Shenmue III Smashes $5 Million Milestone

Shenmue III may have struggled during the middle part of its crowd funding campaign, but it's really flying right now. Following the release of this morning's new trailer, the title has raised a further $100,000 on Kickstarter – and has crossed the all-important $5 million milestone as a consequence. This means that the Character Perspective system that creator Yu Suzuki was so keen on including will now be realised.

We still don't actually know what the Character Perspective system will entail, but Suzuki-san has hinted in the past that it will highlight different personalities as you progress through the story. We suspect that it will work somewhat similarly to the Rapport System, which was an earlier Stretch Goal, and will govern changes in Shenhua's behaviour depending upon your actions and conversations with her.

The game is, of course, aiming to become the most funded video game in Kickstarter history. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night currently holds that record, but with 48 hours left to go, we reckon that Shenmue III should comfortably surpass its total tally of $5.5 million. The next major Stretch Goal in the overdue sequel – excluding Portuguese subtitles – pertains to improvements to the Battle System. But can it climb as high as $6 million?

We'll see...

Update (21:00PM BST): Actually, it sounds like the Character Perspective System may put you into the shoes of other cast members. According to a translation of a NicoNico stream, this feature will allow you to "choose your character, and it's not only the character, the routes that we can follow are also different, and the personality of different characters and their gender will make us choose between different options". Still a bit vague, then – but colour us intrigued. [Thanks FullReactiveEye]