Why the story in Shenmue 3 is good/Why the story in Shenmue 3 is bad

[Sh3ppy]

@iknifaugood

i feel like I’ve addressed your points in my previous posts and we’ll just keep going round in circles. You keep saying he had the story all planned out and I made the point that having the story planned out beforehand doesn’t guarantee a good implementation (see novels and film adaptations). I’ve read all your other posts re. the topic too and for the most part don’t agree. There are definitely some things that I would say you’re bang on the money, but it is what it is.

@hmjohnny

see I feel that S3 actually proves the exact opposite. What Suzuki has achieved with all those limitations in place is really quite remarkable and proves, at least to me, that he is capable of grand accomplishments, and even more so with the appropriate resources and team around him. I don’t for a second agree that S1 & S2 were a success despite Yu. He was the glue that held everything together and directed the project. Obviously he’s not capable of doing everything himself so he surrounded himself with the best possible people to see his vision out, with a clear directive coming from him. I really don’t mean this is any way confrontationally but I do think the idea that S1 & S2 were as good as they were “despite” Yu is nonsense.

 

[Sh3ppy]

I think you are viewing the issue through an arbitrary lens here. Budget and money play a role but it’s not the only sole criteria for judging quality. By that same rationale Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides should be the best film ever since it cost $378.5 million dollars.

But I never said that’s the case. I think in THIS particular case, better resources would have addressed many, if not most of the complaints people have with the game. I’m most definitely not saying every game needs a AAA budget to be quality (because that’s clearly not the case), but for a game with Shenmue’s vision and scope, I strongly believe it to be the case. It’s about hiring the best people for the job and S3 was somewhat hampered by Yu’s inability to do so.

What I’m writing seems to have been misinterpreted, hence the going around in circles.

 

[orient]

Translation from Japanese to English would indeed be affected by the budget, but Suzuki has claimed to have the story written and planned--he's the designer after all, so those things shouldn't be affected by the budget.

Plans change, though, even if you've had them written down for 20 years. The problem with having a game story written down is...that's the easy part. How you get from A to B, storybeat to storybeat, is 100% down to things like budget, time, tech, and execution. We can argue all day over where the money "should have" went, but there's no getting around the fact that story content is expensive to produce, and when you're operating on a limited (and flunctuating) budget, everything's a trade-off.

If the game had a bigger budget, I'm 100% certain there would've been more character development and less repetition in the main story. It just seems obvious given the story's blatant flaws. So many of the characters were clearly envisioned to be deeper and feature more heavily in the story. Yu hinted in pre-release interviews that they weren't able to flesh out the characters as much this time round -- it almost seems like a heads-up in retrospect.

I'm kinda in the middle when it comes to Yu. Some think he's an untouchable genius and all he needs is more money, and some think he's always been a bad manager and his story's a mess. I think both ends are extreme and the truth is somewhere in between.

 

[iknifaugood]

i feel like I’ve addressed your points in my previous posts and we’ll just keep going round in circles. You keep saying he had the story all planned out and I made the point that having the story planned out beforehand doesn’t guarantee a good implementation (see novels and film adaptations).

True, there's no need to go around in circles, but I just want to clarify because I think two points are getting conflated here. On the one hand there's the issue of the story, which I would compare to something like the FF7 remake (they knew the entire story beforehand but they had to basically rewrite all the dialogue and tweak the scenarios, and they're pacing it out over several installments: I'd say that's pretty comparable to Shenmue 3). Obviously FF7 is one of the most beloved games of all time with a massive following, so it got the beyond-AAA treatment because it's guaranteed to be a hit. But my point is that, if they only had $7M to do it, I wouldn't suddenly expect half the content to be missing and the story to be a jumbled mess.

On the other hand there's the gameplay design, which I would compare to God of War PS4 (the series used to be far more arcadey and over the top and the new mechanics actually alienated a lot of existing fans). Again, obviously God of War is a AAA game, but even if it were made for $7M, the changes it made would still have pissed off those fans. Hell, even the RE2 remake, which is as close to perfect as you can get from a remake, has its detractors simply for changing the camera. And at least you can see how the designers of these games were making changes that would give them broader appeal, S3 appears to have made changes to double down on the game's niche audience. It's truly baffling to me and I kind of agree with @hmjohnny that the previous games might have been better in spite of Suzuki, rather than because of him. But we'll have to see what happens with S4 I guess.

 

[iknifaugood]

Plans change, though, even if you've had them written down for 20 years. The problem with having a game story written down is...that's the easy part. How you get from A to B, storybeat to storybeat, is 100% down to things like budget, time, tech, and execution. We can argue all day over where the money "should have" went, but there's no getting around the fact that story content is expensive to produce, and when you're operating on a limited (and flunctuating) budget, everything's a trade-off.

I agree and disagree. On the one hand, I think you're downplaying the importance of a story treatment and design doc, which is what I'm assuming Suzuki had. It should be an outline of the story and the scenarios in the game and should cover some A to B stuff. Obviously it's not the bible and it's subject to change but he would have known that when he was setting up the Kickstarter. You're right that story content is some of the most expensive content to produce for a game (cutscenes, voice acting, scripting, animation etc.) which is why the only games that focus on it are ultra-budget AAA games, or games that are basically nothing but cutscenes. However, S3 has cutscenes and scripting and voice acting etc. It has approximately 4 hours of cutscenes; it's the content in those cutscenes where the problems lie and that's why I say it's not a budget issue.

If the game had a bigger budget, I'm 100% certain there would've been more character development and less repetition in the main story. It just seems obvious given the story's blatant flaws.

Again I agree and disagree. I'm sure things with Ren (and other action oriented things) were cut due to budget, but more time is spent with Shenhua in S3 than nearly any other character in the entire series and they basically just do what they did in S2 again. For the amount of time spent on Ryo and Shenhua's relationship, I can't say that I have a substantially deeper understanding of it or where it's going.

I'm kinda in the middle when it comes to Yu. Some think he's an untouchable genius and all he needs is more money, and some think he's always been a bad manager and his story's a mess. I think both ends are extreme and the truth is somewhere in between.

I think we're in George Lucas territory where he's a great idea man and a visionary when it comes to technology but a pretty terrible writer and someone who benefits greatly from other people pushing back against his excesses.

 

[orient]

I agree and disagree. On the one hand, I think you're downplaying the importance of a story treatment and design doc, which is what I'm assuming Suzuki had. It should be an outline of the story and the scenarios in the game and should cover some A to B stuff. Obviously it's not the bible and it's subject to change but he would have known that when he was setting up the Kickstarter.

I guess we may never know how detailed his plans actually were and if they included gameplay minutia, but no matter how deep it got, I think it's still subject to change given time, budget etc.

Again I agree and disagree. I'm sure things with Ren (and other action oriented things) were cut due to budget, but more time is spent with Shenhua in S3 than nearly any other character in the entire series and they basically just do what they did in S2 again. For the amount of time spent on Ryo and Shenhua's relationship, I can't say that I have a substantially deeper understanding of it or where it's going.

Shenhua is definitely a special case and is treated differently to all other characters in the game. I think most of the others were destined for more screentime, while Shenhua basically got the treatment she would've gotten if the game had come out 15 years ago. I just don't think much more was planned for Ryo and Shenhua in Shenmue III and, honestly, I think the time spent with her would've went down a lot better 15 years ago.

I think we're in George Lucas territory where he's a great idea man and a visionary when it comes to technology but a pretty terrible writer and someone who benefits greatly from other people pushing back against his excesses.

Not sure I'd go that far but yeah, I can definitely see the comparison. I've been watching a lot of Shenmue Let's Plays over the past year or so, from new players and old, and it's gotten me thinking a lot about the story, the good, the bad...ultimately, I think there are problems in all three games, and I glossed over a lot of them in I & II because I first played them so long ago and they mean a lot to me. I'd like to make a thread about it when I have time but who knows when that'll happen.

 

[iknifaugood]

I guess we may never know how detailed his plans actually were and if they included gameplay minutia, but no matter how deep it got, I think it's still subject to change given time, budget etc.

I agree, that's why I'd love to see the original story treatment and what was planned for each area from VFRPG to Shenmue.

Shenhua is definitely a special case and is treated differently to all other characters in the game. I think most of the others were destined for more screentime, while Shenhua basically got the treatment she would've gotten if the game had come out 15 years ago. I just don't think much more was planned for Ryo and Shenhua in Shenmue III and, honestly, I think the time spent with her would've went down a lot better 15 years ago.

My main issue with Shenhua in S3 is how it fits into the broader story. In S3 it actually makes sense to focus on their relationship since the climax of the game is about Ryo giving up the Phoenix Mirror to save Shenhua. The problem is that nothing really happens between them and by the time we get to the ending with Niao Sun, the nightly talks at Bailu Village are long gone. I have no idea what's going to happen between Ryo and Shenhua in the broader story (if they're going to be romantically linked or whatever), but more of where this is going needed to be in S3 for the climax to work. We needed a better context of the Phoenix Mirror, the CYM, and Niao Sun in order for Ryo giving up the mirror to feel as big as it should have. There's a good idea for a story in S3 but it's buried under so much filler: I would forgive the sub par writing if the story hit the right beats (similar to the first 2 games).

I've been watching a lot of Shenmue Let's Plays over the past year or so, from new players and old, and it's gotten me thinking a lot about the story, the good, the bad...ultimately, I think there are problems in all three games, and I glossed over a lot of them in I & II because I first played them so long ago and they mean a lot to me. I'd like to make a thread about it when I have time but who knows when that'll happen.

I've always maintained that Shenmue is about the juice being worth the squeeze. Like a good slow-burn movie, there's a lot you need to sit through for the payoffs to work and the better the payoffs, the more the slow-build serves a purpose. Shenmue being slow for the sake of being slow does not work without big payoffs (the ending to S2 being the best example of going extremely slow and then paying off extremely well).

That thread sounds interesting, I tried to be as objective as possible when playing the HD collection in the lead up to S3, but it's really hard to minimize the nostalgia. I try to sympathize with the criticism of the series and not dismiss it out of hand.

 

[shredingskin]

I think you are viewing the issue through an arbitrary lens here. Budget and money play a role but it’s not the only sole criteria for judging quality. By that same rationale Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides should be the best film ever since it cost $378.5 million dollars.

The thing is that while it's actually "true" that if they had more money they could hire better writers, it's an inconsequential point for many reasons:
- They could also have hired amateur writers and pay them next to nothing and hypothetically also get a better script.
- The best writing in games these days come from narrative small games that have 1/100th of the Shenmue budget.
- The story layout was already made.
- As opposed to other mechanics that can end up inflating the budget, it takes the same amount of resources to deliver a well written line than delivering a boring/uninteresting line.
- Most of the stuff that actually requires quite a substantial budget it's pretty well done for the budget the game has (and the japanese price range).
- I could also say that the problem with Shenmue is that it had surplus budget and it was miss-used, if had lower budget it would be a more focused game.

I think that any of those points are more comprehensive than just saying "more money" mostly because that excuse can apply even to the most expensive games ever that have any flaws (oh X AAA game was not as good because of budget, with more money they could have hired better programmers/designers/writers/directors/TA/VA etc etc. depending on the flaws).

I do think that it's YS was trying to deliver far more than he could, and that falls on his lap (well, it's actually the producers job to keep a project on track, but in this case YS seemed to be the responsible while Shibuya kept a hands off approach).

But honestly, anyone that even sees a written synopsis of the game can see the game narrative faults.

 

[Sh3ppy]

The thing is that while it's actually "true" that if they had more money they could hire better writers, it's an inconsequential point for many reasons:
- They could also have hired amateur writers and pay them next to nothing and hypothetically also get a better script.

You can make any argument you like when you tack on the word “hypothetically”, so this particular point doesn’t quite hold water with me.
There’s a reason why professionals (in any given industry, including scriptwriters), cost more. That being because they are probably more experienced and have had proven successful results. Having the story previously planned out doesn’t equate having the script and in-game implementation figured out. And again, we know that because of budgetary reasons they had to cut out chunks of the game which would have had an impact on the preplanned narrative.

So using the argument that “more money” can be used as a bit of a cop out (which is true to a certain extent), it’s probably more so the case for, “well hypothetically...”

 

[shredingskin]

It's also hypothetical that more and more expensive writers could do a better job (again, most of the better written games are just made by indies and newcomers, there having more writers can be more of a nuisance than a help and create a new array of problems.
It's hypothetical that with if S3 had more budget YS would spend it in the story and not just refining gameplay/animations/models or adding more content.

We don't really know if it's actually bad writers, or that they overshoot the project (because they had more budget) and had to create a coherent narrative by chopping up pieces to make a somewhat coherent piece.

It's sad because the "good stuff" is mostly there, I can find many ways to piece the same information (or resources) and make a better narrative than what we got.

On the other hand, it seems that "finding Shenhua's father" was always supposed to be the whole story-arc of the game, even if you can make the inbetween more interesting.

 

[spud1897]

On the other hand, it seems that "finding Shenhua's father" was always supposed to be the whole story-arc of the game, even if you can make the inbetween more interesting.

Which fits the premise of the other 2 games.

Shenmue 1: Find Lan Di/Gang

Shenmue 2: Find Yuanda Zhu

On their own probably don't amount to much but the execution of such, with added story/character telling is what makes them great. Shenmue III just needed some filling out around the main arc and it would have been OK. The game itself is a good game IMO

 

[iknifaugood]

You can make any argument you like when you tack on the word “hypothetically”, so this particular point doesn’t quite hold water with me.
There’s a reason why professionals (in any given industry, including scriptwriters), cost more. That being because they are probably more experienced and have had proven successful results.

Disco Elysium, Planescape Torment, Firewatch, Hellblade, Stanley Parable, Inside etc. are all games with similar or lower budgets than Shenmue 3 that have orders of magnitude better writing and/or storytelling. This notion that it requires expensive writers is nonsense; the basic plot of S3 is full of incongruities and lacks proper dramatic stakes, hiring Aaron Sorkin to write the dialogue wouldn't fix that.

And again, we know that because of budgetary reasons they had to cut out chunks of the game which would have had an impact on the preplanned narrative.

Sure, the quantity of the story is affected by the budget, which is why we're somehow only at 40% after 3 entries, but the quality of the story isn't. S3 had an entire area cut due to budget, it had you chasing thugs with no names for 90% of the game due to bad writing.

On the other hand, it seems that "finding Shenhua's father" was always supposed to be the whole story-arc of the game, even if you can make the inbetween more interesting.

This also depends largely on how much control Suzuki insisted on maintaining, there are certain beats the story needs to hit to adhere to his plan and those, frankly, might not be very compelling story developments. We'll see.

 

[Sh3ppy]

Disco Elysium, Planescape Torment, Firewatch, Hellblade, Stanley Parable, Inside etc. are all games with similar or lower budgets than Shenmue 3 that have orders of magnitude better writing and/or storytelling. This notion that it requires expensive writers is nonsense;

Man, I’ve said so many times that a game doesn’t necessarily need a high budget to be good, script wise or in any other aspect. For the umpteenth time It’s not what I’m saying ffs. And I don’t think anyone else is either. You’re either being purposely obtuse this to make a non-existent argument or your eyes need checking mate. So yes, claiming a game needs super expensive writers to be good is nonsense. And for the last time, I never said it wasn’t. Cool? Glad we have that cleared up now.

 

[Sh3ppy]

Couldn’t resist.

 

[iknifaugood]

Man, I’ve said so many times that a game doesn’t necessarily need a high budget to be good, script wise or in any other aspect. For the umpteenth time It’s not what I’m saying ffs. And I don’t think anyone else is either. You’re either being purposely obtuse this to make a non-existent argument or your eyes need checking mate. So yes, claiming a game needs super expensive writers to be good is nonsense. And for the last time, I never said it wasn’t. Cool? Glad we have that cleared up now.

You just replied to a guy who was talking about how budget is no excuse for bad writing by citing that it was only a hypothetical that less expensive writers could produce a better story and you emphasized that expensive writers command their prices for a reason (hence the reason I took it out of the realm of hypothetical and cited examples). If you're not trying to argue that budget = writing quality then you're at the very least doing a really good impression of that argument.

So just to clarify: what are you saying is the reason for S3's bad writing?

 

[Sh3ppy]

You just replied to a guy who was talking about how budget is no excuse for bad writing by citing that it was only a hypothetical that less expensive writers could produce a better story and you emphasized that expensive writers command their prices for a reason (hence the reason I took it out of the realm of hypothetical and cited examples). If you're not trying to argue that budget = writing quality then you're at the very least doing a really good impression of that argument.

So just to clarify: what are you saying is the reason for S3's bad writing?

My god man. My point the whole time has been that the execution of s3’s story could very well have been improved with better resources. Large parts of the game and narrative were likely cut because of lack of resources. I believe that there’s a good chance a number of people’s main complaints would have been addressed were Yu to have had access to a more seasoned, ‘better’ team. That’s it.

I replied to the poster you mentioned when he said that hypothetically amateur writers could do a better job than seasoned writers. That’s it.

At NO point have I said a game needs to have a AAA budget to be good. In some circumstances games would benefit from more experienced people being involved. Again, this isn’t a blanket statement. That’s what you seem to be having a hard time grasping here.

I mean, I don’t know how else I can put such a simple point across without it being turned into something I never expressed.

 

[iknifaugood]

My god man. My point the whole time has been that the execution of s3’s story could very well have been improved with better resources. Large parts of the game and narrative were likely cut because of lack of resources. I believe that there’s a good chance a number of people’s main complaints would have been addressed were Yu to have had access to a more seasoned, ‘better’ team. That’s it.

Yes, better developers would have made a better game. But if the lead designer with the story planned out is telling you to develop a game about chasing down nameless thugs then that's what you're going to make and it's not going to be good. That's the part where I think our wires are getting crossed. What I'm saying is that S3 could easily have been about Ryo learning about the CYM and chasing after Niao Sun (or something else interesting) using the exact same resources; instead it's about the stupid Red Snakes and bosses that no one can remember the names of for seemingly no reason.

I replied to the poster you mentioned when he said that hypothetically amateur writers could do a better job than seasoned writers. That’s it.

That's not what he said. He said that amateur writers could have written a better story than what we got.

At NO point have I said a game needs to have a AAA budget to be good.

At no point did anyone say this. In fact @shredingskin said the precise opposite (which I happen to agree with).

In some circumstances games would benefit from more experienced people being involved. Again, this isn’t a blanket statement. That’s what you seem to be having a hard time grasping here.

I'm having a hard time grasping how in a thread titled "why the story is bad/good", when people are describing why the story is bad and how it could easily have been better under identical circumstances, your response is "if Suzuki had access to better resources then the story would have been better", and then you flip out when that is mistaken for more money = better story.

 

[spud1897]

Move the conversation on or take it to PM

 

[GhostTrick]

We can discuss why the story in Shenmue III is good or bad in the sense of "what did they do right or what did they do wrong". But to guess "Why they did it wrong" is another matter.

You can make amazing stories on a tight budget. But you can also have a bad story because you were limited on budget. It all comes down to what you prioritize.

But it also come down to how talented your staff is. In that case, it's hard to say if it was a problem of talent or budget. Maybe both.

What I'm wondering though is where are they going forward.

In a sense, I believe Shenmue III story suffered from a budget perspective because they tried to do everything with limited means, which means they're excellent at nothing.

But that means a sequel wouldn't need a big budget since most of the game systems are already built... On the other hand... I dont see Shenmue IV getting a bigger budget. In fact, I see it getting a smaller budget. And if anything, even with older assets, there's still new environnements to build.

It's rather tricky in the end. Even though I keep my opinion on the matter: Instead of trying to do everything, maybe they should drop some things and prioritize others.