- Joined
- Nov 23, 2019
This may be a little inside baseball (I'm a UE4 dev) but the assets and systems created for S3 represent a small fraction of the budget that S4 will require. Games that require a lot of budget for systems and engine stuff are games that use custom engines and develop new mechanics (games like Breath of the Wild or Splatoon) because they need to prototype, experiment, and iterate.I think the logic most of us are applying is as they have engine, assets, models and systems created development of Shenmue 4 should be significantly faster and cheaper. Thus development funds and time could be utilized in other areas.
It's true that Shenmue 4 will be cheaper to develop in terms of engine and systems (assuming they keep the exact same HUD, dialogue, cutscene, combat, and minigame systems, which they may not since UE4 has made substantial updates since S3 began development) but, apart from a few character models and some environment stuff, we're talking new models, animations, cutscenes, locations, scripting, dialogue etc. That's the bulk of Shenmue's budget; especially because S3 skimped on story for that exact reason, so S4 needs to cover a lot of ground, certainly more than 3 did if he ever intends on finishing that remaining 60% of the story.
TL;DR it will almost certainly be cheaper to make, but not to the degree that its sales will cover the costs. If every person who contributed to the Kickstarter buys the game for $70, that's $5M: it definitely won't cost anywhere near less than that to make.