Totally agree with CyberEvil's above post.
In thinking about NG4 and what new aspects to the game and combat could be introduced, I have been pondering what Team Ninja might do to make the game more "next-gen". Obviously, the visuals and environments should see a big boost in quality, perhaps even some more actual environmental variety and also enabling Ryu to traverse/utilize the environment in new ways.
But, in terms of the core combat gameplay....what could they do to set it apart somewhat from previous games and make it next-gen, but still keep the core NG experience? My thinking is that it will hopefully be connected to even better enemy AI and then also more dramatic, detailed and complicated dismemberment physics perhaps. Next-gen visuals should enable some pretty incredible flesh, blood and dismemberment physics....
I wonder if a possible idea might be to give players more active control in how and where they dismember and/or SoB. Imagine perhaps a slight change to the control scheme where instead of "light slash" and "heavy slash" buttons you have one button be specifically for lateral cuts and the other for vertical cuts. Players can then string together cool combos in the typical NG way but this time have more active control in the orientation they decide to slash and thereby what part of the enemy's body they cut. Some combo strings could lead to "low" cuts or "high" cuts, etc. Imagine how leveling up your sword could enable more powerful/devastating dismemberments (like Ryu coming down with a downward cut that literally splits a guy in half, etc.). You could then have cuts be heavier/stronger by holding down either button momentarily, similar to how this is done in NG3RE combos.
Anyway, just an idea....