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Yu Suzuki interview: Shenmue III models temporary, facial animation removed 1mo ago

J2 Cool

Member
Q: I see. With respect to the development, are there any parts you're finding hard?

YS: When I was at SEGA, there were employees who were used to working together. This time, the budget is smaller than when I was at SEGA and the staff I'm working with are people that I have hand-picked one at a time through interviews, so the personnel aspect is pretty tough. I can't just devote my time entirely to development, so the difficult part is getting it done while incorporating management.

This seems like the most illuminating part of the interviews. The gamesparks one was much harder hitting and informative.

I think Yu has a bunch of brilliant ideas, I just wonder if this crew assembled in haste is up to the task. I'm also sure Deep Silver will have discussions with him about how the game's shaping up, and where it's sagging. Hope he does whatever's necessary, including crew turnover, to get the game where it needs to be.

This isn't solely a budget issue so much. The news that Deep Silver is adding additional budget is already good news, it needs to be spent in the right way. If the modelers can't hit a target, they need to be swapped out. Simple as that

I'm encouraged by Yu planning to increase the scope.
 

zeopower6

Member
I think for now, it's okay to have faith because it sounds like the project is moving along according to schedule. I hope by the next showing though, they have tightened up the modelwork and replaced most of the provisional items. Maybe keep Ryo's face as it is now though, LOL.
 
Suzuki said the models used in the Kickstarter were temporary and those were indeed replaced, now he's saying these are temporary as well.

I don't see why he would be lying.
 

Loudninja

Member
Cool stuff from the OP.
Additional Famitsu interview details:

- fishing, and you can sell the fish you catch
- wood-chopping
- forklifts confirmed!!
- other animals - frogs, ducks, tortoises
- "a race" of some kind
- skill tree
- considering a new version of QTEs
 

zeopower6

Member
Suzuki said the models used in the Kickstarter were temporary and those were indeed replaced, now he's saying these are temporary as well.

I don't see why he would be lying.

Yeah, and those ones were ESPECIALLY bad, improving along the way. But even he said Shenhua needed a lot of work, lol. I hope they give her back her old outfit.
 
Where the hell is Oneida? I want at least someone to give a shit about moving away from the Virtua engine for the fighting mechanics.

Or anything else besides the models, really.
 

zeopower6

Member
Because you and everyone else would have complained if there wasn't one.

Or if the trailer just showed off the environments...

"Why is this so barren? The game must be in a horrible state for them to not show anything"

It was 100% lose-lose for them to show or not show.

Which is usually why they DON'T show games off until they can but they wanted to show something to show they are moving along.
 
What drives me crazy is the idiocy shown. It's basically willful ignorance.

The game might be shit, it could be too much, but non existing animations in a work in progress game don't show that.

The communication from the team was poor as usual in advance, but I swear people want this game to be bad.
 

jett

D-Member
They should've been smarter when editing this teaser. It calls attention to the non-existent facial animation.
 

Loudninja

Member
They should've been smarter when editing this teaser. It calls attention to the non-existent facial animation.
Ehh they were showing off the characters the description mentions this.
The first teaser of Shenmue III is built from a small slice of an in-development build of the game, and it delivers small peeks in new look of main characters, new characters, and feels of Shenmue world.
.
 
This seems like the most illuminating part of the interviews. The gamesparks one was much harder hitting and informative.

I think Yu has a bunch of brilliant ideas, I just wonder if this crew assembled in haste is up to the task. I'm also sure Deep Silver will have discussions with him about how the game's shaping up, and where it's sagging. Hope he does whatever's necessary, including crew turnover, to get the game where it needs to be.

This isn't solely a budget issue so much. The news that Deep Silver is adding additional budget is already good news, it needs to be spent in the right way. If the modelers can't hit a target, they need to be swapped out. Simple as that

I'm encouraged by Yu planning to increase the scope.

It sound like Yu needs to hire some sort of project manager to help reduce his administrative load. These are the types of business challenges that were probably taken care of for him at Sega, but now he's having to deal with for the first time.
 
They should've been smarter when editing this teaser. It calls attention to the non-existent facial animation.

On a practical level I agree. While I would hope people would be able to factor in elements like budget and state of development into sizing this up, it was presented at a conventional trade show where the context is generally very highly developed, polished trailers. AAA is also the space the series was born in - "magnum opus" was basically the description du jour when the original game was being previewed and reviewed, and at the time it was the (or one of the) most expensive game productions ever made (at only $70 million USD, dem good ol days).

I understand why people's expectations are off here, even if I wish they could listen to the team and have a bit of faith. At the end of the day, they probably have done a bit more harm than good with this teaser.
 
Where the hell is Oneida? I want at least someone to give a shit about moving away from the Virtua engine for the fighting mechanics.

Or anything else besides the models, really.

Until we know what they are moving away to, it's hard to form any judgement on that. Virtua Fighter is undoubtedly a wonderful system, one of the genre's best, but it's tuned around 1 on 1 fights with movement that is mostly linear with only partial 3D movement. Maybe they want something that's better equipped for handling fights against multiple adversaries, or that can incorporate the landscape and environmental objects better, or maybe we'll see the introduction of weapons.
 
Until we know what they are moving away to, it's hard to form any judgement on that. Virtua Fighter is undoubtedly a wonderful system, one of the genre's best, but it's tuned around 1 on 1 fights with movement that is mostly linear with only partial 3D movement. Maybe they want something that's better equipped for handling fights against multiple adversaries, or that can incorporate the landscape and environmental objects better, or maybe we'll see the introduction of weapons.

this is exactly why i feel mixed about it. I loved the fights in shenmue but they were a bit clunky, and it was as if the engine had been shoehorned into a third person adventure game.

Just curious what he'll go to - for all the baggage this series has, people forget how much Suzuki has innovated in this industry.
 

DunpealD

Member
From all the doom and gloom reactions I thought the teaser trailer would be devastatingly bad. Little did I know that it was actually pretty good.
Outside of the already mentioned problems like character models and lack of face animation, it seemed to be going well.

From what I remember creating vertical slices takes some time from the development and graphical upgrades are most of the time at the latter part of development. So I'm not worried at all as long as they fix the characters looks. Luckily the interview already addressed that.

Tbh. though. I'd be already satisfied with Dreamcast graphics as long as it has the Shenmue feel. The improved graphics are just the cherry on top and the shown choreographed battles sequences were already looking very good.

rohwlt.gif

I didn't know that Grappler Baki's Ogre was in the game.

This trailer is probably my favorite of all time. That music, the graphics, that Sega-giving-everything vibe attached to it, SO GOOD

That trailer felt pretty boring to me. Maybe I just lack the nostalgia.
 

Pyrrhus

Member
I don't understand why people who have been willing to walk this far with faith in Suzuki are freaking out now. In a year, maybe. But they still have a lot of time and a lot to work on. The environments look excellent and you can see with the fight moves and choreography that they've got some quality stuff cooking.
 
I don't understand why people who have been willing to walk this far with faith in Suzuki are freaking out now. In a year, maybe. But they still have a lot of time and a lot to work on. The environments look excellent and you can see with the fight moves and choreography that they've got some quality stuff cooking.



What worries me isn't WIP. It's amateurism. There's a difference between something that is bound to work not being finished and something that comes from bad decisions or amateurish work.

I'm not saying the whole thing feels amateurish, I'm saying some aspects of it does.
 

DunpealD

Member
I don't understand why people who have been willing to walk this far with faith in Suzuki are freaking out now. In a year, maybe. But they still have a lot of time and a lot to work on. The environments look excellent and you can see with the fight moves and choreography that they've got some quality stuff cooking.

The question should be: Is it even the people who were willing to walk with faith in Yu Suzuki freaking out?
 
What worries me isn't WIP. It's amateurism. There's a difference between something that is bound to work not being finished and something that comes from bad decisions or amateurish work.

I'm not saying the whole thing feels amateurish, I'm saying some aspects of it does.

Some unfinished aspects? Yes. Those are, well, unfinished. You cant just says "this is amateurish" if you dont have the final version of a given work.
 
What worries me isn't WIP. It's amateurism. There's a difference between something that is bound to work not being finished and something that comes from bad decisions or amateurish work.

I'm not saying the whole thing feels amateurish, I'm saying some aspects of it does.

Can you explain how you are disintinguishing "amateurism" and "unfinished"? This would imply you feel the development process is amateurish - are you a developer?
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Some unfinished aspects? Yes. Those are, well, unfinished. You cant just says "this is amateurish" if you dont have the final version of a given work.
Can you explain how you are disintinguishing "amateurism" and "unfinished"? This would imply you feel the development process is amateurish - are you a developer?
This needs to stop just as it needed to stop during Mighty No 9's development, and other projects that looked troubled.

As much as Suzuki wants to handwave all criticism away this week with talk of models being "provisional" and going to be changed, you can say that about any aspect of any videogame all the way up to maybe a month before launch. In some cases, like Mass Effect Andromeda, even the month after.

Shenhua's model is extremely amateurish. This is after they even had other temporary models in 2015, the Shenhua one looking a lot better back then. But now that more realistic artstyle doesn't fit this weird anime eye shit they're trying lately.
R2RftPd.png


Shitcanning the facial animation system a month ago but still creating a teaser trailer without it is amateurish. "This'll be fine!!" is not where we should be at 2 years in and the first actual real footage.

The new logo is SUPER fucking amateurish. It's also a great example of Yu producing things he should absolutely have no hand in. "I did it with a brush and despite English letters not being my native text!" would set any professional graphic designers teeth on edge, let alone THEN covering it in a fucking gold bevel.

This isn't the first time people closely following the project have perhaps been worried by the amateur elements Suzuki has had to surround himself with due to starting a dev team almost from scratch.
6qL7BZU.gif

This is not Yu Suzuki and AM2 and the best and brightest Sega have to offer working on Shenmue 3. This is whoever he could get at the time. With environments, they got good, but with character modelling and animating, they got bad. If they can fire and re-hire due to enough noise being made over how unacceptable this stuff looks, now is the time. Coaching everything in "well its not done yet!" is how average shit like Mighty No 9 crawls out and people either pretend to be blindsided or actually are.
 

J2 Cool

Member
Basically agree. A model can be unfinished but foundationally on point. Like the equivalent of a solid rough sketch. But Shenhua is nowhere near right, and the earlier model absolutely better. That's what's concerning. It has to start with Yu acknowledging it, so at least that's good, and then they need to make some changes.
 
As much as Suzuki wants to handwave all criticism away this week with talk of models being "provisional" and going to be changed, you can say that about any aspect of any videogame all the way up to maybe a month before launch. In some cases, like Mass Effect Andromeda, even the month after

Pretty much mirrors my thoughts. But a lot of people in here were adamant that great improvements to facial animation and such occurs towards the end of development and we see that with the big differences between what is in the final release and what we see in early trailers.
I myself, couldn't think of too many examples where that was the case.
I mean look at games like Horizon, Uncharted and, as you mentioned, Mass Effect: A. There was barely any difference and you could even argue slight downgrades upon release. Shenmue is a game where looking at talking heads is a major portion of the game, it should be better, even now.
I really don't think what they are showing warrants this optimistic view that major advances will be made in the coming months.
 

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
Where the hell is Oneida? I want at least someone to give a shit about moving away from the Virtua engine for the fighting mechanics.

Or anything else besides the models, really.

i don't care honestly XD
the combat in shenmue & shenmue ii was always more limited than VF3, and i enjoyed those games for the worlds i got to live in... Especially in shenmue 1 where combat was such a minor aspect of that game. There really wasn't that much combat, outside of the final act.
 
While Shenmue looks crude today and wasn't quite consistent at the time, the AAA development still shows in the main characters. Of course today you don't need a big budget like Hellblade shows but they've just come from that.

I hope Yu Suzuki is not too downcast with the reaction. I'm sure most fans are relatively happy given the budget and difficulties of employing. I remember the sentiment was please almost anything will do for Shenmue III, just let Yu finish the story.

The environments are very good, characters have improved to a serviceable standard and of course they still have more animations to add. I mean there's nothing wrong critiquing and getting people to do better, I certainly would say the main characters modelling is quite poor so far in terms of likeness but damn the standards set by other games is so high recently. Even going back a few years to PS3/360 era is really bad for many games.

Also I enjoy some of the weirder looking off nature side characters from Japanese games. Who Ryo is fighting looks the part. I'd hate for him to feel pressured to come out with something more considered.
 

AmyS

Member
I'm glad those facial animations and models are being changed, because otherwise Shenmue III's environments look awesome.
 

Hesh

Member
To understand the removal of the animations for the trailer you have to approach it from the perspective of an artist: how do you want your vision to be viewed by the public when you absolutely have to give them a glimpse of your unfinished product? For whatever reason, they did not like how their first-pass facial animations looked and so rather than show that they omitted the animation entirely so that they can show off their second-pass/final/etc. facial animations at a later date when they have more confidence in them, Video game development takes time and is a volatile process.
 
To be Fair those are the high res models, those arent used on gameplay, not even in all cut scenes only in certain ones


But they indeed are Very beatiful


If you look at secondary characters they are kinda ugly for today

nugget.mp4_snapshot_01.33_2017.01.19_11.07.50.jpg

What the hell are you talking about? That chicken looks incredible!
 
This is one of those situations where I would have rather not got a teaser at all if the models were temporary and the facial animations have already been removed.
 

zeopower6

Member
I myself, couldn't think of too many examples where that was the case.

It's very rare we get a look at content and such while it's in this state.

This is one of those situations where I would have rather not got a teaser at all if the models were temporary and the facial animations have already been removed.

I think had they not shown something, Shenmue III would still be in that "well then they must not have anything to show" criticism. I feel they made a good call since it also provided some talking points about where they will go moving forward.

This needs to stop just as it needed to stop during Mighty No 9's development, and other projects that looked troubled.

As much as Suzuki wants to handwave all criticism away this week with talk of models being "provisional" and going to be changed, you can say that about any aspect of any videogame all the way up to maybe a month before launch. In some cases, like Mass Effect Andromeda, even the month after.

Shenhua's model is extremely amateurish. This is after they even had other temporary models in 2015, the Shenhua one looking a lot better back then. But now that more realistic artstyle doesn't fit this weird anime eye shit they're trying lately.
R2RftPd.png


Shitcanning the facial animation system a month ago but still creating a teaser trailer without it is amateurish. "This'll be fine!!" is not where we should be at 2 years in and the first actual real footage.

The new logo is SUPER fucking amateurish. It's also a great example of Yu producing things he should absolutely have no hand in. "I did it with a brush and despite English letters not being my native text!" would set any professional graphic designers teeth on edge, let alone THEN covering it in a fucking gold bevel.

This isn't the first time people closely following the project have perhaps been worried by the amateur elements Suzuki has had to surround himself with due to starting a dev team almost from scratch.

This is not Yu Suzuki and AM2 and the best and brightest Sega have to offer working on Shenmue 3. This is whoever he could get at the time. With environments, they got good, but with character modelling and animating, they got bad. If they can fire and re-hire due to enough noise being made over how unacceptable this stuff looks, now is the time. Coaching everything in "well its not done yet!" is how average shit like Mighty No 9 crawls out and people either pretend to be blindsided or actually are.

As far as the logo goes, they do say "let me know what you think" if it works. Honestly, negative nancies who have nothing to offer but criticism without the constructive aspect behind it are horrible. With Mighty No.9, I think people were very sure that not too much was going to change after that 'first look' especially since that game was never going to be 2D like that initial concept and doesn't deviate much from whatever it was they showed to begin with. I think it's better to have faith with this sort of thing than try to be a huge effing downer on every single thing they show.
 

eso76

Member
To understand the removal of the animations for the trailer you have to approach it from the perspective of an artist: how do you want your vision to be viewed by the public when you absolutely have to give them a glimpse of your unfinished product? For whatever reason, they did not like how their first-pass facial animations looked and so rather than show that they omitted the animation entirely so that they can show off their second-pass/final/etc. facial animations at a later date when they have more confidence in them, Video game development takes time and is a volatile process.

Err, devils advocate after defending this teaser but...
they were OK with showing Shenhua though ?
 

zeopower6

Member
Err, devils advocate after defending this teaser but...
they were OK with showing Shenhua though ?

I believe they did say "it may not be things we are happy with but we felt we had to show something" or something along those lines.

They aren't saying this is done by any means and are being rather honest about what is being presented to us.

they should had just made a trailer about environnements

That may have gone off worse than this.
 
They shouldn't have released a teaser then. There's a lot of bad press regarding potentially big titles funded through Kickstarter right now, and it doesn't make sense for them to have released a teaser with such shitty looking characters.
 

harlekin

Member
Let me throw a spanner into the "forgiveness fest" thats fostered in here and make some things clear.

- More than two years into development, we havent seen the slightest glimps of any gameplay. Suzuki-san teased the new fighting system thats supposed to be displayed in the trailer - I dont know where... In fact we havent seen ANY system of the game so far. All we've got are blurry glitter shots of render objects - in fact, thats all we've ever seen from this game so far. While increasingly weird angles were used to hide its actual quality, that was now fully on display for the first time.

- Some of the environments in the trailer got a blur filter on them that made them look like it was used so they would "blend in", and partly would be the reason why Game Watch Japan had to ask if they were prerendered. There was a sharp disconnect between the character models and the world around them.

- The only explanation given is that Suzuki-san cant chose developer talent, or that managing the project is hard, and he has "other things that are on his mind as well". How very comforting.

- I've seen the "are subject to change" line too many times to not know, that its usually used as an excuse for presenting subpar quality, that usually is an indicator of the final product - but I'm accustom to see it in a disclaimer thats directly part of the video or game content thats presented. This was not the case here. Suzuki-sans "development report" was a fully fledged teaser trailer, intended to reach a mass audience and get people interested in the game. Everyone can make up excuses later - but this was the intent. And the entire project had not ONE voice, that prevented them from releasing footage in that state - presumably because the people in the know thought it was "good enough".

Also, I've been part of other Kickstarter projects, where this line was used - and the change that actually happened after the "main character design was revealed to backers" was minimal at the most. So lets at least clarify, that there is a significant difference between "stand ins" and "not quite right yet".

- Talking about quality control - the trailer even sports a typo in the copyright line, thats displayed at all times - I guess I should have patience with the people responsible for proofing that as well...

- How can anyone think that "failing your way to an acceptable character model" in the span of a year is progress? If anything, they've become far worse since their first showing. (With Ryo becoming a metrosexual, always a little bit too angry looking dude, and 80s cartoon villain, which they've now featured in three different installments of their PR material, over a span of several months, as if it was the pinnacle of their creation...)

- How Suzuki-San can know that his game will be 30 hours long, but hasnt decided yet, if there should be flashback sequences (which presumably are videos) is puzzling as well. But ok, lets give him that benefit of a doubt.

- Having to take out facial animations, can not be explained by "scheduling issues for voice over sessions" - that was either another calculated move to get "better public perception" or it was a quality control issue, where an entire system had to be scraped, after it was already implemented.

- Also lets talk about that mockup "cover" that Deepsilver had printed out in larger than life size to have a stand in for the Gamescom "meet and greet". Its an arial shot, with two HORRIBLE chraracter portraits - that "still are not final". Then why put it out there? Are you as Deep Silver more interested in producing a PR fallout, than actual good will? Again - something is very wrong with the approvement of the quality level that actually gets out to supposed "customers" here.
-

Here is the jinx of it. This game has to go gold in eight to ten months (not one and a half years), and we have seen NOTHING but cameramovement through U4E environments, and phony charts on computer screens. If kickstarter backers were real "producers", this project had been canceled well before the release of this trailer.

Also I don't quite get how a publisher could be ok with releasing any of this - because its literally harmful to the campaign they actually should be running.

This is the real situation we as backers are confronted with. Not a half mumbled two line explanation, someone had to translate from a japanese Interview in a video game magazine. If this would have been a horrible misunderstanding, the twitter feeds would be full with rebuttals and counter claims. Mumbling "not final" is cheap.

Delivering actual progress - apparently is very, very hard for Mr. Suzuki, who in my mind got very close to Peter Molyneux levels of reputation loss, for being a figurehead that literally sold - what he then cant deliver. Not a visual masterpiece, but jsnt something thats congruent, as a game. And has any of the charme of the original.

I still hope that I am wrong - but just campaigning for people to "not look at the omens" is not what I am very likely to support.

This is a rational reflection of the proceedings..

"Have faith!"
"Just wait."
"Believe!"
and
"He can fix all of it, he still has time and some money..."

aren't necessarily.
 
This needs to stop just as it needed to stop during Mighty No 9's development, and other projects that looked troubled.

Etc

I was really asking a legitimate question, we have a lot of developers on the board. I personally think he just shouldn't be releasing trailers at all. But we're also dealing with an industry luminary who has done many amazing things - mostly without enormous budgets remember, shenmue was an anomaly - so I DO think he deserves some benefit of the doubt.

We won't know until we see gameplay, and I'm holding my judgment (and freakouts) until I see that.
 
Delivering actual progress - apparently is very, very hard for Mr. Suzuki, who in my mind got very close to Peter Molyneux levels of reputation loss, for being a figure head that literally sold - what he then cant deliver.

Now, now, this comparison doesn't make any sense at all.
 

ianpm31

Member
It actually makes nothing but sense, its just a very hard/harsh thing to say. I dropped it as a byline, because I didn't want to make the entire thread about that.

A guy who is easily in the top 10 game creators of all-time and you're talking about delivering.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
But we're also dealing with an industry luminary who has done many amazing things - mostly without enormous budgets remember,
A guy who is easily in the top 10 game creators of all-time and you're talking about delivering.
Right, you see this is always the problem with these Big Name Kickstarters when its just that one name. Yu Suzuki did incredible things at Sega. With his teams. Of also very talented people. The budgets he enjoyed for OutRun and Space Harrier were obviously not Shenmue level, but they were still notable. This stuff was still cutting edge technology being produced by one of the hottest shit videogame software and hardware developers on the planet.

Yu Suzuki in the modern era has none of that. It's the opposite of Kojima waltzing out of Konami with almost his whole team intact. A lot of said Sega/AM2/Shenmue teams either stayed on at Sega (Yakuza and those facial animations eh!) or similar jobs at other companies. Those that didn't either faded into obscurity and have come back to make stuff for the first time in like 17 years. That's... a lot of rust to shake off. While also adapting to "this is all the money, there isn't any more".

Now when it was early days, many hoped, me included, Yu would be able to put together a competent team and launch right into production and just really knuckle down on asset creation so we could get the biggest world possible. Skip to today and core animation systems have just been chucked out and all the character models look pretty shit after 2 years. Even the 2 main characters. That's... you know thats bad news for a project with 1 or 2 years more of dev left.

In retrospect, this game being made in Japan was a problem. There just isn't the same indie culture of amateur devs over there just waiting to stumble into the right project as there is in the west, and perhaps particularly Europe. China and Korea even have better teams ready for dev like this. If you're good at 3d animation in Japan you're already at Sega/Square/Capcom/Platinum etc. This IS going to be made by students fresh outta college, and perhaps even more problematically, they're being directed by someone that is also having to relearn how to make this sort of game after 17 years. Someone who's perfectionism drove Shenmue's budget into absurd realms and doesn't seem to be delegating well all those years later.
 
Right, you see this is always the problem with these Big Name Kickstarters when its just that one name.

snip
It's not that you're not making a reasonable argument - in contrast to horseshit clickbait comments comparing Yu Suzuki to Molyneux - its mostly just, what are you going to do about it? Are you making the argument that hope is lost on this production and we should all move on with our expectations? I agree - it raises concerns about the production. I think i mostly just feel, shenmue 3 is still coming, so here's hoping he can pull it off. In 2014, it's existence was impossible but here we are. I don't think this video's facial animation and models remove all hope that the game can be what we're hoping for. People repeatedly told me to shut off hope that last guardian either existed or would be anything but a piece of shit. I've learned to tune those things out until I see for myself.
 
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