This is why I say it depends because you're right, Suzuki may place equal or greater value on any number of things that I disagree with. With a fixed budget of $20M, we may still have had Baisha cut, but had realistic noodle physics (something he actually claimed to want) or we could have gotten an improved combat system. As a general rule, yes more money locked down earlier would be better for the project, but it does not guarantee a better game, if that makes sense.
I guess what it really comes down to is whether you believe that Yu Suzuki still has what it takes to make good games. I do, ergo, I choose to believe that better circumstances would have led to a better game. There are no guarantees, of course, but his track record would seem to suggest as much.
If it made money, then they made money (and all the investors would have also made money). Of course the 7.2M was YS Net's money, I'm not saying it wasn't; all I'm saying is that they obviously spent it and more during S3's development and they aren't entitled to recoup it.
If you spent money developing a product and that product went on to generate enough money to cover the cost of development, would you not expect to come away from the endeavor with at least as much money as you first put in?
I was always under the impression that the story for S3 was locked down and non-negotiable and that any of the stretch goals were going to be about expanding the game/world, which is actually much more financially responsible than promising additional story content. Suzuki initially just wanted to make a story focused game but was talked out of it (and seemingly into the KS) by Ryan Payton. I didn't really pay attention to any of this at the time, as I didn't want to be spoiled; I gave my money and let Suzuki do his thing.
I just don't buy this. Nothing about Shenmue 3 suggests to me that the story was ever a priority. It's sloppily told and there's nowhere near enough of it.
This is where I think wires are getting crossed. Trying what new things? S3 is slavish to being what it thinks people want from a Shenmue game to a fault and, apart from the stamina system and level system, it barely adds anything new to Shenmue, much less new in terms of games more broadly.
I was speaking more about the series as a whole here (and Suzuki's wider catalog of games), although there's evidence to suggest that he wanted to introduce new ideas into Shenmue 3 as well (the higher ground battle system, magic maze, character perspective system, etc), even if none of them ever came to fruition.
That it doesn't matter how interested Suzuki is in making a Shenmue prequel. However unlikely S4 is (and it's mighty unlikely at this point), a Shenmue prequel in Yokosuka is even less likely than that.
For whatever it's worth, I think that a prequel is a terrible idea (especially one set in Yokosuka, where we know nothing of significance really happens until that day when the snow turned to rain). However, for as long as Suzuki continues to entertain the idea of making one before making Shenmue 4 and Shenmue 5, I don't see how you can possibly argue that finishing the story is his main focus.
I didn't say that you said that. You were talking about all the evidence that Suzuki doesn't care that much about it and/or cares at least as much about nebulous other things. Which I'm not disagreeing with at all btw, which is why I keep saying that there's no guarantee that an increased budget would make S3 good or that the series moving forward will be good.
Me saying that the story is not Suzuki's main priority is not the same as me saying that he doesn't care about the story at all.
And what are those things?
To me, Shenmue's biggest strength is its immersive world (which comes from the highly detailed environments and the fact that you can talk to pretty much every NPC), but I think the answer to this question will vary quite a bit depending on who you ask. For example, I know that some people are really into the games' combat (something that never really appealed to me all that much besides its connection to the story), while others love being able to play mini-games, or get a job (again, things that I'm not all that bothered about besides their existence adding to the believability of the world).
Shenmue means different things to different people, which made scaling it back without compromising anybody's ideal Shenmue experience an impossible task. I think it would be fair to say that the team failed in this regard, though would argue that they were always destined to given how ambitious the project ended up being, and that they deserve credit for how close they ultimately came.
Could Suzuki have honed in on one or two specific areas of the Shenmue experience instead of trying to tick every box? Absolutely. The fact that he didn't, though, would seem to suggest that he considers all of these elements essential parts of the Shenmue formula, or, at the very least, that he felt that including them was important for meeting the wants and needs of the fans who backed him when nobody else would.
Not enough. And if he wants to make games for that tiny audience, then he should budget and advertise the game accordingly, which he seems unwilling to do.
Personally, I think that smarter monetization is the key to moving the series forward, but agree that in its current format, Shenmue is not a mass-market product and cannot be pitched as such.
I would prefer if the content was actually possible to access on a first playthrough. Deus Ex, Breath of the Wild, the Witcher, hell, even Assassin's Creed allow you to play without quest markers and also don't require the player to ask a million NPCs the same question.
There is nothing in any of the Shenmue games that can't be accessed during a first playthrough.
If it's difficult to seek out, then it's not distracting you from the critical path, is it? It's also impossible to seek out unless you know what the critical path is. Shenmue 1 is painfully antiquated in this respect.
Knowing that there's a possibility of stumbling upon some secret interaction is more than enough of a distraction for me. You may find that concept antiquated, but I much prefer it to being hit with a notification or quest marker that then leads to some boring fetch quest. Don't get me wrong, there are some modern games that do side content well, but most tend to follow the same tired formula, which, to me at least, is massively inferior to the approach taken by Shenmue despite coming decades later.
Random events are cool but again, not exactly economical and not something that's overly present in either sequel. And let's be real, they're almost all just cutscenes, not actual gameplay.
Oh absolutely. Allocating resources to content that most players will never consume is a risky strategy, especially when you're already on a tight budget. However, it's an incredibly effective way to encourage exploration, and, imo, makes for a much better game (assuming you can make it work without compromising other areas).
And no. Not all of the optional interactions in Shenmue are "just cutscenes". Many of the moves that you can learn from NPCs (one of the few things that you seem to have actually liked about the Shenmue games) can only be learned by being in the right place at the right time. I suppose you might argue that it would be better if the game guided players toward these interactions (or just placed them along the critical path so that they couldn't be missed), but I'd strongly disagree with that assertion. Not only does the possibility of learning these new moves incentivize exploration, but it also adds to the sense of realism.
Minigames and NPCs that say some variation of "I can't help you, ask someone else" are expensive wastes of production resources at Shenmue's current scale, particularly when the combat system and dialogue system are so compromised; that's just the reality of game development. Limit NPC interaction, reduce the importance of minigames (Shenmue 1 has one arcade, S3 has like half of Niaowu devoted to minigames) and first spend the resources making the important parts of the game good: good dialogue, well paced breadcrumb trail, good combat that is facilitated by learning moves from NPCs etc. I'm not going to write a full GDD here but please stop assuming that just because I want Shenmue to be successful and financially viable, I mean I want linear corridors with cutscenes and fighting. I want the game to be something that isn't so easy to laugh at and embarrassing to play.
I agree to a certain extent about the mini-games (at least when it comes to how many of them ended up being in Shenmue 3), but would argue tooth and nail for future Shenmue games having a fully-voiced cast, even if facilitating that meant having fewer non-critical NPCs or some with AI-generated voices. Again, though, this kinda comes back to that idea of what makes Shenmue Shenmue. For me, realism and story are the two most important things, so I'd sooner those areas be prioritized, even if that meant cuts elsewhere (I wouldn't mind if the game switched from 3D to 2D for combat, for example).
Because it's the only example of a Shenmue game where you can (reasonably) just follow the critical path without encountering progress-halting roadblocks. And to the extent that it does contain those elements, they should be eliminated going forward.
I was talking about the future of the franchise, rather than the past, but if you insist on using Shenmue 2 as an example, there are at least two points in the game where you hit "progress-halting roadblocks". Even if there weren't though, just following the critical path requires engaging with a lot of the elements that you deem to be superfluous (asking random NPCs for information and directions, earning money to buy maps and pay for hotel rooms, having large open areas that can be explored freely, etc). To make the game work without any of those things, you'd almost have to teleport players from one key conversation/fight to the next with no exploration in between them, at which point, yes, that starts to sound like something that would be better experienced in a different format, whether that be a book, a movie, or a visual novel.
Well you got your "true" Shenmue game and still appear to have to wait for the novelization so I don't see how that's preferable.
I'm not sure I'd really consider Shenmue 3 to be a "true" Shenmue game, but I'm still glad that we got it. Suzuki could have instead chosen to make a crappy 2D visual novel-style game that bombed even harder, in which case, we'd still be sitting around waiting for a conclusion to the story, only without having had the chance to experience Shenmue 3.
I described an (extremely high-level) financially viable business plan for the series.
A novel would be a whole lot more financially viable and would allow for a much more immersive experience than a low-budget 2D game in which half of the characters speak Japanese and the other half don't speak at all. To me, what you're describing isn't really a Shenmue game at all; just a means to an end. If finishing the story is what we're shooting for, I'll take a novel over a game built almost entirely around compromises every day of the week.