R.E: the platonic love bit.
That's something Yu has mentioned before in talking about Ryo and Shenhua's relationship. I think last time he cited Roman Holiday as an example. It's probably something that plays into the Affinity System (I think that's what they've renamed the Rapport System to now, right?) and the Cooperative Quests.
I'm hesitating likening it to a romance option like in other games. Mainly because Yu seems to want to portray a totally different type of relationship, but also because it's solely focused on one character so it should have more weight in terms of consequence, choice, whatever end result of Shenhua's like/dislike towards Ryo will be.
Actually speaking of choice, I had a bit of a brainwave based on the description given at Gamescom of the new QTE system.
Yu showed/talked about something that included traditional button presses, but also would utilise stuff like sound, colours, Chinese characters, etc. The traditional button press prompts are something that's easy to understand because you've got it on the controller right in front of you, and you know that anything other than the correct button will result in a fail state (in theory, this was already subverted in II but stay with me).
But what about the other examples? How do you know what colour, sound, or symbol is the right one? Maybe it's not a case of hitting the right marker, but making the right choice. Yu has talked a lot about wanting greater emphasis on decision making in Shenmue III, so maybe the new markers are for Ryo to make a decision (about what to do next during a fight or a chase) rather just failing to react/going the wrong way/etc? If YSnet wants to continue the branching quest design of Shenmue II, this could work out pretty nicely.