Will Suzuki change his mind and just finish the story in the anime?

It's speculation at this point, but why not?

If we can trust Cedric on this one and for S4 to be better than S3 it would take an even bigger budget than S3 (e. g. more than $20 million) even with the foundation laid by S3, then it will be very hard to pull off.

I'd rather have a good Anime than another mediocre game, tbh.

Same goes if S4 and 5 cannot be made in game form. While I'd not watch a live action movie or read a Shenmue novel, I'd have nothing against an Anime finishing the story.
 
I don't think S4 would need a bigger budget than S3 to be better. They have their engine, game mechanics, artwork from S3 - its on the Unreal engine so it will scale up to next-gen without complete overhauls.

But if I was looking at this - surely you'd release your anime (hope its at least kind of popular) and then off the back of that you'd reveal the 4th game. I'd assume we won't be seeing this Anime until at least Spring 2021 (if not this time next year) so we'd be getting on for 2 years since the release of S3 so it could be a perfect time to reveal the next chapter.

Fingers crossed it shores up the finances for game development.
 
I don't think S4 would need a bigger budget than S3 to be better. They have their engine, game mechanics, artwork from S3 - its on the Unreal engine so it will scale up to next-gen without complete overhauls.

You might be right, but it seems that Cedric (and, by extension, Yu Suzuki) thinks it needs that bigger budget. And that worries me a little bit that they might have misread the reactions to the game.

I'm also on your side. They should only need to hire a better writer, because a game with the size, scope and production values of Shenmue III but with a powerful, interesting and well delivered message would get a much different reception.
 
You might be right, but it seems that Cedric (and, by extension, Yu Suzuki) thinks it needs that bigger budget. And that worries me a little bit that they might have misread the reactions to the game.

I'm also on your side. They should only need to hire a better writer, because a game with the size, scope and production values of Shenmue III but with a powerful, interesting and well delivered message would get a much different reception.
Thing is though doing cutscene animation and VO (by default more of them to give more of those moments) is expensive. So that might be some reasoning behind it. I'd imagine better writers = more money

But flip that and you could argue that the systems etc are in place from Shenmue III. So unless they're going for a visual upgrade too I'm not entirely sure why they need more than they had with Shenmue III. I'm no developer so anyone from the field want to provide an insight please do.
 
Cedric Biscay has already shared that Shenmue’s anime whether it succeeds or fails has no impact on the outcome of Shenmue continuing as a game. I say in the worst case scenario, if people want Shenmue that badly and can’t have a game, then I’ll be fine if the story goes on as an anime. I just want it to continue as a game as much as possible.
 
You might be right, but it seems that Cedric (and, by extension, Yu Suzuki) thinks it needs that bigger budget. And that worries me a little bit that they might have misread the reactions to the game.

I'm also on your side. They should only need to hire a better writer, because a game with the size, scope and production values of Shenmue III but with a powerful, interesting and well delivered message would get a much different reception.
I agree entirely that to fix the issues that fans of the series had with Shenmue 3 would not necessarily require a larger budget, but I think you’re both missing a key part of Cedric’s Tweet.

He specifically mentions meeting the demands of the market and it’s this pursuit that’s going to require significantly more money to realize.

A Shenmue 4 that only fixes the things that fans were unhappy with probably wouldn’t sell much better than Shenmue 3.
 
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