Give someone else the old saga, keep Mercury with the "cinematic" one. Fire IGA that man ran out of ideas since it's second game, they are well executed and his games are very good (or garbage, the last ones) but he has no ambition, no intention for the saga to have sense, to evolve, to change in any way onto the new trends of storytelling quality and gameplay, I'm just tired of playing a game with mehcanics of 1997. If it was in my hand, I would fire IGA (of the saga of course, he's fine with his other work: LOVE SIMULATORS and SCROLL SHOOTERS - prime genres they are - ) and I woulg get an ambitious fan team to work in the old timeline, erasing some games from it and reboot it... but from the old prespective.
The 1999 game can wait, IGA wouldn't make it justice.