Yu Suzuki Discusses Shenmue III's Story Development

Man, I simply can not wait to play Shenmue 3. Already finished Shenmue l & ll back then on my Dreamcast machine. Am sooooo hoping there will be a CE with steelbook case and a statue of Ryo Hazuki. That will be glorious indeed.

i just hope they finish it with this game, they were lucky to even get a third game so they shouldn't try to stretch it out to much

Playing Yakuza 0 to tide me over! 😀

No way this will launch in 2017. Bloodstained Ritual of the Night started development before Shenmue 3 and it got pushed back to 2018.

@RedMageLanakyn

Bloodstained was pushed back because they lost their "development partner", if I recall correctly. Not that I'm privy to the specifics, but I assume work stopped for a time so another could be found (which is detailed in the delay update), which resulted in a pretty hefty delay into 2018.

@Spaghetti They did add another team, and they are developing for multiple platforms. Keep in mind this is a 2D platformer though. The size and scope compared to something like a Shenmue game is miniscule....and it had to be pushed to 2018.

Just keep working on it. I assume that screensaver he had is something created during these years after the campaign ended?

@RedMageLanakyn I'm not saying Shenmue III won't be delayed, but Bloodstained's issues are different, and not typical of a standard development process.

Bloodstained had publisher problems. From the outset of the KS there was an unnamed publisher waiting in the wings (rumoured to be Deep Silver), and it seemed at some point they dropped out to later be replaced by 505 Games. That's why I'm saying there could have been serious disruptions to development that meant such a big delay.

We'll have to see how it plays out for Shenmue, but it's apples and oranges really.

@sinalefa That's actually the E3 2015 KS pitch video playing on the front page of the shenmue.link site.

@Spaghetti Everything I've read in terms of the delay is actually exactly what you would expect from a Kickstarter game. Iga did an interview with IGN and he stated part of it was the fact that they created stretch goals on the fly when money started pouring in, which took them far beyond their original vision for the game.

Secondly, he wanted to make sure the game came out at the highest quality, and inti creates wasn't cutting it, so they added another team. He also stated he would've changed the date during the Kickstarter, but it's not allowed.

It's apples to apples, because we have two high profile persons trying to revive game franchises using Kickstarter, and are running into the same problems every other Kickstarter game has; they bit off more than they can chew. The only difference I'm seeing is that Iga is learning from past disasters and is being honest and upfront, whereas Shenmue is quietly doing....nothing.

@RedMageLanakyn If you want to play a change in publisher off as no big deal, go ahead. In reality, though? That's a very big disruption that would account for such an extensive delay beyond "quality reasons", but I see I'm not going to talk you round on that.

If you want to say IGA bit off more than he could chew with Bloodstained's stretch goals that's fine, but to compare them to Shenmue III's stretch goals without understanding the fundamental differences between them is not a proper argument.

Bloodstained's stretch goals largely just layer on additional modes and flourishes. Shenmue III's stretch goals change the core of the game itself. You might think that would obviously mean Shenmue III would take much more time as a result, but here's why that thinking is wrong:

Many of the Bloodstained stretch goals are built on the core game (ports, challenge modes, online functions). They require the core game to be sufficiently developed before work can realistically begin on these stretch goals. You can't scale development up to account for this. That's where IGA & co got caught out making up stretch goals on the fly, and are now possibly paying for it in time tacked on to the development period.

Shenmue III's stretch goals change the core of the game rather than layering on top of it. I was going to make a longer explanation about how the stretch goals are smartly structured, but I'll save you the boredom, unless you ask me to elaborate. The point is, you can scale production better with this approach because none of the stretch goals bar language support are being held back by the completion of the base game, because the stretch goals are rolled into core game design.

It's also important to note the stretch goals in Shenmue III were not made up on the fly like with Bloodstained. Yu Suzuki said from the start that before the Kickstarter launched he made several game design plans for several different budget tiers, and designed the stretch goals appropriately around them.

Again, none of this is me saying that Shenmue III won't be delayed. It's me saying that Bloodstained is in a very different position, with very different problems, and why exactly that is.

@Spaghetti They are in different positions, but they're cut from the same cloth. I don't care how much planning they did for Shenmue, they didn't actually start work on the game until the campaign was over and funding was secured. It's unrealistic to expect them to create a quality game before the end of 2017, no matter how good their development has gone. It's just not possible.

Also, I don't know where you're getting your info that Bloodstained changed publishers, but it differs from what I've read. They have Inti Creates, and added 505 games to increase the size of the development team. Inti Creates is still doing work right alongside them, just something more suited to what they can handle.

I cited Bloodstained as an example because it was the most recent and prominent in my mind of how a quality, high profile game can't come out of a Kickstarter in less than three years' time. If they somehow manage to push out Shenmue this year, i can guarantee it will be worse than Mighty No. 9.