An Evening Snack in Niaowu | Shenmue 3

In the first two Shenmue games, there were plenty of restaurants and food stands to be found - and even Tom's hot dog truck - but it wasn't possible for Ryo to eat at any of them.

That will be changing with Shenmue III, where managing Ryo's energy (screenshots suggest it will be called "endurance") will be a core part of the gameplay both during combat and while exploring. Ryo's maximum endurance is represented on-screen by a number of balls, a number that can be increased by training.

While exploring: the green balls around the outside of the mini-map represent Ryo's endurance (from a screenshot at Yu Suzuki's talk at Reboot Develop 2019)

Ryo's HP meter during combat (from Yu Suzuki's presentation at MAGIC 2019)

Ryo's endurance is depleted through physical exercise such as fighting or running. We have learned from recent comments by Yu Suzuki that if Ryo grows too tired, he may become unable to run but he can restore his energy by eating various types of food.

Ryo may find or buy snacks that boost his Endurance, such as this banana (from a screenshot at Yu Suzuki's talk at Reboot Develop 2019)

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Bracelets & Prayer Beads at the Waterfront | Shenmue 3

Yu Suzuki shared several new Shenmue III screenshots at the Reboot Develop conference last week, and one of these was the above image of Ryo strolling along the waterfront in Choubu (Niaowu) at night.

• Related post: Recap & Analysis: New Shenmue 3 Screenshots (High-Res) | Reboot Develop 2019

This post will talk some more about the first stand, as it has a few extra details of interest.

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Recap & Analysis: New Shenmue 3 Screenshots (High-Res) | Reboot Develop 2019

To the delight of Shenmue, Yu Suzuki revealed several new screenshots and new gameplay details on Shenmue 3 during his one-hour on-stage talk at the Reboot Develop 2019 game developers conference held in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

This post presents the new screenshots (update: now refreshed with 1080p versions obtained via the official Shenmue.link site), with notes and comments on each. When zooming in on details, the images have been enhanced for clarity using image-processing software to upscale and filter.

At points along the way I've provided my own translation of Yu's words, although I have to say that the on-stage MC, Ben Judd, did an excellent job at digesting and translating what Yu said, and combining that with his own input.

New Screenshot: Ryo at the Waterfront (Choubu / Niaowu)

Notes on this image:

• Yu Suzuki says: "This is the Guilin we created. It's Guilin only as far as the mountains go [indicating the distinctive shape of the mountains]: there are also outdoor stalls that are a little similar to those in Japan, and the scenery along the shore on this [right] side is from a place that isn't Guilin, called Fenghuang (Phoenix Ancient Town). I've assembled pieces of scenery that really feels like China from various places and made alterations as needed to bring them closer towards what I want to portray.
  
  In contrast to the fair amount of "shaping" that was carried out with the backgrounds, is the accuracy of things like people's movements and their small every-day gestures - for example when someone feels troubled and so on. NPCs too; we've made a lot of different faces of Chinese people, and I don't think there's any other game that has put this much effort into portraying old men and women NPCs!
  
  For the music also, I've used Chinese musical instruments as much as possible, for example.
  
  To bring out the feeling of China, there are certain areas like these that I've really focused on".
• The items for sale at the first stand appear to be bracelets.
• On the green awning of the first stand, the large characters 珠宝専科 mean "Jewelry Specialists" (hence the picture of a cut diamond in the center).
• The smaller characters above are 五十年老店. Update: I initially misread the fourth kanji - thanks to yuc02 for the clarification! The meaning in Chinese is that the shop has been in business for 50 years.
• The writing on the other stalls is hard to make out, but it looks like one of the characters on the red awning is 董, which is part of the word "antiques".

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