Managed to listen to this earlier today. Fantastic interview as usual, loved the enthusiasm and clearly love of the franchise Esra has. A couple of stray observations-
- He seems to reiterate that budget from his original
interview was 20 million dollars. Development these days isn’t cheap!
- His story of his real life experience visiting Guilin and the magnet was heart warming. It mirrors a lot of my experience living in China in the 90’s and how inquisitive folks were of foreigners especially in the more rural parts of the country
- He references Life is Strange and David Cage titles as possible blueprints of how Suzuki could build a potential Shenmue 4. A much more self contained experience going from various story beats as he thinks open world with level of production required isn’t sustainable
On that note and again it should be stressed I’m paraphrasing and it’s speculation on Esra’s part but since he seems to have developed a relationship with Suzuki I think his opinion is pretty qualified.
He mentioned given Suzuki’s arcade roots his interest is on game systems and creating technically interesting products. He said based on his discussions there may be a disconnect between what fans want, i.e. conclusion to the story, satisfying answers and resolutions to the games various story threads and he feels Suzuki may not necessarily place same level of importance. Rather he is interested in building revolutionary game and game systems. Thinks based on Shenmue 3’s sales and critical reception it will be difficult to get budget and team to satisfy modern players along with core fans.
I know Suzuki’s impulse is to build and create but I hope Shenmue 4 is a iteration of the systems of 3 because I think a lot of resources and time can be saved rather than starting from scratch. Lots to speculate and discuss in the coming months...