Shenmue 3 - AMAZING but slightly gimmicky?

T

Taarabt

Joined
Aug 2, 2018
Hi guys and girls

i dont post much but have always been monitoring posts and keeping updated since the famous kickstarter. I was so caught up in excitment and went for the $175 tier and no regrets. its an amazing games... it is everything we hoped for and I am only around 5 hours in!!!

I sit there with my son (4 years old) and we walk around and talk to people, turtle race and chop wood etc. Its a solid 9/10 game with fantastic story and gameplay

Now my only question here is, is the game too gimmicky? When I say this I mean because of things like capsule toy machines in a village in middle of nowhere, gambling oppourtunities when there would realistically be no market audience for such gambling in the area and games like throwing into bucket etc...

I am not saying I dislike it but is it keeping with the original shenmue idea. Shenmue 1 was a perfect game and was realistic as japanese cities had arcade games and toy capsules, there only a couple of meaningful misplaced items thrown in like the sega saturn :)

shenmue 2 was similar but with a few more fun unrealistic bits added but none too far fetched

So has shenmue 3 gone too far or is it giving fans what they want and am I being ridiclous? I think I am but just want to check. Or perhaps I have played the original two games too many times that even the unbelievable seems normal in the game now (like forklift racing!!)
 
Taarabt said:
Hi guys and girls

i dont post much but have always been monitoring posts and keeping updated since the famous kickstarter. I was so caught up in excitment and went for the $175 tier and no regrets. its an amazing games... it is everything we hoped for and I am only around 5 hours in!!!

I sit there with my son (4 years old) and we walk around and talk to people, turtle race and chop wood etc. Its a solid 9/10 game with fantastic story and gameplay

Now my only question here is, is the game too gimmicky? When I say this I mean because of things like capsule toy machines in a village in middle of nowhere, gambling oppourtunities when there would realistically be no market audience for such gambling in the area and games like throwing into bucket etc...

I am not saying I dislike it but is it keeping with the original shenmue idea. Shenmue 1 was a perfect game and was realistic as japanese cities had arcade games and toy capsules, there only a couple of meaningful misplaced items thrown in like the sega saturn :)

shenmue 2 was similar but with a few more fun unrealistic bits added but none too far fetched

So has shenmue 3 gone too far or is it giving fans what they want and am I being ridiclous? I think I am but just want to check. Or perhaps I have played the original two games too many times that even the unbelievable seems normal in the game now (like forklift racing!!)
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Me, and a few others talked about this for a bit, and the overall reason we came up with, is if the minigames, and capsule yoy machines were relegated to the 2nd area, sadly people would rush through Bailu village.

In hindsight I can say I know exactly how to pull that off, but we need to remember the funding for the game went through some drastic changes, and It's very clear the mini game allocation design was already in place prier to the biggest of the funding changes.

It's also why the Magic Maze system wasn't imlimented, it would basically require redesigning all the maps.
 
Zoltor said:
Me, and a few others talked about this for a bit, and the overall reason we came up with, is if the minigames, and capsule yoy machines were relegated to the 2nd area, sadly people would rush through Bailu village.

In hindsight I can say I know exactly how to pull that off, but we need to remember the funding for the game went through some drastic changes, and It's very clear the mini game allocation design was already in place prier to the biggest of the funding changes.

It's also why the Magic Maze system wasn't imlimented, it would basically require redesigning all the maps.
Click to expand...
I still don't really understand what the Magic Maze system was supposed to be. What was the deal with that, again?
 
I think the mini-games are the consequence of his staff. Yu noticed that some of his employees were incredibly skilled at modelling objects so he emphasized that aspect since it's part of Shenmue DNA. That's why we saw an incredible amount of items in Shenmue 3: capsule toys, random objects, food, drawers interaction, mini-games,etc. depite the lack of realism it implied in the worldbuilding.
That could also explain why we heard so late about the endurance system, they needed to find a design purpose for all this new potential stuff.
 
Dietsoap said:
I still don't really understand what the Magic Maze system was supposed to be. What was the deal with that, again?
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It's a space management system, that would allow Yu Suzuki to make a infinitely big game world, without using much space.

Shenmue 2 uses it, basically a ton of assets/asset pieces are stored in a database, and the world Isn't rendered in the traditional may,, instead it builds the map in games, based on the instruction of what to do with the assets in the database.

Guilin, and the high rise building in Kowloon used the magic maze extensively.

It also flipped assets behind the scene, to create assets that aren't even in the database, so yea a basically the be all end all holy grails of data compression.
 
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Yokosuka said:
I think the mini-games are the consequence of his staff. Yu noticed that some of his employees were incredibly skilled at modelling objects so he emphasized that aspect since it's part of Shenmue DNA. That's why we saw an incredible amount of items in Shenmue 3: capsule toys, random objects, food, drawers interaction, mini-games,etc. depite the lack of realism it implied in the worldbuilding.
That could also explain why we heard so late about the endurance system, they needed to find a design purpose for all this new potential stuff.
Click to expand...

That's possible, and I did like how all the systems were integrated in this game. I thought the environment and object modelling in this game were really top-notch for something on such a limited budget.
 
I think they've gotta get away from having a hundred Lucky Hit boards in the next game. It's like Yu Suzuki thinks it's the hot game all the kids are dying to play.
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I think they've gotta get away from having a hundred Lucky Hit boards in the next game. It's like Yu Suzuki thinks it's the hot game all the kids are dying to play. Oooh, pail toss. That'll rope 'em in.
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HEY

Don't talk shit about pail toss...
 
lmao

I kind of love how simplistic the games are, but there's something very comical about a game where your main 'fun games' are about as complex and creative as stuff you'd find at a local elementary/primary school.
 
Dietsoap said:
I still don't really understand what the Magic Maze system was supposed to be. What was the deal with that, again?
Click to expand...
I think it's a kind of procedural generation that allows the developer to create bigger environments or more stuff within those environments using less data.
Explanation of the system starts at around 26 minutes in.

Edit: sorry, didn't see Zoltor's post further up.
 
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I like seeing the new games in bailu (wood chopping, turtle race, pail toss) but I won't like it much if they are in the next city, I think they fit well the village but not a city.

I find dice throw fine because of what it is, a little less lucky hit, and I'm not a fan of the capsule toy that could have been kept for the city.
 
So I agree with a lot of the points here! loving taking my time with it as well. i wont complete it for months tbh
 
Elfshadowreaper said:
I really hated the magic maze didn’t get implemented. That would have made things so much more dynamic. Maybe for Shenmue 4.
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Dynamic in what way? "Magic maze" was their own term for procedural generation. But it wasn't intended to be a roguelike experience, where the forest (or Kowloon) is randomized every time you play. It was more like No Man's Sky, where they generate the universe once and then it's static and the same for everyone based on that initial seed.
 
I can see it being gimmicky, but I liked having the wide variety of stuff to do in bailu especially given how uneventful it ends up being, but ideally, I would have loved different minigames based more on the more lower tech setting it was supposed to be. It did feel like they just kind of said fuck it heres some capsule toys and arcade machines.
 
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