Fair enough. Hard disagree. I just cannot see there being too much story in Shenmue III, and that's not at all consistent with the complaints I've seen so far. I find it hard to imagine people being happier if Hsu, Shingling, Ge, and the rest if Niaowu was just completely cut a la Star Wars (1977).
It might not be a useful comparison since games and movies are made very differently, it's extremely rare for a game to have
too much story because generally that's tied to length. Apart from something like Metal Gear which crams a ton of story into a short game, most games can spread their story over however many hours they want. Movies, on the other hand, have a set length, so no one would realistically release a 4 hour cut of Star Wars that focuses on Luke's friend on Tatooine. Rather, the comparison being made here is that the story lacks focus or is focused on the wrong things. In the case of Shenmue, if this story has indeed been planned and they knew the beats going in, there is no reason for it to meander on nothing for its near 30 hour run time and then rush an ending and then claim that we're still only 40% done.
Yeah, if I was expecting another 3-4 entire chapters of the Shenmue story, and a full-on epic across 3-4 regions of China with an enormous amount of exposition, I would for sure be disappointed too, so I can for sure see more where you're coming from with your feelings toward Shenmue III now.
I expect more story out of 1 chapter of Shenmue, frankly. In Shenmue 1 we're introduced to a ton of memorable characters who (likely) never return, the play area is tiny and yet we get a ton of story involving the Mad Angels, the mysteries of the mirrors and Iwao's past, and Ryo's struggles to get to Hong Kong in about the same time that it takes Shenmue 3 to repeat story that we already know.
Shenmue III for sure only covers one of those: Bailu and Niaowu are not separate chapters at all, even if we had gotten Baisha, this is all happening in the same region, so Shenmue III was always going to be a single "chapter."
I have no way of knowing if that's true. Hong Kong and Kowloon are the same "region" and are considered separate chapters and Baisha was changed to the castle area. All we actually have to go on is what Suzuki said regarding the actual scope of the story (40% done after S3) and how many more games he intends to make (1-2). So the second best case scenario, according to Suzuki, is that we get 1 more game with 60% of the story crammed in.
Niao Sun is introduced as another main villain, and Ge was another villain. Maybe translation issues, but personally I never expected for a second the Niao Sun arc to begin and end in Shenmue III, especially when we knew that half the game takes place in Bailu village. I certainly didn't expect a complete explanation of the poem this early into the story, so not really sure what Yu was on about there.
Suzuki said there would be 4 bosses, Lan Di, Niao Sun, an unnamed tactician, and one unknown. So I guess Ge could count as the unknown boss, but I don't consider this even a proper introduction to Niao Sun (she's not even named in game), let alone her having any kind of substantial role, and the unnamed tactician seems to have been cut completely. No one thought her arc would end in S3.
Regarding the poem, Bailu village is where it originated, obviously we wouldn't get a full explanation (presumably the events of the sequels would fill that in) but this has been recited in Bailu village for a long time and they believe Ryo and Shenhua are literally fulfilling it, so for it to not even come up is insane.
So to sum it up, I think the series should continue for at least 5 games, even 6. I don't find it unreasonable so long as we the fans remain interested and we can attract newer fans to the original games.
This may be a little "inside baseball" but the fact that a sequel is even something that's dependent on sales after a record setting Kickstarter does not bode well. I released a game made by a small team (with "help" from another company) and the budget ballooned to $2M. If S3 got $7M from KS, you can expect that to be at least doubled by the other companies investing, hoping for a fairly standard ~150k unit break-even (our break even was around the same). The EGS gave us $1M over the first year for exclusivity, so assume that S3 got even more, say $3M, it still needs to sell 100k to break even. Remember, that's breaking even. If it doesn't do anywhere near 200k units, forget about a sequel. Hollow Knight sold 250k units on Switch alone and it's orders of magnitude cheaper to make than Shenmue. Suzuki knows all of this which is why I'm blaming this on either gross mismanagement or the insane notion that S3 was going to have record setting sales.
. I agree with Yu being too old to make a 6th game, and I can't really think of a story driven series that has that many installments so it might be tough to keep momentum, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
