Impressions on the plot and the ending (only read if you finished the game)

gladias9 said:
I don't really understand the twist.. like why in the world did Niao Sun even dress like a completely different person anyway?

Neither Ryo nor Shenhua even knows who she is (well maybe US as fans do though huh? Answered my own question)
BUT even at that, her disguise wasn't utilized in any real way. She didn't befriend Ryo.. or trick him.. Maybe just kept an eye on him? I'm not sure.
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Ryo and Ren's behaviour at that scene in the Red Snakes Hideout with her is so fucking bizarre. She makes this ominous comment about sending them away and them taking a girl and their reaction is to just leave her there???
 
I didn’t do the sub quest with her, but if someone did maybe that answered some of that? I think it was just after you see her on the Promenade going to Vendor Avenue but I didn’t see her again after that, that I recall and didn’t get the sub quest others mentioned you get from her.
 
Why did Niao Sun dress up? Do you think that was just done to try and fool the fan base that already knew about Niao Sun? Like I get Niao Sun is supposed to be manipulative and everything, but in terms of Ryo? Ryo’s never seen her before in his life. Hell, Ryo’s never seen any of the other Chi You Men bosses in game before. So why go to the lengths of disguising herself in front of Ryo? Didn’t really make a ton of sense to me at all. Maybe if she had been playing him like a fiddle the entire time or befriended him...the only other reason I could think of was she was keeping tabs on Ryo but didn’t want to stand out from the crowd so dressed unassumingly.

I’m starting to believe that Yu is a fantastic engineer, but maybe not a great story teller. Because this made no sense to me. Is it just because it was incomplete (like a lot of things in game) or did no one there really think to address this?
 
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danielmann861 said:
Why did Niao Sun dress up? Do you think that was just done to try fool the fan base that already knew about Niao Sun? Like I get Niao Sun is supposed to be manipulative and everything, but in terms of Ryo? Ryo’s never seen her before in his life. Hell, Ryo’s never seen any of the other Chi You Men bosses in game before. So why go to the lengths of disguising herself in front of Ryo? Didn’t really make a ton of sense to me at all. Maybe if she had been playing him like a fiddle the entire time or befriended him...the only other reason I could think of was she was keeping tabs on Ryo but didn’t want to stand out from the crowd so dressed unassumingly.

I’m starting to believe that Yu is a fantastic engineer, but maybe not a great story teller. Because this made no sense to me. Is it just because it was incomplete (like a lot of things in game) or did no one there really think to address this?
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Yes that’s why the Niao Sun is Li Feng revelation had such little pay off because what purpose did it serve narratively? Unless in future games we learn all the things she was doing masquerading around in this alternative identity, as it stands it falls flat.
 
Maybe people in the dowcity knew who she was, and she didnt want people to regonize her while ryo was asking around in the City. Fuck if i know...
 
Just finished the game after delaying it as long as possible and, having glanced through this thread, there really isn’t too much more I can add.

I really enjoyed my time with Shenmue 3 and am amazed at what they were able to achieve given the budgetary constraints, but the story was really lacking.

It’s all well and good creating a massive world, but if you take out the grinding and all of the other distractions the game throws at you to slow things down, we got about 2-3 hours of story gameplay and very little movement in the overarching plot. If anything this game shits on the previous games as we’re told that all of Ryo’s training and development were more or less pointless.

I enjoyed the time spent with Shenhua in Bailu, but after heading to Niaowu it felt like the character development came to a grinding halt. I know she was kidnapped and all, but even before that I felt like the time spent with her wasn’t as meaningful as it had been in Bailu.

Characters like Grandmaster Bei had the potential to be really interesting, but instead all we got was a quick cutscene where he tells us that we’re not good enough and then a quick cutscene where he teaches us the move (during which time I hadn’t improved my Kung Fu one bit). I would have loved to have seen his character fleshed out a little more.

Likewise, the shrine maiden seemed as though she might have had some depth to her, but after the initial cutscene and the fetch quest, every time I tried to speak with her Ryo was reluctant to talk because he didn’t want to get her involved. When she turned up at the end I was a little bemused (especially as Ren wasn’t present during the only story based interaction and so would have had no idea that Ryo even knew her or Mr. Hsu). The comic relief provided by these characters in the closing moments did help to break up the tension though.

It would have been nice to see some development in Ryo and Ren’s relationship too, but he was used far too sparingly in this game for my liking. My heart was in my mouth when Lan Di kicked him though, as it was when Ren through the fake mirror. Really glad to have been wrong about his fate.

This game captured most of the things that I loved about the originals, but the lack of any characters that I really gave a damn about (that goes for the villains as well as the protagonists) is probably my biggest disappointment. That and Lan Di’s voice.

Before completing the game I’d have given it a 9 (maybe even a 9.5), but the closing stages left a sour taste in my mouth which bump it down to an 8.
 
Honestly....the story structure doesn't bother me.

I know some people are all up in arms that the training in the previous game didn't matter. I disagree. I think it did matter. The four Wude is very much all over this game (train every day without fail, do the right thing without hesitance, don't show your moves carelessly, be brave and stay calm to make the right decision)

But at the same time, Ryo is still far from proficient. That's the general story structure of Shenmue in a nut shell. Ryo faces the odds. Is beaten down by those odds. Learns techniques to overcome odds. Beats the odds. Shenmue II did this as well. Xiuying is basically his guardian angel in that game. But Ryo did get his ass beaten by Dou Niu. Remember, it was Xiuying who saved him. Then he eventually overcame the odds with the move that Xiuying taught him.

The difference is Xiuying held some weight as a character. Whereas I felt some of the grand masters we met in this game were woefully underdeveloped....Master Feng felt like he could have been so much more relevant to the story than he was.

But you can't make Ryo invincible moving forward. You do have to stack the odds a little. And there is still much for Ryo to learn. So the story structure doesn't bother me too badly. This is the journey we're on in our path for vengeance. Because everyone keeps stressing that he can't take Lan Di because he's nowhere near as proficient as he thinks he is. That part of the story doesn't bother me.

What bothers me is that it felt way more filler with no killer. It felt like it was just going over the same things we already knew. Yes, we found out the origin of the mirrors, but most of that we knew. We knew it was Shenhua's family that carved it (or at least deduced it). I mean it's good to know why, who and for what purpose they were made for, but we're still left with more questions than answers regarding it. Is it just a treasure or is there something else to it all like some have theorized? What about the Shenmue tree? Why is it important? it's the name sake of the game and I don't think it really got mentioned. The floating sword? No one's gonna mention that? I mean I know it held the key to the scroll...but no one's gonna mention the fact that it was floating? Did they retcon that? What about the prophecy itself? Or did the game flat out answer it by flat out saying it is a treasure and nothing else? Then what about Shenhua? Based on the interogation scene and her mentioning the fact that she can recall living past lives, there is clearly something more going on with her.

Again, it felt like there were just more vauge questions than there were solid answers. Or worse. just recap of things we already knew. How many times do we have to be told Iwao and Lan Di's father were friends? We knew that from Shenmue II. It just rammed home how much of this was like a filler episode of a long running Anime.

Then we go to Chobu. Again, story structure is okay, but why did that twist with Niao Sun exist? We've never met her before. She was clearly keeping tabs on us, but why dress up? The only answer I have is that she didn't want to stand out from the crowd (I mean lets face it...in her usual get up...her presence stands out) but yeah...like it would have been interesting if she had maybe befriended Ryo and purposely manipulated him (that would have been interesting and would have made the payoff more compelling) but as is, I thought it was pretty weak.

I don't know. I knew we weren't gonna get all the answers. But I expected at least a little bit more than just more bread crumbs. Sure, we got some solid info regarding the origin of the mirrors and we have a new dynamic at play between Niao Sun and Lan Di in their power struggle. There is some progress, but at this point in the series...I expected more than what we got.

I can't shake the feeling that the story telling could have been so much better as a whole. It could have been developed better.

The structure itself isn't the problem. Ryo has to face up against odds otherwise the game would be pretty boring if Ryo was an unstoppable beast. Whether those odds were genuinely menacing or not is up to the end user. But considering we're three games in? I expected this to be the point where we would get more answers than not. I really expected this to be the point where we would get some of our former questions answered but then get left with a whole bunch of new ones to keep us going forward.

I guess you could argue we did get answers though...but I still felt we got more breadcrumbs and vauge answers than anything concrete.

I don't hate the game...I just felt like the story could have been so much more than it was. Instead, it all just felt a bit filler.
 
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I think after finishing the game now, I'm in almost universal agreement with the majority of you. The ending massively soured me - up until about two hours before the end I'd have said that I enjoyed it more than 2 but less than 1, having played both again recently after the release of the HD remakes. However, the ending did not land at all. The remarks about character weight were right on - if we'd spent enough time with the characters, Ling, Mr. Hsu and Bei coming with us could have been a great moment, but we basically spent no time with any of them whatsoever to develop them to the point where there was any sort of emotional carthasis from having them along with the ride. Ren also sort of just came out of nowhere (how did he know to go to Niaowu again?).

Worse still, every single revelatory moment was stuff that had already been told, but still unveiled with fanfare like Ryo suffers from long-term memory loss. Lan Di's father and Iwao knew each other! Cool, Yuanda Zhu told us that. The mirrors lead to treasure of an old Chinese imperial dynasty. Yuanda Zhu also mentioned that already. Sunming Zhao died mysteriously, Longsun Zhao blames Iwao. I think Ryo has learnt three times now that Lan Di's real name is Longsun Zhao, and that he blames Iwao for killing his dad, but it blows Ryo's mind every time he learns it.

There's also the issue that the Niaowu plot is just the Bailu plot, but somehow done less impressively. The plot arch is fine, if archetypal, in terms of being defeating by stronger opponent, over-coming through training and learning, getting revenge. But, the fact it's copy-pasted over and just done a second time is crazy. You could have cut off the story after infilitrating the Red Snakes hideout the first time, and then just used the rest of the script to flesh-out the castle. Niao Sun's betrayal and finally facing Lan Di could have been worth a lot more if the story had built up to it and spent more than 10 minutes on each, rather than just repeat Bailu's story.

I get that's almost certainly down to budget restrictions, because for it's cost in most other areas as a Shenmue game this hits way, way, way above it's weight, so it had to be felt somewhere, but it's a shame as it just destroy's so much good will by missing the mark on the plot. As I said, I was about two hours away from liking this better than the second game.

TLDR: It's Mass Effect 3's ending all over again, but without having being burdened by impossible promises on disparate choices affecting everything.
 
So, I just finished the game, I don't want to say I am dissapointed because it's been one of the best experiences I've had this generation hands down.

Reflecting back on the expeirence though, I feel sadly we just haven't learnt much from the story as a whole. Now I wasn't expecting for all the games lore to be explored we all knew this title wasn't going to END the series. But I still feel that it didn't bring much to the table - Espeically not as much as compaired to no.2

I said some of this during my impressions with Bailu but I feel the biggest problem was that the plot thread of saving Shenhua's father was stretched out far too long - I feel it should have resolved within Bailu Village itself. & upon talking to Mr. Yuan, we learn secrets of the Mirror that lead us to Niaowu - Or Chai suceeds in taking the Mirror.

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I was just watching that sccene when you speak to Yeh about the Scroll and she mentions about a Cave within Niaowu... This didn't come to pass did it?

I just didn't think that the game offered anything substantial within Niaowu. It was all focused on The Red Snakes, which really in comparison to the Yellow Heads felt very inferior - I felt that their rank and impression from the Chi You Men was held in higher regard.

Then when we spoke to Yuan, finally at the end of the game... He told us absolutely nothing new, we knew of Lan Di's name (Though the way it was presented in that scene it was almost like it was meant to be a surprise?), and the events regarding his fathers death remain Mysterious. I can't think of a single thing we learnt from him, other than about the Temple on the cliff - Which Ryo says they got the scroll from??? (I thought it was in the Bell Tower?)

I don't want to come up with a list of complaints but I really feel that the Narrative of Shenmue III is bare bones and just didn't explore enough of the lore to be satisfying.
 
That's the main problem of the game: we're 3 games in and Ryo has yet to face a Chiyoumen leader. Progression cannot be fast, but it just can't be against thugs all the time. As you said, Ryo is not a beast and it wouldn't make sense if he could defeat all his opponents straight away (I wouldn't like that either). But the road to the thugs leader has to stop at some point if we want the story to progress.

I can see 2 scenarios :

1) Less important characters are going to be cut from the game and Ryo will only have to face the Chiyoumen leaders, meaning his current power up is well balanced

2) Considering the fact that Lan Di has been raised by the Chiyoumen, we can assume that Lan Di will eventually understand that he killed Iwao for nothing because Tentei lied about his father's death and he'll team up with Ryo to take down the Chiyoumen (Niao Sun tried to kill him and tries to be the leader, so there's a conflict)

And I'm going to quote this :

Suzuki hints at new characters coming to the game, without revealing too much about them. The game will feature "four main bosses," Suzuki says. One of these is Lan Di, who returns from Shenmue and Shenmue 2.
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First boss in Bailu, Mr Muscles and Lan Di, so one is missing. It was either Niao Sun, but unlikely because she turns out to be against Lan Di. I'm going to bet on another Chiyoumen leader, meaning one was supposed to go down in S3 with 3 left for the next 2 games.

Things I'd have added to SIII :

- More infos about Sunming Zhao's death (we already knew that he died under mysterious circumstances, nothing new)
- Proper fight with Chai and not simple QTE's
- Better reunion between Ryo & Ren because it seemed so weird to me. I wasn't expecting bro's high five, but damn...
- The boss that didn't make it into the game, him being one of the leader so Ryo's progression is not unbalanced in the next games
- Better introduction of Niao Sun. Like many of you said, Ryo doesn't know her, so she has nothing to hide from him. As fans, we know about her so when Ryo arrived in Choubu, I already knew the girl on the boat was Niao Sun, but from Ryo's perspective, it's totally different
- More conversation time between Shenhua's father and Ryo
- More focus on key characters like Feng, Lin Shiling, Sun instead of the rich dude in Choubu etc
- More dialogues between Ryo & Lan Di

Suzuki san is probably confident about the possibility to release a 4th game and I trust him. Shenmue III is a fantastic game and could have been even better with more story content & better focus on key characters.
 
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Also regarding the very ending. Yuan says something about the cliff temple that Zhao visited that has been taken over by the Chi You Men. Ryo mentions that's where they found the scroll....ahhhhh, what? What scroll? The scroll that we got at Bailu? We haven't visited any cliff temple yet. Maybe I need to listen and dissect the Japanese on that....bad translation, maybe? I read the subtitle and thought to myself "what? when did that happen? what scroll? we got a scroll in Bailu but not from any Cliff Temple."

Was it a left over from when Baisha was in the game that no one thought about? What? Just what?
 
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Vivi-gamer said:
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I was just watching that sccene when you speak to Yeh about the Scroll and she mentions about a Cave within Niaowu... This didn't come to pass did it?
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I always assumed they mentioned distinct feature such as the cave so she could place location, seeing as she is blind. It’s obviously in reference to this screenshot-

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danielmann861 said:
Also regarding the very ending. Yuan says something about the cliff temple that Zhao visited that has been taken over by the Chi You Men. Ryo mentions that's where they found the scroll....ahhhhh, what? What scroll? The scroll that we got at Bailu? We haven't visited any cliff temple yet. Maybe I need to listen and dissect the Japanese on that....bad translation, maybe? I read the subtitle and thought to myself "what? when did that happen? what scroll? we got a scroll in Bailu but not from any Cliff Temple."

Yeah, I stand by my thought. The game feels a bit unfinished as a whole.
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Yes this confused me as well! We got it from the Bell Tower & With that Scroll Yeh also mentioned of a Cave wihtin Niaowu - Where was this?
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code l name said:
I always assumed they mentioned distinct cave so she could place location. It’s obviously in reference to this screenshot-

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Hmm maybe, I was kind of expacting an actual Cave to explore from the way it was stated though. I felt the motivation to going to Niaowu as a whole was a bit weak.
 
In Japanese, that bit about the scroll sounded to me like he said

Maki o mi ni atta tera ga

Which is more like "The temple where there was a scroll to see" (if I heard that right)

I should have turned the Japanese subs on. You can't rewatch cut scenes can you? Not unless I just reload the save and rewatch the scene with Japanese subs on to confirm what is actually said there.

I don't know...I'm so confused by that one line of dialog...it's like it referenced something that never happened. Surely, they can't be talking about Bailu, right?

Or was this something to do with the original ending (Baisha) that went completely overlooked?

But yeah that one line confused the fuck out of me. Still does.
 
"The temple seen on the scroll."

It just clicked for me. Was having a brain fart.

Or

The temple that was on the scroll.

In Japanese:

Maki o mi ni atta tera

Tera = Temple
mi ni atta = seen on
Maki = scroll

Putting a noun at the end of a verb (in this case: "ni atta") makes it into something like (____) that (____)

Japanese is backwards

so it's literally "Temple that we saw on the scroll"

i'm pretty sure that's it....if so then damn that translation in game sucks.

That translation is completely fucking wrong. I noticed while playing that some stuff was taking liberties in the subs. Some stuff in the subs wasn't what they were saying in the Japanese track...I could pick up on it...I guess it's based on the English script, but still, it's a bad and confusing translation of what is actually said. How hard is it to say "that's the temple that was on the scroll"

Some of it I could understand....you can only say "I see" so many times for "Sou Desu Ka" before it gets repetitive.

But yeah, how do they fuck up something pivotal like the one above?
 
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danielmann861 said:
Why did Niao Sun dress up? Do you think that was just done to try and fool the fan base that already knew about Niao Sun? Like I get Niao Sun is supposed to be manipulative and everything, but in terms of Ryo? Ryo’s never seen her before in his life. Hell, Ryo’s never seen any of the other Chi You Men bosses in game before. So why go to the lengths of disguising herself in front of Ryo? Didn’t really make a ton of sense to me at all. Maybe if she had been playing him like a fiddle the entire time or befriended him...the only other reason I could think of was she was keeping tabs on Ryo but didn’t want to stand out from the crowd so dressed unassumingly.
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I was pleasantly fooled, to be honest :D
Anyway my question would actually be, why would she do that herself, as a big shot in the criminal organization, instead of hiring someone else to do it.
But by the time she decided to do it herself, it would have been much easier to creep around and gaining Shenhua's trust by looking like the girl next door rather than some deranged pornstar.
 
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