I decided to rewatch Matt McMuscles Shenmue III's video again and realized why I will never subscribe to his channel nor Super Eyepatch Wolf's. My main issue with his video is twofold, the first being that for someone who wants to come across as a neutral arbiter of information on post mortem retrospectives clearly shows his bias, and secondly, he falls on his sword too many times to count. I will now present my opinion on why that is.
First of all, he criticizes the ambiguity of Sony's involvement with the Shenmue III Kickstarter. Yet, in the very next breath, he mentions Gio Corsi's quote to which if he had dug deeper he would have found out that Sony was providing some money for marketing, production costs, and to cover the logistical side of things. If one goes on to watch Personal Magnus' video "Making Shenmue III was not easy" he provides a clip from Gio Corsi himself.
He then did not mention that the first two Shenmue titles costed SEGA in the vicinity of forty-seven to seventy million dollars in total. A figure that is so high that every Dreamcast owner would have had to buy Shenmue Chapter One: Yokosuka twice for SEGA to break even. This failure is why Yu Suzuki was "Moved Upstairs" which is a business speak for his creative power being neutered to save face. So when the Kickstarter was announced in which fans would be taking the financial risk and not SEGA they decided to let Yu Suzuki borrow the license to the Shenmue Intellectual Property. Because as we all know, this was a win-win situation for SEGA in that if Shenmue III sold well, they could easily swoop in and take some of the profits for themselves, and if it failed, SEGA would lose nothing.
His next big mistake was bringing on Super Eyepatch Wolf. For someone who wants to portray the situation in a neutral manner bringing on someone who has a negative bias towards the game defeats that purpose. It is also an Ad Populum fallacy because his video is the most popular on the topic but it is not an objective one. Ironically, there were two easy ways he could have avoided this which are either to find someone with a positive bias as well to counter Eyepatch Wolf's opinion such as Adam Korlaik, James Reiner, Oregon Pacifist, Personal Magnus, or Virtua Bros or just leave him out of it altogether.
While I agree with Eyepatch Wolf on the combat system in Shenmue III, I disagree with him on everything else. His complaint about the stamina system is an excuse to artificially inflate the game's running time is absurd. When you can exploit the money system in Shenmue III of which there is a YouTube video out there explaining the process his whole argument falls apart.
I am not sure what he means by how interacting with the world is still clunky when all you have to do is press a button and the game even highlights things in red when you shift into first-person view. Finally, Eyepatch Wolf complains that Longsun Zhao gets away again and Shenmue III was all for nothing. Forgetting the context around how the game ends.
This is then where Matt brings up the whole Epic Games controversy and once again falls on his sword. He mentions in one breath how fans were not getting the video game that they pledged their money towards and yet in the next breath states that Shenmue III would be coming to Steam within a year. It is amazing how he does not realize his irony.
I think that it was not the moving of launchers that was a big deal because if Shenmue III were moved over to CD Project Red's GOG launcher the outcry of betrayal would have been non-existent. It had to do with the issues the launcher had at the time which had to do with missing features, security issues, bugs/glitches, and potential privacy violations. Therefore, I will provide my perspective on the situation.
When it comes to missing features, Epic has provided a roadmap for the improvement of its launcher. Now whether they implement these proposals is one thing but at least they are aware of this. For the next two points, I will simply state "Welcome to the Internet" a software program that will always be in a perpetual beta state.
Bugs and Glitches are ubiquitous in all software no matter how well coded it is. One only has to watch the "Son of a Glitch" YouTube channel to see this. However, does this stop people from buying video games? Does this stop people from using various software programs? If not, then why does Epic get thrown under the bus because of it? This same logic could apply to security issues as no matter how fortified your firewalls are, some hackers will find a way through them. It has happened to Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, YourTango, Google, the PlayStation Network, and Steam as well. Does this stop anyone from using their services? If not, then why is it a big deal when it's Epic?
Finally, spying on users' private information is something that happens on the microscale and the macroscale. How many individuals have had their personal information leaked online by some hacker? Then you have the National Security Agency spying on all information users post online which is a constitutional violation of citizens' rights. Yet, when it comes to the latter, no one cares but Epic supposedly does this there is massive uproar. Not saying it is acceptable, but either it is all okay or none of it is. In either case, my overall point is that when you entered into the online world you entered into a perpetual beta where you are always at risk. It is what you agreed to when you decided to enter into this domain.
Then Matt complains about the preorder gifts which is just pedantic. Someone who has spent five to thirty dollars is not someone who is even covering the full cost of the game. Anyone over that threshold is like someone who has been given first-class treatment on an airplane being served Foie Gras, Fillet Minion, Caviar, and Champagne but complains when they see someone in Coach Class being fed a cheeseburger with fries and a Coke. Especially considering you were not promised these items in the first place. Because by that logic, is it not unfair for the customers who are not getting these exclusive Kickstarter rewards? I mean they are supporting the game with their hard-earned cash too.
Finally, Matt laments how Shenmue III has us right back at the beginning again. Yet forgets to mention the upcoming anime. This means that Shenmue's future is still uncertain because if the anime is a success, then Shenmue IV is looking more promising, and maybe SEGA will reconsider the viability of the Shenmue franchise once again.
In any case, I apologize for this long post, but I wanted to get all my thoughts out there.