Random Shenmue III Thoughts

[spud1897]

Welcome to the forums

 

[Mr Sun]

Welcome to the forums

Welcome to the forums

Thanks, sorry should probably have made more of a formal introduction!

 

[Mr Sun]

Some more thoughts on Niao Sun: I like that, in befriending both Ryo and Shenhua, she appears to have a plan for both of them - one gets her the Phoenix mirror, the other nearly kills Lan Di. Also her cruel smile when thinking of her betrayal of Shenhua “they took a lady”, is one upped by her manic sociopathic laughter when betraying Lan Di. And in using Ge to test/gauge Ryo’s abilities she clearly couldn’t give a crap about Ge’s well-being which seems very on brand.

 

[chaikilla]

It still makes me sad that Ryo can't use demon's triangle in Shenmue 3. I know it couldn't be helped but still.

This beta image of Bailu village makes me wonder what this quest was all about, also...

I think this is the beta model for the sensei from martial hall.

 

[iknifaugood]

Just found myself wondering; If Niao-Sun’s plan was to have Ryo distract Lan Di while her men set the castle ablaze, why does she have Gi apprehend Ryo just before he reaches the room where Lan Di and his men are waiting?

Given that at this point in the story Gi has already bested Ryo twice, surely the reasonable expectation would be for him to do so again - in which case Ryo would never reach Lan Di and he’d simply leave the very moment he saw smoke/flames. Having Gi there is entirely counter-intuitive.

I don’t like to poke more holes in the story as at this point it could give Swiss cheese a run for its money, but this seems like a rather large oversight on the part of the developers and makes no sense considering the narrative they were trying to set up.

To me the fact that there are plot holes is less important than why there are plot holes. Every story has them, you’d drive yourself crazy trying to cover all the bases, so something like “why is Ge waiting for Ryo?” doesn’t really bother me because I can easily rationalize that away as either a byproduct of Baisha being cut (so he would fight Ge at the end of Niaowu and then Lan Di’s castle would be in Baisha) or even Ge acting on his own.

If a plot hole exists to serve the pacing or the overall structure of the story (how does the Joker escape the party in The Dark Knight?), then it doesn’t really bother me; if it exists due to lazy/bad writing (How did the Emperor come back in Rise of Skywalker?) then it bothers me a lot.

Niao Sun learning about the mirror is the kind of thing that bothers me because it’s a much bigger deal to the story and it’s not the kind of thing that was affected by Baisha being cut. I literally wondered aloud how Niao Sun knew about the mirror when I first saw that scene, I can’t say that I wondered why Ge was there but obviously YMMV.

 

[Rydeen]

It still makes me sad that Ryo can't use demon's triangle in Shenmue 3. I know it couldn't be helped but still.

This beta image of Bailu village makes me wonder what this quest was all about, also...

I think this is the beta model for the sensei from martial hall.

So I went searching for the name the old man mentions being assaulted, and found this post about images revealed in the Muecas posts:

ムーキャス団に掲載されていたシェンムーの未公開画像

今はもう見れなくなった、ムーキャス団に掲載されていたシェンムーの未公開画像です。出典：SEGA-AM2 (webarchive)© SEGA-AM2.Original Game©SEGA. © Ys Net.シェンムーのこのシーンは何？の巻

shenmueguide.xyz

Seems like that probably isn't Bailu, but potentially a scrapped quest line for finding Zhu's book.

Something I thought was kind of interesting about the character relationship chart near the bottom is that there's a line leading from Ren out past the Seven Star Co dudes.

Something else I was kind of thinking about lately:

I don't know how Ziming isn't the silhouette on the right. The shape of his bangs, especially, seem too similar and distinctive.

 

[Mr Sun]

Have just realised that Shenmue 3 is basically a Rocky film. And Shenhua is Adrian.

Mr Sun is probably Mickey.

 

[WuyingRen]

Something else I was kind of thinking about lately:

I don't know how Ziming isn't the silhouette on the right. The shape of his bangs, especially, seem too similar and distinctive.

I think it’s safe to assume that Yu was throwing us a Red Herring when he said that he wasn’t at this point.

 

[iknifaugood]

So I went searching for the name the old man mentions being assaulted, and found this post about images revealed in the Muecas posts:

ムーキャス団に掲載されていたシェンムーの未公開画像

今はもう見れなくなった、ムーキャス団に掲載されていたシェンムーの未公開画像です。出典：SEGA-AM2 (webarchive)© SEGA-AM2.Original Game©SEGA. © Ys Net.シェンムーのこのシーンは何？の巻

shenmueguide.xyz

Seems like that probably isn't Bailu, but potentially a scrapped quest line for finding Zhu's book.

Something I thought was kind of interesting about the character relationship chart near the bottom is that there's a line leading from Ren out past the Seven Star Co dudes.

Something else I was kind of thinking about lately:

I don't know how Ziming isn't the silhouette on the right. The shape of his bangs, especially, seem too similar and distinctive.

I'm pretty sure Suzuki meant this in a "certain point of view" sort of way. "Ziming" isn't one of the 4 leaders, just like "Longsun Zhao" isn't--Lan Di is. I wouldn't mind if there were even more characters to be introduced but I doubt it at this point.

 

[orient]

Man, the thought that we may finally get to meet Ziming in S4, and that Xiuying (and perhaps Gui Zhang!) could make a return, is still ridiculously exciting to me, even if the story in S3 wasn't perfect.

It should've been Gui Zhang in S3 gosh darnit, not Ren

 

[24Nathan]

It still makes me sad that Ryo can't use demon's triangle in Shenmue 3. I know it couldn't be helped but still.

This beta image of Bailu village makes me wonder what this quest was all about, also...

I think this is the beta model for the sensei from martial hall.

As mentioned already, this is not a beta image of anything from Shenmue III. It is likely a cut section from the boat ride from Kooon to Langhuishan. It is one of several screenshots officially released on Shenmue com.

 

[24Nathan]

More specifically, here is the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20071219010922/http://www.shenmue.com/muecas/029.html

These were shown in 2002 on Shenmue.com and are labelled as "unused". According to @Kiyuu , you can find the old man named as "Unused Character 2" on disc 1 of Shenmue II on Dreamcast when you look at the contents on a PC. His file name in the games is "OSY".

More about these screens, including translations, and some information about the infamous boat chapter from Yokosuka to Hong Kong are in the document I compiled here:

 

[hmjohnny]

I was watching the NES Works on Rad Racer

And I didn't know Rad Racer was called Highway Star in Japan. Considering it's a derivative work of Outrun I thought it interesting that Shenmue 3's driving arcade game is also called Highway Star

Probably a coincidence but cool to think about it being intentional

 

[KiddMarine]

I was watching the NES Works on Rad Racer

And I didn't know Rad Racer was called Highway Star in Japan. Considering it's a derivative work of Outrun I thought it interesting that Shenmue 3's driving arcade game is also called Highway Star

Probably a coincidence but cool to think about it being intentional

I imagine they're both named after the Deep Purple song.

 

[Revan]

It's quite eye-opening to revisit the old Dojo to read the concerns some of us had back in 2015 when a $2-5 million dollar Shenmue 3 had just been greenlit.



https://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48988&sid=acbe53633bda881603e4aa34af3ab503

I picked out some of the concerns that were expressed on this particular thread about how Shenmue 3 could turn out. A lot of them are similar, so I have tried to combine them into one concern each.

Concerns highlighted in yellow have since been put to rest by the Shenmue 3 that we ended up with, while statements we are still debating to this day with regards to the Shenmue 3 we got I have left unhighlighted.

• The size of the world will be smaller than Shenmue 1 & 2
• The story would focus on just the main quest and main characters alone
• The game would offer no room for exploration and getting lost in a dense, large world
• Character models will remain looking as ugly as they looked back in 2015
• Gameplay events will not be as deep as 1 & 2 e.g. striking trees
• No minigames, side quests, diversions or secret events to unlock
• The game's overall content would be less than 25-30 hours
• The game will have lots of magic in it
• The game won't have lots of NPCs to interact with inside its small world
• QTEs won't be integrated just like they were in 1 & 2
• The story would be disappointing
• The graphics would not look next-gen enough
• The combat system won't be as good as Shenmue 1 & 2
• It would not control similarly to 1 & 2 (e.g. pulling the trigger down to make Ryo run)
• There would be a total lack of attention to detail
• Characters (e.g. NPCs) would not be fully voiced
• We would not stay in rural China
• The game will not capture the same visual style as Shenmue 1 & 2
• There will be no classic loading screens
• Shenmue 3 would force you to use the Character Perspective System when it should be Ryo's experience alone
• The game won't be styled to play or feel like a classic Shenmue game just like 1 & 2 did

It's good to see that a vast majority of our worries did not transpire into the final product.

EDIT: Also worth noting the most popular concern by far concerned the absence of a large, explorable world as big as 1 & 2.

 

[KiddMarine]

God that feels like a million years ago.

 

[WuyingRen]

So a month ago I compared Shenmue 3 with FFVIIR on a few trophy sites...

August 9th
PSN Profiles: 3,714 vs 66,209
True Trophies: 3,116 vs 70,520
PSN TL: 4,174 vs 84,410

September 10th:
PSN Profiles: 4,014 (+8%) vs 75,986 (+15%)
True Trophies: 3,514 (+13%) vs 81,663 (+16%)
PSN TL: 4,465 (+7%) vs 90,756 (+8%)
Average: (+9.3%) vs (+13%)

Gotta say I’m pretty impressed that the figures are so close considering FFVIIR releases 5 months later than Shenmue 3 and got it’s first big price cut around the beginning of this period.

The figures suggest that FFVIIR sales are now up to 5,650,000, so allowing for players who aren’t tracked in S3 due to the trophy list error, we get...

PSN Profiles: 373,118
True Trophies: 303,937
PSN TL: 347,444
Average: 341,500

Still not great, but accounting for special editions, duplicate copies and PC sales it’s possible that we’re at least around the 500,000 mark. If the game can maintain 10% month on month growth until the end of the year and the Steam release isn’t a complete flop, the game could end up posting some fairly respectable figures.

 

[Guy-ManAfterAll]

I think 500k sells is already very good ! It is already more than Shenmue 2 (DC and Xbox combined, no HD remaster). I personnally was hoping for something around 750k total. I am not sure that it will go that far sadly, but with the Steam released, we can hope for 50 to 100k mor sells I guess.

 

[WuyingRen]

I think 500k sells is already very good ! It is already more than Shenmue 2 (DC and Xbox combined, no HD remaster). I personnally was hoping for something around 750k total. I am not sure that it will go that far sadly, but with the Steam released, we can hope for 50 to 100k mor sells I guess.

Should have mentioned that that number includes backer copies of the game, although it’s unclear how many (anybody who backed multiple copies or purchased additional copies of the games post launch will only be counted once).

Prior to release I’d been thinking that 500,000 sales would have been pretty decent, but that’s when we thought the budget was around $12m rather than It being around $20m. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the copies of Shenmue 3 sold were at a reduced price.

 

[Guy-ManAfterAll]

Should have mentioned that that number includes backer copies of the game, although it’s unclear how many (anybody who backed multiple copies or purchased additional copies of the games post launch will only be counted once).

Prior to release I’d been thinking that 500,000 sales would have been pretty decent, but that’s when we thought the budget was around $12m rather than It being around $20m. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the copies of Shenmue 3 sold were at a reduced price.

Yeah, you're right, it might not be as good as I believed. I still think it's decent, considering all the drama there was during the Kickstarter campaign and prior release (Sony, EGS Exclusive, trailer without facial animation...). Now, of course, knowing that many players and fans were disappointed, Shenmue 4 will have to be extremely good to sell even better, or hope that less copies sold (around 300k total) would be sufficient to then finance Shenmue 5.