Shenmue: Officially The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.

Why should you care about Yu Suzuki? Because he's the guy behind Shenmue. We all know Shenmue is the best thing since sliced bread. Shenmue is so good, we're still writing about it ten years later on a website dedicated to a platform it never released on.

Speaking with 1Up, Suzuki's revealed that Shenmue III "already exists", albeit in concept form.

“The concept for Shenmue 3 already exists,” he said, laughing.

“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. But Shenmue 3 doesn’t expand outward, but inward.”

Suzuki explained:

“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.”

Right.

... Can we have the game now please?