Almost two decades passed between the release ofShenmue 2andShenmue 3; with the latter finally coming about thanks toa record-breaking Kickstarter campaign. While many of the game’s original team returned to work on the long-awaited sequel, almost all of the game’s voice actors were recast following the series' long hiatus.
Corey Marshall did reprise his role as series protagonist Ryo Hazuki, but new talent was brought in to provide the voices for other returning characters like Shenhua, Chai, Lan Di and Ren. Thanks to a new mod made by members of theShenmuecommunity, however, it’s now possible to play throughShenmue 3with several of the original voice actors modded into the game.
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Eric Kelso provided the voices for Ren, Fuku-san and Guizhang in the original games and has a strong relationship with fans of the series. So much so, in fact, that he agreed to record himself reading all of Ren’s lines inShenmue 3so that they could be swapped in for the original recordings. The mod also sees Paul Lucas reprise the role ofShenmue’s main antagonist, Lan Di, although the Chi You Men leader has a lot less to say than Ryo’s treasure-hunting ally.
This isn’t the first time that Kelso has worked with the community either. He’ll be appearing in the upcoming documentaryA Gamers Journey: The Definitive History of Shenmueand also recorded additional voice lines for the phone conversations with both Fuku-san and Guizhang inShenmue 3. Given his strong connection with the characters, many fans will now be hoping that he is given the chance to reprise them officially inthe upcomingShenmueanime.
This isn’t the only mod that members of theShenmuecommunity are currently working on; with some of them recently beginning the monumental task of porting the original two games to Unreal Engine 4. It’s still very early days, although test images suggest that things are going fairly smoothly for the team. That said, it will probably be quite some time beforethe Dragon and Phoenix versions ofShenmue1 and 2are ready for release; especially as the team are technically making two different versions of both games.
As for a possibleShenmue 4, news on that front remains somewhat muted. At the end of last year,Shenmue 3producer Cedric Biscay revealed that he and Yu Suzuki were in the process of pitching the game to potential publishers, although there’s been no official update on how those pitches went. Either way, series fans will be hoping that the wait to find out is a little shorter this time around.
Shenmue 3is available for PlayStation 4 and PC
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