Thoughts on the phone calls?

Joined
Sep 9, 2018
I think they are a nice fan service but some of them are just a bit... odd. Ine-san's particularly. When Ryo asks about Megumi visting Ine-san says something like 'I still remember the day that cat's mom was killed by a car' - oh Ine-san, that day, when the snow turned to rain and Iwao was murdered, and that car being the car that killed Ryo's father!? Come on now, it's just bad writing and makes her seem like an elderly person with dementia.

I didn't like how a lot of the characters barely expressed an interest in Ryo's journey. Going back to Ine-san as the example, she was in disbelief when he originally in S1 said about wanting to go to Hong Kong. What happened to the Ine-san who would tell Ryo off for staying out late due to her worrying, but now she is pretty chill and disinterested about him being god knows where (not even asking him)?

I dunno, I just feel if they were going to include these characters we deserved a) longer conversations and b) some more development and discussion on Ryo's journey up to the point of the call.
 
The phone calls were a bad idea. It was cringey and the dialogue made no sense. It was a novel idea but without the original voice actors, it wont connect much to the fans
 
I really like them. Some of them were one of the rare dialogs in the game sounding like a normal living humans would talk to each other.
 
I haven't seen anyone mention it but does everyone only have the 2 calls (3 responses each), apart from joy? She has the extra response once you meet ren. Does anyone else get one?
 
I didn't like not being able to manually enter the phone number, unoriginal voice actors, and the slideshow next to Ryo's face. Each takes away from the realism and being able to reminisce your own memories of the character.
 
I think they were just right (vs. too little or needing more fleshing out). If the general consensus is right-- the team was severely strapped for time come Niaowu-- three options for eight people felt fine, even if the voices could be wobbly.

In particular, I think they balanced well Ryo's awkwardness coupled with subtle, gentle reminders that people care for him. Joy's frustration, Nozomi's coyness, Ine-San's warm-hearted "I just want you to be okay", Tom's caring but earnest advice, and so on.

It was also nice to see Ryo, in just the little ways, show gratitude for the characters and their past help. Maybe the external plot didn't go all that far, but the internal progress is apparent in moments like these.
 
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I enjoyed them quite a bit. Some were more entertaining than others but that was more down to which characters I personally care about. I liked Goro's and Tom's in particular.
 
Even Nozomi’s?

Yeah. I loved it. I know the voice actress sounded completely different, but i expected as much going into shenmue 3, so i was able to look past it. I understand others who didnt feel the same way though. But yeah, i liked all the phone calls

It also made me remember my childhood, where mobile phones weren't a thing and you actually had to use your house phone to ring friends and catch up. No text messages or whatsapp. Loved those times. The phone calls in Shenmue 3 were a very nostalgic moment for me personally.
 
I really really enjoyed all of them, especially:
-- Joy acting super offended
-- Guizhang finding out Lishao Tao is a (beautuful) woman

About the voice actors I have no idea, I played the first two games in English, and S3 in Japanese with subtitles.
 
I found it hard listening to them in English because they sounded so different to their original voice actors.
I had no problem with the Japanese voices though and thought the phonecalls were actually well written.
 
Was absolutely a GREAT bit of fanservice; it was fresh, new and nostalgic all-in-one.

THAT is how you do fanservice, YS Net! Not the unnecessary things that remained in the main game!
 
They were atrocious and beyond lazy. I wish they hadn't been included if they were going to be this poorly done.

None of the voices were close at all. I figured if they couldn't get the original voice actors, they'd at least play some of the older content for the new vas so they could at least try to mimic them, but it was really just random voices. On top of the poor va, none of the conversations were relevant or interesting. They didn't even try to represent the personalities in any way. The writing was so bad.

I think maybe Joy was the original va but it didn't matter because she had nothing interesting to say. I also think Tom was done by the Jamaican darts guy in Shenmue 2. That cracked me up and was the only enjoyment I got out of them.
 
Oh shut up FFS.

Whether you like it or not, they were done well and tastefully and BY FAR, they got the correct Japanese VAs.

Don't you have anything better to do than endlessly shit on this game?
 
Yeah, I'm fairly critical of Shenmue 3 and I generally don't like fan service for the sake of it, but I have to agree that the phone calls surprised me in both how they were tastefully handled and how they added some depth to the characters.

Probably the only thing that I didn't really like was the little frame of flashback scenes to the original games. They seemed a bit cheesy, a simple picture of the character probably would have sufficed.

As for the VA, It's been 20 years, you can't expect them to have gotten the original cast for what amounts to a few minutes of dialogue. I appreciate that they attempted to at least approximate most of the voices though.
 
I didn't like not being able to manually enter the phone number, unoriginal voice actors, and the slideshow next to Ryo's face. Each takes away from the realism and being able to reminisce your own memories of the character.

Without picking a fight, and though I'm not aiming to die on a hill over the calls, I am wondering how any (or at least "each") of these three challenge realism (although we can qualify that term*):

a. Manually entering the phone number: I don't know your age (not calling you out, just an earnest curiosity), but international calling cards (esp. when traveling) were a common thing for some time. While you could/can do international calls manually, I never knew it to be the norm then, given the ridiculous charges from your phone company. (One also thinks of collect calling, or the continued added charge for calling cross country or further from a landline today).

b. New voice actors: This one does admittedly make the connection between our real life past experience/the present different (or more difficult), but I don't see how this breaks the rules of the game. Otherwise, it's an opposite sin for the same voice actor to have voiced both Guizhang and Ren.

c. Slideshow: did this really distract? If anything, it made the calls feel more real, as we're reminded of what Ryo's thinking in his own head, and why he may be reacting as he is. Moreover, what else may have fueled your own memories of characters besides the critical moments with them in 1/2?


*Post-response edit: I'd distinguish realism with relation to the series (to that end, the phone dialing, changed voice actors, and odd clouds are fairly "unrealistic"), but on our end, are these not in some way connected to lived experience?
 
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I played Shenmue 3 in japanese and in my opinion the phone calls are awesome, the voices in japanese are awesome, one of my favourite parts of the game, i did all the choices. Every time i called a character i felt a warm feeling in my heart, i smiled when i saw Ryo talking with them. These details in the games is one of the reasons why I love Shenmue so much.

Shenmue always helps me deal with my mother's death.

It is these simple and sweet moments that make all the difference for me in Shenmue. The phone calls, Ryo's conversations with Shenhua in her house and in Niaowu, they laughing and playing that game, getting to know each other. Shenhua caring about Ryo. Ryo trainning with Masters and learning new moves. Ryo finding some things that his father did in Bailu Village, Ryo playing hide and seek with the kids in Bailu Village. In Shenmue 1 Ryo being friends with a homeless man, the homeless man teaching a move to Ryo, Ryo reading the message that his father left for him, the kitten moments, there are a lot of this simple and sweet moments that i love in Shenmue.

These are the moments that maybe for some people are meaningless, but for me this moments are special moments that helps me a lot, and is one of the reasons why i love Shenmue so much.
 
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