Random Shenmue IV Thoughts.
- Thread starter Jigen
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I don't even bother anymore with those
I think the PlayStation Showcase has the potential to be massive, considering all the rumors swirling around.
Nostalgia is still holding strong, which might be Sony's play with their rumored exclusivity deal on Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill(long dormant franchises).
Most of us here are older and remember the titles that helped PS be on the map(MGS1, Silent Hill and Symphony of the Night).
But such powerful nostalgic deals, coupled with the fact they haven't shown a great many of their first-party lineup, could bode ill for a Shenmue IV reveal at the event.
I'll never say never, as they *do* have Final Fantasy VII Part II and could go for another 1-2 punch, especially if they've agreed to do marketing again.
But I don't see it--I see them just going for megaton after megaton, which I don't think Shenmue has that power after III's mixed reception.
But I feel that Shenmue IV, if it exists, is something that would probably be shown at Summer Games Fest or perhaps Gamescom.
Nostalgia is still holding strong, which might be Sony's play with their rumored exclusivity deal on Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill(long dormant franchises).
Most of us here are older and remember the titles that helped PS be on the map(MGS1, Silent Hill and Symphony of the Night).
But such powerful nostalgic deals, coupled with the fact they haven't shown a great many of their first-party lineup, could bode ill for a Shenmue IV reveal at the event.
I'll never say never, as they *do* have Final Fantasy VII Part II and could go for another 1-2 punch, especially if they've agreed to do marketing again.
But I don't see it--I see them just going for megaton after megaton, which I don't think Shenmue has that power after III's mixed reception.
But I feel that Shenmue IV, if it exists, is something that would probably be shown at Summer Games Fest or perhaps Gamescom.
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I’ve kinda resigned myself to the idea that Shenmue IV probably won’t happen. I know I’m being a doomer but I just don’t see a path forward. But I do think if it’s going to happen it has to have already been in development for the past couple of years. If we go 2023(and at least some of 2024) without hearing anything the chances drop off significantly.
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Nobody can blame you for that way of thinking shadowreaper. I still think something could happen though. We maybe not learn about it in 2023 but maybe we get the first news about the stuff in 24
It is quite common these days for old series to come back so it is not totally impossible for Shenmue to get another chance.
It is quite common these days for old series to come back so it is not totally impossible for Shenmue to get another chance.
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I think you're right but honestly I don't understand what the point of waiting for a reveal would be. This trailer announcing the Indiana Jones game from Machine Games came out two years ago essentially just announcing that the game was in development with ZERO updates since then:
I understand why Shenmue 3 needed a big reveal because the Kickstarter relies on a lot of hype being built all at once but is he really going to go that route again, 4 years after the release of S3? And if not, what's the benefit of radio silence? Has Suzuki said anything since the anime was cancelled?
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japalp
Dojo Actuary
I don’t get it either. No need to show anything but why torture Shenmue fans any more than we already have endured? It seems silly if they have been working on it to say nothing. I am concerned that it means they haven’t which would be a disaster.
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I mean.. you kind of answered your own question here. Studio announces project. Fans/journalists grow impatient. Devs start to get fed up of being asked about the project. Devs feel pressured into releasing footage or images that aren’t ready. Fans/journalists complain that unfinished game looks unfinished. Devs are forced to waste time fixing stuff that wouldn’t usually be fixed until later just to placate fans. Et cetera et cetera.
As soon as a project gets announced, there needs to be a constant stream of news and updates to maintain hype, otherwise, any hype from the initial reveal just dissipates. There is zero advantage to announcing a project early.
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I can't think of another high(ish) profile game that had this issue. Sometimes games like Halo Infinite catch flak for artistic choices that they then address but that's not the same thing as showing something that is obviously not ready to be shown. S3 was a Kickstarter game so it required a bit more transparency than your average game and I didn't pay attention to any of it except for official trailers but, I mean, this was the official teaser, not something released to placate demand:
Totally disagree with this. The only games that benefit from relatively late announcements (ie: within the year they will launch) are guaranteed hits like Call of Duty or GTA. Even indie games generally announce early and sometimes take years to build hype which makes sense because you don't have a massive marketing budget to get lots of eyes on the game quickly. I was absolutely floored when Hi-Fi Rush showed up on my Steam front page and I hadn't heard about it at all, but that's also a new IP with a very catchy hook, not a sequel to an historically very uncertain franchise.
Especially in the case of Shenmue, there is zero advantage to not announcing development: it hypes up/unites the fanbase, drives sales of the older games, puts Shenmue in articles on gaming websites etc. And I see no reason to ever show unfinished work; just drip feed content when it's ready.
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Any announcement will put pressure on the dev team to deliver in a reasonable amount of time. Without announcing anything the pressure is internal.
I know it isn’t apples to apples but think about Dead Island 2 and Beyond Good and Evil 2. I don’t know the exact dates but I think DI2 was announced in 2014 and only just released this year. Beyond Good and Evil 2 dropped the first trailer in TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT. After that long both games have a HUGE amount of hype to live up to.
I can never see Shenmue in either DI2 or Beyond’s situations but if they’re holding back on any announcement I understand why to some degree.
I know it isn’t apples to apples but think about Dead Island 2 and Beyond Good and Evil 2. I don’t know the exact dates but I think DI2 was announced in 2014 and only just released this year. Beyond Good and Evil 2 dropped the first trailer in TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT. After that long both games have a HUGE amount of hype to live up to.
I can never see Shenmue in either DI2 or Beyond’s situations but if they’re holding back on any announcement I understand why to some degree.
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The issue is that both of those games changed engines, which I'm assuming is off the table for S4, and in the case of BGE2, it appears to have unrealistic ambitions/feature creep but that's not a problem with announcing early.
Seaman
ネットやろうぜ
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Have you people heard about the recent news about opensource AI eating the cake of propietary ones? That's what YS has been for a while now.
Have you seen the recent footage of new AI controlled NPCs?
The amount of code and thus workload and money saved with it will mean a paradigm shift in development soon.
Companies like money flowing in and cutting costs and the AI assisted development cries a lot both.
Who has a record of foreshadowing future leaps in industry? Yu-sensei.
This could also explain the secrecy around well imho, revolving around tools that will impact the way of doing stuff when its finally released.
Mark my post, S4 will be the first of a kind. Almost totally AI made, and then the whole industry will crumble.
Another day I would like to discuss how we players of the world are going to be tokenized in the wonderful world of Web3 tm, pushing for a classist gaming ecosystem if we don't stay sharp.
@shadowreaper strenght there buddy, I relate a lot to that "doomer" feeling. What I do is remember YS statements about perseverance in life and his strong will in continuing making games and finishing the series.
Have you seen the recent footage of new AI controlled NPCs?
The amount of code and thus workload and money saved with it will mean a paradigm shift in development soon.
Companies like money flowing in and cutting costs and the AI assisted development cries a lot both.
Who has a record of foreshadowing future leaps in industry? Yu-sensei.
This could also explain the secrecy around well imho, revolving around tools that will impact the way of doing stuff when its finally released.
Mark my post, S4 will be the first of a kind. Almost totally AI made, and then the whole industry will crumble.
Another day I would like to discuss how we players of the world are going to be tokenized in the wonderful world of Web3 tm, pushing for a classist gaming ecosystem if we don't stay sharp.
@shadowreaper strenght there buddy, I relate a lot to that "doomer" feeling. What I do is remember YS statements about perseverance in life and his strong will in continuing making games and finishing the series.
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- Aug 22, 2018
I linked to two of them. Bayonetta 3 is probably the most notorious example of this, with Hideki Kamaya having a mini meltdown over people asking for progress updates on the game. I’m sure if you were to ask him or the guys at Retro Studios (who’ve had to put up with semi-regular “it’s now been X years since MP4 was announced and we still know nothing about the game” articles) whether they were happy with Nintendo’s decision to announce B3 and MP4 early, their answers would be a resounding no.
Announcing S4 early would certainly hype up the fanbase, but to what end, exactly? At some point that hype is going to turn into impatience, which is even less helpful. Likewise, it would get the press writing about Shenmue again, but is that really such a good thing? Most publications seem to enjoy shitting on Shenmue, and I don’t think that’s going to have changed with the release of Shenmue 3 (if anything, I expect things to be worse than ever).
A Shenmue 4 announcement would also distract from any other projects that YS NET may be working on. We saw this last year when that douchebag refused to publish his Air Twister interview because YS wouldn’t talk about Shenmue despite the fact that YS had clearly told him that he wouldn’t be answering questions about anything besides AT ahead of time.
I suppose an early announcement could lead to sales of the older games picking up, but YS NET doesn’t benefit from sales of the first two and only takes a small fraction of sales from S3. To be honest, though, I can’t see an Shenmue 4 announcement getting anybody outside of the fanbase too excited. A kickass trailer might, but the chances of them having one of those ready two years out from launch seem pretty slim.
Your argument also seems to ignore the fact that an announcement say six months from release could just as easily attract new people to the franchise as an announcement two years out (perhaps more so, given that they’ll more than likely have something of substance to show closer to release).
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My point was that games don't show things that aren't finished, not that they don't feel pressure post-announcement. Metroid Prime 4 has shown nothing but a title card since 2017 and, while surely people are impatient, they are also guaranteed sales. Bayonetta 3 announced in 2017 and released in 2022, making it a 5 year development, which is not only totally reasonable, but Platinum games also released a couple of games in the intervening years. Announcing early helps ease players' minds that, while we might not hear from Retro Studios for a while, we know what they're working on. With YS Net, we have no idea.
Assuring everyone that Shenmue is still alive?
How? You seriously think the growing impatience with the second "death" of the series is better?
This would allow Suzuki to get ahead of things, address criticism, and tailor information releases strategically to show the game in the best possible light, rather than cutting together a trailer (even S3's launch trailer is pretty good) that ultimately says nothing about the game other than "more Shenmue".
That is indeed very douchey but, again, I have to disagree: an annoucement of Shenmue 4 would make interviews like this impossible because Suzuki could just remain tight lipped and say it will come out when it's done or whatever. Of course people are going to ask the Shenmue guy when he's going to finish Shenmue. He should have decades of experience with that at this point.
Shenmue 4 is completely reliant on as many people being at least familiar with the story of the first 3 games so even if it doesn't benefit them financially, it certainly benefits them to cast as wide a net as possible.
OR a slow build up of information. Showing gameplay around the new regions, what characters we can expect to see, how much story will be covered this time etc.
It could but let's put it this way: if Suzuki let Shenmue fans, who have already been burned by a 20 year wait between 2 and 3, suffer in silence while the future of the series is once again in limbo (especially after the cancellation of the anime) while secretly having something to say, then at the very least I would classify that as a dick move.
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I just hope if there isn’t a path forward for a game Yu can shift to another medium to finish the story.
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- Aug 22, 2018
Ah. So we finally get to the root of your argument.
Personally, I don’t think that Yu owes anything to anybody. Sure, I guess I’d like to know if something was going on behind the scenes, but not if it’s to the detriment of the project. Besides, us knowing about a fourth game ahead of time isn’t going to make it come around any sooner, nor is it going to lead to us getting a better game.
As far as I can see, all of the supposed positives of announcing early would still be applicable if they announced the game closer to the release date. Conversely, none of the negatives of announcing early would be applicable if they announced the game at a later date, save, perhaps, for fans getting antsy and impatient.
I suppose you could try to argue that some fans might give up on Shenmue if made to wait too long, but after waiting twenty years already, I very much doubt that another year or two is going to make that much of a difference.
I have to disagree just a smidge. Keighley's events do tend to be extensively overhyped by his own word, but he does give a good deal of room for indie or AA games, the latter of which Shenmue would classify as these days.
I think Gamescom is a more likely scenario at this juncture; the other possibility is one of Sony's later State of Plays, less bombastic shows they put on that focus more on smaller things.
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I mean, considering that Shenmue fans showed up to deliver the biggest video game Kickstarter ever and gave the anime supposedly good enough ratings to greenlight a sequel (but for the merger), maybe owed is too strong a word, but I would definitely say that radio silence is...unwise.
The actual root of my argument is that Suzuki has a huge problem on his hands that giving the silent treatment is likely to exacerbate. Many people (including some Shenmue fans!) think he's either an out of touch has-been, a delusional egomaniac, or at worst a shady grifter, so while he may not owe anything to anyone (though, again, I do think KS entitles fans to more than they otherwise would be), he certainly owes it to himself if he ever wants to finish the series.
I don't think S4 is actually in development, but for the sake of argument, let's say that it is and that they announce the game within the year the game launches. Do you think that, 4-5 years after S3, S4 showing up, looking exactly the same, promising an imminent release date is going to garner positive attention? There would be huge backlash even from fans for being kept in the dark, the gaming press isn't going to believe a word Suzuki says regarding content or release dates, and unless the trailer looks fucking amazing, no one outside the fanbase is going to care.
I've worked on games with both marketing strategies and announcing early is 100% better unless you have a guaranteed hit or perhaps a high-profile platform exclusive. Otherwise you're just asking to be ignored.
I would argue that he has to win back fans who were burned by Shenmue 3 first and foremost and appeal to a wider audience as a close second and the best way to do that is to be open, transparent, and realistic. S3 was billed as the game that would cover more story than 1 or 2, stretch goals were hit, hyped up, and then cut, and the game was ultimately not very well received--those are all things that can't be ignored if you want a better outcome next time. A good way to do that is actually what the anime did which is to over-deliver: the anime was billed as taking us "part of the way through Shenmue 2" but it actually ended up covering both games. Whether or not you loved it, it certainly made the prospect of a season 2 more enticing because there was even more ground that could be covered.
IMO S4, at a minimum, needs to show 3 new areas (they don't need to be huge but they need to be distinct locations) with a fourth one that can be kept under wraps and out of the trailers. This way you can tease story developments and gameplay scenarios; imagine revealing Meng Cun as a location and stating that we'll finally find out the truth of what happened there or something. You can only really do that kind of controlled drip-feed narrative by announcing early.