10 Gaming Endings That Basically Doomed The Franchise
3. To Be Continued...(Again) - Shenmue III
Shenmue III was one of the most anticipated video game sequels of all time, arriving almost two decades after the second game left fans on an epic cliffhanger, with Ryo Hazuki's vengeance against his father's killer Lan Di still unfulfilled.
And though franchise director Yu Suzuki did tell fans that Shenmue III wasn't the end of Ryo's story, given the sheer time and effort it took to get the third game made, fans surely deserved to see the story significantly moved forward, no?
Instead, Shenmue III ends in hilariously anti-climactic fashion, as a brief boss fight with Lan Di - who is absent for 99.8% of the game, by the way - culminates in Ryo getting his ass kicked and Lan Di escaping once again.
A closing title informs us, "The story goes on...," as though to rub salt in the wound that near-two decades of waiting really wasn't worth it after all.
Considering that Shenmue III's mere existence is a freaking miracle, and there's no guarantee at all that a fourth game will ever come to pass, the game's refusal to move Ryo's story on left many fans feeling burned for all the time and money they invested in the project.
As a result, a Kickstarter for Shenmue IV surely won't have anywhere near the same uptake should it actually happen.