What’s Shenmue?
Part IV: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt and Hope
Kickstarter buckled under unprecedented demand. Within 102 minutes Shenmue III raised $1 million, faster than any other crowdfunded game. The initial $2 million funding goal was met in less than eight hours. Shenmue III would be coming for PC and PS4, with a tentative date of December 2017.
Still, some had questions about Sony’s involvement in a Kickstarter; why weren’t they backing the game? Unaware of the history of the series, of how Sega had never recouped their investment in Shenmue and thus had no desire to invest any more money, how publisher after publisher had turned down Suzuki’s offers to collaborate on Shenmue III, many were quick to dismiss the Kickstarter as unnecessary and shameless. Sony’s Adam Boyes and Shuhei Yoshida clarified in interviews that while Sony was providing marketing and publishing support for the PS4 version, along with some funding, as Sega owned the IP they could not invest any more without causing considerable consternation from their own investors (though Yoshida would put $29 of his own money towards the Kickstarter). Having Shenmue III on Sony’s stage at E3 was a huge publicity boost which was mutually beneficial for both parties, and it is unlikely that Shenmue III would have raised as much as it did without the historic announcement.
Sony’s role in the history of Shenmue had changed from that of rival to saviour; Suzuki’s Virtua Fighter convinced Sony to have their PlayStation’s hardware tailored for 3D games, leading in part to the Saturn’s failure, and despite the Dreamcast’s best efforts, including Suzuki’s magnum opus, Sega could not fend off the juggernaut that was the PlayStation 2.
Now here they were, years later, offering to market and help resurrect a series that had long been abandoned thanks in part to the death of a console they helped kill.
There were conflicting arguments regarding the funding goal; some thought $2 million was asking for a lot, while others remarked that it was nowhere near the original game’s budget. Why were subtitles being offered as stretch goals? And what did things like “Rapport System” mean?
Regarding the budget, Kickstarter will not be the sole source of funding for the game, with Sony and Shibuya both contributing to marketing and development, with the former often costing as much or even more than the latter. In tweets on the 20th and 21st of September 2015, Cedric Biscay would confirm that Shibuya Productions is the main investor in Shenmue III, providing more funding than Sony.
And while the overall budget may still not match that of the original Shenmue games, with Shenmue III being developed with Unreal Engine 4 considerable expense will be saved compared to the original games which saw custom engines developed, not only for the Dreamcast but also when for when the Sega Saturn was the targeted platform.
Suzuki devised multiple development plans for Shenmue III based on how much money the Kickstarter raised: in a reddit AMA he stated, “if we reach the $5 mil mark, one of the things I really want to do with Shenmue III [the “Character Perspective System”] will become a reality. At $10 million, it will truly have the features of an open world.”
While part-time jobs will be in the game, including fishing, with further funding there will be more variety.
“Magic Maze” refers to a programming technique that was employed in Shenmue II, allowing the woodland of Guilin to be more expansive by generating areas on the fly, reducing the amount of data needed to create a large forest.
Suzuki first hinted at a Rapport System for Shenmue III in 2010, offering the following insight into how he wanted to take conversations in the game:
“The world of Shenmue I and II expanded outward… in the original games, of all the data used for dialogue in the game, the main characters’ dialogue was about 20%. The remaining 80% was dialogue by characters other than the two main characters. But Shenmue III doesn’t expand outward, but inward. A lot of the dialogue is used for the main character and especially dialogue with Shenhua. They talk about a lot of different, deeper things.
This is not actually in the game, but as an example to give you an idea of what I mean by deeper dialogue, when Shenhua and Ryo are at home, Shenhua will ask Ryo if he would like to drink tea or coffee and the player will select one or the other. Or, Shenhua will ask Ryo a hypothetical question like: “There are four animals; a monkey, cat, dog and bird. You are crossing the river but you need to leave one behind. Which one will you leave behind?” And the player has to choose one. Shenhua will ask lots and lots of questions like these and the answers will get stored in the game and affect the outcome of the player’s relationship with other characters. It’s like a personality test. For example, the person who leaves behind the monkey is the type of person who leaves their wife.”
With conversational choices with Shenhua forming the greatest part of the Guilin segment of Shenmue II, it is likely your choices were intended to carry over to Shenmue III; Shenmue II let you import save data from the first game, and plans were in place to do so for further sequels before the death of the Dreamcast.
The “Character Perspective System” was explained by Suzuki as a game mechanic that will see players control Shenhua and Ren at certain points in the latter half of the story.
Playing as the less virtuous Ren may allow players to resort to acts of violence and skulduggery that Ryo and Shenhua would never consider. Subsequently playing as Shenhua, players may find that she does not think Ren is as charming as he considers himself to be.
In the case of Shenhua it will also be linked to the Rapport System:
“I’m thinking of setting up around 3 parameters like level of trust, level of intimacy, friendliness toward you… With a high level of friendliness, cooperation with Shenhua will go smoothly, that sort of thing. With the Character Perspective which will feature in the latter half of the game, if you choose to play as Shenhua, her true feelings will be revealed, and you may be in for a shock — “So that’s what she thinks of me…!””
While Bailu will be similar to Shenmue II’s Guilin chapter and Choubu will have the most “Shenmue-like gameplay”, the climactic chapter set in Baisha will feature new gameplay elements. The highlight will be the “Battle Event” that was set as the $4.6 million stretch goal; based partly on siege tactics employed during the time of China’s Three Kingdoms (one of the bloodiest eras in human history), Suzuki elaborated further in a September 2015 interview with Famitsu:
“You will not simply be fighting, but will make full use of war tactics that resemble famous tactics from China’s Three Kingdoms period, such as the Water Attack or the Fire Attack, as you fight. This may sound very difficult, but I plan to make it straight-forward when you try playing, so please don’t worry about that.”
Modern fighting games are too complicated, too “hardcore”... Those factors definitely limit the audience, because even fewer people are playing them, and at this rate the genre can sink into oblivion.
I want [a player’s victory to be] based on making the right decisions. And because of that the battle system in fighting games is still imperfect. Even in Virtua Fighter…
I would like to make a win dependent on how a gamer thinks. To make him think, like, “If I hit with an arm now, and then kick with a leg, I could win.”
Yu Suzuki, Strana Igr (Gameland), November 2013
While combat in the first two games used a modified version of the Virtua Fighter 2 engine, Suzuki has expressed a desire to build the battle system from the ground up, focusing less on players’ reaction time and more on their decision making. Technique scrolls will be obtained from weapons shops and/or from completing mini-games.
The Skill Tree System is an integral part of Shenmue III’s combat; advanced moves and a special kind of technique scrolls known as “arcane scrolls” can only be unlocked by collecting multiple technique scrolls in one group. Getting all the scrolls for one group will unlock that category’s master move. Combining your moves together will allow you to take on kung fu mentors and masters who challenge you to defeat them as part of your training.
Both Suzuki and Hirai have expressed a desire to link real-time fighting and QTEs together in the combat system, with “Battle QTEs” allowing you to execute moves for which you have obtained scrolls.
Even after the initial $2 million was pledged, fans made every effort to spread the gospel of Shenmue and Yu Suzuki, eager to see more stretch goals reached and Suzuki’s grand vision fully realised. Blog posts, articles and YouTube videos were produced in an effort to relate why they held Shenmue so dear.
15 years on and innumerable “open world” games later, Shenmue is still unique. While many today focus on ever larger game worlds and increasing graphical quality, Shenmue was about depth and detail, and recreating the spirit of Showa-era small-town Japan, taking pleasure in the quotidian and the mundane.
Numerous fans would be inspired to make pilgrimages to Japan and China, visiting Shenmue’s Dobuita and Shenmue II’s Aberdeen and Guilin. Two brothers were inspired to become Volunteer English Teachers (VETs) in Guilin, and pledged $20,000 of their own money to the Kickstarter to raise awareness and support for their English language school.
Yu Suzuki and Shenmue continue to alter the course of people’s lives. During the countdown to the end of the Kickstarter, Suzuki announced that he had met with Kid Nocon in Korea, and on the 3rd of October it was officially announced that he would be joining Suzuki and the rest of the Shenmue III development team.
In a Kickstarter backer update from the 31st of August, Suzuki related the following anecdote of the early days of development:
“One night, I went to a Thai restaurant with the development team after work. At that restaurant, a man approached me and asked to shake hands. He said he was a fan, and we had a brief talk. He also happened to be in the game industry and we began to hit it off. We talked some more to find out he really knew his job, and on top of that, he was an exceptionally good person. I was so impressed, I asked him to help with the development. I couldn’t help but feel Shenmue’s unique gravity to bring interesting things together.”
Due to demand, especially from Japanese fans who could not contribute to the Kickstarter, a PayPal “Slacker Backer” campaign was launched on the 17th of September and will run until the 31st of December, when funding will be halted so as to finalise planning of development.
After that, fans will have nothing to do but wait.
And while for some December 2017 may seem far off, after 14 years of fear, uncertainty and doubt, there is hope.
Q. Why do you create?
A. Why does one climb the mountain? The shark cannot breathe when it does not swim.
One wonders what would have happened to video games had Suzuki passed his dentistry exams. Or if technology at the time would have allowed him to make a sports game instead of Virtua Fighter. If he had not gone to China to research martial arts and find himself taken by the country’s culture and history. But while fortune and circumstance have played a great part in forging Suzuki’s career, his will to see his objectives through, to not let dissenting voices compromise his grand designs, is both undeniable and inspirational.
When Suzuki revealed that Shenmue III will not see Ryo’s story end, there was concern that it would not deliver on fans’ expectations. But that is not what the tale of Shenmue is about.
It is about Yu Suzuki’s unbridled ambition, one man refusing to give in despite his creativity and vision constantly being thwarted by paymasters and men in suits. It is about this vision ultimately being realised by the collective efforts of his ardent supporters who had faith in him when all hope was lost.
Shenmue III is about dreams coming true.
