Hope gauge poll, do you believe or don't believe 4 can happen?

[jsh020]

I do think Shenmue IV will happen. The truth is will Sega be the one to help fund the game?

shenmue IV 50/50 toss up
Shenmue IV with sega involved, 0%

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I think Sega is happy to let Yu do what he wants with the license, but I still fail to see any incentive for Sega to involve themselves. He'd need to present a compelling roadmap to conclude the story, at the least.

 

[jsh020]

I think Sega is happy to let Yu do what he wants with the license, but I still fail to see any incentive for Sega to involve themselves. He'd need to present a compelling roadmap to conclude the story, at the least.

3 wold have to sell super well, something I think we can cross off pretty confidently at this point, for sega to get involved, let alone actually do anything development-wise. I think the absolute most we can hope for is getting a couple minigames.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

Yeah. It'd really help Shenmue 4 if they just let Yu use a few Sega games so they can focus less on creating new mini games... but I can't imagine they wouldn't charge license fees. I assume that's why Shenmue 3 didn't have any.

 

[RiGoRmOrTiS]

Spending time reading up on the sales and other articles. It feels like we really don't know how it's faired sales wise, there is nothing out there that can prove either way if they are good (enough for Shenmue 4) or bad.

Looking at sales charts and some hot take articles based on reported numbers in Japan for a short space of time at launch and balancing that against sales charts across different retailers it really feels like a 50/50 chance either way.

Under no circumstances should they push for another Kickstarter, it's was managed terribly from a PR standpoint and with the 50/50 media response to Shenmue 3, it won't hit its target; then you'll have a failed Kickstarter for the media vultures to create hit pieces about and that's Shenmue 4 dead for not just 18 years, it's permanent.

If by the grace of chance sales are good enough for Shenmue 4, they need to do the following:

1) re-use character assets where possible, re-use environmental objects such as mini games etc.. don't waste anymore time and development on that. (Shenmue 2 did that, it's fine) maybe for random NPC's just replace the 1 out of 10 which look out of place.

2) focus on story and character development first. Barely anything happens in Shenmue 3... 4 WILL be the last one, pack it with story, move it forward considerably.

3) don't reuse music tracks from previous games unless appropriate, such as music linked to specific characters or tasks/mini games. This is of course optional if it's the difference between releasing the game or not. I would say go back and re-jig all the tracks in Shenmue 3 retrospectively.. but that might be an unrealistic request at this point.

4) get someone else to redo the menus and UI. Patch those changes into Shenmue 3 for continuity sake.

5) cancel the English Dub if the time and money saved can make noticeable improvements across other areas. You didn't even bother to 'try' and make the old characters during the phone conversation behave or sounds remotely similar.. just axe the English Dub.. only Joy, Fangmei and Tom were good.

6) remove the stamina system.

7) stop fading to black so often in places it shouldn't happen. (Like in shenhuas house when you take your shoes off and during standard conversations because you want to hide the fact you are "snapping" character models into new locations without any animations. Maybe the saved money from not doing an English Dub could cover this?

8) more story cutscenes with the same presentation as the fight with Grandmaster Bei or Lan-di.

9) get some sponsorship from some game companies and use their items for capsule toys. Doesn't have to be SEGA if they can't get an agreement... They should be something more interesting than plastic gems, fishing lures and shrunken models of other in game assets. If you have to pay for the product placement don't bother... they should be paying you to have their products in the game. Slap some monster cans in there.. you get the idea.

Most importantly.. I say again.. move the story forward at the expense of all other features except the environmental art, character development and if there is some money left... music.

P.S. I enjoyed the game, but even as a mega fan I can't give it more than a 7/10... I feel like Yu Suzuki was a bit bamboozled by the fans overly loud focus on mini games and forklift driving etc.. when they were really secondary to the story and environment. They could have easily had half the number of mini-games and it would have been enough and spent more time/money elsewhere, like involving the secondary characters in more fleshed out narrative roles rather than the short 5-10 minutes convo we get and then are expected to believe they would come on a dangerous mission with you... (talking about Grandmaster Bei, the shrine maiden and the fat guy.. can't remember his name)..

 

[mjqjazzbar]

Definitely with you on the dub. :)

I would like to see Yu take on another type of game, if he’s willing. That would be my main reason for wanting him to wrap up Shenmue. I’ve seen bits and pieces of his ideas since leaving Sega and they all sound so good.

 

[jsh020]

I dont want them to cut the dub, I want them to not make it absolutely awful, its not like everyone in it were bad actors, the translation and directing was obviously going for an intentionally campy and memey tone, something I'd argue ended up costing the game a massive amount of appeal. I can guarentee you right now, the english dub alone turned people off immediately upon hearing it, and no the existence of the japanese track doesnt automatically make up for it past a very specific group of people ok with subtitles. People like to play things in their native language and dubs now actually have the work put into them to not be absolutely awful campy messes.

Just cause the dub is better than 1 or 2, doesn't make it one of the worst I've heard in a while.

 

[GYO6161]

Yeah i want them to keep the dub as well.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I dont want them to cut the dub, I want them to not make it absolutely awful, its not like everyone in it were bad actors, the translation and directing was obviously going for an intentionally campy and memey tone, something I'd argue ended up costing the game a massive amount of appeal. I can guarentee you right now, the english dub alone turned people off immediately upon hearing it, and no the existence of the japanese track doesnt automatically make up for it past a very specific group of people ok with subtitles. People like to play things in their native language and dubs now actually have the work put into them to not be absolutely awful campy messes.

Just cause the dub is better than 1 or 2, doesn't make it one of the worst I've heard in a while.

Sure, but you know going Japanese only hasn't really hurt the Yakuza series. Why should Shenmue be any different?

 

[jsh020]

Sure, but you know going Japanese only hasn't really hurt the Yakuza series. Why should Shenmue be any different?

Yakuza is a special case, cause it was a game that only really appealed to weebs in the first place (and it did arguably suffer for a while, yakuza really was only salvaged by 0's success before it was a total literal who franchise that was even dead for 4 years till passionate fans revived it), there really isnt a game like that triples down that hard on japanese culture, politics, and customs in a modern setting with a realistic art style. Shenmue being china offsets that hard and if anything its the lack of a chinese track that probably doesnt help in this case more so than a japanese one.

But the bigger issue is again, people like to play things in their native language it just makes the game immensely more accessible and easier to market, especially since anyone that going to review it or stream it defaults to the one in english to make it easier to get across the game to outside viewers.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

It's just a shame they can't seem to figure out how much the 'bad' dub hurts the image of the game. At the same time, I've debated with various people here who seem to love the dub. When Ys Net has to appease every segment of the fan base, how can they win? No mini games... Well, some of the fans are obsessed with Lucky Hit and forklifts. No dub... Well, some of the fans are obsessed with Corey Marshall's VA. I dunno. Seems like none of us can really figure this out for them and any decision they make will upset somebody out there.

 

[jsh020]

It's just a shame they can't seem to figure out how much the 'bad' dub hurts the image of the game. At the same time, I've debated with various people here who seem to love the dub. When Ys Net has to appease every segment of the fan base, how can they win? No mini games... Well, some of the fans are obsessed with Lucky Hit and forklifts. No dub... Well, some of the fans are obsessed with Corey Marshall's VA. I dunno. Seems like none of us can really figure this out for them and any decision they make will upset somebody out there.

Well I think in this specific regard to the dub, its not a matter of cutting it or keeping it, putting in the effort for a good dub would of cost exactly the game amount as what they did and would of saw better benefit. Its not like they threw 10 bucks at the dub and called it a day, it was a deliberate choice to make the dub campy. It was just horrendously misguided cause shenmue itself aint no deadly premonition where the story itself is this really wacky and campy game with cheesy 50's sfx violins playing whenever a twist happens, shenmue isnt high art in its writing or anything but the story itself is really grounded all things considered and rarely ever gets too cartoonish, making an intentionally lol so bad dub feels like an entirely misguided attempt to make a so bad its good product, only for it to just be bad,

Really I dont think the next game needs to cut much of anything if it can happen, it just needs better direction. A good dub would just help its image and sales.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I definitely think they should've spent more on a quality translation at least. They actually had some fairly well known VA on the cast and it appears like the director had some decent credits as well.

Personally, I prefer playing these types of games in Japanese. I heard a couple minutes of Judgment in English, after playing it in Japanese for hours, and it sounded horrible to me.

 

[jsh020]

I definitely think they should've spent more on a quality translation at least. They actually had some fairly well known VA on the cast and it appears like the director had some decent credits as well.

Personally, I prefer playing these types of games in Japanese. I heard a couple minutes of Judgment in English, after playing it in Japanese for hours, and it sounded horrible to me.

I don't think its budget at all, there absolutely incompetent translation mistakes found throughout the game that feel like they intentionally were trying to make the dialogue feel more otherworldly than it actually was, I think if we threw more money at the dub the translations and voice acting would be exactly the same, everything feel deliberate and thats the problem.

I know its just beating a dead horse, but I wish we lived in the timeline where sgea was involved and we could of gotten scott from the yakuza franchise to translate the game, if he did we'd have an amazing attention to detail with alot of emphasis on the nuance in peoples performances.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

Yeah, those guys are the best. I just don't think there's any chance of anyone related to Yakuza getting involved. I've been trying to read up on Nagoshi & Shenmue, and even his relationship with Yu Suzuki, and I really get the sense he isn't a fan of Shenmue or working with Yu Suzuki. I actually saw an interview where he mentioned that Suzuki has a bad temper, which surprised me. Scott works for Atlus, though, right?

Also, Japan’s economy was good. So the company was investing heavily in arcades, and it wasn’t much of a problem if a game wasn’t successful. I was working under Yu Suzuki, the game director. We’d been working together a while by this point. He was a very energetic person and, well... a little childlike. He was full of curiosity, and when things didn’t go his way, he would get very angry. But I understood that those things were just a result of his energy. If you didn’t know him well, you might think he had a short temper.

 

[jsh020]

Yeah, those guys are the best. I just don't think there's any chance of anyone related to Yakuza getting involved. I've been trying to read up on Nagoshi & Shenmue, and even his relationship with Yu Suzuki, and I really get the sense he isn't a fan of Shenmue or working with Yu Suzuki. I actually saw an interview where he mentioned that Suzuki has a bad temper, which surprised me. Scott works for Atlus, though, right?

Nagoshi and Yu Suzuki have a positive relationship last I checked, Yu suzuki was actually the one that even motivated Nagoshi with how to even pitch yakuza to sega execs at the time when they were pushing back so hard on the concept. I dont think their relationship soured or anything either I recall a journalist mentioning there was a pre-e3 party both were at and they were just hanging around in the back but I havent been able to find it since (admittedly havent looked too hard) but I know I didn't imagine it.

I think the reason we don't see much public love between them probably cause of Sega themself and how both creators want to stand on their own, like Nagoshi is the CCO but that doesn't exactly give him free rein to interact with and throw money at outside creations, and I really get the vibe that Sega Executives don't seem to think too highly of Yu Suzuki and tend to use him and shenmue as a scapegoat for the financial missteps that led to their near demise. Hes a respected guy by the staff and the like, but I think the higher ups are on a different wavelength than the average dev or consumer.

And yes Scott and crew are atlus

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I'm not saying he doesn't respect him or that he isn't a friend, but I just get the sense they're both very strong-willed and not a great match for a continued working relationship. I could imagine Nagoshi trying to micro-manage Shenmue 4 and Suzuki not having it at all... He probably could use the help, but at 61... doubt he's looking for that kind of help.

 

[jsh020]

I'm not saying he doesn't respect him or that he isn't a friend, but I just get the sense they're both very strong-willed and not a great match for a continued working relationship. I could imagine Nagoshi trying to micro-manage Shenmue 3 and Suzuki not having it at all... He probably could use the help, but at 61... doubt he's looking for that kind of help.

Oh yeah theres no doubt them working together would probably just bring both of their strengths into direct conflict. To put it frankly, I think Nagoshi's brand is absolutly more style over substance, make something simple but overload it with personality and theatrics, where as Suzuki feels more focused on the technical side especially when you look at the virtua fighter series.

That said, man I wish shenmue 3 has half the presentation some of Nagoshi's stuff has had

 

[Mittens2317]

It's just a shame they can't seem to figure out how much the 'bad' dub hurts the image of the game.

I'd honestly be much less likely to play Shenmue III if it didn't have the dub.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

And there you go.

A small game with a divided fan base. Hard situation for Ys Net to appease us all.