In an interview with 1UP, Shenmue director Yu Suzuki said that a Shenmue 3 concept already exists. I’d love to get my hands on that!
The concept for Shenmue 3 already exists, so… [Laughs]
Suzuki continues: “The world of Shenmue 1 and 2 expanded outward. So, for example, 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.”
Shenmue 3’s a bit different, Suzuki tells 1UP. “But Shenmue 3 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.”
Suzuki then gives an example of how different his vision was for the third game. Mind you, this example isn’t necessarily from the concept.
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.
Sounds deep. We’ll take it. We’ll take whatever. Hell, we’ll even take your Shenmue MMO thingy for now.
Read the rest of 1UP’s interview with Yu Suzuki here.
