At the time of posting there is 56 hours left in the campaign to go and luckily (hopefully), we've crossed over the $5m mark! It will add the Character Perspective system, something Yu Suzuki really wanted to have in Shenmue 3 so I'm glad that is the case. It's at this point I start to worry a bit because if you look at the stretch goals, there's a very big gap between $5m to $6m, with only Portuguese subtitles included in that range (although that is a good thing for those who want it!). And $6m is the Expanded Advanced Free Battle goal, so we're talking about making the fighting more in depth, which is an important goal to have! I worry that with few stretch goals leading up to it then the drive will dry up as people don't see anything to work towards and $6m is pretty far away that they might get discouraged. Plus, raising $1m in this space of time is already a tall order. It's been met at the beginning of the campaign but who can say what will happen. I do think it will beat Bloodstained as the most funded game on Kickstarter though and what an accomplishment that would be. It only makes it crazier that Sega haven't announced a Shenmue 1 & 2 release, the demand is clearly there (or maybe they are, who can say?)
Still, have to remember, Shenmue 3 is happening! And we're guaranteed a better game than what was initially pitched to us so that's good news. In better news, the team put out a new short teaser of their work on Shenmue 3!!!
Now I think the lighting from the fireflies is maybe too intense and the lens flare might be a bit much but I think it looks good! The models look closer to the originals at least. Plus this was made by a small team this early into the development, with more people being hired and the game won't even be out until Dec 2017. So still hugely early days. But again, I'm looking at Shenmue 3. It's actually happening.