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New Yu Suzuki Interview on Shenmue (Budget preventing sequel from being made)

R

rbenchley

Member
s_mirage said:
That sounds optimistic to me. Shenmue fans are vocal, but I'm not convinced there are as many as some people seem to think.
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I love Shenmue, but a lot of the hardcore fans are delusional. The original game sold something like 1.2 million and the sequel maybe around half of that between the Xbox and Dreamcast. Pretty decent numbers for a mid-range game with a modest budget, but not so great for a game that is expensive to make. Realistically, how many people are that amped for a sequel to a game that is 13 years old? In the 13 years since Shenmue 2 came out, a lot of people have new careers and families and don't have time to invest in video games beyond the occasional smartphone game. I would guess there is somewhere between 10,000 - 100,000 "hardcore" Shenmue fans and unless each and every one of them is plopping down a few hundred bucks, there's no way in hell you're Kickstarting $10- 15 million. Plus, I seriously doubt that would be enough money to make the game. The successful Kickstarter games have been old-school isometric RPGs made in Unity, Good luck trying to do that with something incredibly immersive like Shenmue. Sega can't even make a go of it in the West with the Yakuza series and the sales for that series are stronger than Shenmue.
 
B

Bass260

Member
Poor Suzuki-san. He must wake up every day dreaming that it's finally the day that he gets to finish Shenmue :(

I don't see anyone footing the budget on HD consoles. Even Sega barely makes huge console games anymore....maybe we all should have bought Binary Domain.
 
Acquiescence

Acquiescence

Member
If Shenmue III's budget isn't sufficient, quality will suffer from it
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I'm glad this is his stance. Broken Sword is one of my favourite franchises, but the latest game that was funded through Kickstarter just felt like an empty shell of the first three games, and that was mainly due to its budget, or lack thereof. It was cheap looking, it felt rushed, the first half spent too much time in one location, it pandered far too much to the fanbase and it just general felt like it was going through the motions. It felt like a fan project. (4 was shit, but that's neither here nor there.)

Anyway, point is, I don't want Shenmue III to turn out the same way. If it can't gain the budget needed to give it the same ambition, scope and minute attention to detail that the first two games have, then don't make it. I don't want some installment made out of crappy parts released just to appease the fanbase and afford them some closure. That's not the way I want Shenmue to go out.
 
L

LeleSocho

Banned
10k said:
Nintendo is coming Yu......they're coming. Just to see the meltdowns on gaf.
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Yeeeaaah that won't happen.
Shenmue 3 would require an huge budget probably higher than any game funded by Nintendo ever required and N is in no shape to burn money like that.
I would even doubt Yu would accept putting the game on a technologically ancient console like the WiiU.
 
S

sbkodama

Member
Of course shenmue will not be finished with shenmue 3 because too many chapters are planned and it could cost even more than the planned shenmue 3.

The only questions left for me is what is the way he'd like to do it and what about the gameplay ?

Does he think about additions in the gameplay ?
will the games be separate in three parts adventure, battle and qte like the others ?
Has he never think about a more cinematic camera during the adventure part like in dialogues ?
 
1

10k

Banned
LeleSocho said:
Yeeeaaah that won't happen.
Shenmue 3 would require an huge budget probably higher than any game funded by Nintendo ever required and N is in no shape to burn money like that.
I would even doubt Yu would accept putting the game on a technological ancient console like the WiiU.
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Nintendo has more to spend then Sony and who said it would be for the Wii U?
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
Sectorseven said:
Probably, but still, Shenmue as an open world game is no where near the scale of something like a GTA or Elder Scrolls.

Shenmue 1 is like a couple alleys and a harbor.
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Modern GTA is roughly 5x that ($265 million was reportedly the budget for GTA5). The point is, a game with a fully modeled town or towns with hundreds of voice acted NPCs and fully modeled exteriors and mo-capped cut-scenes isn't getting made for the same Kickstarter funds as Mighty No. 9 or Wasteland.

10k said:
Nintendo has more to spend then Sony and who said it would be for the Wii U?
Click to expand...

For 3DS or Nintendo's next console?
 
A

aizen59

Neo Member
Hello guys and thanks for reading the interview.

My name is David and i am the person who interviewed Yu Suzuki:

I wanted to post to clear some things regarding Shenmue IV and V:

The question i've asked was : Do you think Shenmue's story would end with Shenmue III ?

And his answer was : Story is far from its end and ending it with a single game seems difficult. Without cutting parts, we would probably need players to play through 2-3 games (Shenmue V), but it seems to be a lot so, if possible, i'd like to finish the story within the next 2 games (Shenmue IV).

Sorry if it sounded weird at first, but what Suzuki san said pretty much means (to me) that if he has to cut some parts he will, but he'd rather make it so fans can enjoy the full story instead.

He is still looking for a way to produce it and wish to do it, so no matter what, i will keep supporting Yu Suzuki.

Kickstarter sounds like a nice idea, now he's the one in charge, so let's see what he's going to do in the future.
 
L

LeleSocho

Banned
10k said:
Nintendo has more to spend then Sony and who said it would be for the Wii U?
Click to expand...

But it has also less ways to regain an hypothetical money hole that a game like this could create... and even if it's not on WiiU but their next gen the point still stands as it will probably be around a generation behind the competitors technologically.
 
J

jay

Member
I'm very happy to hear him say Shenmue 3 would not finish the story. I have been worried for a decade that the series would be forced to end extremely prematurely instead of unfolding as he originally envisioned.

Not that there ever will be a Shenmue 5, or 4, or 3.
 
A

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
As I have said multiple times, I would pay hundreds for a proper Shenmue III. Hell, release HD remasters of I and II and I would pay full retail, no questions asked.

Give us a chance to make this happen and I believe the marketplace and fan base will pull through.

I just need to know where to send the money... Kickstarter, Crowdfund, Yu's personal back account, whatever.
 
A

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
ThoughtsOfSpeaking said:
Im failing to understand why this game would need such a huge budget based on what is now available in 2014. It seems suzuki is the problem here.
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AAA Games cost a lot of money to make. Funding a sequel to a game that not many played more than a decade later is a hard sell to the suits. Especially with the budget this will surely command.
 
I

IronicSonic

Member
liquidtmd said:
I remember reading something on GAF to this effect six months ago, if not a year. What was our source on this?
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Here's an old couple of sources about Shenmue HD (1) (2) but Krejlooc seem to be a better source.

Krejlooc said:
I don't know why they haven't released yet. Sega has a bunch of Sega Heritage stuff they haven't released, either.
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It's hard to believe that Sega releases a incomplete game like Sonic Boom and chooses to not release new games under the Sega Heritage seal. JSR, Nights and Sonic Adv 2 were really good ports.

Do you have any info about the other unreleased Sega Heritage games that you can share? Did they include mini-documentaries and other extras?
 
M

MaschinenZimmer

Banned
ThoughtsOfSpeaking said:
Im failing to understand why this game would need such a huge budget based on what is now available in 2014. It seems suzuki is the problem here.
Click to expand...

Read the interview.

I will talk about NPC. Having control over NPC's daily life was not something we were supposed to add during the first stages of the development. It was decided afterwards and adding such feature was a difficult task for the development team.

Adding up all Shenmue and Shenmue II NPC, we reached a number of 450, maybe more. For each NPC, we created a background : name, how old the NPC is, weight, how tall, its partner, its location etc.

Let's see how it worked for one character. A shop owner or someone working at the post office. In Japan, during the 80's, we had our day off on sunday. We used to work from monday to friday and on saturday, work was usually done during the morning. That said, we had companies where you'd have to work on weekends too!

This is how everything has been programmed. At what time the character is going to wake up, leave its home, go to work, stop at a conbini convenience store to buy some food, goes outside again to catch a bus etc.

At noon, there was a lunch break and the NPC usually brought its lunch and ate it at the park. Also, the NPC's behavior would change depending if it was a week day or weekend.

This intelligent process contained a lot of data. This is explained by the fact that even if you were not even close the NPC, it was still leading its own life, like working.

During NPC's daily life development, on regular basis, I often checked how NPC were reacting. I was waiting in front of a door to see if it would come out, where it would go, what it planned to do etc.

But we had many other things to focus on. Let's say an NPC is walking while holding a bag and it starts raining and he had to use its umbrella. We had to think about which hand was going to hold the umbrella and which hand holds the bag.
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If you count how many people are walking around Dobuita, you can easily reach 100 people. As I've already said, I've build Shenmue based on real world standards, meaning if 500 people would have walked around Dobuita, I would probably have added 500 characters.

What I did not want players to experience while having a conversation with an NPC is repetition. Getting the same answer to your question over and over is boring. And that is what happens in some games. In Shenmue, the conversation system has been adjusted accordingly. To be specific, if an NPC was replying with long sentences, the amount of data we had to use was excessive. We optimized our system in order to lower the amount of data being used.
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Imagine creating a life-cycle specifically for every NPC in a game the size of GTA. There is a reason why many characters in AC: Unity are copypasted. If this is the thing he wants to achieve, there is no wonder nobody wants to publish his game. It sounds insane.

aizen59 said:
And his answer was : Story is far from its end and ending it with a single game seems difficult. Without cutting parts, we would probably need players to play through 2-3 games (Shenmue V), but it seems to be a lot so, if possible, i'd like to finish the story within the next 2 games (Shenmue IV).

Sorry if it sounded weird at first, but what Suzuki san said pretty much means (to me) that if he has to cut some parts he will, but he'd rather make it so fans can enjoy the full story instead.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for clearing this up and making this interview. It was a joy to read.
 
D

DAREALGUMMY

Member
Nintendo......you already rescued one dead sequel....do it again!

I'd also probably be dumped by my on and off again gf if a kickstarter was announced and knew how much I'd give.
 
Ghost_Messiah

Ghost_Messiah

Member
Wow this came out of nowhere and is probably the most positive and optimistic thing I've ever seen Yu Suzuki say about the future of Shenmue. It sounds like if he has the capability and budget required he'd execute, complete and release Shenmue III in a heartbeat with the overriding objective of producing Shenmue IV and V providing at least III is successful and breaks even. It's just so unbelievably and surprisingly positive to hear him comment about the future of Shenmue so optimistically.

Seriously it was over a decade of vague, non-answers without any hope whatsoever and now it sounds like Shenmue III is actually a realistic possibility.

Also Sega's not the obstructive issue at all? Mind blown there.
 
A

ALLseeingEYE

Member
Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
The most funded Kickstarter video game is Torment with just over $4 million. $4 million can buy you a Mark of the Ninja or a Guacamelee or a retro game - it's not getting you a big budget cinematic open-world game like fans would expect from a Shenmue 3.
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Exactly,
Shenmue 3 is realistically a $100,000,000+ game if any first party wants to do it right. Which means, bringing the game up to current-gen visual, content and critical standards (huge open world, huge replayability, huge campaign). If Shenmue came out today and was only 15 hours long (and that possibly cost Sega $30,000,000+ back in 2000), it would probably be just as controversial critically. It's not a surefire hit.

Considering that no one even bought enough Yakuza for Sega to bother translating it to english anymore, I don't see why people think this will garner enough interest to warrant that budget. I basically consider Yakuza to be Shenmue's spiritual successor but simply done better and more efficiently, as much as it pains me to say that.
 
L

Lernaean

Banned
That's always the problem with Sega the last few years. That they ain't willing to take any risks. That's why all the fans of the old Sega IPs hold the company in such high regard.
Also i've moved from the point of wanting a Shenmue 3, to wanting anything new from Yu Suzuki. The guy is a legend for me and i miss his games.
 
S

Seik

Banned
Just freaking kickstart it!

I'm sure there is tons of people that would fund a Shenmue III, it could work.

Not sure about Shenmue IV, even less V, but hey, at least we'd get a part of the sequel we waited for so long to see!
 
T

ThoughtsOfSpeaking

Banned
MaschinenZimmer said:
Read the interview.





Imagine creating a life-cycle specifically for every NPC in a game the size of GTA. There is a reason why many characters in AC: Unity are copypasted. If this is the thing he wants to achieve, there is no wonder nobody wants to publish his game. It sounds insane.



Thank you very much for clearing this up and making this interview. It was a joy to read.
Click to expand...

Yeah. It also sounds needless. Why on earth does 500 npcs need their own lifecycles.

The problem is suzuki is not compromising on his vision and his vision includes stuff that would not significantly hinder the narrative of his game if left out.
 
J

Jan

Member
Will be really that expensive. I mean we the fans dont need shenmue 3 to be a top graphical game. Just use a yakuza engine. Also there,s a lot of work done from the early days.
 
N

Noisepurge

Member
Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
The most funded Kickstarter video game is Torment with just over $4 million. $4 million can buy you a Mark of the Ninja or a Guacamelee or a retro game - it's not getting you a big budget cinematic open-world game like fans would expect from a Shenmue 3.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't need to ask for the game budget itself, just ask for a million or two for pre-production and give cool unique Shenmue swag and beta keys or so as rewards.

This way they could gauge how many people really want the game to be made. This could also loosen Sega's purse strings.
 
M

MaschinenZimmer

Banned
Jan said:
Will be really that expensive. I mean we the fans dont need shenmue 3 to be a top graphical game. Just use a yakuza engine. Also there,s a lot of work done from the early days.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I don't think it's the graphics. Something like the ramen part from the interview made me realize at what level of detail he was already thinking when he started that project on the Saturn.

I can only imagine the faces of the experienced investors/ managers when he starts to talk about in detail what he has in mind for a third Shenmue.
 
C

Chaos17

Member
Just kickstart this game and let fans throw money at you just like for Star Citizen.
You don't need Sega.

Or Nintendo, save Shenmue like you saved Bayo *_*
 
A

ALLseeingEYE

Member
Chaos17 said:
Just kickstart this game and let fans throw money at you just like for Star Citizen.
You don't need Sega.

Or Nintendo, save Shenmue like you saved Bayo *_*
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Honestly, this isn't a terrible idea.

Shenmue on WiiU would be far more financially viable from a content standpoint. If Nintendo pitches in on design and quality control, it could help the game become a critical success too.

If Nintendo is willing to bet $40-50,000,000 on a quality Shenmue 3, it could sell a modest bunch of Wii U's due to the hardcore fanbase. Perhaps the only issue is the game would likely be at least 3 years off.

I honestly think the smartest think Yu Suzuki could do is streamline the design. If he used the Yakuza engine as a base, perhaps they could get the game done for far cheaper too.
 
K

Kamek

Member
I need a game like Shenmue to fill the void in my heart. A lot of people say the Yakuza series is comparable. Is this true? or Sleeping Dogs.
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
Basically the only thing I would crowdfund at a high tier.

Kamek said:
I need a game like Shenmue to fill the void in my heart. A lot of people say the Yakuza series is comparable. Is this true? or Sleeping Dogs.
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Yakuza is Shenmue + River City Ransom. But it has different emotional overtones.
 
A

ALLseeingEYE

Member
Kamek said:
I need a game like Shenmue to fill the void in my heart. A lot of people say the Yakuza series is comparable. Is this true? or Sleeping Dogs.
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It is. I love Yakuza.

In my opinion, it has a much superior and excellent storyine, much better characterization, and is just kind of cooler with you being a badass Yakuza and all.

It has a bigger open-world. The world isn't as intricately detailed per building, but they did things smarter and more efficiently. They have intense detail in shops you can enter, but they only let you enter viable shops. It also has a ton of great missions, and a lot of variety in them.

I also think they did the combat better. Yakuza's combat is very solid, and quite varied with a ton of awesome finishers. It's like an awesome RPG evolution of a 3D Streets of Rage with an intense amount of weapons. This is as opposed to Shenmue being based off of Virtua fighter. Shenmue's combat is great, but the Streets of rage style is better suited for multiple opponents, and Shenmue never had enough combat encounters in my opinion.
 
Z

ZombiePlatypus

Member
Oh my god Shenmue IV and V??!!?

I'd love those but we're already pulling teeth just to get III to even potentially get off the ground.

It's actually crazy cause, if marketed right, I think Shenmue III would do insanely well in the west. It's the freaking godfather of open-world, sandbox games on consoles. It'd fit right in!

Also, where the hell are Shenmue I & II HD releases? Not even up for digital download? Come on!
 
E

exmachina64

Banned
I'm marginally hopeful that if Valkyria Chronicles and the other Steam releases we hope Sega releases are successful, that will make a case for porting Shenmue 1 and 2 to Steam.

After that, we could worry about HD remasters and sequels.
 
F

FlashbladeGAF

Member
ThoughtsOfSpeaking said:
Yeah. It also sounds needless. Why on earth does 500 npcs need their own lifecycles.

The problem is suzuki is not compromising on his vision and his vision includes stuff that would not significantly hinder the narrative of his game if left out.
Click to expand...

He's not just creating a narrative. This guy is trying to push open world gaming, which he started.

He's not just trying to create an epic story... he's trying to create an epic world/experience.

Shenmue isn't like GTA where you jump from missions to missions while avoiding cops and learning about a story.
Shenmue is about experiencing the life of a kid in 1980s Japan/China

It's 1st gen holodeck/SoA

And although it may be overkill, that kind of attention to detail is what separates the mediocre fromm the greats ..or in this cast the classics
 
T

taps

Neo Member
I know it's a pipe dream Nintendo would lose money here but I'd love if they funded Shenmue 3 w/ the 1 & 2 Remaster.
 
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