I can't believe he didn't just wrap up the story in this game. Like, what is the plan for financing sequels? Just keep doing kickstarters?
How many times do any of us have to keep repeating the same thing in response to this?
I can believe they didn't wrap up the story here because, just think about it. Think about one aspect alone: how expensive creation of locations for this game is. They would have to create ALL the locations up to and including Chapter 11. The budget would have to cover all of these locations, so that would mean that none of them would be worthy of exploring because.. well they'd be tiny and unsatisfactory due to being spread thin over all of these chapters. That is just locations. Think about pacing, think about NPCs, conversations, and wrapping all of that in a game that is cohesive and doesn't feel rushed.
Kickstarter is out of the question now. They have an engine, a team, a production pipeline, a very solid foundation upon which to build. They have proof of the size and scale of product Yu Suzuki and a core team of 75 people (w/ outsourcing) can produce with a AA budget. So now they can use what they have, and more easily create and iterate over something that they can pitch to publishers that looks better than what they had to pitch to Sony, Deep Silver or whomever else a few years ago.
Some years ago, people didn't believe Yu could produce a Shenmue-sized game that does the series justice because "omg, the originals cost so much", but they proved much of what we were saying in that: they had the middleware, engine support and much of what made Shenmue special back in 2000s is not as expensive to re-produce today. Modern open worlds are focusing on other things. I think he's earned the benefit of the doubt.