Revealed: Sega's cancelled Shenmue HD remake - with fully updated graphics (EuroGamer) Update 16/10 - Sega respond

BalHan said:
28 million?! Why didn’t they just make Shenmue 3?
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Cause SEGA gonna SEGA...

Honestly if it weren't for how well they were handling the Yakuza series and the fact that Sonic Mania exists I'd have zero faith in the company altogether...
 
orient said:
It all comes back to nostalgia -- people want the old SEGA back. They want the same innovative company who released the Dreamcast to publish Shenmue again, and they want Shenmue III to be the exact game Yu would've made at SEGA 16 years ago...but it's a fantasy. Times change, people change, companies change.

I think there's still the "dream" out there that SEGA will bring Shenmue back in-house after III, the Yakuza team will make Shenmue IV with their own tech, Suzuki and Nagoshi will ride off into the sunset together etc. etc. It's not going to happen.
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Yup, as if that corp is going to magically change. Yu-san parted ways for good reason. Just thankful he and his fellow artists are finally free to create Shenmue’s own destiny. Success or failure, they’re in it for the right reasons. And so are the backers. The future is forward...
 
Wouldnt have made a difference. Since the ps4 remasters were the first time i play the games, i had to forget everything ive seen graphics wise the last few years and pretend i'm playing something new and groundbreaking. Luckily my mind wasnt nitpicking graphical details, and i fell in love with the game , the artstyle and everything. Would better graphics have made the game better for me, don't think so.
 
Peter said:
Then we come to every single building interior, which particularly in Kowloon is insane levels of work. Follow that up with Guilin too.
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Actually, its not quite as much work for the interiors in kowloon due to the alogrithym database system that builds the rooms on the fly . You just have to remaster the library of objects it selects from. Still a load of work, but not as much as building all those rooms, placing the objects etc if you didnt have that system.

I agree with all your points though, particularly the V.O , something ive been reminding people of myself, remastering that if they dont have the OG studio master tapes/files would be crazy money. The yakuza creator said most of their dev cost is paying voice actors so i can see why they didnt go through with it.
 
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AhabSnake85 said:
Would better graphics have made the game better for me, don't think so.
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I remember seeing beta footage of the unreleased Shenmue for the Sega Saturn and all I could think was thank eff I got to play the Dreamcast releases and not this. However, it can be assumed that had Shenmue been released on the Saturn and then remade for the Dreamcast, there would have been criticism from Shenmue fans saying the game has ‘lost its original charm’ or something to that effect. This is often the case with games that are remastered or remade.

We can therefore extrapolate that should Shenmue 1 and 2 be remade with a big budget, then those gamers who experience Shenmue for the first time playing the remakes would feel the remakes are superior to previous ‘inferior’ releases of Shenmue as the old releases’ graphics are not as good and the geometry is blocky etc.

Hindsight is 20/20.
 
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I don't really understand the toxicity towards Sega in this thread. They made the right call to cancel this. It took d3t two years to finish 50% of S1 and 10% of S2. Of course Sega had to cancel this.

I'm disappointed, this won't come out. It would have been wonderful for us as fans. But what I'm even more disappointed in is all the time and money wasted on those remasters. Would a remaster have brought in more new fans than the straight-up ports we have now? I doubt it.

To be honest, I would have preferred d3t never working on remasters and delivering competent ports of the games for PC, PS4 and Xbone instead. The PS4 version is somewhat playable now at version 1.02 but it's still far from what I would call a quality port. If they can get the move progression, the music and the arcade games working I think we will have a good port then. But these three points still need work. A lot of work.

So to sum this up, I would have preferred these remasters to never have existed and d3t given all the time they need to deliver competent ports. It's a shame Sega again wasted money on a Shenmue project which never came to fruition, just like Shenmue Online. The money which went into the remasters could have gone into S3 or S4.

Still, Sega absolutely made the right call to cancel this. It had to come out before S3 which would have been impossible given how long it took to get the remasters not even halfway done.
 
hyo_razuki said:
Still, Sega absolutely made the right call to cancel this. It had to come out before S3 which would have been impossible given how long it took to get the remasters not even halfway done.
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Agreed and given the size of the team that D3T had working on the project significant investment would have been needed to finish it before 3 which would have made the whole project less profitable, & that includes the insane backing the community showed in pre order and sales initially.

I'm glad this proof of concept exists. It shows that the remakes were and still are being taken seriously, even if the consoles have had to wait for more patches though I understand why (discussion for another time).
 
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I can't understand all the critics towards Sega. Never I believed about a Shenmue remake, even in my wildest dreams. They tried the impossible thing and thank you Sega for that.

The only valid point is that's illustrating a wrong management of the project, once more.
 
Ultimately I think it's good that this project was attempted. Even though they weren't able to see it through this time, I believe it will prove to be valuable for future remasters. Whether or not they use any of these assets that were made, I think the experience of attempting the hybrid version of applying new assets to the original engine will provide some helpful guidance for the future attempts. I think it's likely we'll see remasters some day.
 
I hear it's not affecting the release of Shenmue 3 so that's a relief but still, it's a huge shame that SEGA removed such a beautiful footage.
 
Sega can be some ignorant asshats. To be honest I still have a bit of resentment towards them not funding Shenmue III like they could have. But I will admit their attitude towards Shenmue as a whole has gotten a lot better as I clearly remember when they wouldn't even acknowledge it's existence. I feel like there had to have been some sort of changing of the guard at Sega HQ that propelled that change.

It seems like the devs who worked on Shenmue back in the day are in higher positions at Sega and they are proud of the work they did on the first two games and do not want that legacy to die off. Sega has a lot of work to do to improve, but they have been getting better on a PR and game development standpoint.
 
hyo_razuki said:
I don't really understand the toxicity towards Sega in this thread. They made the right call to cancel this. It took d3t two years to finish 50% of S1 and 10% of S2. Of course Sega had to cancel this.
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You answered your own question...
 
darksniper said:
It seems like the devs who worked on Shenmue back in the day are in higher positions at Sega
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I'm not too clued up on Sega's current structure so was not aware of this. Are you saying there several original Shenmue devs in higher positions at Sega nowadays?
 
Sh3ppy said:
I'm not too clued up on Sega's current structure so was not aware of this. Are you saying there several original Shenmue devs in higher positions at Sega nowadays?
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Yes. I can't remember the names but several of the original development team hold high up positions in Sega these days
 
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