Trivia / Shenmue III

• Doing It for the Art: Prior to the game's release, Eric Kelso (Fukuhara, Guizhang and Ren) and Paul Lucas (Chai and Lan Di) expressed interest in reprising the roles of the characters they voiced in the previous game's English dub. Unfortunately for them and their fans, neither of them were contacted to reprise their roles and were replaced instead^note Speculation is that neither of them live in the United States where the dub for III was recorded, unlike the previous two games where recording was done in Japan where they both lived at the time. Following the game's PC release, fans reached out to them to redub their characters for the game, and they agreed to do it. For free. Although Chai was not redubbed, fans can use their voices in the game through unofficial mods.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Two of them.
  • Limited Run Games produced a Collector's Edition that included a Light Box, patches, stickers, mini replicas of the Dragon and Phoenix Mirrors, and a Dreamcast-style game case. It was limited to 5,000 copies, pre-orders went live on the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast's US launch (9/9/19), and sold out within a couple of hours.
  • For the European market, Pix'n Love released their own Collector's Edition that included a special case, the Day-One edition of the game, a 104-page artbook, 4 lithographs and a numbered certificate of authenticity. 2,500 copies were made.
• Network to the Rescue: Sony is working as a partner with the developers to get the third game off the ground. Or so it was thought. In actually, it's just a publishing and marketing deal, and that Sony wouldn't see any of the development money. It was later confirmed that SEGA had given Yu Suzuki the Shenmue license, but that he could not do an HD remaster of the original two because SEGA still owns the license to one and two; which thankfully in 2018, SEGA announced a Compilation Re-release of the first two games.
• The Other Darrin: In Japanese, Shenhua Ling is now voiced by Haruka Terui, who replaces Hazuki Ishigaki from the first two games. In English, Brianna Knickerbocker voices her, replacing Akasha Scholen. Adding further to this, since the first two games used English-speaking actors who were living in Tokyo at the time, almost no one from the earlier games returned for both dubs, save for the examples in Role Reprise below.
• Promoted Fanboy: Prior to the third game's announcement, a fan known as NoconKid attempted his own remake of the first game in hopes to help revive the franchise, and dreamed of working with Suzuki on a Shenmue game together. Following the Kickstarter announcement, he released a video showcasing a remake of the Hazuki Residence running in the Unreal Engine, which was also recognized by Suzuki, and was contracted to work on the third game.
• Role Reprise:
  • Masaya Matsukaze and Corey Marshall reprise their role as Ryo for the Japanese and English dub respectively. Takahiro Sakurai also reprises his role as Lan Di in the Japanese dub, and Lisle Wilkerson returns as Joy in a voice cameo.
  • An unoffical example, the fans reached out to Eric Kelso and Paul Lucas to reprise their roles as Fukuhara, Guizhang, Ren and Lan Di as unofficial mods for the PC version of the game.
• Saved from Development Hell: Following the release of Shenmue II, Sega expressed no interest in continuing the series following their departure from the console market. Suzuki had always wanted to continue the saga, and has mentioned in interviews that fans would always ask him if the third game would ever be made. At E3 2015, he announced a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign to help get Shenmue III off the ground, which achieved its $2,000,000 goal in nine hours.
• Schedule Slip: Shenmue III was originally slated to be released in late 2017, but was pushed back to late 2018. Suzuki claims the reason for the delay was because the modern development tools allowed the developers to do more than what they thought was possible, causing the project to grow bigger than originally intended. It was delayed again to improve the quality and polish of the game, with a set release date of August 2019, and was delayed again to November 2019, when it finally released for good.
• Sequel Gap: The game was released 18 years after Shenmue II, which was released in 2001.
• Studio Hop: Deep Silver takes over as the game's publisher when the previous two games were published and developed by Sega. Sega played no role in the game's development but provided Suzuki with assets from the previous games and helped promote the game in Japan.