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Why the story in Shenmue 3 is good/Why the story in Shenmue 3 is bad
- Thread starter mjqjazzbar
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It seems there is also a problem that "open world games" is used too broadly and does not really define at all a genre.
Open world is a gameplay element and we are comparing too many games that do not try to achieve the same end result or player experience. For example sleeping it is not an issue on GTA or Assassin Creed because simulating lifelike experience that is not the focus of the experience and it does not add anything. However, there are games like STALKER that because it was kinda a dealbreaking people added it as a mod to give them better immersion.
Shenmue, project zomboid and even stardew valley or the Sims gets enhanced with sleeping mechanism because it reinforces the life simulation aspect of the game which is psuedo unrelated to the open world aspect of it and honestly they would be weird without it.
OFC this is a story and narrative thread so I would gladly drop this line of discussion after this post. I APOLOGISE for this side topic.
Open world is a gameplay element and we are comparing too many games that do not try to achieve the same end result or player experience. For example sleeping it is not an issue on GTA or Assassin Creed because simulating lifelike experience that is not the focus of the experience and it does not add anything. However, there are games like STALKER that because it was kinda a dealbreaking people added it as a mod to give them better immersion.
Shenmue, project zomboid and even stardew valley or the Sims gets enhanced with sleeping mechanism because it reinforces the life simulation aspect of the game which is psuedo unrelated to the open world aspect of it and honestly they would be weird without it.
OFC this is a story and narrative thread so I would gladly drop this line of discussion after this post. I APOLOGISE for this side topic.
B-Man
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Yeah, he's really reaching now to try to justify his hatred for this game.
This guy literally joined the forum a few days after Shenmue III was released and has done nothing but trash the game and explain why he also thinks that Shenmue I is a bad game.
@iknifaugood, I really don't understand what you're doing on a Shenmue fan forum when you think that two thirds of the series is bad. It's obvious that the series will never be what you want it to be, so you'd might as well just enjoy Shenmue II and stop worrying about the rest of it.
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You're literally on a thread titled WHY THE STORY IN SHENMUE 3 IS GOOD/BAD and you're surprised that someone is explaining why it's bad? You've done this on a couple of threads now and it makes no sense to me, it's not like I'm on some part of the forum where people are sucking the game's dick and trying to ruin their fun. How about instead of complaining about people complaining, you do as the title of this thread suggests and explain why the story was actually good.
Shenmue 1 gets a pass for its time, I thought it showed great potential but its flaws (wasting time IRL, padding out story that's obviously just supposed to be a prologue) have not been sweetened by time and on my latest play through before S3, I arrived at the conclusion that there is more bad than good in that game. I would still rather play it 1000 times than touch S3 ever again. Conversely, S2 is a masterpiece and one of my favorite games of all time, it delivered on all the potential that S1 hinted at. I am truly baffled that anyone who loved S2 could consider S3 a worthy follow up and I have been on this forum to understand why (turns out many do not).
What does that even mean? 90% of Star Wars fans complain about 2/3rds of that series. You think you're gonna see nothing but a bunch of love letters to Rise of Skywalker on Star Wars forums? Welcome to the internet, where people complain about dumb stuff.
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B-Man
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How many of those fans think that the original Star Wars had potential but was a fundamentally bad movie? Also, how many Star Wars movies have had major budget constraints?
Back to the topic at hand, your complaint about Ryo playing hide and seek is ridiculous. It's not like he saw a bunch of kids and said "Hey, I should play hide and seek with them!" Perhaps you would have found it more engaging if he had gone to Sunflower Grove, asked somebody a question, got the answer, and left? It at least made that part of the game more fun and interesting.
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First of all, there are plenty of people who complain about Episode 4 especially by modern standards (idiots, but they exist). Second, I don't see what this has to do with anything. What does it matter which 1/3rd of the franchise you like?
Fair, but that does not forgive S3 of its most egregious sins. Plenty of similar better games have been made for less.
No, I would have found it more engaging if when we found out the premise of the game was "Shenhua's father has been kidnapped and the kidnappers are after the other stonemasons still in the village!" Ryo immediately scoured the village for the stonemasons and the kidnappers. Instead, he meanders around refusing to go to certain places in a tiny village until he has talked to enough people. Alternately, if they wanted the story to be more slow paced they could have had the kidnappers no longer be in the village and Ryo would have to piece together what happened.
Instead they tried to have their cake and eat it too, which resulted in the insane mess we see in S3 where we have stakes that should feel urgent and imminent but a story that is slow and takes its time over several days/weeks. This is all exacerbated by the fact that this story has supposedly been planned out for 20+ years.
It is really unfair comparing S2 to S3 when budget, number of people on the team and engine situation/development pipelines are completly different for those 2 games.
If you really thought S3 would have the same level of polish in story and gameplay then I believe your expectations were too high and that might be one of the causes of your disappointment.
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I have no desire to re-litigate this as it has been discussed elsewhere on the forum but no, my expectations for S3 were not high, no I was not expecting it to be as good as S2, and no, the budget isn't immediately an excuse for everything wrong with S3. I dislike S3 entirely on its own merits (or lack thereof); the only reason I even finished it was because it was the follow up to S2--were it a standalone game, I would've stopped playing as soon as I saw that running around kills the protagonist.
B-Man
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It's a bit different when that third is just a single entry as opposed to an entire trilogy. I guess what I should have asked is how many Star Wars fans that incessantly complain about the latest movies dislike the original trilogy?
You seem awfully obsessed with Shenmue III considering that you only ever liked one of the two games in the franchise to begin with. You should just accept that you only like Shenmue II and move on with your life already.
So again, I ask what you're even doing here. If you love Shenmue II so much, why did you never join to discuss that game? Your sole purpose on these forums is to talk about how much you hate Shenmue III, which you've already done ad nauseam. Will it ever end? This is supposed to be a Shenmue fan forum, but your entire presence here is predicated on negativity.
It sounds like you already wasted your time playing the game, since you clearly like nothing about it. I guess you're determined to waste the rest of your life complaining about it now.
Sounds familiar...
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Except it doesn’t. Kill the protagonist that is.
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More time has passed between Shenmue 2 and 3's release than either of the 3 trilogies so this comparison is super unhelpful. Besides that, many people considered Return of the Jedi to be a downright bad movie before any other Star Wars movie was ever made. And if the equivalent of the "original trilogy" is S1 and 2 then I still like 3/4 chapters of it.
Ya but I really like that second game, it's probably my favorite game ever and the potential shown in the Project Berkley video is also very exciting. You seem to be ignoring the fact that many people in a very small fanbase dislike S3.
I was a part of this forum many moons ago when Shenmue Online was announced and I've discussed S2 and why it's brilliant on other threads. You should ask yourself why you keep looking at threads that are discussing criticism of S3 and then getting all pissy that users are criticizing S3. You think I like that S3 was terrible? This was the one chance to widen the audience and it may have done the exact opposite, to say nothing of the future of the franchise.
On the off chance that S4 gets made I want it to be known that storytelling of the kind we saw in S2 is of the utmost importance, not forklift driving. The fan's voices were heard and got a lot of stupid stuff shoehorned into S3 so clearly it makes a difference.
If you're implying that I'm an idiot for disliking that Shenmue 1 makes you waste time IRL on multiple occasions and draws its meager story out to lengths it can't sustain then you're going to have to explain to me why those things are good. And explain why S3's story is good while you're at it.
I was very slightly exaggerating. It takes the protagonist down to about 10% health making fights all but impossible on the first try and is the single stupidest design choice in a game about exploring environments that I've ever seen in a (semi) high-profile game.
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B-Man
Joined: July 2003
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I was actually considering Shenmue I the equivalent of the original trilogy, since you compared yourself to Star Wars fans who dislike two thirds of the franchise. And you're the one that brought up the whole Star Wars comparison to begin with, so don't blame me for it being unhelpful.
I acknowledge that many fans dislike Shenmue III. I don't think many of them dislike Shenmue I as well though.
And I still don't know why you have such a hard on for the Project Berkley video. Yes, the story is important and Shenmue III did not completely deliver on that front. But it is also a game, an experience if you will. On its own, the Shenmue story would be nothing special. I'd rather have what we got, with the potential for more story emphasis in Shenmue IV, than a visual novel or a Telltale-style game. I actually like those types of games by the way, but Shenmue would lose what makes it special if it turned into one of them.
Fair enough, but I also feel that all the negativity from within Shenmue's own fanbase hurts the chances of Shenmue IV ever existing.
First of all, I don't mind that you dislike certain aspects of Shenmue I. What bothers me is that those things make you think it's a "fundamentally bad game." I find it hard to understand how anyone who loves Shenmue II as much as you do can consider its predecessor a bad game, considering how similar they really are.
But if you want, I can explain why those things are good. Making you wait for things encourages exploration, talking to NPCs, playing mini-games, etc. It also just helps to give the game a special feel, as it adds to the immersion and contributes to the life simulation aspects and the feeling of an actual living, breathing world. There was no other game like it, and I still don't think there is today.
I never actually said that III's story was good. I agree that it's the weakest part of the game and that it's the weakest story of the franchise. But I don't think that it's terrible either. There's just not enough of it, and some things that were there were not fleshed out enough. It also could have done with more attention to the first two games by the localizers, so as to avoid continuity errors.
But people need to cut the game some slack. Ys Net was shackled by the budget, as well as the crowdfunded nature of the game which meant that they had to try to keep their promises about the stretch goals, implement the in-game backer rewards, etc. It was also the first major game that Yu Suzuki had worked on in many years and he had to create a Shenmue gameplay engine using UE4. I'm sure he originally intended for there to be more story, but ran out of time and resources.
Anyway, I'll admit that I was triggered when I originally saw you say that Shenmue I was a bad game. I apologize to everyone for derailing the thread. You're entitled to your opinions and I won't criticize them anymore.
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It wasn't to directly compare Shenmue to Star Wars, simply to illustrate the point that there are many fandoms that dislike some or even most of the content of their chosen franchise. Shenmue seems to be the only one where that's considered weird for some reason.
On its own the gameplay is nothing special. Especially in Shenmue 1 and 3, there's very little to do when it isn't tied to the story, it's mostly walking around talking to people and sometimes performing minigames to earn money. If you don't care for the story or the mysteries of Shenmue then I have to ask why on earth you'd care about the series continuing?
I think Shenmue lost quite a bit of what made it special with S3. I agree that a visual novel would be bad but I would greatly have preferred a TT style adventure game with lots of story compared to what we got.
Fair enough. There may be an element of truth to this, but I don't think it's good to pretend that the things that are bad about S3 are actually good, especially concerning the story.
Why do people like Lord of the Rings and dislike the Hobbit? I firmly believe that Shenmue 1 and 2 should've existed as 1 game with the filler cut out of S1 and every time I replay it it becomes more apparent to me. I think story is important so S1 being a drawn out prologue starts things off on the wrong note: to this day people think Shenmue is that weird Japanese life simulator, not the martial arts epic it purports to be.
I kind of hear that except that when you have to wait till the next day there are almost no leads to explore (because you can't choose what to talk about) and playing minigames is just kind of encouraging the player to waste time and especially nowadays, it encourages playing a different game on your phone or browsing the internet, which is probably why most games don't do it.
True. Apologies as well. I don't dislike S1 entirely; there's a lot I really love about the game: Yokosuka is one of the great real world environments created in a game, it still has my all time favorite scene in the series (the Hazuki Basement), and some really strong character work.
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To be honest, the pace of Shenmue1 is mostly what makes it (for me)
less interesting than sh2 to replay-through, in its entirety.
Interestingly, though, having a more relaxed plot
helps/forces you more to notice and enjoy little details.
(Having less clear and urgent objectives leads to creativity in enjoying little nothings.)
-> people that like the little touches are, definitely, loving doing that.
Now :
I can't help but feel that Sh3's story is so thin, because :
It is better to save sweets for when everything is fine.
Trying to make the story richer might have turned it sour
and, most importantly, might have ruined it entirely,
if the epic story planned had failed hard, because of engine/programming shortcoming.
And, yes, I claim this, without having played the game.
But, Shenmue3 s in the same places as a few games I can talk about :
Golden Sun Dark Dawn, TloZ Wind Waker, Pokemon Ruby-Shaphire, ...
Those are good games, that are not the most great, but stay good.
(Because, it's not hard to imagine the potential they hold, when iterated upon.)
The best instance being pokemon Emerald, that showcase how great gen3 can be.
To sum it up :
I want to keep believing that Sh3 story-afinity is lackluster, for the greater good.
less interesting than sh2 to replay-through, in its entirety.
Interestingly, though, having a more relaxed plot
helps/forces you more to notice and enjoy little details.
(Having less clear and urgent objectives leads to creativity in enjoying little nothings.)
-> people that like the little touches are, definitely, loving doing that.
Now :
I can't help but feel that Sh3's story is so thin, because :
It is better to save sweets for when everything is fine.
Trying to make the story richer might have turned it sour
and, most importantly, might have ruined it entirely,
if the epic story planned had failed hard, because of engine/programming shortcoming.
And, yes, I claim this, without having played the game.
But, Shenmue3 s in the same places as a few games I can talk about :
Golden Sun Dark Dawn, TloZ Wind Waker, Pokemon Ruby-Shaphire, ...
Those are good games, that are not the most great, but stay good.
(Because, it's not hard to imagine the potential they hold, when iterated upon.)
The best instance being pokemon Emerald, that showcase how great gen3 can be.
To sum it up :
I want to keep believing that Sh3 story-afinity is lackluster, for the greater good.
BruceWayne911
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- Shenmue II
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- Yakuza Kiwami 2
I think one big mistake going on here is that you can't take everything so serious. It's a video game. The fact that a section of the map has been cutoff by bad guys who have taken a man hostage is a minor thing. The more shocking part is you have to buy expensive wine, practice horse stance and chase chickens to learn one move that can beat said bad guy(in a few days lol).
In Yakuza 0 you are literally the most wanted man in Japan but yet you still have time to race RC cars, karaoke, arcade games, etc. Its a video game.
In Yakuza 0 you are literally the most wanted man in Japan but yet you still have time to race RC cars, karaoke, arcade games, etc. Its a video game.
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If the gameplay is nothing special in 1 then surely it's nothing special in 2 as well? It seems you just don't like the thought of your favourite "masterpiece" being put in the same basket as other games in the series, no matter what the criteria.
Or the most obvious conclusion: the series is a weird life simulator and a martial arts epic, and you only like one of those things.
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- Nov 23, 2019
Why do people love Final Fantasy 7 and not 8? Why do people love Halo 3 and not Halo 4? Why do people love Resident Evil 4 and not Resident Evil 6? The context a game takes place within almost matters more than the actual gameplay mechanics. Shenmue is like an adventure game, the gameplay isn't anything special, it exists in service of the story which is why the best adventure games (Gabriel Knight, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, Walking Dead etc.) are the ones that focus on their stories, characters, and worlds, not gameplay gimmicks.
Shenmue 2 fixes the waiting and pacing issues with Shenmue 1 and moves the story at a much greater pace. In my playthrough of all 3 games last year, S2 took the least amount of time to complete, 15hrs (getting all the achievements) compared to S1's 20hrs and S3's 25hrs. Yet no one on this forum disputes that S2 both tells the best story and tells the most story; this implies that the other games take more time to tell less story and, coincidentally, my main complaint with S1 and 3 (though if I haven't made it clear, S1 is nowhere near as bad as 3) is that they disrespect the player's time.
First of all, I very clearly said Japanese life simulator, because S1 fails to properly convey the overall scope of the story (many people still view it as a simple revenge story, not an 11 chapter epic). Second of all, how presumptuous is that? I like both aspects of Shenmue; when done well they work to strengthen all aspects of the game (finding the Wude in S2 leads to great story moments, has Ryo explore the map, slows the gameplay down for a good reason, and introduces cool characters), when done poorly (asking neighbors about a black car or asking villagers about thugs) it leads to wasted time as Ryo travels from objective to objective that we know isn't going to lead anywhere, so we're just waiting for the plot to correct itself (in S1 when Ryo gets the letter and in S3... uh... when Ryo goes to the castle?). All involve the player running around pressing A on things.
Yes S2 has moments that exist solely to waste the player's time, no it's not perfect, but it's the best example of a Shenmue game that currently exists.
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Yes, but this thread is discussing why the story is bad, so everything that makes the story bad from the premise, to the execution, to the roadblocks is fair game imo.
True, obviously Ryo telling the player he's not going to go to the area of the tiny village where the thugs are because that would cause the story to advance too quickly is not as bad as having to grind out $2K for wine (and then $5K for a move). But both are still bad.
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I do find it interesting how someone can hate a gameplay mechanic so much that it goes a long way towards ruining the game for them. And then you get people like me, at the opposite end of the spectrum who would be disappointed if the stamina aspect was dropped in IV.
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There were parts in S2, both in HK and Kowloon where you were made to grind for money to advance the story too.