Didn't expect to see something like this randomly lol. I was already excited for Gamescom starting Thursday just to see any announcements of upcoming games etc, but this has really peaked my interest now. I usually don't buy in to twitter leaks/rumours, so I'll believe it when I see it
but, I guess the timing makes sense. If they are going to make an announcement then this is the time to do it with Gamescom starting in 2 days and with the GoG and Steam (maybe) releases coming up in a few months. Would be a good way to get Shenmue back into peoples minds.
As others have said, a "fun kinda, unexpected" announcement doesn't sound like Shenmue IV, and with the heavy emphasis story it's super interesting.
If we are getting some more story, I have no idea what form it would be in. After seeing A Gamers Journey's rough cut, I can totally see Yu working with his artists, to make a short manga or webcomic like we had for the missing boat chapter. However, at the same time, I don't know if after Yu's "return to the industry", he would release something non-interactive. Maybe he has some idea to work that into UE4, maybe like a short visual novel?
Yu has said that he doesn't want to cut too much of the story as it would ruin it, and that he would need Shenmue 4-5 to wrap everything up, which might be a bit of a tall ask (we honestly don't know).
Totally one of my thoughts, but maybe he is looking for a way to keep the story "complete" by offloading some of it to smaller episodic releases. Imagine if we get a few small comics/mangas/visual novels, to take us through a a few chapters and then Shenmue IV could finish everything off. That way, we'd still get to see the full story, and it wouldn't be all crammed into 1 game with Shenmue IV (thus the pacing could be good
). I feel like it would be a great way to expand on the story, 1 chapter at a time and also gather/keep interest. Just an idea
.
If we were to get more story, I wonder what we would get. Personally here are 3 things that I'd love to see:-
- Something that fleshed out the new characters that we met in Shenmue III as this is one of the complaints that I see and actually agree with. If we could learn more about Sun, the Grandmaster, Ling, Niao Sun etc.
- Any story that was "cut" from Shenmue III.
- What happened between the end of Shenmue III, and when they end up on the wall, or maybe a small story chunk of them walking on the wall, talking etc.
- Literally any backstory of any character lol. Would be fucking awesome to finally get the lowdown on the martial arts tournament on how Ryo got his scar. Imagine if they just released a standalone 1 hour chunk were we could use the Shenmue III fight engine (with any improvements over the last X months), to fight through the tournament as little Ryo. Would be so damn good, a good way to test the new fighting improvements/get feedback & we'd get some story that we've wanted for 20+ years! **** I'm dreaming though ****
Damn these twitter rumours, got my brain going nuts again... Next few days going to be rough
!
EDIT:- In response to ShenSun's post above, I think they will announce a way to offload some of the story to smaller side projects which will end with a Shenmue IV announcement. What format the story will come in I have no idea though.
If we get a Shenmue IV announcement however, I'll lose it!