The first gameplay trailer for Shenmue 3

Thanks to the recent French convention Magic 2019, which was held in Monaco, we now know a lot more about long-awaited Shenmue 3. We can also finally take a look at the updated gameplay because it’s been almost four years since we’ve seen any gameplay related to the game at all. Moreover, the game’s creator Yu Suzuki promised an extended gameplay trailer at a later date.

The video demonstrates interactions between the characters, as well as shows a few dialogues and battles. Luckily, highly criticized facial animations were extensively updated and look a lot less awkward now. Yu Suzuki also revealed some additional information regarding Shenmue 3. First of all, there’re 500 NPCs in the game, and this amount is 10 times bigger than the initially planned one. Both of the original games had roughly the same amount of characters, so that’s a nice detail. Battle system was inspired by Virtua Fighter but was created from scratch for Shenmue 3, although it is worth noting that many moves and attack variations from the original dilogy will appear in the triquel nonetheless.

Shenmue 3 was unexpectedly announced at E3 2015 and was successfully funded via Kickstarter after that. The game has been delayed several times since, but all the fans will be able to finally grab the triquel for either PS4 or PC on August 27, 2019.