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

[Thomasina]

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 don't really have any interest in conspiracy theories...

 

[code l name]

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.

I am no developer but reading interviews, GDC talks and interviews with people within the industry I don’t think it’s entirely correct.

I mean you are right in the fact there is a lot more middleware and engines like UE which give developers a toolbox to work from. They don’t have to create and design their own custom engines anymore. However it’s no secret game development budgets have ballooned as we now expect much higher fidelity in all aspects including animation which is an expensive proposition.

I think the best case scenario for Suzuki is they already have an engine, game logic and models in place, so any work on a potential Shenmue 4 can be done more effectively and potentially not as expensively. Still if the game comes out it will be released for next generation machines and the question will be can the engine be scaled up to look like a moderately AA production and that’s where all those middleware solutions and careful budgeting will come into play.