don't give them ad revenue.

http://www.donotlink.com/fsl5

I have talked to Jason Schreier, News Editor of Kotaku about this. He is now posting in the Shenmue thread on GAF. He's not happy about this article at all. Apparently the staff is off this weekend and so this post did not go through normal editorial review process.