Shenmue 3
- Thread starter SegaR&D
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Holy resurrection, Batman!
Century even. Will it cost 70 million dollars to make again?
The actor (voice and motion) that played Ryo in the Dreamcast games. The amount of work they put into the motion capture - at the time completely unmatched - is still pretty amazing.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/130940386
Doing full contact stunt work (including being pulled around by rope for reaction shots) while doing motion capture is pretty full on. The actor even studied the martial art that Ryo was supposed to do. I guess being the creator of 3D fighting games meant Yu Suzuki was ideally placed to tackle the only Kung-Fu epic that anyone's tried to make...
https://player.vimeo.com/video/130940386
Doing full contact stunt work (including being pulled around by rope for reaction shots) while doing motion capture is pretty full on. The actor even studied the martial art that Ryo was supposed to do. I guess being the creator of 3D fighting games meant Yu Suzuki was ideally placed to tackle the only Kung-Fu epic that anyone's tried to make...
What? Is this some kind of guinness erecord?
It's difficult to sum the game up briefly because it tried to do so much.
It's a Ryo Hazuki simulator set in an incredibly detailed and time-driven world. It's strangely realistic but has an emerging fantasy kung-fu epic plot. It's virtual tourism mixed with revenge seeking. It swings between light-hearted and gentle and dark and brutal.
The big thing it achieves is a feeling that the world doesn't exist just to make you feel like a badass. The world feels like it would go on and exist without you. The first game in particular goes much farther than the second (or any game I've ever encountered) to achieve this. Shenmue 1 passport disk was a real "wtf" moment in game detail. Backstory and blood type for every single NPC in the game.
I sometimes get nostalgic for Christmas in Yukosuka, and wish I had a job as a forklift truck driver.
It's the most ambitious console game that ever made it to release, bar none. What they were trying to do in the late 90s was insane.
It's a Ryo Hazuki simulator set in an incredibly detailed and time-driven world. It's strangely realistic but has an emerging fantasy kung-fu epic plot. It's virtual tourism mixed with revenge seeking. It swings between light-hearted and gentle and dark and brutal.
The big thing it achieves is a feeling that the world doesn't exist just to make you feel like a badass. The world feels like it would go on and exist without you. The first game in particular goes much farther than the second (or any game I've ever encountered) to achieve this. Shenmue 1 passport disk was a real "wtf" moment in game detail. Backstory and blood type for every single NPC in the game.
I sometimes get nostalgic for Christmas in Yukosuka, and wish I had a job as a forklift truck driver.
It's the most ambitious console game that ever made it to release, bar none. What they were trying to do in the late 90s was insane.
It's not mature in the sense of "sex and violence", it's mature in its outlook and the value it places on lives. There aren't many murders committed on screen, and Ryo himself isn't a killer - he is unambiguously a good guy who will have to face up eventually to the fact he wants to kill someone. Will he do it? I guess we'll find out now ....
Most video games claim to be "adult" but are decidedly adolescent in the way they present themselves. Shenmue is about an adolescent who is becoming an adult.
Knowing Suzuki and how he is obsessed with perfection (never mind Shenmue, Ferrari F355 on dreamcast is a good assessment), I fear working on 2 versions is already too much for him.
To be fair, he's shipped loads of boundary-pushing games in realistic timescales. He didn't just have to invent approaches and in-game systems, he's even invented (at least!) one genre with the 3D fighter and he got all the essentials right first time.
He also headed up the tech team that nearly saved the Saturn by providing its multicore friendly graphics libraries (he tried to get Sega to not release the Saturn as he knew it was the wrong hardware but he was overruled), in addition to creating specifications for real-time 3D leading arcade boards, and he played a significant part in the development of the Dreamcast itself.
Yu Suzuki is a force of nature. He has pioneered and perfected like a boss, and I hope he continues trying to innovate with Shenmue 3. I don't want fan nostalgia to hold him back. Keep taking those chances, Yu!
I'm also really happy to see Sony - who were a major factor in the downfall of the Dreamcast (his favourite console of all time) - being so enthusiastic to see him continue making games and on their platform. That's really cool.
He also headed up the tech team that nearly saved the Saturn by providing its multicore friendly graphics libraries (he tried to get Sega to not release the Saturn as he knew it was the wrong hardware but he was overruled), in addition to creating specifications for real-time 3D leading arcade boards, and he played a significant part in the development of the Dreamcast itself.
Yu Suzuki is a force of nature. He has pioneered and perfected like a boss, and I hope he continues trying to innovate with Shenmue 3. I don't want fan nostalgia to hold him back. Keep taking those chances, Yu!
I'm also really happy to see Sony - who were a major factor in the downfall of the Dreamcast (his favourite console of all time) - being so enthusiastic to see him continue making games and on their platform. That's really cool.
Sega was to blame for the downfall of Sega and their products. Look at how tragic they've been as a software company after they stopped producing hardware.
The 'blame' certainly goes to Sega, but Sony were a brutal and incredibly well funded opponent.
Not quite as nasty as Nintendo used to be, but certainly poster campaigns outside events such as "If you buy a Saturn then your head is up Uranus" and paying Eidos to scrap Saturn Tomb Raider 2, aren't in line with how I think of their games division now.
When Sega left hardware they turned away from their strengths, whored out Sonic, and continually reorganised until all their teams had lost their identity and coherency.
What's great about Shenmue 3 is that Yu Suzuki seems to have been able to put together quite a lot of the original, core team (Producer, Lead Programmer, Character Artist, Environment Artist, Composer, Japanese Voice and Motion Actor) and more will probably be joining.
That would seem unlikely if the Sega of today were making it.
Not quite as nasty as Nintendo used to be, but certainly poster campaigns outside events such as "If you buy a Saturn then your head is up Uranus" and paying Eidos to scrap Saturn Tomb Raider 2, aren't in line with how I think of their games division now.
When Sega left hardware they turned away from their strengths, whored out Sonic, and continually reorganised until all their teams had lost their identity and coherency.
What's great about Shenmue 3 is that Yu Suzuki seems to have been able to put together quite a lot of the original, core team (Producer, Lead Programmer, Character Artist, Environment Artist, Composer, Japanese Voice and Motion Actor) and more will probably be joining.
That would seem unlikely if the Sega of today were making it.
D
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I only played Shenmue 1 and one of the things that I really remember was the fact it was kind of a cross between Virtua Fighter and an RPG (it's possible my memory is hazy though); and that's never been done since. From what I recall it was almost exactly Virtua Fighter when getting into a fight. I really hope they can keep those machanics for the third game.
It was also a cross between a forklift truck simulator and an RPG at one point too - they can drop that stuff for the third game
IIRC, Yu Suzuki first came up with idea of "Virtua Fighter RPG" around the time of VF2. It was actually going to feature characters from VF. As the idea developed that link was broken, but other ideas like journey through the martial arts of Japan and China continued. The fighting was an attempt to bring VF like mechanics into a fully 3D battle against multiple opponents. That made it feel clunky at first, but when you got used to it felt great using complex manoeuvres to see of several people at once!
Hell no! The forklift was difficult to get the hang of but when it clicked you could hurl boxes around like a mofo. Really precise and you could really snap it round. It's like F355 (sort of!) in that when you understand how it works the game suddenly goes from being a bind to being really enjoyable. Well, it was for me anyway ... and the forklift racing was unreasonably good fun when you got the handling.
Not sure how he's going to work a forklift truck in 1980s rural China though ....
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