Valascaziel wrote: Let's be honest here. There *will* be disappointment at some juncture. We'll wish it looked better, we'll wish it had more substance from goals we didn't/don't reach.
If it gets delayed, it gets delayed. No high-profile Kickstarter game has ever made date with their preliminary release window. MN9, Yooka Laylee, Amplitude, Bloodstained; they all got pushed, so we should expect SIII also..kind of an unspoken conclusion now.
At the end of the day, here's what matters--you *will* get it, with all of its celebrations and shortcomings, which is more than we could say for the past 15 years.
This
I used to rail against publishers who called customers self-entitled (I refuse to call it entitled, which is this weird shortened version of self-entitled everyone has adopted lately
) but I am starting to change my mind lately based on some of the post-release and pre-release backlash many games get these days. People are so used to their demands being met - which from a consumer rights standpoint is great, but - they seem to consider anything less than their precise idealized version of what a product should be so woefully insufficient as to render it "a dumpster fire," as the now popular term seems to be.
Thankfully no one has yet referred to Shenmue III by that nomenclature... but seriously... the game has just now exited pre-production, and I don't personally factor in comparisons to other dev cycles for other games with fewer people involved, because this is Shenmue, and it's Yu Suzuki, and while people may not LIKE this... the dev plan chart lays out pretty explicitly where they are and what they've focused on so far and haven't. That's just the way it is. This is the way they are proceeding. Expecting better visual design at this stage is in direct logical conflict with what they've publicly told us their plan is, and when the different stages of development are going to happen.
People have the right to feel that way and to demand whatever they want... but it's just not what they're doing. If he's not ready to pull the trigger on better art assets yet... it's not happening, whether we're impatient for it to or not. Even if they exist, we're not going to see them until they feel it's worth showing. The new screenshots are meant to show a combination of what they have, and what they're aiming for. That's why they're explicitly called WIP. WIP means what it means... work in progress.
And as Valascaziel said, a potentially less than perfect Shenmue III that nonetheless does all it can to feel like Shenmue, with less than ideal marketing and less than immediate response to exactly what we want when we want it... is at least infinitely preferable to the 15 year period during which we all thought we might NEVER see a third Shenmue installment. How quickly we forget the excitement and miracle that was the announcement of this game, and its successful funding. How quickly we start to nitpick every little thing and forget how Yu works and what they've already told us about the development stages and their clearly laid out plans.
Or maybe people just don't like said plan. I get that. That's the thing though... we don't get to affect or dictate that plan. We paid for Yu and company to implement their vision, in the way they best think will accomplish a game that feels like Shenmue. Not to take the reigns and directly influence said plan and how and when things happen. We get to give them feedback... not demand things. Just my opinion. I respect everybody's opinion and I'm not telling people what to think or feel. But this is the reality, and I for one remain very excited and hopeful.