Am I the only one that feels you guys are over reacting to the story ?
Shenmue 1 also had lots of story problems.
Shenmue 1:
1. it had a slow pacing.(It was like the chapter was unnecessarilly stretched.)
2.You never feel anything as Ryu's father dies. Because he just gets killed in the first cutscene he appears.(underdeveloped character)
3.No funeral scene.
4.They never tell the cops about it.
5.Ryu's friend that gave him his motor bike was also underdeveloped as a character.
For Shenmue 3 to have the same pacing as Shenmue 1 does not feel appropriate. Also, Shenmue 1's pacing is not really that slow (much of the slowness is caused by the fact you can't skip time). In fact, a lot of plot events that happen within Disc 1 leads you deeper into the rabbit hole: from Iwao's death, the mirror being taken by Lan Di, Ryo's vow on revenge, asking about the black car which leads to asking about Chinese to learn more about Lan Di, finding the 3 Blades, learning that Lan Di is probably from a black market Chinese cartel, finding sailors to learn more about the cartel (learning a sailor Charlie has a tattoo, possibly the same as Lan Di's), learning about a Chinese letter sent to Iwao after his death, finding help to translate it, learning about the sender Zhu Yuanda and the fact he knew about the mirrors and Lan Di, and to find Master Chen for help. All the above points happen within the short span of Disc 1.
Disc 2 just gets better when Ryo learns Lan Di is leader of Chi You Men and there is in fact a second mirror hidden in Ryo's house, and the mirrors when combined will resurrect a monster Chi You to devour the world. The game then introduces Chai who tries to steal the mirror, Ryo learning Lan Di has left for Hong Kong and tries to persuade Ine-San for help but failed, using his own means to get to Hong Kong and then getting scammed and ticket taken by Chai, getting thrashed by Chai when he tries to get ticket back and ask info about Lan Di, beating the travel agency scammer and learning Chai is connected to the Mad Angels, and Disc 3 focuses on learning about the Mad Angels by working at the harbor, etc.
Shenmue 1 is thick with suspense and mystery and Shenmue 2 builds on it with more action and danger. And the plot always develops in such a way that it is a continuous trail of leads and discoveries and every event serves its purpose. Also, Shenmue 2 introduces many new interesting things in terms of action sequences and plot points and hardly re-uses events that happened in Shenmue 1. But what quality of plot development does Shenmue 3 provide us with?
Finding Shenhua's dad, Mr. Yuan, hoping to learn more about the mirrors, learning the thugs are targeting stonemasons, learning from Grandmaster Feng the guy in the old photo next to Iwao is Zhao Sunming (ok, nice little revelation, one that we suspected all along), learning from female monk both Iwao and Sunming visited the temple and stopped coming one day (ok, a good setup to more mystery), and Iwao left an ema stating to an unknown female, Akane, that he will return for her (perhaps the best new revelation in the whole game), finding a photo about the Verdant Bridge and imperial envoy carrying banners with signs similar to the mirrors (interesting plot point here if only it goes further), asking so many old people and learning nothing new about the envoy, trying to rescue stonemason Yanxin from a thug. After a long process, we defeated a thug and rescue Yanxin (who doesn't do anything or reveal any useful information), learns Shenhua has mind-related powers (a cool buildup to her character), and learns the thug was ordered by higher ups to steal the Phoenix Mirror (ok... we already know the thugs are looking for Phoenix Mirror from the other stonemason). Elder Yeh reveals the emperor sought out Yuan family to carve the mirrors (nothing much new here, we all sort of know Yuan is involved in the carving of the mirrors as told by Shenhua) and we find a treasure map and that's half of the game.
Do you see one common problem with the plot events of Shenmue 3 above? They are all scattered plot arcs, each opening a different rabbit hole and doesn't lead us into any of it. It's so disjointed, and what purpose does Chai serve? None. He's just there to be thrashed and does nothing to add to the conflict.
We want to learn more about the story of the Verdant Bridge and the mirrors, more about Iwao and Zhao Sunming's story when they were in Bailu Village, but the 2nd half of the game does not continue on these story threads, nor does it on Shenhua's powers. And the treasure map, what purpose does it or the picture of Niaowu serve? It's not like they later go to Niaowu to decipher or locate leads that will lead them to the mountains in the treasure map, where perhaps Yuan is taken to to decipher the way to use the mirrors.
Instead, the story only focuses on finding the thugs that took Yuan, beat them up, find them again, beat them up, find them again?? Beat them up again?? Find their leader, get beaten up. Bring Ren along, get beaten up again??? Ask for advice on how to defeat the leader, learns it and then Shenhua gets kidnapped, the siege at the old castle to save her, losing the Phoenix Mirror to Niao Sun (who has no contribution to the plot all along and no explanation why she knows Ryo has the Phoenix Mirror and waited so long to kidnap Shenhua) and fighting Lan Di. The old castle portion has so many things happening: Niao Sun introduced, rescuing Shenhua and Yuan, fighting Lan Di, and yet it is the shortest part of the whole game while the boring parts before it are dragged out so much.
Do you see how weak, illogical and boring the 2nd half of Shenmue 3 is from the events above? It is like a lousy version of Shenmue 1 where Ryo asks about sailors on Chinese cartel, finds sailors, beat them up, find them again, beat them up, finds Charlie, gets beaten by Charlie, learns how to beat Charlie, beats him, Nozomi gets kidnapped, finds the Mad Angels and beat them and saves Nozomi. That's the end of Shenmue 1. If Shenmue 1 were to share such boring plot events, I would never have loved the story.
At the end of Shenmue 3, after coming all this way to find Yuan, we learn nothing about the mirrors or the imperial envoy's intention, which is sumthin Ryo wanted to ask all along from the start of S3. Instead, he is told that the man in the old photo is Zhao Sunming (again??) and Lan Di is his son (again??). Weren't we already told this at the end of Shenmue 2? Only consolation is we learn Lan Di was raised by the Chi You Men and Zhao Sunming tried to guard the mirrors from Chi You Men, but the main thing we want to know is about the mirrors! Why did the emperor want them made and what the treasure is why the Chi You Men want it so badly? Yuan's ancestors are the chosen stonemasons who carved the mirrors so Yuan must know much about it, but we learn nothing.
Shenmue has never been about big revelations or shocking twists but the scenarios that the characters go through that made us attach to them, bond them together and change the way they think. Besides bettering Kung Fu, it's about Ryo's journey of self cultivation through Kung Fu, which is greatly touched on in the Xiuying's story arc. But Shenmue 3 does not touch on that at all, and it kind of turns me off when the ending scene shows Ryo still bent on killing Lan Di without any change in his thinking. Surely after hearing that he's raised by the Chi You Men after Sunming died, and Sunming is a good guy meant to protect the mirrors, he should question if Lan Di is really a bad guy or is he a victim like himself, but no, Ryo is just a one-dimensional character who thinks like a robot, like the code 'revenge' is programmed into his algorithm. It's so sad to see the series' story going downhill this way, when Shenmue had always been the only game series that showed promise in the story department.
