Is Yu Suzuki out of touch with gaming standards?

[SMDzero]

Suzuki is creatively untouchable. But he needs a team who is talented enuf to realize his visions. I'm sure S3 was in part used as a UE4 test run to gain expierence and train up the fresh recruits. There was just too many short-comings hindering S3 from its fully realized potential. One day, a remake/remastered can be an opportunity to amend it.

The project needed a producer to make some tough decisions given the limited budget.

Off the top of my head:

1.) Cut out the Face Off game.
2.) Give Shenhua her original clothes... the banana suit can be an alternate outfit after beating the game.
3.) Only ONE arcade in Niaowu
4.) No Save Shenmue building... there can be a save Shenmue shrine tucked away in a small corner of the map out of the way as an easter egg.
5.) Implement Baisha village as the originally intended finale. The cost of implementation will be off-set by cutting forklift driving, fishing, turtles racing, AND cutting the size of Niaowu in half.

 

[Reprise]

Btw a Hat in Time is crap and no where near "close to Mario" in quality.

Edit: Whoa, I was ten whole pages behind! Apologies if I'm continuing a discussion that has since died.

 

[GhostTrick]

The project needed a producer to make some tough decisions given the limited budget.

Off the top of my head:

1.) Cut out the Face Off game.
2.) Give Shenhua her original clothes... the banana suit can be an alternate outfit after beating the game.
3.) Only ONE arcade in Niaowu
4.) No Save Shenmue building... there can be a save Shenmue shrine tucked away in a small corner of the map out of the way as an easter egg.
5.) Implement Baisha village as the originally intended finale. The cost of implementation will be off-set by cutting forklift driving, fishing, turtles racing, AND cutting the size of Niaowu in half.

I don't think it works like this though. I feel like stuff like Face Off were more like "we've got a bit more budget for this and it cost next to nothing to make so let's implement it". That's my issue with a lot of design decisions with Shenmue III. A lot of them feels like padding. Like Chobu Fighter. It feels like a "let's quickly prototype something, make each character an arcade version and let's pad out the arcade with that". A lot of the design in the game feels like they wanted to fill up something just for the sake of having content.

 

[Sonoshee]

A lot of the design in the game feels like they wanted to fill up something just for the sake of having content.

And if they hadn't people would have moaned it looked too bland.
They were always in a no-win situation.

 

[WuyingRen]

I haven't seen anything clarifying the chapter structure in some time. To my knowledge S1 = Chapter 1, S2 = 2-4, S3 = 5 or something to that effect depending on what constitutes a chapter.

Im pretty sure chapter 2 was the scene on the host to Hong Kong that was cut from the game. I’ve never really been too interested in this kind of thing myself but am sure that one of the posters here who are can point you in the right direction. I recall seeing images that suggested Shenmue 3 was drawing from various chapters. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, it might be worth searching the forums or asking around.

I would change so many variables beyond just reducing the budget (I don't think the game needed to shoot for the level of graphical fidelity that it aimed for, nor did it need full VO etc.). My main concern for keeping the costs low is that Shenmue clearly has a small audience so expecting them to be able to cover huge costs beyond the KS and therefore holding the future of the series hostage seems unfair.

You criticizes the game for not reaching out to a larger audience and I think the decision to aim for the level of graphical fidelity was a result of them doing exactly this. Even in spite of their work, there were plenty of ‘It looks like a ps2 game.’ comments floating around in the wake of the game’s release. Perhaps they were aiming to attract the wrong people, but I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t have been disappointed if the graphics had actually been last-gen quality.

I would be shocked if no one raised concerns.

As somebody who interacts with Japanese people on a daily basis; I wouldn’t be at all shocked. I’m not looking to generalize here, but the vast majority of the Japanese people I know are not direct in the slightest and would rather say nothing than risk confrontation.

.
I'll say this: I don't envy the position that the marketing team were in. I had a terrible feeling towards the back half of the game that all the interesting bits in the trailer were from the ending and I was very sad to be proven right. Not sure who this falls on but, again, the most successful video game KS ever lost a ton of momentum by release.

Time is the biggest momentum killer out there and unfortunately I think the time between the announcement and the game’s release was too long to have any hopes of maintaining the hype from E3. They could have released more trailers, I suppose, but what would they have put in them. It seems like most of the main action scenes were already used and although they tried to think out of the box with some of their marketing (the mood video springs to mind), I really don’t think there was enough material to create more trailers nor make the ones we saw any more compelling.

While they produce content primarily for comedy, I think dunkey is exactly the kind of person that Shenmue could win over with a really tight, well designed game that leans into the series' strengths and abandons its more meme-able qualities. To dismiss his legitimate criticisms out of hand as "someone who will never like the game" is to leave an awful lot of money on the table.

I don’t try to make a habit of discussing anybodies criticisms out of hand, but am of the opinion that some people’s ideas of what make a good game are and what Shenmue is at its core just aren’t compatible.

Sure the team could improve on some of the things that didn’t work out in Shenmue 3, but beyond changing some of the fundamentals, I really don’t see it changing too many minds. Whilst I think Yu might be willing to make changes to his vision to please the fans (we’ve already seen evidence of this), I don’t see him being so accommodating with critics no matter how influential they might be.

 

[iknifaugood]

Btw a Hat in Time is crap and no where near "close to Mario" in quality.

Edit: Whoa, I was ten whole pages behind! Apologies if I'm continuing a discussion that has since died.

Yea it's been dead for a while. If you think A Hat in Time is "crap" then what do you think of S3?

And if they hadn't people would have moaned it looked too bland.
They were always in a no-win situation.

There's always, you know, meaningful, well-written content that moves the story forward and/or develops characters we care about. No one held a gun to Suzuki's head and said "make 90% of S3 about chasing down random low-level thugs".

I don't think it works like this though. I feel like stuff like Face Off were more like "we've got a bit more budget for this and it cost next to nothing to make so let's implement it". That's my issue with a lot of design decisions with Shenmue III. A lot of them feels like padding. Like Chobu Fighter. It feels like a "let's quickly prototype something, make each character an arcade version and let's pad out the arcade with that". A lot of the design in the game feels like they wanted to fill up something just for the sake of having content.

Totally agree with this. Whatever resulted in the abundance of side activities while the big action set pieces, fights, and main story suffered needs to be remedied hard in S4. I've said it elsewhere but it's crazy to me that the stakes were higher when Ryo fought Dou Niu than when he fought Lan Di.

 

[LemonHaze]

There's always, you know, meaningful, well-written content that moves the story forward and/or develops characters we care about. No one held a gun to Suzuki's head and said "make 90% of S3 about chasing down random low-level thugs".

Come on, dude... "make 90% of S3 about chasing down random low-level thugs"... seriously?? All of the Shenmue games contain this, and yes, I'd argue that they all do this equally. Not new for the series and would be out of the ordinary for it not to be there.

 

[iknifaugood]

Im pretty sure chapter 2 was the scene on the host to Hong Kong that was cut from the game. I’ve never really been too interested in this kind of thing myself but am sure that one of the posters here who are can point you in the right direction. I recall seeing images that suggested Shenmue 3 was drawing from various chapters. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, it might be worth searching the forums or asking around.

I meant more as the story exists now. If there are 11 chapters and we're 40% of the way there, this seems to be the only way that adds up. I've seen some threads discussing it but so much of it is based on concept art from the 90s that it's impossible to tell what's still relevant.

You criticizes the game for not reaching out to a larger audience and I think the decision to aim for the level of graphical fidelity was a result of them doing exactly this. Even in spite of their work, there were plenty of ‘It looks like a ps2 game.’ comments floating around in the wake of the game’s release. Perhaps they were aiming to attract the wrong people, but I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t have been disappointed if the graphics had actually been last-gen quality.

I would've been fine with something along the lines of Persona's graphical quality. It would've been a step down but if it allowed them to nail the other aspects of the game then I think that would've been a worthy trade off (commercially as well as critically especially considering that many complained about the graphics anyway). That being said, it's very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of eye candy in UE4.

As somebody who interacts with Japanese people on a daily basis; I wouldn’t be at all shocked. I’m not looking to generalize here, but the vast majority of the Japanese people I know are not direct in the slightest and would rather say nothing than risk confrontation.

Very true, although I'm sure there were Westerners involved simply in terms of the KS, translation, producers, etc. And we can be very rude.

Time is the biggest momentum killer out there and unfortunately I think the time between the announcement and the game’s release was too long to have any hopes of maintaining the hype from E3. They could have released more trailers, I suppose, but what would they have put in them. It seems like most of the main action scenes were already used and although they tried to think out of the box with some of their marketing (the mood video springs to mind), I really don’t think there was enough material to create more trailers nor make the ones we saw any more compelling.

Very true. I feel like if Suzuki was more a shameless self-promoter like Kojima he could have made it work (at least the momentum, clearly Death Stranding's sales show that hype =/= money). But I wasn't suggesting it's marketing's fault that the hype died down, like I said, they were in an unenviable position.

I don’t try to make a habit of discussing anybodies criticisms out of hand, but am of the opinion that some people’s ideas of what make a good game are and what Shenmue is at its core just aren’t compatible.

That's the question though: what's Shenmue? What is it at its core that can't change (there have been many discussions about this elsewhere on the forum)? Personally I hold nothing sacred and one of the main draws of Shenmue for me was that it didn't hold anything sacred either: the sheer audacity of S2's Guilin section is proof enough of that. There is no "Shenmue formula" in my mind.

 

[iknifaugood]

Come on, dude... "make 90% of S3 about chasing down random low-level thugs"... seriously?? All of the Shenmue games contain this, and yes, I'd argue that they all due this equally. Not new for the series and would be out of the ordinary for it not to be there.

S1 and 2 represent the beginning of the story. The story needs to progress and the stakes need to be raised. If Shenmue is all about Ryo going to random towns and encountering their random thugs while narrowing escaping the CYM then why does it need to be so drawn out?

If S4 starts with Ryo going to Datong (or wherever) where the villager who knows how to get inside the Cliff Temple has been captured by the nefarious Green Cricket gang who are secretly working with the CYM, but before we can find him we have to earn $10,000 to bribe someone, I'm going to turn the game off.

 

[LemonHaze]

S1 and 2 represent the beginning of the story. The story needs to progress and the stakes need to be raised. If Shenmue is all about Ryo going to random towns and encountering their random thugs while narrowing escaping the CYM then why does it need to be so drawn out?

Well we can only know this when the story is complete

 

[GhostTrick]

And if they hadn't people would have moaned it looked too bland.
They were always in a no-win situation.

There's always a win possible. If you cant make a big world filled with content. Make it a smaller world.

Come on, dude... "make 90% of S3 about chasing down random low-level thugs"... seriously?? All of the Shenmue games contain this, and yes, I'd argue that they all do this equally. Not new for the series and would be out of the ordinary for it not to be there.

Untrue. The problem with 3, as said before, is how prevalent this is in the story, how it unfolds, how it's done and how it's repeated in the exact SAME structure for both areas.

Why ? Because Shenmue I and II not only avoid to dedicate that to be their main plot point, they also fledge it in a different manner and in a more characterized one.

Yes, in Shenmue I, you end up "chasing thugs". But how does it unfold to reach that ? You have all the first part of the investigation, before any thug is involved. You have Ryo dealing with is father death, you have a lot of memorable characters introduced, with their stories unfolding. You have the relationship between Ryo and Nozomi. You have all the developpement between Ryo remembering his father in the house, Ryo's interactions with Ine-san and Fuku-san. You have the discovery of Dobuita and the locals, all with interesting interactions and stories. It's only until you meet Charlie (a minor antagonist that already leave some impressions) that we're starting to deal with thugs in some way. And from there, it's not an active search for the thugs. You learn about the mirror, you learn about the 3 Blades, and you end up learning about Master Chen. It's only from this moment that the game actively starts being about fighting thugs, the Mad Angels. But why do you happen to step into the Mad Angels ? Because Chai (another memorable antagonist) get in the way to your ticket for Hong Kong, as Ryo's goal was to go there to fight Lan Di. You end up investigating the Mad Angels to learn about Lan Di. Ryo doesn't care about fighting Terry at first. A lot of events unfold in a non-linear way and you end up with varied set pieces (the motorbike segment) and meeting even more memorable characters (Mark, Guizhang, Goro).

In Shenmue II, you end up "chasing thugs" too. But then again, it's not the main plot point. You arrive in Hong Kong to meet Tao Lishao and Yuanda Zhu to help you in your quest to learn more about Lan Di. You end up meeting thugs, because Wong steal your bag. You also beat the hell out of them. And then you proceed in your investigations, in which you meet Xiuying, learn about the Wude and in the process meet a shitload of interesting characters. Joy, the 4 masters teaching you about the Wude, Wong, Fangmei. Every events unfold in a non-linear way and doesn't follow a linear pattern. It's until you learn more about finding Yuanda Zhu that you get in the way of thugs and you are introduced to one antagonist, memorable as well, Yuan. The more you step into their stuff for your own quest, the more you interact with more thugs and you get to meet another great character: Ren. Non-linear stuff unfolds and you get to Kowloon. Does the same structure repeat here ? Hell no. You get into a wild city and pursue your investigation, which gets you to the tape section, an entire segment about following Yuan and you manage to find Yuanda Zhu after many kind of events that wouldn't happen in the first half of the game in which you end up in a pseudo fighting tournament to infiltrate YHD, HQ of Dou Niu the major antagonist of the game. You proceed to make your way in with an amazing set piece with a lot of gameplay ideas (the infiltration, the lights and such), you end up meeting a minor antagonist, yet fucking memorable that is Master Baihu and you get to fight Dou Niu in a mind blowing set piece.

Think this is over ? Here comes CD4. Fucking amazing narrative experience, with a non-linear structure again.



Now, let's get to Shenmue III shall we ? First thing you do in Bailu: You search for Shenhua's father. The very first 10 minutes, you hear that two thugs are causing troubles in the village. The very first 10 minutes, your objective is to investigate to find the thugs. All the quests unfold to lead to the 2 thugs, which you proceed to defeat. Then, they have a MUSCLED boss no one cares about, who beat the shit out of you the first time. You investigate again to search the father again and you meet the muscled boss and his two minions again. He beat the shit out of you. So you seek the help of an old master who accept to train you if you pay the cash. He trains you, you beat the guy and you learn that the princess... sorry the father is in another area. So you go to that area. You learn that 2 thugs are causing troubles in the area. You find them, it leads you to their MUSCLED boss no one cares about, who beat the shit out of you the first time. You investigate again to search the father again and you meet the muscled boss and his two minions again. He beat the shit out of you. So you seek the help of an old master who accept to train you if you pay the cash. He trains you, you beat the guy.


To make it clear once and for all. The problem isn't to chase thugs. The problem is how Shenmue III does it. How it does it twice. And how it does it twice the SAME way as the main story arch for the SAME story reason.

 

[LemonHaze]

To make it clear once and for all. The problem isn't to chase thugs. The problem is how Shenmue III does it. How it does it twice. And how it does it twice the SAME way as the main story arch for the SAME story reason.

But this is kinda hard, if not impossible right now, to come to the conclusion of, since none of us know the entire story of Shenmue. We can't know for sure the relevancy of any of the thugs, in any of the games, until the story is complete, don't you agree?

 

[GhostTrick]

But this is kinda hard, if not impossible right now, to come to the conclusion of, since none of us know the entire story of Shenmue. We can't know for sure the relevancy of any of the thugs, in any of the games, until the story is complete, don't you agree?

No, I don't. Because what you're doing is a Devil's Proof.
"You can't prove something doesn't exist, therefore it doesn't work".

And I'll say even more: Even if Master Baihu never comes back, it still felt a more memorable segment in the Shenmue serie than the first mister muscle. Basically, your point is "Well, that character MAY become good in the next game". Maybe. But in this game, those are irrelevant.

That point doesn't work because as individual titles, Shenmue I and II can stand on their feet. We don't need Shenmue III, IV or V to appreciate what they're doing. Therefore, that failure is on Shenmue III.

 

[WuyingRen]

I meant more as the story exists now. If there are 11 chapters and we're 40% of the way there, this seems to be the only way that adds up. I've seen some threads discussing it but so much of it is based on concept art from the 90s that it's impossible to tell what's still relevant.

I don’t think it’s that simple, unfortunately. I get the impression that some of the chapters were more fleshed out than others whilst some were a series of themes and ideas that were integral to the story but could be slotted in anywhere across the narrative. This is part of the reason that I’ve never been too interested in the ‘chapters’ as whilst they undoubtedly have an impact on the narrative as a whole, I don’t think they’re integral to the overall structure. As I say, search the forums as I’m confident it’s not quite as simple as ‘We’ve has 40% of the story and so must be up to chapter X’. It’s more like ‘We started at chapter 1, skipped over chapter 2 then jumped from chapter 3 to chapter 5 before jumping back to chapter 4 and then saw certain elements from chapters 6, 7 and 9.’. It’s starting to become as confusing as the Zelda timeline.

I would've been fine with something along the lines of Persona's graphical quality. It would've been a step down but if it allowed them to nail the other aspects of the game then I think that would've been a worthy trade off (commercially as well as critically especially considering that many complained about the graphics anyway). That being said, it's very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of eye candy in UE4.

As I said, whilst some would’ve been happy if Yu had toned back the graphics, others wouldn’t have been. Ultimately, I guess Yu wanted to aim high and that’s what he ended up going for.

If it was a straight up choice between a stronger narrative and weaker graphics, I’d probably have opted for the former, but there’s nothing to suggest that cutting back on graphical fidelity would have lead to a better story. If the story we got in S3 was the story that Yu wanted to tell, we may well have ended up with substandard graphics as well as a substandard story.

Very true, although I'm sure there were Westerners involved simply in terms of the KS, translation, producers, etc. And we can be very rude.

Maybe you’re right, but I still wouldn’t be surprised if the production team had been too shy to be critical. I think that most of the team were hired as contractors and as such could have been easily replaced. I wouldn’t want to piss off my boss and risk losing my job, especially if I didn’t have any strong feelings for the project.

Very true. I feel like if Suzuki was more a shameless self-promoter like Kojima he could have made it work (at least the momentum, clearly Death Stranding's sales show that hype =/= money). But I wasn't suggesting it's marketing's fault that the hype died down, like I said, they were in an unenviable position.

Unfortunately, I think that Kojima is a bigger draw these days and will always be surrounded by hype. Suzuki, on the other hand, comes across as being quite modest. Kojika also had the rather substantial handicap of a blank cheque. It’s a lot easier to self promote when your budget allows for your each and every whim rather than fording you to make compromises and limiting your creativity.

That's the question though: what's Shenmue? What is it at its core that can't change (there have been many discussions about this elsewhere on the forum)? Personally I hold nothing sacred and one of the main draws of Shenmue for me was that it didn't hold anything sacred either: the sheer audacity of S2's Guilin section is proof enough of that. There is no "Shenmue formula" in my mind.

Ask ten fans and you’ll probably get ten different answers. Things that are meaningless to you and I might be the driving force behind somebody else’s fandom and so making changes to the Shenmue formula is more or less impossible without upsetting some of the fans. This kind of supports my argument. Why make changes that will undoubtedly upset some of the fan base to potentially appease a critic who may very well still make fun of your game when all’s said and done?

 

[LemonHaze]

No, I don't. Because what you're doing is a Devil's Proof.
"You can't prove something doesn't exist, therefore it doesn't work".

And I'll say even more: Even if Master Baihu never comes back, it still felt a more memorable segment in the Shenmue serie than the first mister muscle. Basically, your point is "Well, that character MAY become good in the next game". Maybe. But in this game, those are irrelevant.

That point doesn't work because as individual titles, Shenmue I and II can stand on their feet. We don't need Shenmue III, IV or V to appreciate what they're doing. Therefore, that failure is on Shenmue III.

No, now you're trying to force my words into meaning something else. I am simply stating that you can't possibly determine the relevancy of characters only just recently introduced into the series, without knowing the entire story. This is a fact, actually.

 

[iknifaugood]

But this is kinda hard, if not impossible right now, to come to the conclusion of, since none of us know the entire story of Shenmue. We can't know for sure the relevancy of any of the thugs, in any of the games, until the story is complete, don't you agree?

All I'll say on this front is that anytime I've ever seen a story where I've thought to myself "future installments will make this all good, surely they have a plan", I've been wrong (The Matrix, Lost, Star Wars, Game of Thrones etc.).

 

[LemonHaze]

Hmm, @GhostTrick seems to be mentioning "Devil's Proof" for pretty much any time when anybody questions his opinions. I'm not sure this applies here, considering the story is not complete and therefore there is no logical way to determine the status of it as a whole.

 

[LemonHaze]

All I'll say on this front is that anytime I've ever seen a story where I've thought to myself "future installments will make this all good, surely they have a plan", I've been wrong (The Matrix, Lost, Star Wars, Game of Thrones etc.).

So you mean the ending of S2, for example?

 

[LemonHaze]

I think people have trouble understanding cliff-hangers in this thread.

 

[iknifaugood]

So you mean the ending of S2, for example?

While this is true for certain elements of S2, it still tells a complete and compelling story. I didn't need to wait for S3 to get why Dou Niu was a worthy villain, or why I should care about Joy, or why Ren is the fucking man. S2 starts with Wong stealing Ryo's bag with all his money and the Phoenix mirror and by the end, he's so endearing that Dou Niu threatening his life is one of the main driving forces of the final battle.

The examples I cited were more along the lines of S3 where nothing made sense or nothing substantial happened but don't worry, more story is coming! Which is very different from a cliffhanger ending.