How Shenmue 3 Chased the Memory, but Lost Sight of the Vision (ign)

I'm surprised that there's a new IGN article about the game actually. The writer clearly understands the series judging by the praise and criticism.

A few thoughts :
it might have behoved Shenmue 3 to put some effort into a flex during its opening moments, into finding a way to pique a new audience’s interest. And yet [...] once it’s done with its short recap, Shenmue 3 opens with its two lead characters [...] walking a bit, stopping to talk a bit, walking a bit more, stopping to talk again, walking again and… well, it’s unevenly paced and wholly uninterested in doing anything other than picking up directly from the next page.
I didn't even think that this was a logical next step. Ryo knew Lan Di went to Guilin. Shenhua's father was gone, possibly dead. They just saw something mystical happen. And then they casually stroll to the village? I don't know, maybe Shenhua would hurry up a bit and check her home first out of worry? Maybe their conversation would be more tense/excited and mention the strange events that they just saw?

Having more action from the start wouldn't be misplaced at this point. And it would be more interesting for newcomers who aren't invested yet in the story. Yu also said that 3 would be slightly more fastpaced. By the way, it would have had more impact if we could walk out of the cave ourselves. I hoped that they would let us do that.

@spud1897 I saw this in your comment underneath the article :

The VO director openly said to fans this weekend that it was done on a very tight budget, 1 line 1 take job. So while it's not great it was also massively constrained.
I didn't know that. Recording in a rush makes people feel pressured and affects performances. They should've asked me, I could have offered a good price ;)

While most open worlds are littered with countless buildings and NPCs, Shenmue 3 has notably fewer, but they’re buildings that its individually-modelled and voiced NPCs actually live in.
I miss this in many open world games. Cities can feel like a facade with not much to enter or interact with. Interestingly, Red Dead Redemption 2 also added more realism and a lived in feeling but got criticized for it too.

Statistically, the kitten in the first game ate 100% more food than its lead character.
Wait a second. Ryo ate a hotdog. 100% more means that it ate twice as much food. In my game, the cat got a lot more. And if he assumed that Ryo ate nothing then 100% more of 0 is still 0, right? This guy is clearly not a Shenmue expert ;)


Shenmue’s world has never been strictly realistic. It’s a martial arts wonderland, a fantastical spin on Asia in the 1980s. What it has been, however, is consistent with the routines of daily life, in keeping with its own internal logic and interpretations of the essentials of living within its areas, not just adventuring through them.
Interesting. Yu talked about the importance of internal logic in interviews but the writer feels that they didn't achieve this.

Shenmue 3 has, it is safe to say at this point, struggled to attract a new audience
I remember thinking that they would need to change more to attract a significant amount of new players. Either that or make the game purely for the fans with graphics closer to the original game to keep costs down.
A more old school look could have helped in other ways too. The public then assumes that it's a smaller budget game and expects different things. Now people saw a game that tries to compete with AAA games (at AAA price first) and assume a AAA budget and polish.
Yu focused on gameplay, stressing that it's a game after all. So they added a survival mechanic because they saw that it was popular. Focused on lots of mini games and easter eggs for the fans. But it looks as if more story focus would have been more interesting for both groups and beneficial for the series?
 
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I didn't read it that way. I think he was just pointing out that Shenmue isn't a game that stands purely on narrative alone, that these other aspects contribute greatly to its story. I think summarising it as "a revenge story that does a handy job of spinning a few plates" is pretty accurate, and isn't meant as a negative
I'm not sure I agree that it doesn't stand on its narrative. Maybe not alone, but I can't see Shenmue and its story separated in any meaningful way.

I'm not saying the author was intending that "a revenge story that does a handy job of spinning a few plates" is a negative per se, but the implication is still there for me because he is being reductive to what Shenmue's story is really about. It's akin to saying that the story really isn't that special, when I would say the primary allure for me is that the story is quite special precisely because it takes a simple premise like revenge and elevates it using classical epic tropes to try and tell a modern day epic saga.

Ultimately I think it boils down to believing that Shenmue is really about revenge. Everything that has been alluded to so far seems to indicate that it's not. However those less invested in the story might believe it to be the case, especially when as of Shenmue 3, the story hasn't pivoted to what should be its central conflict.
 
Ultimately I think it boils down to believing that Shenmue is really about revenge. Everything that has been alluded to so far seems to indicate that it's not. However those less invested in the story might believe it to be the case, especially when as of Shenmue 3, the story hasn't pivoted to what should be its central conflict.
I don't think the writer is less invested, though. He clearly knows his Shenmue. I think if he had written a paragraph to summarise the story he probably would've mentioned some of the deeper themes, but explaining the story was not the purpose of this article. Of course there's more to it, but it's not like we haven't spent two games searching for Lan Di to take revenge, and one game searching for someone who was kidnapped by Lan Di's organisation...which culminates in Ryo attempting to take revenge. I don't think it's an unfair label.
 
I don't think the writer is less invested, though. He clearly knows his Shenmue. I think if he had written a paragraph to summarise the story he probably would've mentioned some of the deeper themes, but explaining the story was not the purpose of this article. Of course there's more to it, but it's not like we haven't spent two games searching for Lan Di to take revenge, and one game searching for someone who was kidnapped by Lan Di's organisation...which culminates in Ryo attempting to take revenge. I don't think it's an unfair label.
In the context of what he's writing it makes no sense. He says "it’s the time between appointments that opens up its world, that allows the actual narrative moments to matter" and then immediately downplays it by saying that it's not a masterpiece, just a revenge story that spins a few plates and doubles down on that by saying that S2's greatest strength wasn't the story moments, but the way it moved Ryo around the setting and introduced new characters (which is not meaningfully different from the "story" but whatever). And then he criticizes S3's story as being slow, treading water, and not focusing on characters.

So if Shenmue's story isn't all that great or important (weird why you would want 4-5 games to tell a mediocre story) and the time between story beats is so important as to render the simple story "just as well", then why complain about S3's lack of story? Surely, as you point out, S3 has far more of the "time between appointments" than either S1 and 2.

It's a weird note to hit and pretty much the only thing of substance that I disagree with the article on. I think what the author is attempting to do is separate the "plot" from everything else in order to call the scenes that move the plot forward the "story" (of which there are maybe 2-3 per game), which I still disagree with because that's not how stories work.
 
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