he said as much in the interview that he is always interested in challenging himself technically. Look at the comments from people for S3 calling it a PS2 game etc. how do you think it's going to look in the middle of next gen with a game looking the same?
The only challenge he should be interested in is working with what he has. Shenmue 3 doesn't even come close to the kind of fidelity we expect from games nowadays. Until Dawn came out
5 years ago and looks better than Shenmue could ever hope to, even on next gen hardware.
There's so much that goes into making a game look AAA (or anywhere close) that it's not possible to achieve if that's not the focus of the game or you don't have millions of dollars to burn. Until Dawn has a small cast of characters, limited interactivity, small environments, and a highly controlled location/atmosphere.
I actually liked that S3 leaned into a more stylized look, it would help Shenmue still look good while being able to avoid falling short of that photo-real bar. People think BotW is beautiful (and it is) and it's hardly pushing the limits of technology.
I personally do not think that it's possible at this point to try and attract new audiences to Shenmue. Attempting to do so will result in compromises at best that will alienate existing fans and fail to attract new ones. Suzuki should be looking to save money and focus on what he feels is important for the future of Shenmue.
It kind of sounds like S4 has to attract new players in order to be more profitable. I think it's totally possible (Yakuza didn't become popular until several sequels in) but, frankly, Shenmue needs to look like a fun game to play. You're not going to attract new players with single button minigames, conversations with no dialogue options or consequences, and a fighting system as janky looking as the one in S3 (
especially in a game about martial arts).
This is what combat in Sleeping Dogs, a game from 2012 running on last gen hardware, looks like:
If you want to attract new players with your combat system and you can't make your combat look that good 10 years later, don't bother trying to attract new players with it or focus on something else.
If conversations are the focus, this is what conversations in Witcher 3 (came out wen the S3 Kickstarter was announced) look like:
The writing, voice acting, animation, camera work, attention to detail in the lighting and setting are all amazing (and the facial animation isn't even that good) and I'm sure that bar is going to get raised again when Cyberpunk comes out; if you want to attract new players with your story and dialogue system, then you need to be able to at least
approach this level of quality. If not, focus on something else, etc.
I point this out only to emphasize that Shenmue needs to focus. What's it about? What's most important? And what is going to attract new players and please existing fans? Because new players have been playing lots of games in the last 20 years and no one is going to give you an A for effort. Shenmue can absolutely attract new players as long as it does something good enough to attract them. If not, and all of this sounds completely unreasonable, then Suzuki has all the information he needs to work backwards from and budget appropriately.