General Shenmue & Shenmue II talk

thefavoriteplay said:
Does anybody else take issue with how this release was handled? This release was announced like 4 months ago....at a Japanese Sega event....then hardly any info came out/no one could talk details....then some details....then we finally get a release date and now it is here and there appears to be problems with the game.

I feel like this whole announcement and release has a botched feeling and I, as a Shenmue fan, couldn't really get properly hyped for this because of all the secrecy around it.

Don't get me wrong, I am still really excited...it just seems like the whole promotion and release should have been handled differently.

Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire collection was made from around the time we first saw it to right now.
 
To a certain extent, I agree @thefavoriteplay . I don't know if I would say it was totally botched, but it has been a bit of a weird release.

Overall I'm happy to have these re-releases, but imagine what could have been achieved if a full remaster was commissioned and more time/money had been put into these releases. But maybe due to the nature of Shenmue's engine, that would have been too difficult or costly. That said, they redid several assets in the Xbox release of Shenmue 2 when porting from the Dreamcast release, so why not now for this modern day port?

They could have made this collection something really special, like the ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection was on the PS3.
 
Well, what I mean by "botched" is not that the whole release is terrible, it is just this whole roll out has been kind of strange. I feel like at the beginning of the year this should have had an announcement or even at a large event like e3 and maybe manage the time better so d3t could release a full complete game.

If they are still now releasing Day 1 Patches, why not delay the release a little further to have it complete. Was there a reason they chose this August 21st arbitrary release date? What would it have mattered to work on it a little longer.
 
I think the release date was picked for business reasons. The rest of they year is going to get stacked in terms of popular releases.

They were possibly also hoping it would coalign with a Shenmue 3 update at Gamescom, although as it seems that's not happening, maybe not.
 
Robfozz said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire collection was made from around the time we first saw it to right now.
Click to expand...

Utter rubbish, even if it was rushed that's just impossible. To get it running natively even with a layer of code to interpret everything in 4-5 months is unthinkable. if we need evidence of you just being needlessly negative for the sake of it; this is it. It puts the rest of us concerned with reasonable issues such as performance or the music in a bad light
 
Last edited:
To me, it just felt like Sega was keeping everything under wraps. This is an exciting time and nobody can talk details? Was Sega themselves not sure of the final outcome of the product? Something just doesn't add up for me.
 
For anyone who actually owns the game, how are the English and Japanese voicetracks in terms of compression? Is it the same as the Dreamcast release or is there any improvement? That was the only thing I was hoping they'd improve in this release as the compression is awful in many parts, especially the English track.

Robfozz said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire collection was made from around the time we first saw it to right now.
Click to expand...
Except that would be absolutely impossible, it takes 2-3 months just to make the golden master and initial general release production test run and maybe up to 4-5 months if you include the TRC's. Any platform holders like Sony and Microsoft have a system called TRC (Technical Requirement Checklist ) to ensure the game fulfils their criteria checklist so the game can actually be released on their platforms, this is to prevent bugs that can damage hardware or their services like servers and the like. Also it takes time to get the rating agencies like the ESRB to sign off on a game, that alone take a couple of months for them to sign off on a rating.

The game was announced on the 14th of April and it releases on the 21 of August, that is only 4 months, it'd be impossible to even clear the platform TRC's and ESRB ratings in that time frame. All those steps exclude even coding the game or even pre production which obviously take a long time, those steps I've mentioned happen after almost everything else is finished.

So much ignorance about game development in this thread it's almost comical.
 
I mean, we (the community) had questions from the immediate drop of the first promo video. And we didn't really have any answers for a while.
 
thefavoriteplay said:
To me, it just felt like Sega was keeping everything under wraps. This is an exciting time and nobody can talk details? Was Sega themselves not sure of the final outcome of the product? Something just doesn't add up for me.
Click to expand...

This has literally been an industry text book *Develop in Secret* > *Announce* > *Market* > *Release* sitation; the same as any other game release. This desperate scramble for controversy and bait posts has ruined any possible genuine discussion over positives and negatives (bugs) of the re-release.

I'm gonna nope out of this thread now so as not to be associated with it...
 
Ucuetis said:
For anyone who actually owns the game, how are the English and Japanese voicetracks in terms of compression? Is it the same as the Dreamcast release or is there any improvement? That was the only thing I was hoping they'd improve in this release as the compression is awful in many parts, especially the English track.
Click to expand...

A number of characters have horrendous distortion/clipping/popping/noise when speaking in the Japanese voice track. I have never properly played the Japanese version before, so I have no idea if it's a remnant from the original release or if it's somehow worse/amplified in this port.
 
Hoping for the remake of your dreams is fine, but remember...they could've also not made it at all. Just like every other division of SEGA for the past decade. The likes of Sony have the money and marketing muscle to guarantee their re-releases will sell in the millions.

SEGA Europe on the other hand are basically taking a big gamble. No one knows how a Shenmue game will sell in 2018. To minimise the risk they've opted to release a modest remake at a budget price. Personally, I'm choosing to accept this release for what it is
 
RiGoRmOrTiS said:
This has literally been an industry text book *Develop in Secret* > *Announce* > *Market* > *Release* sitation; the same as any other game release. This desperate scramble for controversy and bait posts has ruined any possible genuine discussion over positives and negatives (bugs) of the re-release.

I'm gonna nope out of this thread now so as not to be associated with it...
Click to expand...

I'll stop with the "controversal" posts but all I am questioning (legitimately) are the later 3 bolded points above in your post. What would be the issue with Sega "Announcing" sooner..."Marketing" better for the game and "Releasing" a complete (working) title? I don't feel I'm being obscene with my questions, but if you would to point to a proper thread where I can post these questions, feel free. I have gotten my points out, I'll stop.
 
Ucuetis said:
For anyone who actually owns the game, how are the English and Japanese voicetracks in terms of compression?
Click to expand...

i'm playing with japanese voices and yes there is some crackling, hissing and clipping going on
but i have no idea if it was like this in the Dreamcast version. maybe its the same, maybe it got worse.
its not super terrible or anything but if you thought that the re release will offer a new and better quality - no.
 
Tosh said:
i'm playing with japanese voices and yes there is some crackling, hissing and clipping going on
but i have no idea if it was like this in the Dreamcast version. maybe its the same, maybe it got worse.
its not super terrible or anything but if you thought that the re release will offer a new and better quality - no.
Click to expand...

Aw, that is a shame, I wasn't really expecting them to change the voicetrack, more along the lines of hoping more than anything else. It might be a engine related issue why they couldn't swap the voicetracks for the uncompressed masters, the original build of the game uses some bespoke compression systems from my understanding which might mean it isn't easy or maybe full on impossible to swap audio out.
 
I was able to get the game yesterday and it really looks good in HD. It`s kinda the phenomenon of you thinking it always looked like this even though turning off HD rendering and 16:9 reminds you that your brain is fooling you.


Here are some issues I have encountered though:


-When Ryo leaves his room for the first time the camera was stuck on Ryos alarm clock instead of showing the cut-scene. The audio was playing normally though.


-Bloom lighting, even when turned off, sporadically turns itself on in cut-scenes and conversations. I realize that Shenmue has a subtle light on characters in conversations but having no bloom lighting and then in these conversation it being triggered in full force is something very irritating. Nozomi straight up was glowing in the dark when I talked to her.


-When you get a new entry in the notebook opening it results in problems with the audio transition. So waiting for the notification sound to totally play out is advised.


-Music once was in a one second loop in Dobuita but after entering a building it went to normal.


-Contrast over all is weird. The game is way to dark. I had to do stuff in my TV settings to get the game to look acceptable making my over all settings very weird. First time seeing the intro with the default settings was not as magical as I imagined it to be because of this unfortunately.


Other than that the game looks great. As I said it feels very natural in 16:9. I like the menus as well. The only thing I dislike about the UI are the buttons that are displayed in QTEs. They are very flat.

Btw I`m playing on Xbox One X on version 1.3.


One thing I was wondering is am I having luck or is something wrong with the weather. It is always a crystal clear day but every time I played Shenmue I on DC the weather was miserable and I kinda liked that....
 
Master Mo said:
One thing I was wondering is am I having luck or is something wrong with the weather. It is always a crystal clear day but every time I played Shenmue I on DC the weather was miserable and I kinda liked that....
Click to expand...

i saw sunshine, rain and snow in my 10 hours of gameplay.
 
How does the transition to different areas work? Did they remove the now loading screens or?
 
the loading screens are still there but you will only see the screen for like 1-3 seconds.
if you start the game on the PS4 and click on continue, you are in your saved game in like 1 second.
 
I see I see. Any idea how long did it used to stay on screen for? It seemed like forever back in the day.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top