Shenmue 3 website opens as Kickstarter counts down to final days

By Brenna Hillier

Shenmue fans have a new source of information on the crowdfunded sequel to Yu Suzuki’z cult-favourite open world series.

Shenmue 3 is in the final days of its crowdfunding campaign, so if you’ve been on the fence you don’t have much time left to make up your mind.

How handy, then, that a new Shenmue website has been opened to showcase the project. At present the bulk of the materials presented are mirrors of updates to the Kickstarter page, but there’s also a trailers section (with a blank area suggesting a new trailer is on the way soon), a character render and profile module, and links to stand out community sites.

“The gentle and somber Shenhua, and Ryo, jacketed in fearlessness, are reunited and reborn in Shenmue 3. Get swept along with them on this uplifting journey. This is the new era of Shenmue,” the website reads. Bless.

As with most communication pertaining to Shenmue 3 to date, it all has an authentic-feeling roughness to it; you can really imagine Suzuki and a small band of Ys Net staffers putting all this together, rather than Sony’s slick marketing team. That has its downside, of course, as some potential backers have been put off by the early assets shown so far.

Hopefully we’ll see bigger and better things are development continues; keep an eye on the new site for updates if you’re not planning to make a pledge.

Shenmue 3 is coming to PC and PS4 but has not been dated.