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

Ren said:
Well Yu Suzuki is 62 year old, he may be dead in 10-15 years or too old to make makes. Yu needs to finish the Series this decade or else it will never finish.
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Yu shouldn't be under any obligation to finish anything. He's literally continuing it for the fans. He's got a lot he still wants to do at his age, but here he is, looking after the Shenmue fans. He could have said "no, I'm done with Shenmue" years ago. He didn't. The man is a hero.
 
Sonoshee said:
Yu shouldn't be under any obligation to finish anything. He's literally continuing it for the fans. He's got a lot he still wants to do at his age, but here he is, looking after the Shenmue fans. He could have said "no, I'm done with Shenmue" years ago. He didn't. The man is a hero.
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He is still human through, I can't vision Yu at 80's year old working on Shenmue 5.
Been a Game development director can be very demanding.
Yu has 10-15 years to finish the series max.
 
danielmann861 said:
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.
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And there I agree 100%. Look at how much fun wood chopping is, or pailtoss. I personally liked the fighting too. All that in a low budget game is great. Maybe a 6 mill version would just end in Bailu. Never know. He needed to come out and explain the situation. Still, as is, S3 is a solid Shenmue game. I think compared to S1, it has as much of a story. Lot's of S1 was repeating the same things.
 
I wish I found Pail Toss fun since it shows up as like two or three other games (golf, basketball--- is there another one?).
 
Sergeynest said:
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.
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For me the most effective "fan service" would be the familiar sounds and that's about it. The same sounds for qtes, and Ryo unlocking a capsule toy, or drinking a pop, or the menu sounds.... The sounds are classic and wonderful. Really just the same continuations from the first two games. I don't need or want to be pandered to.

Make the game he feels is the right game to make without any promises of number of locations or whatever other restrictions. Do what's right and what makes sense.
 
While I agree he may have over done it on the "fan service" in some areas, most of it was a part of the Kickstarter tiers so there was no way out of it in the end.
This is why I think that if fans end up helping fund a Shenmue 4, they should go for a simple Paypal route or something where you can donate just because you want to help toward development costs and nothing more. No in-game or physical rewards or anything like that.
 
Sonoshee said:
This is why I think that if fans end up helping fund a Shenmue 4, they should go for a simple Paypal route or something where you can donate just because you want to help toward development costs and nothing more. No in-game or physical rewards or anything like that.
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Good point, I'm on.

.. and yeah. I know we fans have our own personal image what a perfect Sh IV would look like. But in the end I'm just glad that Shenmue is alive because that itself is a miracle. Yu wouldn't make it without the fans. Fans wouldn't get any new shenmue without Yu (well most likely not.)
I'm optimistic of Shenmue and I think like this; it may not become exactly the way I want it to be, but:
Yu will make IV, not anyone else.
And we get the continuation of the story. And that is better than nothing at all.
I think Yu is well aware of the criticism, and I belive that he will make a game that is at least a little bit better than Sh III.
 
Sonoshee said:
Yu shouldn't be under any obligation to finish anything. He's literally continuing it for the fans. He's got a lot he still wants to do at his age, but here he is, looking after the Shenmue fans. He could have said "no, I'm done with Shenmue" years ago. He didn't. The man is a hero.
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From what I gather from his past interviews, Finishing Shenmue is just as personal if not more personal to Yu Suzuki himself than it is for the fans. This is one of many reasons why I love the series, because Shenmue is a personal experience for each person who plays the game and a very personal meaning from the creator himself.
 
I do think that, as personal as the journey is to Yu, he also needs to accept the commercial realities which will ultimately dictate the survival of his series.

Sure in a perfect world, Yu may want to take us on an extended tour of China though many many games, each where little (if any) plot progression actually occurs but where we ultimately get there in the end albeit at a snails pace.

However, he really needs to find the core STORY of Shenmue.. split up that narrative neatly into two more games (Shenmue 4 & 5) and then surround himself with people who can help him tell the story WELL.

Once the story is locked down, he can through in all the extra flourishes he can afford... but the game's STORY and the quality in which it's told must come first.

We brought Shenmue back from the dead with 3.... now it's up to Yu to DO SOMETHING with the series in Shenmue 4 and 5.
 
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darksniper said:
From what I gather from his past interviews, Finishing Shenmue is just as personal if not more personal to Yu Suzuki himself than it is for the fans. This is one of many reasons why I love the series, because Shenmue is a personal experience for each person who plays the game and a very personal meaning from the creator himself.
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I have no reservations that Shenmue means more to Yu Suzuki on a personal level, but it's because of fan demand that he was able to continue it after all these years. Without that, the remainder of the story would most probably have gone to the grave with him and in the meantime he'd have continued on with something else. On top of that, he's been very vocal about wanting to try out other ideas or perhaps reviving older IPs of his (if he could).
That's all I was really getting at :blush:
 
FlaMerZea said:
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.

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 !!!!
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Yeah, you just exemplified how he's being pressured by fans with your own post, lmao.
 
Imagine what would happen if YU Suzuki decided to cut down some features of Shenmue 3:

We would have thousands of articles and youtube videos on how Shenmue 3 has much fewer features compared to Shenmue 1 and 2.(Then the epic exclusivity news would kick in and the negativity would have been much worse than the way it finally did.)

Also, the review scores would have been the same since the reviewers would just find other reasons to hate this sequel.
 
Yu has the heart and the passion, for this reason I will always stand besides him.

It's however important to understand he hasn't physically created Shenmue1-2 just by himself.
The secret recepie of S2 were a large team besides the man (working on 2 games) and AAA budget to fully realize the vision.

Unless he can secure a similar budget, it is necessary to accept a compromise.
I'd accept any cut but the magic feeling of Shenmue sense of travelling, and a compelling story with well written characters.
 
Dg1995 said:
Imagine what would happen if YU Suzuki decided to cut down some features of Shenmue 3:

We would have thousands of articles and youtube videos on how Shenmue 3 has much fewer features compared to Shenmue 1 and 2.(Then the epic exclusivity news would kick in and the negativity would have been much worse than the way it finally did.)

Also, the review scores would have been the same since the reviewers would just find other reasons to hate this sequel.
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I think if the game lacked the food system and the token system then reviews would have been much fairer.

murdiaries said:
Unless he can secure a similar budget, it is necessary to accept a compromise.
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I would hope that what was possible in 1999 could be done in 2019 with a much smaller budget. I don't think Shenmue can only be done properly if the budget explodes and reaches upwards of $80 million. That's definitely not happening, so fingers crossed things can be worked out on a smaller scale.
 
Thomasina said:
I think if the game lacked the food system and the token system then reviews would have been much fairer.
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The reviews would have bee much fairer if Yu and Deepsilver actually paid them some protection money.(I heard somewhere that SE paid some protection money for the reviews of FF 13 rerelease edition. I also think that Sega paid gamespot protection money in order to convince them to change Shenmue 1's score to 7.8/10 from 6.8/10.)
 
I also think that Sega paid gamespot protection money in order to convince them to change Shenmue 1's score to 7.8/10 from 6.8/10.)

Hey there's nothing wrong with greasing the skids a little bit.....

I won't lie, I would have "accidentally" dropped a briefcase full of money on Jeff Gerstman's desk right before he was about to review Shenmue.
 
spud1897 said:
Have we got any sources on this? Otherwise it's wild accusations at this stage.
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Looks like I've somehow forgotten that it was actually a FF 12 review where SE wasn't satisfied with the review.(But then again when you are intimidating a reviewer it's as bad as buying reviewers.)
www.resetera.com

Square Enix intimidated a reviewer to change a review score for Final Fantasy XII, accusations of lying, suggested "correct" content for the review

www.resetera.com www.resetera.com

Really, paid reviews are really a thing in video games media. When you dare to give some big publisher's game a bad score they will blacklist you from doing anymore reviews for their games.(Alongside threatening your employers)

Here are some more examples:
From this article it looks like that Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot due to low scores he gave to some games.
https://kotaku.com/yes-a-games-writ...meSpot writer,negative review of Kane & Lynch.

Konami pulled all of it's advertising from a magazine because of this that that magazine dared to gave their soccer game 7/10. According to this article:

text/html; charset=utf-8

www.eatchain.com

According to this article, Itagaki wasn't satisfied that Nintendo of America didn't stop or change a Devil's Third review. Which makes me feel that in Tecmo he used that tactic a lot.
www.polygon.com

The ups, downs and future of Tomonobu Itagaki's Devil's Third

Tomonobu Itagaki, outspoken former leader of Tecmo's Team Ninja and current leader of Valhalla Game Studios, has spent the last eight years of his life working on the action game Devil's Third.
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
 
Jeff Gerstmann didn't review Shenmue on Dreamcast, Jeff Mielke did iirc.

The guy simply did not understand Shenmue and the backlash of their score with users caused them to raise by a digit, although I've never heard anything about Sega forcing them or bribing them. Shenmue 2 was assigned to Riccardo Torres who was one of my favorites of Gamespot and actually understood the beauty of both Shenmue and Dreamcast.

afaik, review bribing didn't begin until 7th gen when Famitsu basically lost most credibility for being outed as a paid-review staff.
 
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