Following a very successful Kickstarter campaign in mid-2015, Ys Net has spent the last two and half years slowly but steadily developing Shenmue 3. In August this year, the dev announced a publishing deal with Deep Silver—and it's now revealed a partnership with game art studio Lakshya Digital.
Lakshya Digital operates out of Gurgaon in India, and has offices in Pune and Seattle. Its back catalogue boasts the likes of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, WWE 2K16, Sea of Thieves and Bloodborne, so I'm particularly interested to see how it informs the art direction and character production of Shenmue 3 moving forward.
Ys Net announced the collaboration via a new Kickstarter update, within which it also teased the following image:
"We gave a first look of this character earlier," reads a caption in the post. "You'll have to wait and see how she fits in with the temple in the background."
In reference to Bloodborne, Lakshya's co-founder and CEO Manvendra Shukul said this in conversation with Gadgets 360 earlier this year: "[Bloodborne] helped us understand what goes into the production of that nature. We've learned from working on such a complex title. It helped us on gearing up with the inefficiencies in our development pipeline, and working with developers and publishers more efficiently."
Ys Net adds that its next dev room report is in the works.
