According to Yu Suzuki (who worked on several popular games under SEGA), it would be a lot of fun to remake the first and second parts of Shenmue using Unreal Engine 5.

The last time we heard about Shenmue IV was in April 2022. At the time, 110 Industries hinted at a possible partnership with Suzuki’s studio Ys Net, but nothing came of it. And in an interview with the fan site Shenmue Dojo, Suzuki revealed that the studio isn’t even working on Shenmue IV at the moment, as it’s still in the planning stages because they need a partner. This will not be an easy task for them in the current difficult climate of the gaming industry, and sales of the third installment were nothing but “good” according to Lars Wingefors, CEO of Embracer Group (Shenmue III was published by Deep Silver, which is under Embracer, which is splitting into three companies).

Shortly after the release of Shenmue III, Suzuki set out to complete Ryo’s story with fans. This game was funded on Kickstarter at the time (and raised more than $6.3 million, making it still the highest funded game there). Those days are gone, however, and that’s probably why Suzuki doesn’t want a Kickstarter for Shenmue IV, and he spoke of its having a motion capture (mocap) process:

“With Shenmue III, we did a lot of motion capture using a magnetic scanning system. Motion capture technology has advanced now, so for Shenmue IV we would probably use optical detection. We will do the prototyping here and outsource it for the final. However, there are still some things that need to be done internally. When you hit someone, they get hurt, right? But I want to see the reaction when they get hit,” Suzuki said.

Suzuki has also said that he would make the first two Shenmue Unreal Engine 5 remakes if he had a partner, but for now he is focusing on Shenmue IV and later on the fifth part that will complete the story. He has five or six concepts, both small and large, and one of them could be announced by the end of the year. With Air Twister (a rail shooter on Apple Arcade), he said it was well received and he would consider making a sequel.

So he’s got a lot of ideas.

Source: WCCFTech