Doesn't seem like they have much of anything still besides a few models that they keep showing. Hoping for the best but I'm worried about how this will turn out.
It looks like the trailer they were planning for December was pushed back to early next year. But there were three new screenshots released today. The 2nd one is photoshopped, as the light on Ryo's face is from the wrong direction. But obviously they're trying to indicate that they want the final model to look like that. https://shenmue.link/post_en/424/?en The graphical quality looks considerably better than the original Kickstarter trailer. I'm definitely satisfied with that, although the motion blur in the 2nd shot looks a bit excessive. It will be more interesting to finally see the game in motion, where the motion blur might make sense. (Or maybe it was photoshopped too)
I'm...not excited. Maybe if they show some Shenmue 3 gameplay so I can see what improvements there are, and hope for them to be translated to the prior games but... I dunno guys. Was Shenmue 1 and 2 kinda bad? They seem like games more fun to watch than to play. I certainly don't remember having a lot of fun with Shenmue 1 or 2. They're...plodding. I don't think I'd be much interested in playing them with only another coat of paint.
No, but they're not for everyone. They get billed up like modern action RPGs/Open World games, like they're supposed to be akin to The Witcher or GTA, but they really aren't. While shenmue pioneered a ton of things that eventually lead to those kinds of games, Shenmue itself feels much more like a point and click adventure game than anything else. If you don't like point and click adventures, you probably won't like Shenmue. If you love them, like I do, then Shenmue is basically the highest production point and click adventure game ever made. They also still feel incredibly unique, both in world building and setting. In terms of world building, the only game I've ever been able to compare to Shenmue has been Majora's Mask - not because of the moment to moment action gameplay, mind you, but because of the intricate, handplaced nature of the characters and enviroment. Shenmue walks this weird balance between being one of the first massively procedurally generated productions, while simultaneously being meticulously hand tweaked to a degree I've never seen any other game. The official Shenmue strategy guide is staggering - half of the guide is dedicated to every person in Shenmue I. Every single person in Shenmue I has a story, a unique routine, backstory, voice acting, etc. If you follow just the people in Shenmue for the several months the game allows, you'll see tons of small side stories that most people would miss. Certain characters have fights, they make up, they become friends again, that sort of thing. The story and setting are also very unlike any other. In modern gaming, I feel like there is too much of the same in the AAA realm. Lots of war stories, lots of middle-earth type settings, that sort of thing. To see a bruce lee style kung fu epic that takes place in 1980's hong kong is a vast departure. And the story it's been telling thus far has been really good, especially in Shenmue II. You can see it has parts of Star Wars and even Dragon Ball in it, but the main story thread has been really good. Most people seem to forget that, in terms of the story, we are at the very beginning in Shenmue. Shenmue II ends just as things start getting crazy. In trms of sluggishness - I get the feeling that many who say this didn't play Shenmue II, or at least don't remember doing so. I've always felt Shenmue's pacing was a little weird - Shenmue I and II should have been one game, and about half of Shenmue I should have been cut. Shenmue I is a prologue, set in a tiny (but extremely meticulously detailed) city, but the plot it covers is tiny, and really isn't enough to carry an entire game. The vast majority of the second half of the game feels like filler, honestly, especially when you learn that, story-wise, what you spent doing much of that time didn't even matter. And, despite the city being so meticulously detailed, there isn't much action in Shenmue I. In fact, you can't really freely enter combat until the very end of the game, outside of practicing moves in a mostly empty dojo. So most people never have any reason in Shenmue I to explore the RPG elements of the game related to leveling up Ryo and teaching him moves. Shenmue II solves all this. The pacing is really, really quick. Shenmue I covers 1 chapter in the grand story of the series. Shenmue II covers 4. That means it changes locals much more frequently, and the locals you visit are much more interesting and bigger to explore. The cities are less detailed, but they trade that for tremendous scope, especially the walled city of Kowloon. Being in a strange land, you can find combat all over Shenmue II just by wandering around, which finally shines some light on the battle system, which is actually a lot of fun when you get into it. This is highlighted by the end of the game where Shenmue II, for basically a chapter, turns into a black-market virtua fighter tournament. You have much more incentive to learn new moves in Shenmue II, and really level up and change your ryo. As you do so (and especially if you actually practiced in Shenmue I), the combat starts to really open up: The actual story of Shenmue II is way, way more interesting than Shenmue I. When most diehard shenmue fans talk about the need to resolve the story, they are mainly talking about shenmue II. A good 90% of the story in Shenmue thus far basically came from Shenmue II. You can really sum up the backstory in Shenmue I in about an hour -- which is actually what Sega did, twice. It'd be much harder to condense Shenmue II into something quickly digested. The more dense plot winds up being a major boost, too, because it lets the series hit some emotional highs. There are numerous very memorable scenes in Shenmue II where you walk away feeling like a real badass, and you see Ryo grow quite a bit, my favorite moments being: -the handcuff sequence with Ren of Heavens -Recalling the four wudu on the roof top fight -practicing Tai Chi by the waterfall It also has a godly soundtrack. And, to top everything off, as mentioned earlier, Shenmue II ends on a massive cliffhanger. In terms of the story, we were just about to move into the gut of the action. Shenmue is clunky, yeah, which is part of the reason so many people want a remaster. It wouldn't take much to get shenmue up to speed - packaging both games together really helps, and touching up the controls would pretty much be required. Offering the japanese voice acting with subtitles would be such an enormous improvement as well. But beyond that, the game and lore really live up. People who like shenmue aren't feigning their excitement and enthusiasm. It's not nostalgia - I replayed both of these games within the last 6 months and the conclusion for Shenmue II is still thrilling to me. I can't wait to see the next chapter. I always felt these videos really summed up what's great about shenmue: Original Shenmue II E3 trailer Shenmue in HD Shenhua's Lullaby EDIT: Oh yeah, and another thing about Shenmue I and II - they are best played with a 2D gamepad. That's because they really aren't designed with analog movement in mind at all. I played through last time using a Sega Saturn controller, and it dramatically improved the playability, especially in the combat sections. A lot of the controls make more sense if you play with a 2D controller, which makes sense given the Saturn roots for the game.
Going by what you're saying, they may as well only remaster Shenmue II and just have a recap video for what happened in the first game.
...Unless you like point and click adventure games, like he does, and I do. And I haven't played Shenmue yet. If they're gonna rerelease it, I'd like to start from the beginning and have it be one cohesive experience. I know nothing's stopping me from just going back and playing the first one on DC whenever I want anyway, but visual gravy is nice sometimes. Then again, retro remasters can be so hit-and-miss in that department.
I've only watched a playthrough, but I wouldn't really call Shenmue much like a point and click adventure game. There aren't really any puzzles, it's more just talking to people, and trying to find side stuff to do cause often you have to wait until the next day before you can proceed. And a lot of it is just mundane and tedious work, sometimes literally. And also there doesn't seem to be nearly enough side stuff to do, though it's possible that there is but it doesn't make it clear nearly well enough where you can find said side stuff. I get why Shenmue has a fandom, there's nothing quite like those games. Especially not at the time it was released. But also it has clearly aged incredibly poorly, and I can't imagine that many people getting into the games these days. Especially as the Yakuza games do a lot of the same things but without the tedious elements that turn people away.
Play more point and click adventure games. Not all point and click adventure games have puzzles. telling shenmue fans to play Yakuza is like telling F-zero fans to play Mario Kart 8. You just keep missing the point. Yakuza is nothing like Shenmue.
Shenmue is a game meant to be played slowly, meant to be absorbed and lived in, more along the lines of something like Animal Crossing, or the Chao Garden. Shenmue II is a little more difficult to play this way as they made concessions for those with shorter attention spans (some good, some bad), but it's still what's intended.
Personally, I often compared Shenmue I to Harvest Moon, only without the focus on gardening. But Animal Crossing is also a good comparison. In terms of point and click adventures, Shenmue is much more like D, or Enemy Zero, Snatcher, or modern games like Indigo Prophecy or Heavy Rain, than Sam and Max or Secret of Monkey Island. It also shares a lot in common with old text adventure games, like Photopia. I actually think Dear Esther is also a pretty modern comparison.
Shenmue II has a lot of features that would be really welcome in Shenmue I, which is what I'm hoping a remaster could hack in. Shenmue II, for example, has a ton of 3D maps you can purchase that really helps out, and you can place waypoints in them like a modern open world game. And when you ask people for directions in Shenmue II, many times they'll actually offer to take you to the destination itself, rather than just telling you how to get there. What would improve Shenmue I the most, however, would be an external tool to change your pay rate. Games like Final Fantasy VIII on the PC have things like auto-draw tools to take the tedious drawing portion out of the game, so it wouldn't be too weird to have the ability to change your pay rate in Shenmue I. This would be hugely beneficial because Shenmue I hums along until you suddenly need to save up money for a trip, which becomes basically a quarter of the game as you grind for money. If you could get all the money you need in 1 or 2 days, instead of a few weeks, the pace of the game would dramatically improve.
First of all, I completely agree with Cooljerk's post explaining Shenmue 1 and 2. I've played through Shenmue 2 roughly twice as many times as first game. It's so much better than the first one, because I feel like all of the pacing problems were solved and there's so much more to do when you want to do something else. All of your actual complaints are only valid for the first game, hence his comment in the long post about Shenmue 2 solving all of that and most people who provide complaints about the series tend to point out problems that were solved in the second game. When events in the story require you to wait in order to proceed, they added a "Wait" option in Shenmue 2 which automatically fasts-forward time until the target point. Thus if you don't want do something else until then, like playing games or earning money, you have the choice skip ahead. There are also fewer of those time-sensitive situations. The second one has plenty of side stuff to do. Moving boxes as a part time job to earn money (boring), various gambling mini games all over the place including games that resemble pachinko, several dice games, a game that's sort of like a simplified version of roulette, there are still slot houses and arcade games in the second one, arm wrestling, the hidden duck racing mini-game, competing in street fights, playing darts competitively against other people, and many of those you can do as a way to earn money. The story also forces you to learn about most of them early on, because you need to earn money as a result of the story. They added a separate talk button specifically to ask NPC's about work, gambling, or other money making activities. I get the point and click comparison, because I like point and click adventure games too, but you're right about the lack of puzzles. The only real puzzle I remember from the first game is figuring out how to access the secret basement in the Hazuki dojo. It plays more like one of Telltale's recent "adventure" games where they got rid of the puzzles and you just have story with dialog options that barely influence the story. In Shenmue's case, instead of your responses influencing the story, it's who you decide to talk to and where you decide to go in the open world that influences the story. For example, when you're looking for Charlie you can ask certain people who point you towards the jacket shop and then Ryo starts asking about that. But if you talk to the lunch stand lady, she mentions that he could be Yakuza so you visit something industries (don't remember the name) and get to talk to the head yakuza guy there and learn some of his back story and learn that Charlie isn't exactly one of theirs. But unlike those telltale "adventure" games, because it's open world there are a bunch of side stories and events that you'll never see unless you visit the right place at the right time and it guarantees you'll almost certainly find something new each time you play. The duck racing is one of the most commonly referenced secrets in the second game, but there's also stuff like the side quest involving Fengmei's birthday where you can only find out about her birthday, find out about the necklace she's interested in, and buy it for her as a gift if you manage to do the necessary things roughly a week before her birthday. Of course, you'll never do any of that if you never talked to the right people at the right time. Unless they bring some Shenmue 2 improvements to the first game like the "Wait" feature, I can see a lot of people not enjoying that one as much. But the second game still holds up very well in my opinion, as long as you play the Dreamcast version with the Japanese dub. :-) Shenmue 1 & 2 were the main reasons I still have a working Dreamcast hooked to my TV (and also why I bought GDEmu a few years ago), so I'm really looking forward to official HD remasters. From an audio standpoint they can greatly improve these without even making new assets. The voice acting in the originals varies roughly between 8 and 11khz depending on whether it's used in cutscenes or just generic NPC's. They have the original 44.1khz recordings of the dubs, they were used for Ryo in Sonic All Stars Racing, so higher quality voices are the first thing they can do easily. They also have higher quality versions of all of the music. Some of it was used in the cancelled Shenmue online, you can find ripped tracks on YouTube. But all of it still exists in the original format before being converted for the AICA sound chip on the Dreamcast, Yu Suzuki has talked about music twice during the development of Shenmue 3 and both times he was pulling up tracks with the original 000_0000 numbering format that was used for the .SND files on the game disc. From a graphics standpoint though, it's less obvious how much old stuff they had in higher quality. We know at least that there were higher poly versions of the main characters along with higher resolution textures, because those were used for the tech demos on the Shenmue passport disc. But we don't know how much of the other assets were originally higher quality than actually used. I really hope that they're handling the port internally and not farming it out to a developer like Blit that just throws an emulator around it like they did with Jet Set Radio, because that would severely limit their ability to improve the assets. They ported Shenmue 2 once, so I hope they port it again. Edit: I spent about an hour writing this while doing other things, so there's some redundancy with the couple of posts above.
If Shenmue I and/or II HD is actually happening, I really hope they didn't pass the code off to the same people who did SA2PC. All they did was make it look worse, especially in terms of lighting. That being said, I also really hope they did transparency right. As far as I know, Shenmue II was the only one of the two to be prepped and consequently released on a platform other than the Dreamcast, so they had all the time they needed to do any static mesh sorting required to get transparent things working. But if SADX (on all platforms) is anything to go by (and that's with their transparent sort queue), there's not always an easy solution, and it can end up just looking bad. Perhaps we'll get a D3D11 port with per-pixel linked list alpha sorting? :v: (edit for context: transparent part of the item capsule is rendering on top of the water; also dreamcast has order independent transparency)
It winds up not being too huge of a deal, though. Shenmue actually doesn't have a lot of transparency in the game (which likely owes to transparent rendering being a much more expensive operation on the Dreamcast than opaque or punch-through). The Xbox port actually added new transparent objects in certain instances. Most people would never really notice, tbh.
