Hang-On creator and all-around video game legend Yu Suzuki has revealed during a chat with IGN Japan that he would like to make Shenmue 4 more accessible to newcomers, reiterating his previous comments about the as-yet unconfirmed sequel.
Discussing the future of the cult franchise, which started out life on the Dreamcast back in 1999, Suzuki-san also talked about the possibility of including playable flashback sequences in Shenmue 4. As previously reported, he also mentioned that he’s thinking about a Yakuza 0-style Shenmue prequel game.
I want Shenmue 4 to be enjoyable for newcomers. To make that possible, the most important thing is to make it enjoyable without knowing previous events in the story. I don’t think that a new player wants to know 100% of the story. 20 or 30% could be enough.
In Shenmue 3, we implemented a digest movie that teaches the player the main events of the previous games, but for Shenmue 4 I want to integrate that part into the main game. It would be great if the player could naturally learn about previous events just by playing the game. For example, rather than watching a separate movie, having playable flashbacks could be a way to do it.
Shenmue 4 hasn’t been officially announced yet, but Suzuki-san has previously said that he will ‘never give up‘ on the franchise, so it may yet happen. After all, Shenmue 3 around 18 years to arrive after its predecessor, so anything is possible!
[Source – IGN Japan]