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Shenmue 3

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Saidian, Jun 16, 2015.

  1. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    I forgot to fill out my survey, whoops. Guess I'm fucked.

    EDIT: Got a reply from Ys. They said I can still choose my edition and shirt size, but I will not have an ingame credit.
     
  2. Sappharad

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    Although I'd seen a lot of this already by following social media, this was still a great update because it's the kind of thing I was hoping to see regularly when the project first began. We are less than 7 months away from release now.
    Regarding that, the first bit of news should come next Thursday (2/7). Executive Producer Cedric Biscay promised something big Shenmue 3 related for MAGIC 2019, which is on March 9th. Next Thursday is the main press conference announcing details about this year's event including what and who will be there. Last year's MAGIC press conference got us a couple of new screenshots, so this year's should bring more news considering the game is already confirmed for the event. They'll reveal the schedule, which should give an idea of what the Shenmue 3 panel is about. Nothing big came out of last year's event, other than a few more screenshots and the extended version of the Gamescom 2017 trailer which was shown with warnings not to record it and it leaked anyway.

    I don't think anybody has gone as far as to predict this yet, probably to keep expectations in check, but I honestly think it's possible they'll show gameplay on March 9th. The Japanese VO is done, the English VO should be done before the end of February, the backer surveys have closed and they're implementing backer content into the game. There is still a trial version coming for backers who pledged at least $100, which I expect them to also use as the playable demo for trade shows. Maybe they'll show off that build and give some kind of estimate as to when backers will get their copies. Unless they intentionally hold it back from backers, I'd say E3 in June is the latest they'd probably want to have a playable demo done since it's 2 months prior to release. I'm looking forward to that one.
     
  3. 360

    360

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    The MAGIC Monaco press conference just happened and we have a duo of new screens with the announcement that Yu Suzuki will be at MAGIC on March 9 for a dedicated Shenmue 3 conference where an extensive new trailer will be shown with gameplay footage - and selected people which are presumably the press will also have a behind closed doors gameplay demonstration. Era thread here.

    The demonstration sounds like it's for previews and so on from the gaming press. The game's looking great and its future seems bright.
     
  4. Sappharad

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    I agree, the new screenshots look great. Glad my prediction about gameplay being shown March 9th turned out to be true.
    I haven't looked through the ResetEra thread yet, but based on the way the gameplay thing was described I'm guessing it's going to be slightly more than just press. Last year there were a few non-press fans who traveled from other countries and were given press passes presumably because they're just known in the fan community. I'm not suggesting that as the criteria either, but I think it's just one potential group outside of the press. The other thing is the upcoming contest that Cedric has been teasing, which will have 2 winners. Perhaps they're using that contest to pick some people who get to see gameplay, who knows. (I suspect it wouldn't be just that though...)

    On a related note, I started a little side project last weekend that I hope to post later this month. First of all, I uploaded a partially 'fixed' version of the Gamescom 2018 trailer. I suspect that the prophecy trailer was probably captured from an actual debug build of the game on PS4 hardware. Why? Because there are a few areas in the trailer that have noticeable framerate stutters, which could have been avoided if they used a sufficiently powerful PC. Also the still images have better visual detail at times, as if they were taken from a PC with higher settings. The 'fixed' trailer uses motion interpolation to replace the duplicate frames so that it's a solid 30fps. There are some places that are still sightly awkward like the panning of the night sky, but overall it's noticeably better than the official version. In the process of creating the fixed version of the trailer, I had to convert the video to variable frame-rate prior to running it through a video interpolator to push it back up to 30. I realized that the process of converting to variable frame-rate is also a great way to detect duplicate frames, and wrote a tool that can read video files and detect the duplicates. I'm currently in the process of writing additional code that will use the frame data to generate a performance graph like Digital Foundry uses on their tech analysis videos, and my goal is to post a tech analysis of that trailer. I'll post a link here whenever that's done.

    Edit: Here's the frame rate analysis for the 2018 trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=karCkopBbbM
     
  5. 360

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    New screenshot ahead of MAGIC next month. Looks fucking fantastic. The graphics are improving significantly. Guessing this is a recent build and it looks great.
     
  6. 360

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    More screenshots. Game is looking even better than I even first thought. Can't wait for MAGIC next month.
     
  7. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    I agree, the new screenshots are excellent. Less than 3 weeks now until the first gameplay / new trailer. I was satisfied already last year, but the newest screenshots are even better. Lan Di & Ren look like a perfect evolution of the style used on the Dreamcast. Ren looks a lot more detailed than the chunky model featured in last year's Prophecy trailer too.

    The boat screenshot touches on something that hasn't been mentioned here yet. (at least I don't remember it) Yu Suzuki confirmed in an interview last month that the cut boat chapter between Shenmue 1 & 2 that was summarized in comic form in Shenmue IIx, (also in the remaster) has been re-worked for the trip from Guilin to Chobu. That's why you see actual detail and toy capsule machines inside the boat, part of the game will take place there.

    Thanks for keeping the thread going!
     
  8. I get more excited for this every update YsNet emails out. It just keeps looking better and better with each new screenshot. In the writeup's too, you can tell the excitement is there for the team, and appear way more confident than last year. Just a few short weeks to go until what will surely be some absolutely gorgeous footage.
     
  9. Sappharad

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    Edge Magazine (UK based publication) April 2018 issue has Shenmue 3 as their cover story, the first copies are reaching subscribers this week. A bunch of early story and gameplay details are in the article, including a summary of the beginning of the game. One of the screenshots is sort of new, it appears to be from last year based on details but it features NPC's walking around Choubu. The same image was added to the Amazon pages for the game in some countries earlier this month. (France, Germany)

    Someone posted a link to photos of the article in this reddit thread. Read at your own risk:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Shenmue/comments/atu3mk/edge_magazine_cover_april_2019/
     
  10. That was one good read, wish I had a physical copy of the magazine though. I was never fearful that Suzuki will fall into today's "open-world mania," considering his first two masterpieces with Shenmue are what fueled that trend in the first place. Good to know that the team is keeping it contained.

    What really has me hyped now is the insight into the three-pronged combat system. Ryo relies on stamina and endurance, and with continual improvements in both, he can learn Kung Fu. If i read it correctly, it looks like there are around 100 total moves, and knowing them all will be vital when it comes to countering enemy attacks. There are multiple ways to train too, and it looks just battling counts. With a little luck and a lot of skill, fighting in the arena may prove to be the best moneymaker.

    I really enjoy how you can also customise Ryo's appearance. Can't wait to get my hands on this assured gem.
     
  11. NiktheGreek

    NiktheGreek

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    You'll be able to buy it with international shipping here when the issue becomes available later this week. And while you wait, you should buy this brilliant magazine called Retro Gamer, which is from the same publisher but even better. I hear that the staff writer for that magazine is handsome, talented and incredibly humble.
     
  12. Sappharad

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    New Trailer:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wadh41UqGog
    Overall I like it. This is the type of trailer we needed. Some animation is rough, yet in other parts of the trailer it looks fine. The PS4 button HUD can be seen at 1:49, which furthers my theory about the trailers being captured on PS4 hardware. (I previously speculated that the framerate drops in the prophecy trailer were a result of them capturing directly on PS4 instead of using a powerful PC.) Performance seems good in this trailer with no noticeable dips, but maybe I'll run an analysis on it tonight to confirm.
     
  13. Aerosol

    Aerosol

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    Why do some characters look like caricatures and others look kinda...generic?
     
  14. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Oh they've found a lost episode of Captain Scarlet. Nice.




    This isn't good enough for Shenmue. The movements aren't natural, the eyes are god-awful and yeah, the design is totally inconsistent. Shenmue was grounded in reality to the point where it was trying to mimic real 1986 weather conditions - you can't have a character's big lips clipping through half their face when they talk.


    It actually animates similar to the Sonic Adventure 2 cutscenes, where even the act of standing still saw the cast wobble all over the place. Except that was 18 years ago.
     
  15. 360

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    I've been an ardent defender of the game since it's announcement at E3 2015 - and I've been very forgiving of most of the media they've released so far, defending the game with statements like "it's early in development - they still have years to polish this thing" but yeah ultimately we're 5 months out now from release and this just simply isn't good enough. It looks cheap, rough-looking and very unfinished. And as we're rapidly approaching release with mere months left of development and therefore very little time to refine this, I think we're looking at a critically slammed 6/10 game as it stands. Shenmue had this immersive, state of the art, realistic feel to it that pushed the Dreamcast to its limits that's ominously missing here in favour of a bizarrely stylised anime look - that was probably adopted for financial reasons - that means so much of this just looks unappealing and off. Some of the character models are just straight up bad. I mean, it's early in promotion, we could see a better trailer in the coming months or at E3, but I was very disappointed with this. If I were pushed to say something positive - the fighting engine looks great? Voice acting is good? But honestly that's about it.

    I still have a bit of hope, but this game needs a quantum leap of improvement until release or it's just going to get destroyed in reviews. And I say that as someone who backed the game.
     
  16. Sappharad

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    That was argued back and forth already earlier in this thread. Exaggerated characters is something the series had already done in the first two games, especially with many of the fighters in Shenmue 2, but the difference then was the art style skewed more towards realism in the originals. I don't think they have the budget to be able to match something like Uncharted or Detroit, so they gave everything a slightly stylized look. That's my take on it, and as before I'm fine with it. At least the returning characters look nice now.

    It was really just the overweight man who had that problem, everything else wasn't as wonky.

    I agree that the fighting looks great, I was worried about them diverging too much from the originals and that detracting from the experience but it looks like things will be fine there. Not mentioned in my post (because we only have off-screen pictures of it) was the new battle screenshot shown during the conference. They explained the battle system a bit more and showed a screenshot featuring one of the returning moves (Tornado Kick) being used in battle. Battle will have two modes, Manual and Automatic. Manual works like players of the previous games are used to where button combos are used to execute specific moves. Automatic mode allows you to map a handful of moves to individual buttons and easily use those moves in battle. The font used for the move text looked just like an HD version of the font from the original games.

    I see the flaws in the cutscenes, but they don't bother me personally. Some of them can probably be cleaned up before release. I should mention that the awkward fighting stance at 1:40 in the video is actually mentioned in the April 2019 Edge Magazine article posted a couple weeks back. The article describes this scene in particular, in that Ryo has to sit like he's riding a horse and keep his balance as part of the training mini game. That clip stood out as really awkward when watching the trailer, but after someone pointed out the connection and you know what's going on you realize it's not a mistake.

    Some people noted the August 27th date missing from the end of the video, but apparently August 27th was re-confirmed at the event. Another person noted that the trailer video was actually encoded on January 25th, so the footage was about 6 weeks old by the time they showed it. Cedric Biscay confirmed last month that the game was already playable from start to finish, so at this point they are probably entirely focused on filling in the rough edges and placeholder bits. I don't expect them to change the art style, but I do think they're going to clean things up more. I think August 27th is still feasible, so hopefully they are still on schedule. It was also mentioned at the event where this was shown that this is actually an excerpt from a longer trailer which Deep Silver will use again at an event in the future. Maybe that version will be touched up?


    This will probably be a decisive game either way, but so were the originals.


    Edit: IGN Japan posted their impressions of the gameplay demostration.
    https://jp.ign.com/shenmue-3/33819/preview/iii

    Some interesting bits from the article:
    - Like the previous games, this one is fully voice acted - Even more than the previous games. However, there are some NPC's that you not be able to interact with this time.
    "I didn't really look into it, but Shenmue III might have become the most spoken game in the industry so far. The translation company was also surprised (laughs) by the way, this is all fully voiced" - Yu Suzuki
    - Bailu Village + Chobu combined are about as large as the Hong Kong area (discs 1 & 2) of Shenmue II.
    - You can use the analog trigger to zoom the view and look around in first person like in the previous games, but now you can also walk around while zoomed into first person. There's also camera control with the right analog stick like most modern games.
    - One in-game day (morning to night) is about an hour of real time, like Shenmue II was.
    - The magic weather system returns, and if it rains in the morning small puddles will still be around late in the evening.
    - As previously mentioned in the EDGE article, you can buy different clothes for Ryo from the in-game shops and change at any time from the menus. You won't be able to do this with Shenhua or Ren, but they are thinking about possibly adding it for an update after launch.
    - Shenhua's design / clothes were slightly changed to give her less of a tomboyish appearance so that it would be easier to give her character charm and individuality. However, the changes are faithful to her character as was introduced in the previous game.
    - The writer talks about the NPC designs, pointing out that while they are not up to par with a AAA game the characters still hold importance more so than generic NPC's in other games and he expects them to hold up strongly from that perspective. "Many fans said thought the previous trailer was 'Not cool' and I felt uncomfortable, but the latest trailer was much better. Moreover, it seemed to be more cool in the game play video that I was shown, and I never thought, 'this is not cool'.
    - Suzuki-san wanted some of the mini-games to be better linked to the story. For example, you can use the money you earn from the chopping wood part time job to play a mini-game and get a technique scroll for winning. The author compared this to the lucky hit board in Shenmue 2 where you could get move scrolls, but presumably it wouldn't be as hard as that one was.
    - Pawn shops return from Shenmue II, but now you can exchange items for other things besides money like important items or move scrolls. Pawnshops may get rare items to more you use them.
    - It goes on to talk about the training, battle system, and food stuff discussed in the EDGE article.
    - There are 4 difficulty levels in the game
    - All battle animations have been reworked from scratch, no assets have been reused from the Virtua Fighter engine.
    - Since the battle system was redone from scratch and that was difficult, there are no throw moves this time. (Needs better translation / confirmation.)
     
  17. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    I ignore all the updates in my inbox, but I just watched the trailer.

    I really want a refund tbh.
     
  18. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Yikes.
     
  19. Sappharad

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    There has been a lot of news since I last posted, but given the lack of activity and the fact that most people here don't seem to like the game anymore I hadn't bothered to post. There's an official English version of that IGN article now, which confirms that throw moves were omitted:
    https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/03/14/shenmue-iii-preview-nearly-two-decades-later-still-a-one-of-a-kind-experience
    For me, I never even used throw moves in the first game outside of the Chai fight in the arcade where spamming one of them was the best way to beat him. Everywhere else they kind of sucked. In the second game I did use them occasionally but I can live without it. You never used them for the 3 hardest fights in the game (Izumi, Baihu and Dou Niu) and this one still lets you knock enemies into other enemies so one of the fun uses of throws is mostly accounted for.

    It was re-confirmed in one of the other interviews conducted at MAGIC that the game is 'finished'. All remaining work until release is polish, fixes and improvements. So they're basically in beta. This is good IMO because it means they still have time to improve some of the rough animations present in the trailer. It was also confirmed that the backer trial is still coming before release, but they're not ready to announce details on that yet. Also returning are the transition screens featured in the previous games with location + date + time will still be present here, however they are primarily for context / presentation this time as the game has significantly less loading than the originals did. Also, Chobu is now Niaowu in the English localization. Chobu was a mistranslation resulting from going from Chinese -> Japanese -> English. The English localization team picked up on this and is using proper translations for Chinese names where possible. Apparently the same mistake was made in the development of the originals. The character Niao-sun, who appears during the ending credits of Shenmue II was originally translated a Chosun prior to Sega correcting that name when Shenmue was first released in English. The first two areas of the game (Bailu village and Niaowu) combined are around the same size as Hong Kong in Shenmue II, and this isn't including the boat section or 3rd city in the game. There are around 500 NPC's, roughly 10x what Suzuki-san had originally planned for the $2 million level which is similar to the quantity in the 2nd game. In short, we're getting a full sized sequel to Shenmue II, but with cuts made in strategic places to account for the smaller budget.

    Not sure what else of interest I can mention and have forgotten. I'll probably refrain from posting additional news until the next time we get new media.
     
  20. DigitalDuck

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    Izumi is so easy to beat I can do it blindfolded. Greg More is the hardest fight in the game.