Shenmue Dojo

Hi all, I made this thread because I feel we need to check our expectations. When the kickstarter was announced a lot of people asked "How can Shenmue III be made for as little as $2-$10 million?" Many then went on to assume that surely Sony is funding this as Shenmue 1 was like $50 million and there was the creation of the current rumour which plagues the kickstarter for Shenmue III.

We got some clarification, Sony is not funding development of the game but other stuff like marketing, regardless, as Adam Boyes said "It's very much their game" which leads me to wonder, why do we assume Shenmue III will have these AAA standards?

Could it be that maybe the game won't have the latest cutting edge graphics despite Unreal Engine IV. Maybe the gameplay will feel classic also, the combat system in Shenmue is not as fluid and fast paced as the one in Yakuza 0 (A modern game) but once again, with the budget given to us maybe it won't feel super modern with lots of fancy state of the art motion capture which has come a long way since the first Shenmue did motion capture.

Now why is this important? Because I feel some people are going to have unrealistic expectations, they think Sony is funding this and are expecting an impressively looking open world game with tons of interactivity and it probably will be when it releases but not on the scale that everyone imagines and so everyone will get grumpy, rage on the forums, saying the game looks crap and boring yet not realising that all along this was an indie game.

I think it will be right down the middle. It probably won't feel like a true AAA title, like Shenmue did in 2000.
But I'm sure it definately won't feel like a little indie game.

I'm hoping it'll be AAA after Sony's funding is added to the Kickstarter. But I think it'll end up being somewhere between AA and AAA. If the game is a commercial success I think Shenmue 4 will be AAA.

I believe it will be AAA standards, Yu Suzuki has never made an indie game really as far as I know.

Although they started out saying most of the funding would be from the fans in an early Famitsu interview, they now just mention they will have outside funding (with Sony being the biggest partner). I highly doubt Sony would market the game (which probably costs at least 5m to do properly) and not make sure the development has enough to make a great game.

The only reason I can see the KS STILL not answering the question clearly about whether or not the game will come to other consoles must be that they haven't completely agreed on the conditions of the exclusivity yet, leaving them the chance to make a better deal for Shenmue imo. I'm quite sure Sony will be very happy to have this on PS4 only.

elfshadowreaper wrote: I'm hoping it'll be AAA after Sony's funding is added to the Kickstarter. But I think it'll end up being somewhere between AA and AAA. If the game is a commercial success I think Shenmue 4 will be AAA.

I don't think Sony will be investing enough to truly make it like a AAA game (I hope I am wrong though). I agree, it will probably be somewhere in between an indie and a AAA game and maybe if it is successful the next one will get a bigger budget.

Probably somewhere in the middle, which is fine by me. 99% of AAA games are shit and same goes for indie games.

Last year I learned a little on making stuff in the Unreal 4 engine and if you know what you're doing you can make some amazing stuff.

I've seen what some of the Sonic modding community do in GDK and its amazing (and they're doing it for fun in their spare time) so I'm not really worried about how the game will look as it should be pretty amazing.

If the environments look anything like the Kickstarter trailers ones, I think it'll look amazing. What with the leaves falling and the bunched up leaves on the floor looked perfect! Just depends on the gameplay mechanics they use whether or not the game feels the same standard, pretty graphics don't mean everything.

I'll expect the same of (or close to) the amount of attention to detail, but not the same scope. So yeah, somewhere in-between. I don't think the game will push technical boundaries like it did in the past.

Tomato Convenience Store wrote: I'll expect the same of (or close to) the amount of attention to detail, but not the same scope. So yeah, somewhere in-between. I don't think the game will push technical boundaries like it did in the past.

^ Pretty much this. Suzuki said Shenmue 3 would be more character orientated than open world exploration anyway. So I think this will really work in it's favour too.

There's more to games than AAA and indie. Dynasty Warriros for instance, isn't AAA but it ain't indie either. Same for Telltale games.

MiTT3NZ wrote: I've never considered either to be a good video game.

I think the only bad thing Shenmue had was the voice acting. Everything else was pretty much flawless in terms of game development.

Mid-tier is best tier.

Yu and Neilo are the biggest mysteries of this adventure, no one can really say what we can expect from them. And we live at the time the West has surpassed the East technically. However The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the first reason of my faith with Yu himself.