Shenmue III - What Happened? ft. Super Eyepatch Wolf

[Music] [Applause] [Music] taosun oh hi ryo are you trying to find out what happened to shenmue 3 um well you've come to the right place what happened oh don't you know rio you're stuck in the middle of a new episode right now i see yes rio your quest has finally led you here now while i already covered the series a little bit in my dreamcast video it's now time to fully turn our attention towards what might actually be the most divisive tumultuous time in the fan favorite action rpg's history which is saying a lot considering well it's shenmue and to do this i'm going to need the help of someone who loves both video games and specifically sega this is cool someone who's excellent at making video essays and someone who is a dear friend of mine so without further ado my favorite irishman super eye patch wolf oh well thank you so much matt it's a pleasure to be here you are ready to do this though you've danced this dance with this particular franchise before i have but i think i've recovered from it so let's do this what happened to shenmue leo what happened chickens so in 1995 you suzuki legendary creator of all this was asked to make a virtual fighter rpg yeti yada yada six years two games more than 50 million dollars in costs and the early death of a console later suzuki's standing within sega fell somewhat a stark contrast to the 90s where he was let's not mince words here a goddamn superstar after shenmue 2 shipped the series understandably struggled to return in any tangible form which was due at least in part to sega becoming a software only publisher and cash being in short supply in fact yu suzuki himself struggled alongside with it because aside from some producing roles on things like virtua cop 3 yes there was a virtual cop 3 that never got ported anywhere as well as a few more racing titles his directing work slowed down way down 2001 would be the last year he would helm a project for almost a decade but going out with shenmue 2 and virtua fighter 4 especially is certainly a distinction now what was unfortunately happening during those long nine years was a string of cancellations he was making stuff it just never seemed to work out in the end sci-fi in arcade fighting game controlled by a giant touchscreen tested poorly and saw limited distribution in japan shenmue online which did reach a significant level of completion was then also cancelled due to sega withdrawing their online division from china effectively killing the project finally there was purebreed which was an experimental video game that involved something and an animal maybe it was axed very early on in its life cycle a clear problem here was that suzuki's legacy and experience mostly revolved around the arcade scene and the arcade scene wasn't exactly booming in the mid-2000s sega was investing more and more into the console space and less and less into the smoky labyrinthine halls of game centers so that coupled with the commercial failure of shenmue meant that sega was very hesitant to give suzuki carte blanche to create anything risky or just anything at all so in 2009 he decided to just open up his own studio ease net to develop a mafia to to develop a mafia wars inspired japanese yahoo messenger mobile game called shenmue city which lasted for about a year i can't imagine why once those servers shut down suzuki officially left sega in 2011 so he could concentrate on ease net full time it's here when sega themselves contracted them to develop something called virtual fighter cool champ and something called virtual fighter fever combo all of these were japan only mobile games and neither of them were actual virtua fighter games these were some of the darkest days for shenmue fans where all they could hope for is but a fleeting moment of joy as they controlled rio riding a forklift in a cart racer it really did seem like suzuki's epic tale of revenge honor and friendship would go untold meanwhile in a totally different part of the world ryan payton a former producer at konami who had worked on ngs4 guns of the patriots had found success in 2011 when he established his own company camouflage and kickstarted the clandestine stealth game republique one of the most ambitious video game kickstarters of its day therefore seeing the value of kickstarter and being a lifelong fan of shenmue ryan got into contact with suzuki through some connections he had made within sony specifically the man with the knack for hardware architecture mark cerny the pitch was to utilize kickstarter as a way to rally the shenmue fan base in order to finally make the dream happen seeing rio complete his quest in an interview with game informer payton detailed what his thought process behind all this was i was really bothered by the fact that yu suzuki had this incredible saga of games he wanted to tell and how that was seemingly ending with shenmue too i always felt in the back of my mind that if i ever had the opportunity to help you suzuki i would because in a lot of ways he was a god of the japanese games industry now as it just so happened before kickstarter was ever in the conversation suzuki was in fact trying to figure out his own way in bringing closure to the story his thought around the time was to scale everything back the scope and the mechanics and to just focus on that story think of a telltale style adventure game now here's where the story starts to get a bit complicated the original shenmue's development lasted for 6 years and cost sega close to 50 million dollars more if you include its sequel that was justified though because in 1999 suzuki's magnum opus was seen as massively ambitious and unlike anything being attempted at the time but what does the budget and scope of a shenmue 3 look like some 18 years later given the increasing ease of making 3d games over time via more robust tools and advancements it would in theory cost both less time and money but that's the thing shenmue got a lot of slack and praise due to all the new things it had pioneered so the budget and the gravitas of bringing back such a series was obviously a concern and since sony was the go-between during peyton and suzuki's early talks was a long before they became an official slash unofficial partner as well now make no mistake no matter how much a crowdfunding campaign initially asked for and no matter how much that crowdfunding campaign would ultimately raise it was still not going to be nearly enough to fund an open world action rpg such is the nature of game development they needed other partners to make this thing a reality [Music] so at e3 2015 sony proudly declared that they were putting the full weight of their e3 stage show behind you suzuki so he could officially announce the shenmue 3 kickstarter which was kind of extremely weird i'm not sure if there's been anything quite like that before or since for a massive conglomerate that rakes in billions of dollars in yearly revenue to sort of present not launch but present a crowdfunding initiative the campaign itself asked for 2 million dollars and made it pretty clear that this was a grassroots effort that only the fans themselves could make this possible it then proceeded to smash that goal and then some which of course it did because it's shenmue probably the most well-loved franchise that had been left on a cliffhanger ending the probably one of the most loved franchises left on a cliffhanger ending when it was all said and done the campaign more than doubled what it was asking raising over 6 million dollars in making the guinness book of world records for the most successful video game kickstarter of all time just as it was concluding however a few more details revealed on how any of this was possible former sony head of third party relations geo corsi stated pretty plainly sony and playstation is definitely a partner in this game and it's going to be run through third party production we're going to help ease net get the game done we're going to be partners on it the whole way and really excited to see this thing come out in a couple of years we said the only way this is going to happen is if the fans speak up we thought kickstarter was the perfect place to do this we set a goal of 2 million dollars and if the fans come in and back it then absolutely we're going to make this a reality now there's many ways for a publisher or company to support tiny projects and while sony listed off things like milestone reviews submission help and localization services it's very much assumed that direct financial support was also one of them it's here where things get messy ease net were never equipped to publish a game themselves i mean they hadn't even shipped a single product outside of a handful of japanese mobile games and sega well they had licensed the shenmue ip directly to use suzuki so they weren't much of a factor at all it's really similar to streets of rage 4 where sega's logo doesn't even appear therefore it's pretty crystal that sony was providing an undisclosed chunk of the game's true budget but not the full amount and they didn't want to directly publish it either which is again just really weird we'll be leaving the kickstarter here though but we'll be returning to it don't you worry because there's still plenty to talk about for now though allow me to throw over to johnny wolfe who has an equal amount to discuss regarding the game's actual development and the choices that were made thank you matthew almost all the choices they made were wrong now if you've never experienced shenmue then i do need to give you a bit of context here since the game originally started as a virtual fighter rpg the real-time battles used that game's fighting system as a base which utilized block punch and kick through these three buttons you had endless combinations of inputs that would result in a variety of different attacks and techniques if you've got a few rounds with any virtual fighter you'll know how satisfying the fighting system can be simple to pick up but hard to master for no other reason than just wanting to change a core system that was established in the previous two games to be less intimidating for new players you suzuki or some other madman decided to scrap this system all together and in its place was something else something that was not only unsatisfying but also didn't require an iota of effort to succeed in we rebuild shenmue through his combat from scratch it's much more fun to play and much more approachable even if you don't have much skill we're using some ai elements so even if you're just randomly pushing buttons something meaningful will happen even if you're randomly pushing buttons something meaningful will happen this was such a tone-deaf change to make because if this game was indeed for the fans why strip out something that was so fundamental to the experience of the first two shenmues dumbing down a combat system so anyone could play it is very 2009 but this was especially egregious since suzuki and weiznet chose not to modernize in many many other ways interacting with objects speaking to characters just doing anything within shenmue 3's world remained as clunky as ever suzuki then made it very clear that this was an intentional decision to ignore a lot of the advancements and conveniences game design had gone through since 2001 now it's true that there are many modern game tropes that are worth ignoring but not when it comes to simple navigation or item management to be honest i don't play many other games if you say you like chinese food you probably mean that you'd like to eat chinese food but what i like is the cooking of the food not the eating in most cases in the games industry the guys who create the games also like playing games but in my case i really just love to create so the way i develop is very different from ordinary game developers which is it's honest of him i'll give him that and like i get what he's saying but don't you think you should at least keep abreast of some basic things i mean like in the real world if you see some door and you want to open it you open it in the real world you can touch and move everything because i don't play other games i think it's very natural to interact with everything the key word i often use is reality shenmue isn't necessarily true to reality but it is a reality you can trust as if almost real that's what i consider entertainments i see unfortunately this meant that by most modern standards much of shenmue 3's design is archaically outdated and it pains me to say this laborious to actually play what was once a fresh intriguing experience 18 years ago is now an exercise in frustration and a lot of that is due to another mechanic they decided to clamp around rio's neck the new stamina bar drains throughout the day and if you get too low rio can no longer run and performs worse in battles you know the battles where something meaningful will always happen in contrast to the relaxing nature of the earlier games this meter constantly badgers rio to e which in turn drains his finances which in turn artificially extends the game's play time while there's evidence to suggest that a stamina meter was intended for shenmue 2 which would have been a big innovation back then its inclusion here is not needed and is only a hindrance to the player ryan patton in the same eurogamer interview had this to say in regards to suzuki's vision i was really worried how yu suzuki was going to be managing the budget of shenmue 3 and maybe unfairly he has really done an incredible job building a really big game with a relatively small budget but again yu suzuki is a visionary and he's very stubborn he does not want to compromise as for the story the main thing that most if not all shenmue fans were anticipating is to finally have the story advanced to finally see rio avenge the death of his father and it just doesn't happen suzuki has always planned to make shenmue a massive epic spanning multiple chapters like a long-running manga but after 20 some hours spent walking eating fighting talking and eating again the credits roll and rio's no nearer to completing his quest than when he started making shenmue 3 feel like a filler arc at the end of shenmue 2 rio watches landi get away and at the end of shenmue 3 rio watches blandy get away again 18 years of waiting basically for nothing speaking of waiting the game was delayed three times from its original target release date of 2017 to almost two years later in november of 2019. some or all of these delays were probably at suzuki's behest whom as we've seen likes things to be just so however being a full two years late was a hard pill to swallow for even the staunchest of shenmue fans this was also compounded by the fact that suzuki himself went on record saying that the six year long development of shenmue 1 would not be repeated in the previous shenmue games i had a bigger team and because those team members kept bringing new ideas to the game i had to continually change or correct things there were many redos we were doing things again and again and again for shenmue 3 i'm more involved directly in the details and all the elements of the game so there is much less to redo as a result the effectiveness of development is much higher than the originals well he was right about one thing for certain there the team he had working on shenmue in the late 90s dwarfed the one working on it now between 250 and 300 full-time sega employees contributed to the original games compared to the 75 e's net staffers and roughly 100 others from smaller support studios who supplied assets there's no doubt that being understaffed had to have been a factor in the game's slow progress but it wasn't the only one unreal 4 was what yu suzuki chose to power shenmue and while it's certainly a versatile engine it was still fairly new in 2015 so there was a good chance that many of the staff at e's net had zero experience working with it all of this was the result of an overarching problem huge projects like this full 3d open world adventure rpgs just aren't suited for crowdfunding to really pull them off and pull them off well you need hundreds of staff and millions more in funding than what ardent fans could possibly donate that's why the most successful kickstarter games are usually smaller in nature ones that know their limits and don't over promise either by scope features graphical fidelity or the amount of machines they appear on while ryan peyton's republique was a good fit to the platform something like shenmue the way suzuki envisioned it at least just was not oh you okay man i'm fine good cause we're not done yet in the summer of 2017 it was announced that shenmue now had a publisher which was none other than deep silver who were trying to calm the tumult from all the displeased backers of mighty number 9 just a year before for many their involvement with shenmue raised a lot of red flags a lot of quickly but since sony wasn't publishing the game it left the door wide open for someone who would alright so let's just get to it despite having steam logos on the original marketing materials and despite the opening of an official steam page for the game that housed regular updates deep silver announced in 2019 that they had made a deal with epic to secure shenmue 3 as an egs exclusive now this is very much a double-edged sword epic gives a fairer split in revenue when compared to valve at the same time you can't make these types of decisions two years after the fact and expect people to be happy that they can no longer get the game they donated their money towards for their preferred choice of exe file things that only got worse when deep silver stated that they wouldn't be able to offer refunds and that if you were unhappy you could just swap out your non-existent steam code for a ps4 or egs one well that was not met with any amount of enthusiasm the vocal minority made their displeasure very known after a solid month of that displeasure being made very well known epic stepped in and said that they would be covering all the costs from requested refunds so as not to drain funding from ease net's development budget that didn't however change the actual deal shenmue 3 would remain an egs exclusive for one year which of course has since passed but it was a black eye for pretty much everyone involved last egregious but still pretty egregious is that boxed retail versions of shenmue 3 that were handled by deep silver contained exclusive pre-order bonuses specifically the blazing kick technique scroll a unique training outfit and a peeking power starter pack whatever that is these items would not be available to any backers of the kickstarter who had pledged at any tier level at least this was never specifically promised to them though because these items became pre-order retail incentives two years after the campaign ended it was another poor move though on deep silver's part they simply wanted to entice non-backers to buy the retail package and if backers really wanted it then they would just need to buy it as a digital add-on come november of 2019 both critics and fans were heavily divided on the end product as it played exactly like the old games awkward voice acting and all chobuchon what is this thing it really did feel like something that skipped zero beats in its 18 years of hibernation and some people truly honestly applauded that there is something to be said about a creative mind so laser focused on what it wants to make that it shuns almost all influences from the outside world yeah that's right i'm gonna make the game i wanna make damn the trends and gimmicks if i want you to painstakingly put this [ __ ] can of soda in your inventory and then have invasive tiny cutscenes interrupt you when you're just trying to walk through a door then that's what's gonna happen but there then should always be a balance to designing things this way to make your intent shine through without actively inconveniencing the player and given the very mixed response to shenmue 3 ultimately means suzuki didn't quite nail that and honestly in the end it was always going to be impossible to please everyone after so many years of waiting and heartbreak shenmue 3 was going to disappoint some fans like him and there might not be a way to regain that trust again as for commercial success while it was a record-breaking kickstarter in terms of a standalone product shenmue 3 was pretty much a failure at retail selling only 17 000 copies in japan in its opening week and not even charting in north america although these numbers don't take digital sales into account the ceo of deep silver's parent company charitably described the game's performance as fine and a niche product so take that for what you will for his part suzuki has expressed a desire to make a shenmue 4 but as of now there's been nothing concrete announced kickstarter can be a wonderful tool for game creators to realize their dreams but due to a multitude of reasons it just wasn't the right avenue for shen moon to have taken and as of 2021 we're right back where we started with ryu hazuki being no closer to finally achieving his destiny mr eyepatch sir you made an incredible video on shenmue 3 yourself that basically inspired this episode where can people find that well mr mcmuscleface that would be in the description below check it out if you want to see more of my stuff or you can come find me on twitter at ipatchwolf thank you sir and if you out there know of any other video games or media in general that know the divine struggle of eventually getting to release let me know in the comments below drive your forklift over to my twitter or take a walk down to the docks of the flophouse vip patreon and become a big boss to nominate the subject of our next episode see you next time and thanks for watching are you stupid yeah [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 579,272

Keywords: Shenmue III, Super Eyepatch Wolf, Matt McMuscles, What Happened, Wha Happun, Video Game Documentaries

Id: v_WKQrTH2EI

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/kobitz]

To repeat what I said on the YT comments: After an 18 year hiatus between II and III Yu Suzuki (and fans) thought he was making Star Wars The Force Awakens... in reality he made The SW Holiday Special

[u/Jolly_Adventurer]

"I'm one of the few people you'll meet who've written more books than they've read" -Yu Suzuki

[u/Dalek_Kolt]

Wolfie no you don't have to do this to yourself

[u/Lieutenant-America]

SEW: "Naw momma, he's my dog. I'll do it."

[u/PhantonBat]

What happened is a certain someone didn't read the room and still wants to make that 16 part story instead of just wrapping it up as a trilogy.

[u/Paladin51394]

Man I don't think there has ever been someone who's had their soul crushed as hard from a video game release as Wolf with Shenmue 3.

[u/NorrisOBE]

I knew everything went wrong the moment YS announced that Yuzo Koshiro won't be composing the soundtrack.

That says everything about the game's eventual quality that they did not get the man who made Shenmue a mémorable game in the first place.

It makes YS' statement about not playing a single video game since Shenmue 2 to "maintain the feel of the original" ever so ironic since he didn't even get the guy who made Shenmue memorable to millions to compose Shenmue 3.

[u/The_Draigg]

If Yu Suzuki was to actually make a Shenmue 4, then I hope it’s at least in the Telltale adventure game style like what Matt mentioned. Not only is that more feasible for a smaller studio like YsNet to make, but at least then it’ll also be cutting down on a lot of the poorly aged fluff in theory.

Also, Lan Di better get his ass kicked in the hypothetical next game. They’ve been pushing that one off for far too long to make it palatable for him to escape again.

[u/hamie96]

The story of Shenmue III is basically the same as the story of Might No. 9: old-timey big shot director is given free reigns to make his vision and it ends up being outdated and downright awful.

There's a reason SEGA wanted nothing to do with Suzuki since the release of Shenmue 2.