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- Nov 23, 2019
https://www.polygon.com/2015/6/20/8818097/shenmue-3-story-11-chapters-kickstarter-yu-suzukiHe said at least 5. Wrapping it up with S4 would leave us with a lot of missing content and story beats and look at the outcry after S3 did that.
Granted this was before the release of S3, which he stated only takes us to 40%, but it's anyone's guess how he intended to wrap it up in 1 more game under ideal circumstances. If I had to guess I would say he considers Shenmue 1 to be Chapter 1, Shenmue 2 to be Chapters 2-4, and Shenmue 3 to be the rest of Chapter 4-5: 5/11 = 45%. But this still leaves a ton of questions (he said that S3 would cover the most story of all the games, was Baisha Chapter 6 or did that get moved to Chapter 5, have any of the chapters been cut since they're going to the Cliff Temple, not Baisha next? etc.) Even by this math that would mean that, at a minimum, both remaining Shenmue games would need more content than S2 (3 full chapters apiece) to tell the whole story. I really wish that Suzuki would clear this up and address whether or not he was content to let the anime finish the story.
Also, not to beat a dead horse, but S3 did not receive criticism because it was missing story content; it was because it was lacking story content.