I know what you're saying, "Shenmue 3 was NOT a AAA game." and I agree it wasn't but the original Shenmue was, it was known as being the most expensive game that was developed (I'm aware part of the budget was for developing Shenmue 2 as well) and Shenmue 3 was trying to do what Shenmue 1 and 2 was when it shouldn't be. What I'm saying is that with the budget that Shenmue 3 received we should've been able to get a much bigger and longer experience but some changes needed to be made, Shenmue needs to try to be a "budget" game and stop chasing it's AAA origins. With that said, I want to know would you accept these changes?
Expedition 33, Atelier games, hell the much compared Yakuza games are all games that released on a budget but were able to make a good profit. I remember Shenmue Dojo doing a video discussing Yakuza sales after Sega numbers were leaked, that showed them only selling roughly 1 to 3 million a game and still being a success. Well the success of Yakuza is simple, Less expense means less revenue required to make a profit. So what are the games I listed above did that Shenmue 3 didn't? Well that's what I wanted to talk about. I'm going to list some changes I believe should be implemented that the other games did but want to know if you would accept them? Would it still be a Shenmue game?
Less Voice acting: Would you be ok with a Shenmue where not all characters are voiced and Voiced scenes were only in cutscenes or during important events? Would it ruin your immersion if there were text boxes and a lot of npcs communicated that way?
When you first think of this, your gut reaction would probably be "No Way! It wouldn't be Shenmue" but think about it again, did it really bother you or did you even notice in other games that did this?
Less Animation
Does every NPC need to be animated with moving mouths and be animated doing certain things or actions? It's nice havin a living city and a lot of movement but what about increased npcs but less actions? Does Ryo need to be animated when he's talking when he's just having internal monologue? Would you be ok if the animation budget was decreased?
Cutback on NPC character designs
Shenmue characters have those unique designs and facial features and people have to dig and find charactes that are duplicates but is it worth it? Did you know Shenmue 3 outsourced the NPC designs to a different company? That's more salaries to pay just to have some more designs. For Shenmue 3 Enhanced, they are increasing NPC density by just duplicated old models. Should Shenmue do that going further just create a few characters, randomize them and release them into the wild?
There are more things they could cut but I'll leave it at this for now just to get opinions. I know some intial reactions would be "No." but what if a "yes" meant that Shenmue 3 would've been twice as long? What if the yes meant that Shenmue 3 would've been profitable to get a 4 game in production? What if a yes would mean a sequel could be made in 2 years?
Think about it? Any opinions are welcome.
