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Shenmue I & II

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Sappharad, Aug 17, 2018.

  1. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    We've been discussing this in other threads since April, first in the Sega Fes thread then in the Shenmue 3 thread but with the releases coming out on Tuesday it seems as good a time as any to give them their own thread.

    Platforms - PS4, Xbox One, PC (US & Europe), PS4 (Japan)
    Release date - August 21st (US & Europe), November 22nd (Japan)
    Dubs - Both English and Japanese selectable (World)
    Subtitles - English, Chinese, Korean, French, German (World), previous + Japanese (Japan)
    Price - $30 / £30 / ? 3,990 - Physical copies include a double sided poster
    Japan is also getting a limited edition for ? 5,990 in November which includes a 2-disc CD soundtrack, featuring 30 songs from Shenmue on Disc 1 and 30 songs from Shenmue 2 on Disc 2 which marks the first time ever that Shenmue 2 will have a soundtrack release.

    These are ports featuring much of the original models and textures. (In rare cases some a few higher resolution textures were noticed in screenshots.) Shenmue 1 is ported based on the Dreamcast version, Shenmue 2 is based on the Xbox port. The menus, loading screens and HUDs have been completely recreated with new HD assets. Loading screens are very quick. Branded product placement like Ryo's Timex watch have been replaced with Sega branded or generic products. New features include "modern" controls via analog sticks (original controls optional), Save Anywhere in Shenmue 1 with many save slots now, adjustable graphics settings (optional bloom lighting, ability to lock resolution to 640x480, 4x3 and 16x9 aspect ratios), configurable HUD, selectable dub language and more. Note that even though gameplay is available in 16x9, all cutscenes are pillarboxed to 4x3. This only affects cutscenes, most QTE's are fully 16x9 so most of the game is available in 16x9. Save files can be imported from Shenmue 1 into Shenmue 2. The games still run at the original 30fps and max out at 1080p on console, no 4k support.

    Both games are launched as separate apps on their respective console, even on disc. They both have their own trophies / achievements, and each has it's own Platinum trophy on PS4. The Japanese dub for Shenmue 2 is uncensored. (Original voice for Yuan)

    The PC release was originally stated to include Denuvo, but that was removed from the Steam product page on August 15th so it is currently assumed that Denuvo will not be present.

    Several stores in Europe broke street date this week, so copies started showing up in the wild already. The initial leaked footage had some obvious audio problems (sound effects played at incorrect volume & pitch, some music missing DSP effects) but Sega confirmed that there will be a day one patch for disc based versions that corrects the audio problems. It appears that patch dropped today for people with early copies and the sound effect problems seem to have been addressed based on Streams from users playing with the patch. (I just found a stream from today of the new patch, the music problem still exists. We'll see at launch if it's patched by then. The problem is very obvious in the Master Chen scenes, but that's the only place I've noticed so far so it's not a huge issue.) This does confirm though that the audio is synthesized like in the originals, they did not substitute recordings.

    The ports look really good in my opinion, based on gameplay streams from people who got early copies. Everything seems very fluid and the new on-screen elements seamlessly replace what the originals had. An oddity I noticed from watching footage is that on Xbox and PC, the QTE prompts blink like the originals but on PS4 they are solid. I'm wondering if the no-blinking is a Sony thing, unless they made it optional. (Edit x2: Not blinking in QTEs may have been a bug that they fixed in the 1.01 patch. Recent videos with that patch don't seem to have the problem.)
     
  2. 360

    360

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    Awesome that you made a thread! These brilliant games deserve one. I love both for different reasons. Shenmue 1 was like this calming, relaxing and super immersive and ambient experience whilst 2 was like a high-octane entertaining Kung Fu epic. Both remain as some of the best games I've ever played so will probably be getting this in a heartbeat. So glad to see the remasters turning out better than expected. With Shenmue 3 looking excellent recently and Sega finally releasing these it's an awesome time to be a Shenmue fan.

    So happy for the guys at Shenmue Dojo who waited all these years in particular.
     
  3. Is the framerate a fixed 30 FPS? Because that would be amazing
     
  4. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    I'd say that's inconclusive right now. You'd think so based on the fact that these are over 16 years old and don't have geometry upgrades, but some people are claiming they saw slowdown in Doubita watching streams of Shenmue 1. I thought I saw some slowdown during the intro watching a live stream of Shenmue 2 yesterday, but I re-watched the archived encode of the same stream today and everything was perfectly fine. I'm wondering if it was just an artifact of the realtime re-encoding that YouTube does.

    I'm going to assume since his first episode of DF Retro was on Shenmue that John from Digital Foundry will probably take a look at this next week. They should be able to do a proper framerate analysis across all versions.


    On a side note, I was wondering how they'd handle the Zippo lighters in Shenmue 2 for product placement removal since the design is basically how you recognize them as Zippo. They literally look almost exactly the same to me and without doing a direct comparison I wonder if they changed them at all. Someone on a French stream got to the part where Wong gives you his, and the name translates to "Heavens Lighter" instead of Heavens Zippo. I suspect that the other product placement is also going to be very similar to the originals.
     
  5. 360

    360

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    I remember reading the intention of the developers was a locked 30fps (my memory is failing me so can't source specifically where at the moment) so I think that was at one point D3T's intention and target. No idea whether it has been achieved in the final release or not but it'd be awesome if they pulled it off. As sonicblur said the inevitable Digital Foundry analysis will confirm for definite.

    I curious to see what this "day one patch" does as the streams I've watched indicate the games are pretty great already. Though them being improved even more is very much welcome.
     
  6. Sir_mihael

    Sir_mihael

    DON'T TRUST THIS MAN Member
    My local store's told me they should be getting copies in any day now. Would love to get stuck in asap! Also, Shenmue 1 with the Shen 2 bloom filter looks surprisingly good - I can't wait to just dive back in to Dobuita once again.
     
  7. Xilla

    Xilla

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    Picked mine up today. The odd bug here and there but nothing major.

    Being able to switch languages from the in-game menu is nice. I'm playing in English for nostalgia purposes so it's nice to switch to Japanese when talking to Tom to hear his Engrish....!
     
  8. I love the port. Yes, it's just short of outstanding, but man it's a great way to play Shenmue
     
  9. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz-TGrhfw_s
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz-TGrhfw_s
     
  10. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    Ditto. I played the first 4 hours of Shenmue on PS4 yesterday and didn't run into any of the cutscene camera problems that seem to be happening to a few people. Only problems I saw were QTE's not flashing, some dropped sound effects, and the music being inaccurate sometimes.

    Out of the 3 versions, the PS4 version seemed to run people into the most trouble right now, so I guess I got lucky at least so far. The PS4 version is also behind when it comes to patches, with only the 1.01 patch being available at launch while Xbox One got 1.03 at the end of last week. (It's been suggested that Sony's patch approval process might be taking longer?) I also have the PC version, which I bought for modding purposes but won't be messing with it much until I finish both games on PS4. It's been suggested that the PC version is the best of the 3, not only with better sound and support for 4K displays but it's probably getting patches first as well.

    I'm trying to go for high completion on 1, all items if possible, so I suspect it may be a while before I finally get around to starting 2.

    I somewhat wish I had decided to play the PC version as primary though, as it took less than an hour after release for a preliminary hack to force cutscenes into 16x9 to be made available. But with my setup it's much better for me to enjoy the game on PS4 right now.
     
  11. Mookey

    Mookey

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    I've been playing the PC version, and the only cutscene camera problem I've had was after I used the phone in Shenmue 1 one night. Kept getting stuck on it in cutscenes in the house and in weird spots outside, but re-loading a save fixed the issue. I've used the phone before and since as well and the issue hasn't come up again.

    Only other issue I've come across otherwise is the cat's shadow overlapping on the cat at times, but otherwise it's been mostly fine 4 hours in.
     
  12. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    Yeah, the PS4 version seems to have the bulk of the problems at the moment because it's a couple of patches behind.

    Cutscene issues on the Xbox One version seem to be related to people pausing the game to go and do something else and letting the screensaver kick in - it seems that consistently breaks cutscenes until the game is reloaded.
     
  13. Xilla

    Xilla

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    Finished Shenmue 1. The only bug that really made me go "Fuck me that's annoying" was the music for the motorbike segment lagging horribly.

    Well....That and the game soft locking when I was in the menu and 7PM came along - the cutscene didn't load and I was stuck until it was time for Ryo to go home!
     
  14. Rockman Zero

    Rockman Zero

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    Videos for Hellfire Commentaries.
    I've only ran into one bug: when I tried to teach Fuku a few moves, the cutscenes got replaced by falling rain. Every cutscene thereafter was falling rain. It's fixable by closing and reopening the game.
     
  15. itsstillthinking

    itsstillthinking

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    As a hardcore Shenmue fan, i can say i only spotted a few issues, overall a very solid port! The quickness of the Loadtimes seems to throw off some event as they load to fast but that the only major issue i found

    What i find interesting though is that the compression found in the first game in this collection is far worse than the DC version. It could be the audio mixing but i played though it a good chunk last week (On a Dreamcast SD card for fun) and the compression is defiantly not as bad
     
  16. Mecha Sally

    Mecha Sally

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    And that was the version I was looking to get. Go figure -.- I guess I'll be waiting a bit to pick it up.
     
  17. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    I'm guessing they didn't want to pay to license CRI middleware. On the PC version, all of the voices have been converted from ADX (Shenmue I) and AHX (Shenmue II) to xWMA. Yet they're still packed into an AFS container. I assume the console ports are using the same format or something platform appropriate. The original files seem to have been decoded incorrectly, resulting in the volume increase causing clipping and making things sound worse. This problem mostly affects Shenmue I.
     
  18. itsstillthinking

    itsstillthinking

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    That sounds like good reasoning. I been playing the PS4 version so it might be worse on that version
     
  19. Yuzu

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    I've been playing the PS4 version and have noticed that the Japanese voices seem like they're at a more consistent volume over the English ones.

    A shame too, as I'm pretty nostalgic for Shenmue 1's english dub.
     
  20. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    On the subject of Japanese voices: they're still using the English timings.

    Which means that someone will say



    something in Japanese but the next part of



    the sentence will arrive ten minutes after



    the previous part. I originally planned to play through in Japanese but all the awkward pauses were annoying the shit out of me and I had to switch to English. Hopefully when the Japanese version arrives in November they'll make sure the Japanese voices use the Japanese timings.