Shenmue Dojo Interviews: Cedric Biscay

Swore Shanghai was suppose to be between Baisha and Beijing, but I might very well be wrong. Anyway, I expect to see Baisha and Shanghai eventually; rearranged order of course with how convoluted the chapters became. Whereas, the boats and train I don't expect to ever really be important enough to produce.
 
Swore Shanghai was suppose to be between Baisha and Beijing, but I might very well be wrong. Anyway, I expect to see Baisha and Shanghai eventually; rearranged order of course with how convoluted the chapters became. Whereas, the boats and train I don't expect to ever really be important enough to produce.
Yu Suzuki is always talking about working on a train scene in a video game, so I can see him still wanting to put it in Shenmue 4 somewhere.
 
Well, from the chapter cards, I think a full chapter in Shanghai was cut too.
True, though Yu has said that he integrated material from chapters 3-6 into Shenmue 3, which would cover events from Suzhou (chapter 4). He’s also said the train event could be reused in Shenmue 4. I think he likes to reuse old ideas later on instead of getting rid of them completely.

While there has been no official confirmation of this...I have a hunch that Niaowu is a reworking of Suzhou seeing as they are both water cities and Shenmue 3 has some Chapter 4 stuff in there somewhere. If ever there’s a future interview with the developers, I’d really like to ask about this.
 
Just a theory of mine: I think Baisha holds too much of a special place for Yu and we will definitely see it in Shenmue 4. Yu probably decided to save Baisha for Shenmue 4 because he realised that with the limited budget he wouldn't be able to do it enough justice.

Yu said early on that if the Kickstarter reached $5 million something he "really wanted to do" would be achieved. This turned out to be the character perspective system for the warring kingdoms event. Baisha also has its own fleshed-out Akira RPG script book which looks fairly dense, a load of concept art from the 90s, research notes from Yu when he took a trip to see the Fujian Tulous, early environmental builds and the location's name has been popping up through ought Shenmue's history (What's Shenmue? loading screens, Shenmue Online chapter map).

I know they want us to believe this, but you don't just bin all that work for a 20-minute Niaowu Castle epilogue. I suspect its definitely being saved as a surprise for the next game.
Agreed. If the character perspective system is integral to the warring kingdoms portion of the game that could be really cool.

I'm imagining Ryo, Ren and Shenhua as playable characters who can each gather different types of information based on their individual skills: Ryo's martial arts, Shenhua's social skills and Ren's trickery. The information you collect then affects the outcome of the warring kingdoms, or perhaps the gameplay set piece that happens at the end of the chapter.
 
Agreed. If the character perspective system is integral to the warring kingdoms portion of the game that could be really cool.

I'm imagining Ryo, Ren and Shenhua as playable characters who can each gather different types of information based on their individual skills: Ryo's martial arts, Shenhua's social skills and Ren's trickery. The information you collect then affects the outcome of the warring kingdoms, or perhaps the gameplay set piece that happens at the end of the chapter.
The only thing I wonder about is how they will re-integrate the event back into the story now, seeing as it was originally designed around an infiltration mission to rescue Shenhua's father.

Perhaps they could infiltrate another Chi You Men headquarters to, say, retrieve the Phoenix Mirror from Niao Sun on their way to the cliff temple? Or, to infiltrate the temple itself (though the warring kingdom strategies sound pretty destructive and not something you'd want to inflict on an ancient emperor's palace, so I'm leaning towards the former).
 
I've been thinking of Niaowu as an attempt of what would have been Suzhou for a long time. With Hong Kong out of the equation, I don't know if I'd really need Shanghai in there. Beijing on the other hand... Could be incredible with all it has to offer location-wise. The Forbidden City, the Hutongs (chase qte scene is a must here), the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the big Lama Temple... All of those could make a great backdrop for Shenmue.
 
I finally finished the interview (yeah, I'm really late... The end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 was pretty wild and intense for me)

This interview is really good! Thanks @spud1897 for doing this!

The fact that they are pitching Shenmue IV with the will to secure a higher budget is pretty reassuring, for me.

Yes, he kinda does tell us that Shenmue 3 wasn't a huge success, but he also doesn't say it was a failure. He said that Shibuya invested heavily on Shenmue 3, and the fact that he is down and ready to go for Shenmue 4 proves that he still believes in Shenmue, which tells me that, even though Shenmue 3 wasn't as successful as he wished, he is sure that they can deliver something great and successful and that's good.

The fact that he acknowledges also the communication problems from the Kickstarter and from Deep Silver he's also good.

The only points that "frighten" me, is that for him, he wants to make Shenmue 4 bigger and with better graphics. And it seems weird to me that he didn't say anything about the story/narration/staging which is the point that disappointed the most and that needs a better work on it.

I don't think Shenmue needs to be bigger nor more beautiful.

But that's my opinion. I'm happy that Cédric is truly a fan of Shenmue and is working really hard on trying to make Shenmue 4.
 
The only points that "frighten" me, is that for him, he wants to make Shenmue 4 bigger and with better graphics. And it seems weird to me that he didn't say anything about the story/narration/staging which is the point that disappointed the most and that needs a better work on it.

I don't think Shenmue needs to be bigger nor more beautiful.

I agree, I hope by bigger he means improving upon all of it's faults such as the story; because graphics definitely wasn't an issue for me in shenmue 3 lol.
 
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