Magic Monaco Press Conference March 9th 2019 Part 2 Discussion and Reaction

[ShenmueTree]

Whoever mentioned the discrepancy with the mouse on screen in the trailer *I cant check as I can barely get into the forum in the first place) please take note that no where in the trailer does it say it was captured on a PS4, or PS4 Pro, so thats not really misleading or dalse advertising or even a discrepancy at all. PC games have mouse support and controller support and it makes sense both would appear in the game when playing on PC, which the trailer was likely captured on. PS4 console exclusive games also have Playstation button prompts in the PC version as well, btw.

 

[Master Mo]

Finally I`m able to log in again. Traffic was off the charts probably due to the anticipation of the trailer. I can understand that

I`m honestly not pleased that they didn`t show footage of Ryo running around. For me all I wanted to see was footage of someone using a controller and I don`t think we got that here. I think the closest to that were the training bits. Maybe even the fighting but those bits had the camera panning around making it hard to visualize what we will see in the final game.

Other then that I really liked the trailer. It looks very Shenmue-esque. I think because not everything is at sunset, like so much they showed off thus far, it all looks more natural like you expect Shenmue to look. I absolutely don`t mind some characters to look a little catoon-ish but I do think the deformation of them could be toned down little bit but I´m honestly ok with it.

The voice over I´m very impressed with. Even the lip syncing is pretty great even though it looks a little jiddery at times but considering the budget I`m very impressed.

The eye motions are considerably better as well. I think it is still not on par with the main characters of the old games but the improvement is significant so I`m sure in the final product at least Shenhua and Ryo will look natural.

I gotta say now seeing Shenhua more in motion I can`t help but to really dislike this redesign. She looks a bit to modern and fashionable. It could be because of her bangs and clothes but that`s not the expression I got from her while walking through Guilin. The face I think is way better then before.

That logo though is something I cannot get accustom to. I know it is obviously nothing really important to the actual game but when you have something that was so much better it is weird to see such a down-step.

 

[LAWXIU]

Ok, so I've watched the trailer again and calmed down a little...I am hyped, honest! I just want to see more and a trailer with a less 'stitched together' feeling like some have said. The details on Ryo and Shenhua are wonderful, and I completely get that not every model in the game can look like that...just a bit more in-line with them would be nice...

I like that stitched together feel. Reminds me of the shenmue 1 movie that came with shenmue 2x.

 

[LAWXIU]

Ok, so I've watched the trailer again and calmed down a little...I am hyped, honest! I just want to see more and a trailer with a less 'stitched together' feeling like some have said. The details on Ryo and Shenhua are wonderful, and I completely get that not every model in the game can look like that...just a bit more in-line with them would be nice...

I like that stitched together feel. Reminds me of the shenmue 1 movie that came with shenmue 2x.

 

[LAWXIU]

Ok, so I've watched the trailer again and calmed down a little...I am hyped, honest! I just want to see more and a trailer with a less 'stitched together' feeling like some have said. The details on Ryo and Shenhua are wonderful, and I completely get that not every model in the game can look like that...just a bit more in-line with them would be nice...

I like that stitched together feel. Reminds me of the shenmue 1 movie that came with shenmue 2x.

 

[KiddMarine]

One thing I've noticed on some character models is that if you look at the top of these guys foreheads, you can see a sort of line seperating the very top of their heads with their face, it looks like their face is pale and above the line is much darker. I wonder if maybe they're gonna apply the darker skin to the rest of the face once the lip synching is 100% finalised and the character is complete. I think that would alleviate some of the cartoonishness.

 

[ShenmueTree]

Also, I have been thinking about the button prompt with the question mark and how Yu Suzuki has stated he would like to do audio QTEs. What if the Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square face buttons (and PC equivalents) all have a specific sound attributed to them? For audio QTEs you would hear the sound and then have press the corresponding button. A question mark as a button prompt would make sense in such a case.

 

[Ols47]

The more I watch the trailer, the more I like it. I cannot explain why this is ha

 

[Shenhua-Nani?]

The trailer left me satisfied because the game has the heart and soul of Shenmue, but it’s evident that the animations need a lot of work still.

The biggest question is if its getting delayed again... hiding the gameplay from the public 5 months from the supposed release (+ trailer missing release date at the end) is a pretty big sign of a delay imo.

 

[Tosh]

Its great to see how lots of fans are happy the way the game is turning out to be.
My concern is the other consumers.

Right now the trailer showed us nothing interesting or a reason for a new player to buy the game.
It needs to pop out somehow. Whatever its the graphics, the story or the gameplay.
They need to start selling their strong points.

The supposed release is in 5 months.

Like I said previously, I understand why they are going for the more cartoonish look and Im fine with it.
But we have to look from the outside perspective. Graphics are the easiest way to lure new players to buy the game.

S3 is turning out to look pretty much like this indie game. And the budget for this game was probably significantly lower.

If they dont have AAA graphics, then they need to focus on something else.
Right now, a consumer has zero idea what the game is about.

Shenmue needs a strong and smart marketing.
The game needs to be intriguing enough for the consumers to look past the graphics. Otherwise it will only end up collecting dust on the shelfs.

There is so many good games, graphically and storywise. Why would they choose shenmue?
Remember, these people havent waited the game to come out decades.
If they cant see anything intriguing, they wont buy the game.

And if they wont buy the game, we dont get Shenmue 4.

i think we all want Shenmue 3 to succeed, but im also pretty sure that Shenmue 3 is a pure fan game.
it took them 14(?) years to have enough confidence to begin with the next title.
the old publisher wasnt interested anymore, fans had to provide start up aid
otherwise the game budget would be something like 4-6 mil and not 10-15.

this is the third title in the series that is all about story. all the people who were too young for Shenmue 1+2
are completely out of that bubble and 98% of them wont play the re release.
not even all of the people who bought the re release finished it.
you can see in the PS4 trophies that only 25-28% of all PS4 players finished the S1&2 re release.
and a lot of them were probably already fans before they played the re release.

chances are low that a lot of new players will start with a game that has a 3 in the title.
most of the critical opinions about the new trailer are from people who know the old Ryo, Shenhua and so on,
so most of them probably are already fans.

Yakuza 1-5 were fan games too. the real worldwide push or hype only started with Yakuza 0
because it was a brand new PS3/PS4 game and a title where everyone could start and then experience all the other titles.

thats not really possible with Shenmue 1-3.
so even if they polish Shenmue 3 a tiny bit more and show some cool gameplay videos and so on
im pretty sure it will only catch a small amount of new players.

it was the fans mission to get a re release S1+2 and it will be the fans mission to make S3 a success.

 

[ShenmueTree]

Also, I have been thinking about the button prompt with the question mark and how Yu Suzuki has stated he would like to do audio QTEs. What if the Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square face buttons (and PC equivalents) all have a specific sound attributed to them? For audio QTEs you would hear the sound and then have press the corresponding button. A question mark as a button prompt would make sense in such a case.

Hmm. Rethought about this as I saw that the other button prompts were still visible. It could either be because its a tutorial or the question mark is actually just a bug. Would make sense with the Shift F8 thing still on screen. Anyways, its just more confirmation that the footage is very much still a WIP and not final ,as it already mentions.

 

[WildManofBorneo]

The inconsistent art style is my only issue right now. Take the guy teaching Ryo and compare it to Jianmin.

The teacher has a big red nose and so does Jianmin. Jianmin looks far better despite the aged model.

Most of the npcs we are seeing have big, cartoony noses, caricatured, cartoony faces.

They don’t even look like they belong in the same world.

Within seconds we go from this:

To this:

It feels like Shenmue III exists in a world where people are only buff, morbidly obese, old, or a realistic looking cute girl.

While the main characters look like this:

By contrast, look at the originals and their variety. While it’s true there were the occasional funny looking character like Cool Z, they were exceptions. Here, it feels they’re the norm.

Shenmue has always placed an emphasis on realism. It’s completely mental that we have fans telling us that Shenmue has always had weird looking characters. In what world? I’m pretty sure realism is a major reason a lot of us love Shenmue to begin with. So for people to say,”Shenmue has always been like this” makes me feel like I’m being gaslit.

The character designs in III are considerably worse than I and II. I don’t expect it to be as good but given it has some of the same staff I expected at least most npcs to continue the tradition of npcs that look like they all belong in the same game.

As a Shenmue fan this is potentially immersion breaking and is the most bizarre direction in the game thus far. I’m starting to think over 300 npcs was too much. Seems there’s tons of filler. The art styles are anything but cohesive and organic. Considering the amazing art direction in the rest of the game this is one giant WTF.

Kenji Miyawaki is the same lead character artist for Shenmue III as for the first two games. Nothing has changed in that regard.

The character modelers however may be different, but their goal is only to realize these drawings in 3D. Watch the Shenmue 3 Extended Trailer on Youtube from 1:15- 1:25 (Apparently I can't post the link here). There are three new characters introduced whose models are not nearly as exaggerated as those we were shown yesterday.

 

[WildManofBorneo]

..

 

[hyo_razuki]

Traffic was off the charts for the last 24 hours so my reply is coming a bit late. Hope this will work now.

Well, what can I say? Overall, I think what they did show in the trailer looked decent, but I was underwhelmed by the trailer and had expected more. So let's get into this.

The Good
- The whole thing had a very distinct "Shenmue" feel to it. They nailed the athmosphere. It felt like coming back into the Guilin region Yu started to create on the Dreamcast 20 years ago, just with a lot more polygons this time.

- Key characters looked absolutely stunning. Ryo needs a darker complexion and the shape of his eyebrows is not quite right still but if the character model remains as it is, I'd be fine with it. That model is Ryo Hazuki, no doubt.
And Lan Di? My Goodness, did they knock that Lan Di character model out of the park or what? He looked absolutely brilliant. The evil glare, the menacing aura, it was all there! Why they recreated one of the S2 bad endings is beyond me though.

- Environments looked vibrant, lived-in and just overall gorgeous.

- Japanese voice acting seems to be top notch once again. Masaya Matsukaze somehow managed to roll back the years and sound like his 20-something years old self did back in the day. Shenhua's new voice sounds great and NPC voice acting is serviceable too. Absolutely no complaints there.

- The fighting looks extremely promising. Loved the moves, the evasion and the Virtua Fighter-esque sound effects. This is what I had always immagined the fighting in S3 or in a hypothetical Virtua Fighter 6 to look and sound like. Lovely!

- The logo, for whatever reason, kind of "worked". I thought Yu's failed attempt at Western calligraphy would stick out like a sore thumb but it looked kind of ok, which was a huge surprise. Still nowhere near as gorgeous as the original logo or the redesign of the original logo Sega used for the S1 & 2 ports last year, but it doesn't look downright fugly anymore which is good. Maybe it's the color which does it?

The Bad
- As a story trailer, this doesn't make much sense, because people who played S1 & 2 can kind of guess what those dialogues mean most of the time but people who don't know Shenmue will have no idea what is going on. Then again, as a gameplay trailer, it doesn't make any sense eiter because there is only like five seconds of gameplay in it. Why did they name a trailer which focuses on dialogue scenes gameplay trailer.

- I had expected them to show off more fighting, the user interface, iventory management, exploring, mini games and/or jobs, investigating/questioning NPCs and more. They callled it a gameplay trailer but only touched upon one of many aspects of a Shenmue game's gameplay.

- The "gap" between the key character models and non-key NPCs quality-wise is too jarring. The little kid and the Pai Chan lookalike who gets the crap beaten out of herself by Ryo looked fine but Xu, whose house got invaded by the Chi You Men (or Yellow Head?), the guy who kicks Ryo's ass early in the game and the drunken boxing teacher need work. I understand not every model can look as gorgeous as Lan Di, Shenhua or Ryo but they need to up their game on these non-key character models a little bit. I guess it's gonna be fine with a bit of polish though.

The Ugly
No release date at the end of the trailer. I hope I'm just being paranoid here. The Kickstarter update email they sent yesterday also left room for speculation. They wrote production is "steadily moving forward" - as opposed to "drawing to a close" or "about to wrap up"? Also they said something about giving out a new development update soon. I think this will either be a confirmation of the current release date, or yet another delay.

Another delay could be terminal to the Shenmue series imho. Starting in October the heavy hitters will come out on the market and turn the PS4's release schedule into a slaughterhouse for Christmas Season. No way Shenmue can release there.

Releasing in early 2020 may or may not work. If Sony go for a Q1 release window with the PS5, just like Nintendo did with the Switch, S3 will sure as heck be destroyed by the PS5's hype. If Sony go for a traditional Octorber or November release for the new console, Q1 of 2020 might just be early enough for S3 to avoid the PS5 hype. Anything later than Q1 of 2020 will be too late for S3 and it would probably release on an essentially dead console, just like S2 did. No matter what way you look at it, releasing in 2020 would be a gamble which is not in YS Net's hands, but in Sony's.

Also who is gonna fund a third delay for this game? Deep Silver already funded one delay, who knows if they are able and willing to splash the cash for yet another?

I'm praying for YS Net to be able to make the August 2019 release date. I have a gut feeling, time for S3's development is running out. It's time to deliver, or else.

Bottom Line
While what they did show of S3 did look like it is going to - against all odds - shape up to become yet another Yu Suzuki masterpiece, this trailer has left a bitter aftertaste for me.

 

[Spaghetti]

Still pretty difficult to use the site, so I'm on like... page 39 of 42 trying to crawl my way to the end of the thread. Sorry if anybody has replied to me and I haven't seen it, but I'd like to reiterate something on the criticism that this was selling "to the fans".

That was probably the point? Given the type of event MAGIC is, and the audience it reaches. Something more mass market will come later, at an event where it'd be more appropriate. I can only speak for myself but I feel significantly more satisfied in something like this as a fan, than a trailer that tries hard to make a more mainstream sell to an audience. At this point at least.

I don't suppose there are metadata in the trailer, @Spaghetti ?
Visually it looks more or less the same as Gamescom, I guess the last screenshots were kinda deceptive due to angle or whatever... Or this is an older build.

Not without having the original render, unfortunately. And even then it'd only tell us when that was done, not when the footage was captured.

I have to disagree about this looking more or less like Gamescom last year though. Character lighting and detail have taken a giant leap forward and is hugely more visually consistent across the entire trailer, as are the animations even if they aren't finished yet. I might wager environment lighting too, but we didn't see much variation in The Prophecy trailer in that respect.

Regarding the screens, I'm not sure I see a giant difference? Other than video compression and possibly borked gamma levels (inconclusive on this one, only the Gamescom 2017 progress video has messed up gamma values for sure) degrading the image quality.

 

[Rikitatsu]

Regarding the screens, I'm not sure I see a giant difference? Other than video compression and possibly borked gamma levels (inconclusive on this one, only the Gamescom 2017 progress video has messed up gamma values for sure) degrading the image quality.

I dunno, but Ryo in the screenshot looked better but I can't articulate why exactly. I dunno if it's his expression, skin shading, or altered facial features? All I know is that when we saw it, we all thought it was an improved model...

The Ryo in the trailer looks the same as the one way back from MAGIC last year:

 

[Spaghetti]

Oh and regarding the NPCs...

I think that people are gonna come down on either side of the line on this; those who appreciate the more exaggerated characters and those who don't. It harks back to the manga stylings of the 2D design work that was always there, where generally the main characters do look a bit prettier and "normal", and less important characters get these exaggerated features to help them stand out or become memorable in spite of their reduced screen time.

And it was always there even in the 3D models IMO, but Dreamcast graphics kind of closed that gulf because both the "prettier" and exaggerated designs were limited by the hardware uniformly. Now that the 2D designs can be rendered in 3D with a huge degree of accuracy though, that gap is more apparent and jarring to some.

I dunno, I think this will be a taste issue for most. I fucking love the exaggerated designs in the NPCs, especially after coming off other games like Yakuza with pretty bland looking non-story characters. The same goes for games that use photogrammetry, where less important characters look realistic... but are about as memorable as just some dude you saw for five seconds while walking around town. And even then games with photogrammetry tend to keep casts small, because that shit is expensive and time consuming.

Those exaggerated designs say a lot about the characters too, which I appreciate. The guy who let Ryo into his home for example - I could quite easily think that he's some sort of manual laborer, maybe unmarried, middle aged, and has a gruff personality. I don't need a ginormous back story for each and every one, because you can kind of fill in the gaps yourself just looking at them. A subtler look might not convey all that; it's about showing and not telling.

 

[starscream178]

All things considered, I'm proud to have funded this game, it looks like a funded game and I'm sure it will play excellently, we just need to adjust our expectations for the visuals. I think the trailer could have been little better in terms of making it interesting enough for new fans. All in all I'm excited and it looks like it could be a great game.

 

[Spaghetti]

I dunno, but Ryo in the screenshot looked better but I can't articulate why exactly. I dunno if it's his expression, skin shading, or altered facial features? All I know is that when we saw it, we all thought it was an improved model...

The Ryo in the trailer looks the same as the one way back from MAGIC last year:

I'm not seeing the comparison, unfortunately.

The MAGIC trailer carries more similarity to the recent screen in areas like hair detailing, Ryo's jaw, and how they're rendering his eyebrows now. Not to mention the character lighting looks leagues ahead of the MAGIC 2018 screen and The Prophecy trailer.

EDIT: The site is making it a nightmare to get in and edit things, but I'd also point out the detailing on Ryo's t-shirt. I think most of this supposed difference is in your head, I'm afraid.

 

[KiddMarine]

I dunno, but Ryo in the screenshot looked better but I can't articulate why exactly. I dunno if it's his expression, skin shading, or altered facial features? All I know is that when we saw it, we all thought it was an improved model...

The Ryo in the trailer looks the same as the one way back from MAGIC last year:

I think it's basically the same but a lot of the detail is washed out due to compression in the video.