I saw this thread start up last week and knew I wanted to get involved, as you can probably tell from the avatar Im a pretty huge Shenmue fan. I was 15 when it came out here in the UK , and whilst Id been playing video games since the Mega Drive era I think this was the first one that I can say truly shaped my tastes as a gamer. It seems like yesterday I was sitting on the edge of my bed, in my tiny bedroom at the back of the house exploring Dobuita, or powering about the docks on my forklift truck. I dont think there is any other game that have put the player in the kind of mindset where you just want live in the world, at the start of each day Id have a sort of vague plan for the day, got to walk down through Yamanose and Sakuragaoka into Dobuita, dig further into whatever leads I was investigating at that stage of the game, go visit Nozomi, play some arcade games, talk to Tom, train in the parking lot. It really was awesome both in telling its revenge story, and conveying an amazing sense of place and atmosphere.
I bought the second the day it came out and at first was actually a little apprehensive about just how large the world seemed. In Shenmue I knew the street layouts (and later warehouse layouts) from memory, probably still do, Wan Chai, with all its different quarters, streets, back alleys, parks and people seemed like it would be impossible to ever know by memory. However thats what I grew to love about it, it felt like a bustling metropolis, and as it turned out I ended up knowing the layout by memory anyway after countless playthroughs. Kowloon still ranks as one of my favorite locations in any videogame, I remember it being so seedy and threatening. I really felt like I was closing in on Lan Di, culminating in the showdown with Dou Niu on the rooftop where, after almost two full games and maybe for the last time) we finally see Lan Di in person again, tantalizingly close, yet unreachable. I know these are not the most eloquent couple of paragraphs, but theres I wanted to convey just how much I loved these two games without writing 2000 words!
In terms of this GDC talk, I really cant see anything being announced, it is after all a post-mortem on the first 2 games. The eternal optimist in me thinks we may get something in the coming years, especially with Adam Boyes and a few other Sony people mentioning it has topped the list of most requested games. I think its far more likely that this will lead (finally) to the HD releases of the first two games, rather than an outright 3rd game. I just cant see a company (other than maybe Sony) willing to put up the kind of money making Shenmue 3 PROPERLY would take. I stress the word properly as Im of the mind where if they were to do a Shenmue 3 Id want it to be like the first two games, huge game worlds, lots of people on the screen going about their daily lives, a sprawling story that spans numerous locations etc. I am not interested in playing Shenmue 3 in say tight episodes with no exploration, or have it be like an interactive novel. Also ignoring the money side of it, building a game as big as Shenmue 3 would need to be would surely mean even if it was announced that they were going to be starting work on it after GDC, wed be looking at mid 2016 at the very earliest, meaning that if I am to ever a reach the end of my favorite gaming series, one that I started when I was 15, I would be in my early 30s, which seems pretty crazy!