Less than 9 hours after the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter was launched, it already reached its $2 million goal. It’s an amazing and record breaking performance, as Shenmue 3 is now the fastest game to reach both the $1 million and later the $2 million mark. At the moment, the game has already reached the $2.5 million stretch goal as well. With this, it seems the dream of Shenmue fans around the world will finally become a reality.
We’re not out of the woods yet
But let’s play the Devil’s Advocate for a moment. With all the excitement, it’s easy to forget that $2 million isn’t an awful lot of money to create an AAA game. The Witcher 3, for example; is said to have had, for a game that size, a relatively low budget of $32 million (excluding marketing), That’s still more then ten times the amount of money that Shenmue 3 is currently at. So what can we really expect from Shenmue 3, depending on how much the Kickstarter actually reaches?
A good comparison might be the Kickstarter for Dreamfall: Chapters, a 3D adventure game with relatively simple gameplay mechanics made using the Unity 3D engine, which reached $1.5 million. That was almost twice its original goal, yet the game still ended up having to be released in five episodes rather than as a full game (as was originally planned), likely because they ran out of money (that said, the game is living up to expectations).
So it’s hard to think that $2 million or $3 million is enough to create a complete Shenmue experience. And it seems Yu Suzuki realizes that. In his video, he states that it’s up to the fans now. Whether or not Shenmue 3 will become the full-on Shenmue experience the fans have dreamed of will be determined in no small part to the budget that they can obtain. But another aspect is of course the management itself. The original Shenmue games went way over budget, and it’s up to Yu Suzuki now to prove that they can create the next game on a considerably smaller budget. It’s been a while since Yu Suzuki and his team at Ys Net have worked on AAA games, and things have certainly changed in the past decade. And it’s easy for a Kickstarter campaign to overload on stretch goals and rewards to keep the pledges going, only for them to end up taking considerably more work and money than anticipated.
Worth the risk
But of course, it didn’t stop me from backing the Kickstarter, and neither did it stop the other ~34,000 backers. At the moment, the stretch goals seem to be set at a realistic price point. Personally, I think that if the Kickstarter can close in on $10 million mark, it’s going to be at a point where they can deliver an experience worthy of that of the first games. That’s very far off, but we know Shenmue fans are crazy (in a good way), so it might not be unthinkable to see it reach that number.
Also, it’s fully possible that Yu Suzuki plans to secure additional funding out of Kickstarter. At the moment, it’s not clear if they plan to fund the game entirely through crowdfunding. Sony appears involved in one way or another, seeing how the Kickstarter was announced at their E3 press conference. The game is scheduled for PS4 and PC only at the moment, although the FAQ on Kickstarter doesn’t exclude a release on Xbox One or Wii U, so for now it doesn’t seem like Sony paid for a console-exclusive release.
It’s not about the graphics this time
Technically, the Shenmue games were ahead of their time. But this time around, the goal isn’t to create the most realistic game ever made. Instead, the demo shows a colorful graphical style that seems reminiscent from the older games (the character models seem a bit off, but those will no doubt be tweaked based on feedback from the fans). There’s really no need for the game to try and compete with the likes of Uncharted 4 here. After all, what’s important now is for fans to be able to finish the story.
In terms of development, the Unreal Engine 4 is a good choice for the game, as it has already proven its worth many times before in other AAA games. Unity 3D is another popular choice for development studios on a smaller budget, but games like Dreamfall: Chapters already seem to be pushing that engine to its limits, so it probably wouldn’t be a good pick for a game like Shenmue.
In terms of animation, what we get to see in the demo is really solid. The characters move realistically, more so than in the original Shenmue games. Shenhua’s jump across the river is perhaps the most impressive moment in the short demo, as it appears to be motion captured (and if it’s not, that’s even more impressive). And although the video isn’t the best quality, the engine also appears to be using motion blur here to add to the sense of realism. It certainly looks promising if this is the quality they’ll be aiming for.
The moment where Shensua jumps across the river shows a lot of attention to detail in the animation.
Ultimately, we know this is Yu Suzuki’s dream project, so we can be sure he’ll do everything he can to make Shenmue 3 the best game it can possibly be. And one thing’s for sure: it’s going to be an interesting 31 days until the Kickstarter ends, and we’ll be certain to continue reporting news on the game as the Kickstarter progresses!