- Joined
- Aug 20, 2018
I think the game managed to cover quite a good chunk of story:
- An Imperial envoy went to Bailu to get the mirrors carved
- The Emperor of China chose Shenhua's family line specifically to carve the mirrors for an unknown reason
- The Dragon Mirror represents an Emperor & the Phoenix Mirror represents an Empress
- The mirrors unlock an ancient treasure of an Emperor and an Empress which we now learn is locked away in a cliff temple
- Ryo's mother - Akane Hazuki - is referenced for the first time in the series canon
- The Sword of Seven Stars was a key that unlocked the treasure map
- A martial artist declares that it was not in Iwao's nature to kill - Zhao instead could have died under other circumstances
- We meet Niao Sun who steals the Phoenix Mirror from Ryo and now wants to overthrow Lan Di and rule the Chi You Men
- Both mirrors were locked away in a mountain, but Zhao retrieved them to prevent the Chi You Men from obtaining these which got him killed and his son was abducted and raised by the organisation
- Shenmue 3 ends with Ryo, Ren and Shenhua journeying to this mysterious mountain where the treasure is still kept
I think that's a lot of progress considering we're only 40% through.
- Kinda irrelevant, we already knew that the mirrors were carved there.
- We already knew Shenhua family created the mirrors.
- Ok.
- We have already heard that the mirrors unlocks a treasure, we learn about the mountain in the last 5 minutes of the game.
- And it's left like nothing, Ryo doesn't even ask anything about his father to the guy that trained him.
- So it was basically a mcguffin ? Could have been the magic wand of gandalf ? Give us some lore, that whole part felt to inconsequential.
- We already knew that.
- All those last points were just stablished in the last 20 minutes of the game in a rushed out sequence and final cutscene.
Again, we get most of the plot development in the last minutes of the game, while the other 85% was padding (and the answers were right there).
It's not just that the plot didn't advance much, it's that it lacked the weight of the older games, I can still remember the jianming scene with the tree, the chawan signs, defeating Dou Niu in the rooftop, catching leaves, saving nozomi on the bike. There wasn't that many epic moments in SIII, the ending could have been one, but it felt tongue in cheek, with 3 characters that we barely know (really, they appear at the pier like they supposedly were friends to the rescue, but really all we know as characters is "fisherman, broom girl, fat guy", compare it to nozomi, jianming, xuiying, yuan, wong, joy, guizang, SIII just felt underdeveloped).
I hate the comparation, but in this case YS should take a look at Yakuza sidequests, they are all the same "go there and beat some guys or get an item), but the scenario writing is so good that makes some of the most memorable parts of the game (and it's just writing, not like they had expensive cutscenes or anything). I thought that the NPC dialogues were pretty good in the variety of situations and added some flavor, but the sidequests (even if somewhat fun) really lacked any narrative weight and focus.