Pre E3 - Shenmue 3

Hey folks,

Groovy here, and we're continuing with our look through what could be at E3 this year, maybe some of the lesser known games that have been announced in years past (because developers love a good old 5 year tease) and what we can look forward to from the stage shows.

Shenmue 3
This little gem was announced all the way back in E3 2015, in what was a very emotional night for me. Shenmue 3 built up enough hype, then there was a montage for Devolver Digital, and then...yeah that's the one, the Final Fantasy 7 remake reveal. Now it's probably easy to have forgotten Shenmue 3 in all that, but I haven't. I adore this franchise, I was one of the fortunate people to own a Dreamcast and get to enjoy this gem, and then the second one on the Xbox, so when this got announced I boarded the hype train and backed it straight away.



That's the main character, Ryo. He's on a quest for revenge to find the man that killed his father and for what reason. Shenmue falls into a "life simulator" with sprinklings of action, adventure, puzzle solving and everything in between. I remember spending a lot of my time playing Space Harrier in the arcade and collecting capsule toys from the gacha machines outside the store. Good times.

I'm hoping we see some more of Shenmue 3 from Sony at their press conference as it's been 3 years and we've had some screenshots with questionable facial expressions and animations in the form of a trailer:

Not the best first impressions to be completely honest, but it hasn't put me off, as in an interview Yu Suzuki himself has said that they are just placeholders for now. You better not be lying to me man. I'm keen for this.

I'd love to see some actual gameplay from this, wondering around the town, maybe some minigames. Give it some love, show the fans what they have to be excited for.

Shenmue 3 is expected to launch in 2019, and it will definitely be worth the wait, but until then, we have the remaster of Shenmue 1 & 2 to look forward to:

Will they age well? I'm sceptical to be honest, I think they were certainly a game of their time, and will have been best enjoyed then. There are other games such as the Yakuza franchise and of course GTA that have done the open world roaming things that Shenmue was kinda groundbreaking for.

We can expect Shenmue 1 & 2 to release at some point in 2018, I'm hoping that it will release at E3, which may be unlikely, but here's hoping!

Until next time!

Groovy