My only issue with the Rating Summary is rather than saying "large amounts of cleavage" I would have said "absolutely stunning amounts of cleavage."

Looks like Tom's skin and hair textures are higher resolution, too. The clown on the sign is different as well.

Telekill wrote: Where did you get the file size?

That's the current figure on Steam. A Sega rep has said that it's possibly subject to change.

Now think about cutscenes. In comparison to gameplay, these are intricately staged and the player was never meant to "see beyond" what was on the screen at a single time.

I'm reminded of something I read about the remastered versions of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. The episodes were shot on 35mm film and then edited for television to 4:3. So some fans are like, "release the remasters in widescreen!" However, since the cinematographers knew that 4:3 was the target format and they framed their shots with that in mind, the widescreen footage contains things that shouldn't be seen in frame... abrupt edges of the sets, boom microphones, crew members at work, and so on.

With Shenmue's cutscenes, of course there aren't mics or crew members, but the characters sometimes freeze immediately when going out of the 4:3 frame. Then there's the suggestion (or, for some, the furious demand) that D3T reframe the shot - somehow zoom it in until it fills the 16:9 frame. Well, this may be possible, though it's not likely to be as easy as we imagine based on the camera controls in contemporary game engines. But beyond the technical issues of working with source code from a 20-year-old game that runs on its own custom engine, changing the zoom, camera placement, lens angle or however else you would achieve the new shot, is the artistic issue of changing the director's original vision. As furious as some consumers get about not having every pixel of their widescreen TV lit up at all times, that's as uncomfortable as some creators get about having their work altered by others. Particularly in film with regards to matters of framing and cropping. And Shenmue is one of the first truly filmic games, so it's easy to imagine that Yu Suzuki would not be comfortable with handing the keys to the Ferrari over to the work-for-hire guys at D3T and allow them to make those kind of creative decisions.

But then one might say, well... all the rest of the gameplay has been altered to 16:9 - isn't that changing the creator's vision? I suppose it is, in a way. But I would say there's a significant difference between a cutscene, which is fully directed to convey the story in a particular way, and gameplay in which the player has agency to choose the view (within limits).

Ultimately there's no clear solution that will satisfy everyone, so I also think there's no reason for anyone to become irate about their preference not "winning." (No reason to be furious on the internet? Yeah, right!) There are difficult technical challenges and difficult artistic decisions and it's really a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position for the developers. So I say take a deep breath and just enjoy the games for what they are.

The reason they give is "creative choice".. this random assumption makes them sound like they are so desperate to dispel negativity they'll just make stuff up. If they could have maintained the aspect ratio without visual issues it sounds more reasonable to assume they would have.

It's really not a 'random' assumption if you're a film buff and familiar with how auteur directors (a classification I'd say applies to Yu Suzuki in the realm of games) care deeply about their cinematography. They hate it when studios mess with the framing of their shots.

this video isn't going to help shut up all those naysayers

Nothing is going to shut them up. There's a negligible number of haters who will continue to try and rain on this parade no matter what. Meanwhile it's still going strong on the best sellers lists...

The in-game clips look really good. I think they updated the subtitles nicely while still keeping the color-coded outlines.

To be frank, something about all this has short-circuited my brain. It's not fully sunk in that we're getting all this. I've been hoping for this for years. It's amazing, but it's so amazing that it's still partially beyond belief for me.

Im more concerned about the animation thats going to be applied to these graphics. From what they've shown, they've proven they don't understand animation basics.

Oh, really? What do you think is more likely... that the professionals working on Shenmue III somehow have landed this job without understanding animation basics? Or that a consumer who has been shown work-in-progress footage doesn't understand what they're seeing in regards to the overall game development schedule?

I think they could've done better on the new post processing too. We've seen what's possible on emulators with reshades. These new effects look like garbage in Shenmue 1 plain and simple.

Are you trying to provoke an argument? It's certainly easier to tear things down than to build them. I really don't like the emulator vs. port dynamic going on. Who are these lazy devs who got all the plum jobs at studios while the brilliant hobbyists can't get a foot in the door? How did they do that?

Some interesting things have been done with emulators. But they are usually accompanied with some serious caveats that would prevent them from ever being released commercially. Like the depth of field effect that looks cool in still images but is a glitchy mess in gameplay. It's a long road from 'this kind of works most of the time' to 'this is ready to be professionally released' and when you're on it, you often find that it ends up being even longer than you thought.