One of the first subjects I wrote about here on Trekking with Dennis almost five years ago was the Shenmue saga – Shenmue III specifically. With 2024 being the fifth anniversary of Shenmue III and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Shenmue… I thought it could be interesting to look at what – if anything – may lie ahead for the series.
For context, I played and loved both Shenmue and Shenmue II when I owned a Dreamcast just after the turn of the millennium. I was left disappointed by Sega and Yu Suzuki’s inability to conclude the story, as I found it incredibly fun and engaging. As I’ve said more than once here on the website, Shenmue was the first game I played that felt truly cinematic; as if its story would be right at home on the big screen. The combination of its open level design, realistic NPCs who seemed to have lives of their own, the modern-day setting, and engrossing narrative all came together to make it one of the best games I’ve ever played – and its sequel was just as good.
But here’s the thing: Shenmue was a failure. While critically acclaimed and spawning a vocal fan community that persists to this day, by every other metric the Shenmue saga completely failed. The incredibly expensive undertaking never came close to making its money back for Sega, and the failure of the Dreamcast meant that there was no way to recoup most of the two games’ development costs. Even a release of Shenmue II on Xbox didn’t help things. As bitterly upset as I may have been, I came to accept that this ahead-of-its-time masterpiece was underappreciated and would remain unfinished.
When Yu Suzuki and his independent development studio YSNet were able to buy the rights to Shenmue from Sega, it seemed as if things might be looking up. A Kickstarter campaign came along at just the right moment – when interest in crowd-funding was close to its peak – and the latent Shenmue fan community stumped up an astonishing $7 million with the hopes of concluding the saga. Backed up by additional investment from Sony, Epic Games, and others, it seemed as if the failed series was about to get one last chance.
A re-release of Shenmue I & II came to PC and PlayStation 4 consoles a couple of years ahead of Shenmue III’s launch. For the first time in well over a decade (since I put my Dreamcast and most of its games in a box in the attic) I re-played the games – and I had a blast all over again. But then came what I considered to be devastating news from YSNet.
The Shenmue saga was always planned as a multi-game story. Shenmue and Shenmue II told the first chapters, but there were several chapters still to tell. For reasons that, years later, I still find pig-headed and incomprehensibly stupid, YSNet was unwilling to adapt the planned story to make Shenmue III the saga’s finale. Instead, it would simply move the story along… presumably with the expectation of high sales or another crowd-funding campaign to keep Shenmue going. That always seemed completely impossible to me – and as much as I hate to say it, I was right about that. I didn’t even bother to buy Shenmue III in 2019, because what was the point? The game had, in my opinion, one job: to finish the Shenmue story. Yu Suzuki and his studio had been given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do that by a dedicated group of fans… and they blew it.
Photo Credit: YSNet; ysnet.games
The re-release of Shenmue I & II (and no, I don’t consider it a “remaster” or anything close; it’s a port) didn’t sell particularly well on PC and PlayStation – which was an ominous warning sign for Shenmue III. When Shenmue III finally launched amidst controversy over its Epic Games exclusivity on PC, it also didn’t sell very well. It seemed to me as if most of the people who might’ve conceivably been interested in buying it had already backed the Kickstarter project – one of the benefits of which was a copy of the game upon release. In its first week, Shenmue III grazed the lower reaches of the PlayStation sales charts in Japan… but didn’t even register anywhere else.
I did eventually buy Shenmue III when it was on sale on Steam. I haven’t played it yet, despite owning it for a while, and I have no real plans to. But when it was on sale for £15 or so, it seemed like a reasonable purchase. And if there’s ever news of a fourth game… maybe I’ll get around to checking it out.
The way I see it, lacklustre sales for both the re-release of Shenmue I & II and Shenmue III demonstrate pretty clearly that this series has no mainstream appeal. Shenmue III was the last opportunity to change that – but again, the game failed to do so. So at this point, the remaining fans of the series are pretty much shouting into a void; tweet-a-thons that garner a few thousand posts at the very most feel like the last wriggles of a series in its death throes.
Shenmue’s anime adaptation also failed to bring renewed interest to the saga. I don’t have the numbers to hand, but Shenmue: The Animation ran for a single season back in 2022, and during that time, sales of the re-release and Shenmue III barely moved.
Shenmue: The Animation was itself cancelled after just one season. Having adapted the story of the first two games, there was scope for a second season to dip into Shenmue III or perhaps even go beyond that… but the audience just wasn’t there either in Japan or in the west.
There was finally some Shenmue news just a few days ago, though. A new publisher – ININ Games, a company with a focus on older, retro titles – picked up the publishing rights to Shenmue III, and there’s been talk of potential ports to the Nintendo Switch and other platforms. This is by far the biggest news for Shenmue since Shenmue III’s launch back in 2019… and while I don’t expect it to really go anywhere, it’s at least noteworthy that someone, somewhere, thinks Shenmue is worth spending a little money on.
At this point, twenty-five years on from the first game and five years after Shenmue III failed to light up the board, I really don’t see Shenmue IV ever getting off the ground. YSNet burned a lot of its bridges with members of the fan community with their first Kickstarter campaign, and with the decline of crowd-funding in general, raising millions of dollars that way seems like it’s off the table. With a clear and demonstrable lack of success with both the re-released titles and Shenmue III, getting significant outside investment also feels pretty unlikely.
However, the new publishing deal for Shenmue III and talk of a potential port of the game to a new platform has raised some hopes in the fan community. So let’s think about what Shenmue IV could and should look like.
For me, the bottom line is this: Shenmue IV needs to be the end. I don’t care how many chapters Yu Suzuki originally planned in the ’90s. I don’t care how much of the story would need to be slimmed down or skipped in order to get to the end. At this point, if the stars align and through some absolutely miraculous good fortune Shenmue IV is able to get off the ground, it simply must bring the story to an end. That was what Shenmue III was supposed to do – and having failed again, there may not be another chance.
Shenmue IV won’t bring in new fans – not in any significant numbers, anyway. The re-release didn’t do that and neither did Shenmue III, so as much as I wish the games were held in higher esteem and celebrated more widely, it’s time to acknowledge that Shenmue is and always has been a niche product with a small audience. But that could be a positive thing! Without needing to worry about making a game with broader appeal, YSNet could tailor Shenmue IV to the built-in audience it already has, keeping things simpler for the team.
And there are ways to tell other chapters of the story if Yu Suzuki is still insistent on doing so. A book, graphic novel, or even a series of cheaply-animated YouTube shorts could cover whatever gaps may emerge from condensing two or three games’ worth of story into a single title. Shenmue IV wouldn’t need to cut out one massive chunk of narrative, either: it could pick up different pieces of the story with in-game cut-scenes covering the basics of the rest. In short, there are ways around this stumbling block – as there were in the 2010s when Shenmue III was being developed. Unlike last time, however, someone needs to come in and make cuts to the bloated story and gameplay – and if Yu Suzuki and his team can’t or won’t do it, then it needs to be an outsider.
I haven’t played Shenmue III and I’ve managed to avoid major spoilers since it launched. But clips of the game that I’ve seen have included things like mini-games, a stamina system that limited how far Ryo could run, and other such bloat. Cutting some of this stuff out to focus on the core narrative – that of Ryo’s quest to track down the murderous Lan Di – would go a long way to helping a hypothetical next title move along at a much more reasonable pace.
There’s an expression that I think is relevant here: “don’t let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘good.'” In this case, I will happily concede that a cut-down Shenmue IV with some of its QTEs, mini-games, and open-world exploration elements removed wouldn’t be the ideal experience. It wouldn’t be completely true to the Shenmue series, either. But if it finished the story – a story I began almost a quarter of a century ago – it would be worth it. I’ll make that compromise to see the end of Ryo’s story… and that’s what I genuinely expected would happen with Shenmue III. In that sense, I’ve already committed myself to and steeled myself against those kinds of compromises.
Both Yu Suzuki himself and some die-hard Shenmue fans evidently hate this idea. But my question to them is a pretty basic one: if it’s this cut-down game or nothing, what would you rather have? I know that, speaking for myself, I’d rather see the story brought to an end, even if the journey to that end point is shorter and less free-roaming than the first chapters of the story. If you don’t agree… how long are you willing to hang on in the hopes that the “perfect” version of Shenmue IV and Shenmue V that you have in your head will ever make it to release?
Wouldn’t something be better than nothing at all?
I’m not getting any younger. I’m the wrong side of forty and, as regular readers will know, I’m not in great shape health-wise. There’s a non-zero chance that I won’t be here in ten years’ time, and with arthritis already affecting my hands and fingers, my ability to play games is beginning to wane. In short… I don’t have the time to wait for a mythological Shenmue-loving corporation to step in and fund development. If I was Elon Musk I’d happily do it… but who has that kind of money just lying around?
Shenmue is one of my favourite games of all-time. More than that, it’s the game that showed me what interactive media could be in the new millennium, and at a time in my life where I might’ve begun to drift away from the hobby, it’s a title that kept me engaged and kept me playing. I love Shenmue and Shenmue II. And I would have given anything to see its story continue. But we’re at a point now where repeated failures and some poor decision-making have left the series’ future not so much uncertain as dead. Shenmue is, in my opinion at least, almost certainly not coming back.
Maybe you’re of the opinion that, even if it takes another quarter of a century, we should let YSNet do its thing and tell the story they want to tell in the way they want to tell it. I’m telling you now: I don’t have that kind of time. If this new publisher is interested in another game – and despite my scepticism, I hope that they are – then my only request is this: make it the final game. Finish the story somehow, even if that means cutting back on the scope of the narrative and/or gameplay. If Ryo is going to get a miraculous third chance that, from a business standpoint, he categorically does not deserve, then have the decency to finish his story and bring the Shenmue saga to a belated conclusion.
But that’s the same red line I had back in the 2010s, and YSNet blew it. Yu Suzuki and his studio squandered the best (and probably the only) chance they had to conclude Ryo’s story, and as much as I’d like to think they’ll get a reprieve… I still struggle to see it. Five years on from Shenmue III and I feel more justified than ever in my stance back then. I said in 2019 that I was unwilling to pick up the threads of that story only to end up disappointed for the second time when it’s yet again left incomplete – and with nothing beyond vague suggestions about what YSNet might like the next game to look like, as well as sales so underwhelming that they’d make any company baulk at the notion of signing on, I get to take a very bitter victory lap… one I really don’t want to take.
If you asked me now, in November 2024, whether we’ll ever see a fourth Shenmue game, my answer would be almost certainly not. I don’t see how the series has a future, despite a new publisher signing on and talk of a potential Shenmue III port to another console. A few thousand remaining fans tweeting into the void isn’t gonna change that, because as loud and vocal as Shenmue fans can be, we’re a tiny and ever-diminishing number.
There are multiple tragedies in the Shenmue saga. The first game was light-years ahead of its time, pioneering a dense, lived-in open world years before anyone else even tried it. The world of those first two games still outpaces many modern titles in terms of depth and complexity. The demise of the Dreamcast and a player base that preferred faster-paced action-packed titles doomed the series… but that isn’t where the tragedy ends.
YSNet’s failure to recognise that the crowd-funding campaign was lightning in a bottle; a once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring a dead series back to life… that’s the final tragedy of Shenmue. Fans gifted Yu Suzuki a golden opportunity to conclude the story he started more than fifteen years earlier… and he blew it. He allowed “perfect” to become the enemy of “good,” and stubbornly refused to deviate from a planned multi-game series even when it should’ve been clear that there would never be another opportunity to bring Ryo’s story to an end.
I could’ve lived with Shenmue and Shenmue II as a disappointingly incomplete story; a millennial masterpiece that, for reasons beyond anyone’s control, would remain unfinished. But I’ve really struggled to forgive Yu Suzuki and YSNet for taking the incredible opportunity presented to them by the fan community and pissing it away on a frivolous, bloated, still-unfinished third game.
And as to the future? Maybe the jury really is still out. Maybe this ININ Games genuinely sees the potential in Shenmue IV. But until the game’s officially in production and ready to go, I’ll be sceptical. I’m pretty sure that this is where the Shenmue saga ends.
Shenmue I & II and Shenmue III are available now for PC and PlayStation 4. The Shenmue series – including all titles and properties discussed above – may be the copyright of YSNet, ININ Games, Sega, and others. Some images courtesy of Shenmue Dojo and IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
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