Dreamcast fans, there are finally some new Shenmue 3 screenshots that appeared online from Shibuya Productions and they look gorgeous, at least in my opinion, Take a fresh look on these screenshots below to see the progress that has been made:
This is certainly looking pretty good for a work-in-progress game, personally, I’m a big fan of the Shenmue series ever since Shenmue 1 released for the Sega Dreamcast, It’s game design focused on the FREE system was nothing short of amazing for the time. The term FREE refers to “Fully Reactive Eyes Entertainment” and it was the main essence behind the development of Shenmue, this system allowed players to fully interact with their surroundings like opening the TV cabinets, checking your closet, opening the fridge to grab something, and much much more. This had a profound impact on me, as it made me feel that I was really the character in the game and playing that character’s everyday life.
Even though the franchise itself was not a commercial success, it definitely has a cult following and for a good reason, not only was this game so ahead of it’s time, it’s story, characters and setting had a vast appeal within the few Dreamcast gamers who got to experience this masterpiece months before the Dreamcast demise.
The development costs for Shenmue 1 and 2 costed Sega a cool 70 million dollars and due to the amounts of Dreamcasts that were sold at the time, it was estimated that every Dreamcast owner needed to purchase the game twice to allow sega to make a return on investment and that was certainly not going to happen, however, not everything ended badly for the franchise, last year, Mr Suzuki took it upon himself to bring back the franchise and with a little help from Sony, the Kickstarter for the game was unveiled during Sony’s E3 conference and it concluded with a massive 6 million dollars funding from gamers who were passionate about this franchise, it is believed that the game is also receiving funding from other sources as well, however, Yu Suzuki has not been open about those external contributors but any additional funding that goes to the game can only make it better and better so no complains from here.
In any case I’m very much looking forward to see how Yu Suzuki and his team will realize the grand finale of the Shenmue franchise with this new generation of hardware!
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