Fresh screenshots from Shenmue 3 appear online, showing new environments and looks at the characters in the forthcoming entry of the beloved franchise.

Brand new images from Ys Net's Shenmue 3 were recently revealed at the Magic Monaco Convention, a popular anime and gaming conference and expo, which show the title's protagonist Ryo Hazuki standing with the character Shenhua Ling in a variety of scenic nature settings. Sometime after the Magic Monaco Convention shared the stills, the Shenmue 3 fan-site known as ShenmueDojo posted a couple more online.

While the screenshots are indeed quite charming, they do little in the way of confirming whether or not Shenmue 3 director Yu Suzuki's desire of the game running at a consistent frame rate of 30 FPS has been met, 0r how far along the studio is in the development process. For instance, with both Ryo and Shenhua facing away from the camera, it's assumed that these stills are representations of in-game materials, but that could very well be incorrect, considering Ys Net has offered no explanation for their context.

Nevertheless, the Shenmue 3 pictures do establish that Yu Suzuki and his team are steadily moving along with the game's creation after breaking the record as Kickstarter's most successful video game project in the crowd-funding platform's history. Fans curious to see what developers have cooked up thus far can get a gander of the title's atmosphere in the mini-gallery below.

[gallery columns="2" link="file" ids="286289,286288"]

While the above images definitely look wonderful, there's always room for improvement, and the Shenmue series creator would probably agree. As it happens, several months ago, Yu Suzuki said that in order to make the game "gorgeous visually" the director would need more money to do so. Of course, a project's graphics aren't necessarily indicative of the overall quality of the final product, as many fans would argue when having a discussion on visuals for current-gen systems like PS4 and Xbox One.

At any rate, with Ys Net shooting for a release window of December 2017, there's still a long time to go before Shenmue 3's gameplay elements become featured more prominently in the press. Even so, the pressure is surely on for the game's developers to keep fans engaged throughout the production process and to deliver a stellar release upon launch day, especially after the audience's rousing reaction when it was announced during E3 2015 last June.

What do you think about the newly released screenshots for Shenmue 3? Are the images enticing enough to keep you interested in Ys Net's revival of the long-dormant series, or are they just not up to snuff? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Shenmue 3 is currently without an official release date, but developer Ys Net has previously said it's shooting for the game's launch to be sometime in December 2017 for PlayStation 4 and PC.

Source: MAGIC Monaco – Twitter, ShenmueDojo – Twitter (via GameSpot)