Random Shenmue III Thoughts

From the very start of this process it's been the same. Ryo looks shit... Oh now he looks good. Shenhua looks shit... Oh now she looks good. Lan Di looks shit... Oh now he looks good. The woman NPC looks like shit... Oh now she looks good.

Look at that pawn shop guy! This game is fucked....

It's been hilarious and embarrassing in equal measure, reading some of the reactions over the past 3 years. Barely anyone content to just sit back and let one of the most influential games creators do his thing, then judge the game on its complete retail build.
 
Peter said:
From the very start of this process it's been the same. Ryo looks shit... Oh now he looks good. Shenhua looks shit... Oh now she looks good. Lan Di looks shit... Oh now he looks good. The woman NPC looks like shit... Oh now she looks good.

Look at that pawn shop guy! This game is fucked....

It's been hilarious and embarrassing in equal measure, reading some of the reactions over the past 3 years. Barely anyone content to just sit back and let one of the most influential games creators do his thing, then judge the game on its complete retail build.
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And they were correct in their judgments. Shenmue 3 characters models have improved, hence the change of opinion.
 
WildManofBorneo said:
And they were correct in their judgments. Shenmue 3 characters models have improved, hence the change of opinion.
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I don't believe that's really the point Peter was going for.

The problem is that we've seen the cycle of reaction play out over, and over, and over, but some (and this isn't aimed at anybody in particular) never taking away from the experience that things will change and improve - as is entirely natural for a game in active development, that isn't really too shy about showing unfinished material.

Not that I expect some NPCs to suddenly turn into beautiful butterflies in the remaining months (for reasons in my earlier post), but touch ups will inevitably be happening. There are probably countless changes actually happening on the final road to release we're on right now.
 
Peter said:
From the very start of this process it's been the same. Ryo looks shit... Oh now he looks good. Shenhua looks shit... Oh now she looks good. Lan Di looks shit... Oh now he looks good. The woman NPC looks like shit... Oh now she looks good.

Look at that pawn shop guy! This game is fucked....

It's been hilarious and embarrassing in equal measure, reading some of the reactions over the past 3 years. Barely anyone content to just sit back and let one of the most influential games creators do his thing, then judge the game on its complete retail build.
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Exactly 1000% agree
 
All will be resolved in due time...especially since Shenmue III will probably be remastered for PS5 down the line for maximum ROI. There’s still lots of time and opportunities for enhancements for the initial release. Let’s just try to make sure this is the best launch possible to carry that momentum towards the future...
 
If you're posting comments on a fan page like "Why does this game look old?" and "Ryo looks crap, use the Shenmue Passport model instead", then I hate to say it but the Shenmue III we're getting is not for you, and that should've been obvious several years ago.

If you want Shenmue III to be on the graphical cutting edge, it isn't for you. If you want it to look identical to the Dreamcast games, it isn't for you, either.

How on Earth these people still expect those things fours years on is beyond me.

Obviously thinking they could improve certain character models is fine -- that's your opinion and a reasonable expectation at this stage -- but that isn't the majority of what I see out there in terms of these "negative" comment threads.
 
The humble art direction of Shenmue III may be a blessing in disguise. Shenmue III will now provide a more seamless transition from Shenmue I & II rather than a jarring jump in hyper-realism that may detach the saga’s cohesion as a whole. A big positive in the bigger picture...
 
They run a very fine line here I think partly because it's a kickstarter.

Some of the images we've seen over the years have been pre-alpha and released to give us a glimpse into development. The wider gaming consumer base doesn't see that and there are some fans out there who have expectations that are plain ridiculous.

However the pawnshop owner image is one I wouldn't have released. Or if you're going to show it, touch it up to make it look similar to the other improved models. That model has flamed the haters but most of what I seen have been positive. However that kind of stuff is avoidable overall if they don't release images like that one.

Lan Di and Shenhua (whatever you think of her appearance imo) are the best examples of finished models that have improved time and time again.

Yu's not done either. There's 3 months of polish left. I'm not convinced we've seen the most recent version either. For example Ryo in the Feb screenshot looks way newer than the one in the MAGIC trailer.

This game will shock the world as to what you can do on a tight budget. If people want AAA models you're in the wrong place.

Here you will get a game worth every penny in depth, story and content, with a art style true to the old games. I cannot wait.
 
Reprise said:
No offence, but people keep bringing up AAA as if it's an either or situation. It's not. There's plenty of AA and low budget titles with better character models than some of the examples shown so far in Shenmue III... Whether they're just random NPCs or not. It's not even neccessarily the level of detail, the more cartoony aesthetic or polygon count, it's that gormless look on that dude's face and the bizarre, ugly facial design on him and some of the models.
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In my humble point of view it is hard to judge the quality of character models since facial animations become a thing. If you take a picture at the wrong moment the facial animation is executed the whole character model looks weird. I have even seen weird pictures of games with good facial animations like RE 2 and Horizon Zero down. If you take the picture at the wrong moment it just looks creepy.

The only way to judge it properly is to wait for video clips.
 
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ShenSun said:
This fan piece really gives me Shenmue 3 vibes. Incredible music. Check it out.


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That is one stunning piece of music. Absolut Shenmue III Vibe! Cant wait!!!!!
 
Whatever the case may be, I see the game playing out like its Kickstarter predecessor "Kingdom Come." Both are large independent games that went through a similar creation process. I thought someone said, too, that Yu leaves the graphical improves as the last thing on the agenda -- or am I foolishly mistaken by "reassurance manipulation"? Once this game is in motion, it'll cure a lot of the flaws we see in these "junior" promotional screens/trailers. The prophecy trailer is the only good one, so far -- conceived by Deep Silver. Hopefully, they final put something together that exemplifies the complete build of S3 by late June. Yu is an amazing game creator, but plain butt at promotion (efff you, Awesome Japan -- probably lost out on close to 2 million because of you!).
 
ManoTemple said:
Whatever the case may be, I see the game playing out like its Kickstarter predecessor "Kingdom Come." Both are large independent games that went through a similar creation process. I thought someone said, too, that Yu leaves the graphical improves as the last thing on the agenda -- or am I foolishly mistaken by "reassurance manipulation"? Once this game is in motion, it'll cure a lot of the flaws we see in these "junior" promotional screens/trailers. The prophecy trailer is the only good one, so far -- conceived by Deep Silver. Hopefully, they final put something together that exemplifies the complete build of S3 by late June. Yu is an amazing game creator, but plain butt at promotion (efff you, Awesome Japan -- probably lost out on close to 2 million because of you!).
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No you're quite right. Yu's model allows for all polishing etc to be done last including improvements.
 
I wouldn't go into the finished game expecting a night and day improvement over the recent media, though. I think the game already looks really good for the scope and budget -- there's just a few things, like some stiff facial animation in the Ryo & Master trailer, and the lack of eye shadowing on the pawn shop NPC.

Character lighting, model tweaks and animation improvements can go a long way, but I'm not going in expecting every character to look as slick as Lan Di.
 
orient said:
I wouldn't go into the finished game expecting a night and day improvement over the recent media, though. I think the game already looks really good for the scope and budget -- there's just a few things, like some stiff facial animation in the Ryo & Master trailer, and the lack of eye shadowing on the pawn shop NPC.

Character lighting, model tweaks and animation improvements can go a long way, but I'm not going in expecting every character to look as slick as Lan Di.
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The problem is, the expectations (often from people who seems to not even have played a game in the serie) are sometimes over what you can expect in a AAA game.
There'll be ugly NPCs in Shenmue 3. Be it by design (not everyone is supposed to be handsome) or by technical limitations. For the latter, a shiton of modern games have subpar npcs. Even for AAA titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn you have ugly bad animated NPCs in the game.

People often love to take Yakuza as a comparison. I get it, Yakuza has amazingly well done story cutscenes and well detailled characters. The same cant be said for the sidequests and NPCs. And the sole reason you get that level of polish on story bits in Yakuza is because the rest is budget as fuck. It's featuring the same map since the very first game. Save for Yakuza 6, the sidequests arent even dubbed and the animations of the NPCs are worse than what you see in that Shenmue 3 trailer.

And in the end, for all the shit Shenmue 3 got, I think gamers deserve to be lied. We often hear about how X devs scammed people by downgrading their game. You saw that with Anthem, Uncharted 4, Watch Dogs, The Division... But in the end when developers are honest and are showing the actual state of a work in progress (especially in the case of Shenmue 3, a game that was kickstarted in July 2015 and had a trailer a year and a half after the begining of actual development) well people just whine and shit all over it, making memes out of it.

People want honesty but shit at it when they get it.
 
Yup, people see what they want to see in order to support their "argument". I say argument but usually it's just a statement they haven't given a minute's thought to.

The graphics may be better than trolls/haters are willing to give credit for, but that shouldn't matter when the game comes out. No Bethesda RPG has ever had cutting edge graphics and animation but that doesn't stop them from selling millions. Their games have soooo many haters but it makes no difference when the game is good (Fallout 76 was not good).
 
orient said:
Yup, people see what they want to see in order to support their "argument". I say argument but usually it's just a statement they haven't given a minute's thought to.

The graphics may be better than trolls/haters are willing to give credit for, but that shouldn't matter when the game comes out. No Bethesda RPG has ever had cutting edge graphics and animation but that doesn't stop them from selling millions. Their games have soooo many haters but it makes no difference when the game is good (Fallout 76 was not good).
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They are better than what a lot of people are actually claiming.

The environnements are great looking, the shaders, lighting, volumetric effects are great (and no, they're not "stock UE4"). Even the characters are decent looking and even have some extra care brought to them:
Clothes physics, ear physic for Shenhua (something I havent seen in any other game), hair physics for characters (Ryo's hair move subtly during cutscenes), subsurface scattering to make the skin look more smooth, yet despite being stylised, being detailled enough to have skin grain.

Sure, the game would look better with better animations (which is kinda stiff so far. Not only the faces, which can vary to decent to bad for the animations but also the bodies which feel rigid at times). But you have to make sacrifices somewhere. A game like Yakuza decided to push for great visuals for environnement and main characters, the cost is subpar npcs (maybe worse than Shenmue 3 ?), no dub for sidequests and the same map and environnements since a decade.
I'm sure Shenmue 3 would look as great if we stayed in Yokosuka in Shenmue 2,3,4 maybe 5.
 
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