Himuro wrote: I posted this on the Kickstarter comment section. Agree/Disagree?
Thank you Yu, and everyone else involved doing this. However, there's a lot of confusion with this Kickstarter. I think you guys are unknowingly damaging the potential for the Kickstarter. Besides revealing Sony's involvement on the first day of the Kickstarter, giving people the idea that there is no more need to back it on Kickstarter because a big company like Sony is supporting it, there's also a lot of vagueness in relation to the stretch goals.
For example, what exactly is Raport? What is the Skill Tree? What are Character Perspectives? No one knows or understands, and this vagueness leaves doubts not only on your potential backers but current backers. Could you further expound upon these features?
Finally, why isn't Yu doing interviews all over the place for the Kickstarter to give information? There was a French interview on Youtube, but not one available in English. A lot of the marketing so far is scattershot and unorganized. Please do better. Thank you, a grateful Shenmue fan.
I agree with you on the vagueness of some of the new system they're hoping to employ; a little more elaboration on the obscure 'Rapport System' and 'Character Perspective System' outside of how they sound on the surface (i.e., 'rapport' refers to relationships and an understanding between individuals) would be nice. The 'Skill Tree System' is probably just going to be new moves and passives that unlock upon reaching a certain amount of EXP or something, so that's clear enough. I'm sure they'll update the Kickstarter with what the mean soon enough, though.
However, I have to disagree with you about Sony's involvement. Sure, they're involved and are absolutely going to support the project, but just how far does that stretch? As it says on the page, "If we do not reach our funding goal, Shenmue 3 will not go forward," so it's clear Sony's support would only have gone so far and was always on a conditional basis. I'm guessing that was the reason for the Kickstarter in the first place: to show Sony just how high the demand is, and that people are not only willing to show their support in the form of a 'Yes, I want this game', but by pledging money to see the project go ahead. Needless to say, it has been a great success, and it's only going to see more and more success as time goes.
Maybe Sony themselves will even provide finances for the project now the demand (and the Kickstarter money) is there?