Officially closing off the Kickstarter campaign, Ys Net’s Shenmue 3 Kickstarter has now raised $6,333,295 USD with 60, 320 backers supporting the dream project. In less than a day, the campaign succeeded in its initial goal funding and in a month from the debut, Shenmue 3 became the highest funded Kickstarter campaign for a video game, beating out Bloodstained’s earlier record of $5, 545, 991 USD.
The campaign, much like successful campaigns has numerous stretch goals that have been successfully met. So far, Shenmue 3 will have Shenmue 1 and 2 cinema shorts with assumed upgraded graphics, subtitles for German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portugese. There will be a rapport system to create a more character rich interaction with the world. Skill tree system to add character diversity. Extensions to Baisha Village including more mini games, missions and quests and event and a character perspective system to further enrich the personalities that characters in the world will have towards Ryo. Finally the last goal to be met is an expanded battle system where advanced free battle will be implemented, giving players a more intuitive and interactive gameplay experience.
Shenmue’s creator, Yu Suzuki has mentioned that while the game has exceeded its goal, it’s not going to truly be ‘open world’ unless the campaign managed to hit $10 million. That said, the game will be made and be done to the absolute best potential with what he manages to receive through the Kickstarter and Sony’s assistance.
Shenmue 3 is expected to see release sometime at the end of 2017 for PC and PlayStation 4.