After 14 whole years, the one dream that has stayed with me since I played the last entry in the series is no longer that—Shenmue 3 is very much a reality and I will finally get to see the story continue.
Unfortunately, I was fast asleep when the announcement was made. I’d stayed up the night before without any sleep to watch Bethesda’s press conference. With the time difference (I live in England), it was 3am when Bethesda started and by the time it finished, I was too excited to sleep. The whole of the next day, I felt sick, I had a massive headache and I was completely fatigued. With Sony’s conference starting at 2am, there was no way in hell that I was going to be fit enough to watch. I’m a PlayStation fanboy. I was really excited about seeing the conference, but never in a million years had I expected Yu Suzuki to unveil his Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign. As I woke up the following day, the first thing I did was check my phone, and in my hazy, heavy-headed state, all I could see were people going nuts about Shenmue 3. I had to question whether or not I was still dreaming. Surely this wasn’t happening. Almost every month on Twitter, I’d been participating in the #SaveShenmue campaign, and with every passing month there would be no mention or acknowledgement of a third game. It wasn’t until Yu Suzuki tweeted for the first time in a long time only a month or so ago, and a weird ‘hoax’ hitting the internet that my hopes were once more ignited. I was still very much an unbeliever in anything coming to fruition, but when you love a game series so much, and it never gets the chance to finish, you want nothing more than to see it conclude. I headed downstairs and turned on the laptop; as the internet fired up, I received an influx of information all pointing to the Kickstarter campaign. I clicked on it and there it was, not a dream or a lie, not a hoax or a joke. Yu Suzuki had given us all what we wanted. The goal reached in less than 12 hours and here we are, all ready to soak up every ounce of news and information about it. I made my pledge and became a small part of the Shenmue Legacy. Yu Suzuki wants to make a game for the older fans; the fans that were there in the beginning, and are there all these years later. Having finally getting round to watching the video of the E3 reveal and seeing all those tears and looks of shock, the world could not be more ready to see the story of Ryo’s revenge unfold in front of our eyes; no longer in our heads, but on our television screens. 2017 is a long way away, but now the game has reached its goal, we can all sleep easy and be safe in the knowledge that Shenmue 3 is coming.
Currently, the game is on $2,826,361. With all the extra money that the project will incur (bear in mind that there is still a whole 30 days until it ends), what is Yu and his team going to use the extra money for. I’d personally love to see the original two games get re-released as digital titles on the PS4. It would invite thousands, if not millions of new gamers to the series and help make the release of Shenmue 3 even bigger when it comes out in 2017. So far, the game has only been announced as digital only for the PS4, but if more money is pledged, could we see it get released onto discs? Maybe Sony will actually take it upon themselves to do this after seeing first-hand how important Shenmue is to the fans; I could speculate all day. All I care about now is that when the time comes, I have a guaranteed copy of the game and I am going to be able to continue my love affair with the series and finally be able to finish the story of Shenmue.
Thank you, Yu Suzuki.
If you want to pledge to the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign, just click here.
