Shenmue 3, while lacking the visual sheen and polish of the likes of Spider-Man, Control or Gears 5, is nonetheless obsessed with detail. Get past the awkward first day of gameplay, as well as some of the rust that may be the result of trying to do a lot with limited resources, and what is found within is a delightful alternative reality for what big-budget games could have come to be about. Shenmue 3, then, irrespective of narrative continuation, dusts itself off and walks back to the road that it had tried to pave. This path was swiftly left to the weeds the moment Grand Theft Auto 3 became a runaway hit. Shenmue, while not really an open world game, still set down a potential path for the genre that would be. That said, it would be crazy to say that Yu Suzuki’s latest offering doesn’t have significant problems, even if they’re not as clearly related to simple datedness as has often been made out. It may not have been more, but it was still in most ways everything that I had reasonably been hoping for since I dropped too much of my own money on that Kickstarter. To be clear, Shenmue 3 was my favourite game of 2019. Shenmue’s ambition, even today, isn’t something that can be pulled off on a shoestring budget. It’s all well and fine to make the exact game that your most hardcore fans want, but it’s an awkward place to put yourself in if you’re a middle chapter in a franchise that was, at one point, the most expensive in gaming.

What is particularly astounding about Shenmue 3’s lack of compromise here is that Shenmue 4’s potential budget and scope, to say nothing of its very theoretical existence, is hugely dependent upon success at retail. And yet, in a move so brazen one almost has to applaud it, once it’s done with its short recap, Shenmue 3 opens with its two lead characters – Ryo and Shenhua – walking a bit, stopping to talk a bit, walking a bit more, stopping to talk again, walking again and… well, it’s unevenly paced and wholly uninterested in doing anything other than picking up directly from the next page. With almost every post-Kickstarter copy purchased going to someone more in need of convincing, and the odd scandal added to the mix, it might have behoved Shenmue 3 to put some effort into a flex during its opening moments, into finding a way to pique a new audience’s interest. The story upon the game’s release is a little different. Not that anything else was needed to effectively sell through to 66,282 people, once the simple existence of Shenmue 3 was revealed during Sony’s historic 2015 E3 press conference. The final documentation, it turns out, and nothing else. It's like Yu Suzuki had been keeping Shenmue’s final design document under lock and key since 2001. Shenmue 3 picks up directly where Shenmue 2 left off, going so far as to recreate the ending sequence in what feels less like an attempt to welcome potential new players than it does a gesture towards the existing fandom, reminding them that this is something they have waited a very long time for. Those shackles, mind, come wrapped in the siren’s song of a cashmere sweater. Shenmue 3 suddenly felt less shackled by the reality of its fore-bearers, more ready to achieve what they couldn’t.

Being able to actually do so took a knife to the hardened memories of what was, and opened up a cavity through which the what-could-have-been was able to glint through.

At some point in time, I had forgotten that I once complained that you couldn't change Ryo's outfit in the original Shenmue. I had spent many of my first hours in the game slavishly living by my own memories, much as the game itself seems a slave to where it left off in 2001. It seems ironic, then, that actively removing it was a key moment of liberation for my own playthrough of Shenmue 3.

To put its importance into perspective, during Shenmue 3’s record-setting Kickstarter campaign, 22 people coughed up USD $3000 for a replica as approved by franchise creator Yu Suzuki. That jacket is literally the thing that gives him a visual identity. And become iconic it has, almost by default – after all, the rest of Ryo’s attire is of the white t-shirt and blue jeans variety. The brown, tiger-print jacket worn by Shenmue’s lead, Ryo Hazuki, has had plenty of time to become iconic.

When does shenmue 3 come out