I fear Yu Suzuki has lost sight of what's essential here...

FlaMerZea

FlaMerZea

Joined
Dec 6, 2019
Don't get me wrong, it's not really a criticism, but i think Yu had been "pressured" to please huge expectations from the fans.

I have the feeling that he wanted to do too much, from a global point of view. There's a sentence that interested me very much in his interview :

"It comes down to what you are trying to achieve. If the aim is to attain the level of polish of Shenmue I, then for Shenmue III I think I would have used up the entire budget just on Bailu village."

"With a novel, you just need to write words, right? And for a movie, you just need to assemble pictures. But with a game you’re actually creating the experience through means of a program. [The amount of work is] frightening! [smiles wryly] "

Ok so i get it that creating a video game is not like writing a novel or making a movie. Plus, the Shenmue feel must be hard to express. But then if the price to pay to get the level of polish of Shenmue 1 is to stay in Bailu village, i'd gladly take it ! I loved this place and i felt Niaowu was just a big, empty place to impress fans.

It's not about quantity Mister Yu, it's about quality. We want some actual content, and working on the plot, the characters, and the emotions is (to me at least) essential to what Shenmue really is.

What scares me here is that Yu wants now to please the casual Shenmue player in Shemue 4... What does it mean ?? And what impact will it have in the story ?? I don't want an action packed game and a "modern" Shenmue. It's a niche game and i think it should stay like that..

I want a good storytelling !!!!
 
I think if Shenmue III had a normal development cycle instead of going to KickStarter, he probably would have just concentrated on Bailu in the same way that Shenmue 1 ultimately concentrated on Yokosuka without going to Hong Kong at all. Unfortunately the KickStarter specified three locations, and they could just about get away with cutting one of them out, but there would be a major backlash if Niaowu was cut as well.
 
I think that in Shenmue 3 Yu Suzuki focused to much in pleasing the fans with things that would remind them of the first two games.
In the end he over did it and in my opinion missed out on what fans really wanted that was a complete continuation of the Shenmue story just like Yu Suzuki had envisioned in the first place.
I've played Shenmue 1&2 at least once per year in all of these years until Shenmue 3 came out and I guess most of the hardcore fans must have done the same, so for us there wasn't that much need for fan service anyways and what we really wanted was for the series to continue is natural course.
 
I would make a slight difference between expectation and wish.

What we wished was a Shenmue formally on par with the Dreamcast episodes, with compromises as less as possible. Likely an impossible task and now I genuinely believe that Suzuki refused to develop Shenmue 3 for a long time because Sega didn't want to give him the minimal budget he asked. Insistence of fans eventually changed his mind: that a low-cost Shenmue might still be Shenmue in spite of what he thought initially... but it was too late and Shenmue Online had just worsened his situation.

What we expected was more informal and on the ground. We simply wanted a good if not memorable experience whatever the mean. Something implying a more balanced game with its own flavor and smart concessions, not a basic recycling of what we used to love. Because recycling often means no new memories. Some have been pleased nonetheless, some others not.

But looks like everyone agree that Shenmue 3 would have been a better game if Yu hadn't promised Niaowu and Baisha in 2015. Tbh, I find his last interview convincing enough. Scrapping the Old Castle part (i.e. the Mirror swap, the Lan Di first round and the CYM schism) would have been a tough, tough decision if not impossible as the story must progress. Lack of substance was the issue.
 
Machsi said:
Here we go again.....

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It's interesting as some aspects or S3 was underwhelming but overall I found it an enjoyable but flawd experience and yea I also for shure feel that baulu village should of been the whole game with like you said the flow of the first game but I can understand his need to have a second area that was larger in scope , which in hindsight was the wrong choice ,

I can't be mad at yu about this because I genuinely feel he was trying to make the best game he possibly could and despite some of the games flaws it came out pretty good and was has in no way reuind shenmue forever but shenmue 4 needs to be much better which I dont doubt is a possibility
 
hyo_razuki said:
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I was wondering if this one would show up :p

I think that Yu was kind of forced to add Niaowu after the announcement. And as I've written before, there were quite a few people who said that they weren't interested in a Shenmue game without a city. So he likely tried to please both types of fans by having a smaller and larger location. And I guess that it also added some variation in general. I saw a few playthroughs and most seemed to like traveling to Niaowu.
 
Rikitatsu said:
I feel like Shenmue 3's biggest issues were due to the lack of good management, it's like they splurged on the first half of the game then ran out of resources for the other half.
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That can happen when the scope of the project changes halfway through. Bailu is definitely the more polished section hands down.
 
Rikitatsu said:
I feel like Shenmue 3's biggest issues were due to the lack of good management, it's like they splurged on the first half of the game then ran out of resources for the other half
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I don't think it was poor management but poor initial scoping. They tried to do too much with the budget they had.

That being said I'm sure they tried their best and considering Kickstarter never turn out as expected I don't think it turned out that badly. Shenmue 3 is a really polished game by most standards which is something to consider given the nature of crowdfunding.

Of course I have criticisms about the content and other decisions made but that doesn't really have to do with development issues.

I hope with S4 that it not being crowdfunded will greatly improve the development of the game.
 
hmjohnny said:
I don't think it was poor management but poor initial scoping. They tried to do too much with the budget they had.

That being said I'm sure they tried their best and considering Kickstarter never turn out as expected I don't think it turned out that badly. Shenmue 3 is a really polished game by most standards which is something to consider given the nature of crowdfunding.

Of course I have criticisms about the content and other decisions made but that doesn't really have to do with development issues.

I hope with S4 that it not being crowdfunded will greatly improve the development of the game.
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If Shenmue IV is not crowdfunded, I am hoping this eliminates obligations for fanservicing. I doubt that S4 will have much of that anyways, since S3 was the “grand re-opening” of the Shenmue series.

S3’s major issue was imbalanced polish and effort front loading between the first area vs the second area; which unfortunately experienced the rush job. If S4 can balance things better and avoid rushes, it should correct 75% of the things most fans didn’t like about S3.
 
Shenmue III imo exposed the strengths and weaknesses of Yu Suzuki game development. YS is capable of creating good arcade games in his sleep and it shows. Never thought I'd say this, but III has the best minigame content despite there not being any official Sega branded arcade cabinets in the game. However, what was sacrificed was good story writing and progression. I think there will be a chance to turn this around with Shenmue IV. We'll see.

I've said this in previous posts and I'll reiterate it here, the main purpose of Shenmue III was to get Ryo out of the cave. Now we need to see some more character development with the other NPC's. Especially Lan Di.
 
darksniper said:
Shenmue III imo exposed the strengths and weaknesses of Yu Suzuki game development. YS is capable of creating good arcade games in his sleep and it shows. Never thought I'd say this, but III has the best minigame content despite there not being any official Sega branded arcade cabinets in the game. However, what was sacrificed was good story writing and progression. I think there will be a chance to turn this around with Shenmue IV. We'll see.

I've said this in previous posts and I'll reiterate it here, the main purpose of Shenmue III was to get Ryo out of the cave. Now we need to see some more character development with the other NPC's. Especially Lan Di.
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It would be great to see the story of Iwao and Sunming Zhao through the eyes of Lan Di and how he was raised by the Chiyou Men until the day he killed Iwao.
 
I don't think it was poor management rather it was that the budget was constantly fluctuating and the scope of the game changed throughout development. There was no set budget for this game. The budget grew every year through outside financing and as such the game was constantly evolving.

If anything, I think the final product is indicative of a game that wasn't quite complete. It's a game that was still evolving and being built upon but they probably ran out of time and money and had to ship what they had. Hence the rushed final act. I'm sure he would have loved to have put Baisha in but was it simply just "they didn't have time to do it?" Or was it scrapped early on because they feared the budget wouldn't be there for it and as the budget grew maybe it was still too late to fully realize?

In its early days, Shenmue III would have been a very different game to the final product. In fact, I fear the reception would have been worse if we did get a $6 million Shenmue III.

The fact is the game never had a set budget and it was always changing as the budget climbed. Frankly I'm surprised we even got as polished a product as we did get.
 
I would rather say that Yu-San is the only japanese dev out there that does not lose his sight. Even after a long break his Shenmue 3 looks like a Shenmmue 3 fans of the old series would recognize.

Other game devs could achive that. The new Kojima games for example have nothing to do with his old games in the 90s. The games of Mikami too. His new games feel completely different than the old ones.

Yu-San is the true deal. At least for an hardcore traditionalist like myself that hates MGS und Death Stranding and RE 4,.
 
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