Fyonn
did their best!
So, as all my threads seem to start, I recently bought one of those nice Retro Fighters Dreamcast controllers because my existing Dreamcast controller wasn't doing so hot. And for that matter, neither was my Dreamcast, so I ended up getting a GDemu to replace the G-Drive. Naturally, the best game to test both these things with was a game I had been waiting for years to finally get my hands on. You guessed it, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Oratio Tangram. Problem is that game controls like ass. Like, worst control schemes imaginable and it has like six of them. Then I played Frame Gride for a bit, which is like Virtual-On if it had a baby with Armored Core (makes sense, since it's made by From Software) and Escaflowne. But I didn't play it for long, because I already went through the grind of alchemizing new accessories and pawns for my Squire via emulator in the past. (When's Frame Gride 2, From Software???)
Now, if you've read the thread's title, you probably know that I started playing Shenmue after that. I'm a huge Yakuza fan, you see, so huge that I've only played one of them because if I play any more of them I won't be able to look forward to playing them anymore. It's very complicated, but suffice it to say that I think Yakuza Kiwami is easily one of the best games ever made, top five - maybe top three. I also played Shenmue once, briefly, as a teen, where it was thoroughly incomprehensible. I don't think I ever even managed to get to a fight? I definitely got to the QTE versus the conspicuously American sailors, though. And I've watched SuperGreatFriend's LPs of both Shenmue and Shenmue 2, so I knew what I was getting into this time.
Shenmue is one of the best and worst games ever made. It is so precisely simultaneously the best and worst video game that it balances out to becoming the world's most average video game, even. Everything that makes Shenmue cool and everything that makes Shenmue awful is the result of one rock solid fact: Shenmue is the least video game it can possibly be. Even though Ryo is remarkably naive to pull it off more frequently, fights only happen in Shenmue when it makes sense in the plot for fights to happen. Often the enemies you face in a fight have been present in previous cutscenes or conversations, and often they show up in the game later, too.
When it comes time for Ryo to find an hidden object in his family dojo, there's no quest marker or glowy thing you press the A button on. No, Ryo can laboriously open every single drawer and cabinet, take every single picture and wall scroll off the walls to check behind them, and pick up every pot and basket to look inside them. And this is a skill that the game eventually tests you for when you do find the path to the hidden object - there's an entire room full of stuff that you have to guide Ryo through exhaustively checking every little thing. When you discover what it is you need to do, it isn't weird or unintuitive that you need to zoom in on the thing in first person to be able to notice a thing so you can take an action with a different thing - that's just the level of detail Ryo can interact with the world at all the time.
Shenmue is the first open world game in some respects. It's not literally the first open world game, I'm sure tons pre-date it on PC, and I'm nearly 100% sure TES Arena, TES Daggerfall, GTA 1, GTA 2, and a huge swath of the Ultima series pre-date it. But Shenmue is the first open world game in the sense that it has no idea what an open world game should be, only what it can be. Almost by default, Shenmue had to be the Most open world game. Shenmue had no way of knowing what parts of "having an adventure in the 80s" was important, so it modeled every aspect of having an adventure in the 80s. Ryo has to talk to people to figure out what he needs to do next, he's surrounded by people who are alarmed and worried that he's steering his life into extreme danger, the cost of existing in the world is a constant concern, and sometimes there are days where Ryo just has to kill a bunch of time waiting for his next opportunity to act.
Adventures aren't fun, not real ones - they're stressful and shitty and stressful and painful and tedious and stressful. Sure, sometimes you get into a fight, and that's exciting, but you're usually outnumbered and it sucks because you're a naive kid trying to take on the world alone and you don't have practical street fighting experience or any options for crowd control because, like, do you have any options for crowd control? What's the status of your wide attack combo? Do you have a wide attack combo? I'm guessing you don't. Sure, Ryo's a martial artist, but like, four dudes are still three more dudes than Ryo is.
Shenmue is tiny compared to the majority of open world games (though probably not much smaller than Yakuza 1, at least), but that space Shenmue occupies is so massively detailed. Did you know that not only does Shenmue have a 24-hour cycle (well, more like 14 hour cycle because Ryo's bedtime is non-negotiable), but every day it snows or rains is 100% accurate to the real-world weather in Yokosuka in 1986? Because it is. Also, Shenmue has exactly 250 NPCs and they're all unique, they're all voice-acted, and they all have schedules they follow. 250. Later, Deadly Premonition would become a cult classic for having this level of detail with a significantly smaller set of NPCs.
The real reason I think Shenmue is the first and most open world game is that it is archetypal of the problems a game acquires when it metamorphoses into the open world genre. When I look at Shenmue struggling under its own weight and costing more than it could ever make back, I can't help but think of Final Fantasy XV, a game that tries to paint a world-spanning adventure like its predecessors into an un-abstracted physical space that's about the size of the town I live in. The thing that means Shenmue, the series, will never be finished is the same thing that means Final Fantasy XV, the game, will never feel like it's more than gesturing at what could have been.
My time with Shenmue 1 is over. I got to the bit with the forklifts. And Shenmue models "having a tedious job" so accurately that the idea of having to do forklift stuff a second time was actively depressing to me. I've seen SuperGreatFriend's let's play of Shenmue (and Shenmue 2), so this wasn't a great loss. It's a shame that Shenmue 3 is, by all accounts I've heard, pretty bad and actively worse than Shenmue 2, because Shenmue 2 has been brilliant so far. Shenmue 2 found solutions to Shenmue 1's problems without taking out what made Shenmue Shenmue. You can get a minimap now, and mark stuff on it! But you do actually need to buy a map of the local area to have that, and maybe that's money you can't spare right now.
Speaking of money, you can now ask anyone you meet on the street for the way to the nearest pawnshop, gambling corner, or side gig. And Shenmue 2's core of "How do I find THING? I should ask people about THING," is not only present, but enhanced with more detailed instructions despite there being a larger space to explore and sometimes NPCs will just straight-up lead you to places you need to be without a quest marker or glowing arrow in sight. Ryo uses the same navigational skills in Hong Kong that you might use in Hong Kong in the era before smartphone GPS. And every single line of dialogue is voiced.
I think the single biggest thing that has made Yakuza profitable where Shenmue was not doesn't have to do with Yakuza's better combat, better characters, or better stories, but rather that Yakuza isn't dedicated to having voice dialogue for every single character. In an age where abstraction is a faux pas in the eyes of AAA venture capitalist suits who have never actually understood video games, Yakuza understands what is important about open world games, and knows what can be abstracted at no loss to the final product. Shenmue didn't. And Shenmue doesn't. That's why I think there won't be a Shenmue 4. And yet the clear passion and love in the work that Yu Suzuki and the Shenmue dev teams had and have for the craft is why I think it's heart-breaking there won't be a Shenmue 4.
Thanks, as always, for reading my slightly rambling thoughts on video games.
Addendum:
It is deeply funny to me how rapidly Joy adopts fledgling Ryo. She takes one look at that boy and goes "Mmhm, this adventure himbo is my himbo now, thanks." Equally funny is how utterly oblivious Ryo is to the fact that he has been adopted. Where's the Shenmue side game where we play as Joy and learn how she knows literally everyone in Hong Kong. She has so very clearly done a bunch of Protagonisting herself in the past.
Now, if you've read the thread's title, you probably know that I started playing Shenmue after that. I'm a huge Yakuza fan, you see, so huge that I've only played one of them because if I play any more of them I won't be able to look forward to playing them anymore. It's very complicated, but suffice it to say that I think Yakuza Kiwami is easily one of the best games ever made, top five - maybe top three. I also played Shenmue once, briefly, as a teen, where it was thoroughly incomprehensible. I don't think I ever even managed to get to a fight? I definitely got to the QTE versus the conspicuously American sailors, though. And I've watched SuperGreatFriend's LPs of both Shenmue and Shenmue 2, so I knew what I was getting into this time.
Shenmue is one of the best and worst games ever made. It is so precisely simultaneously the best and worst video game that it balances out to becoming the world's most average video game, even. Everything that makes Shenmue cool and everything that makes Shenmue awful is the result of one rock solid fact: Shenmue is the least video game it can possibly be. Even though Ryo is remarkably naive to pull it off more frequently, fights only happen in Shenmue when it makes sense in the plot for fights to happen. Often the enemies you face in a fight have been present in previous cutscenes or conversations, and often they show up in the game later, too.
When it comes time for Ryo to find an hidden object in his family dojo, there's no quest marker or glowy thing you press the A button on. No, Ryo can laboriously open every single drawer and cabinet, take every single picture and wall scroll off the walls to check behind them, and pick up every pot and basket to look inside them. And this is a skill that the game eventually tests you for when you do find the path to the hidden object - there's an entire room full of stuff that you have to guide Ryo through exhaustively checking every little thing. When you discover what it is you need to do, it isn't weird or unintuitive that you need to zoom in on the thing in first person to be able to notice a thing so you can take an action with a different thing - that's just the level of detail Ryo can interact with the world at all the time.
Shenmue is the first open world game in some respects. It's not literally the first open world game, I'm sure tons pre-date it on PC, and I'm nearly 100% sure TES Arena, TES Daggerfall, GTA 1, GTA 2, and a huge swath of the Ultima series pre-date it. But Shenmue is the first open world game in the sense that it has no idea what an open world game should be, only what it can be. Almost by default, Shenmue had to be the Most open world game. Shenmue had no way of knowing what parts of "having an adventure in the 80s" was important, so it modeled every aspect of having an adventure in the 80s. Ryo has to talk to people to figure out what he needs to do next, he's surrounded by people who are alarmed and worried that he's steering his life into extreme danger, the cost of existing in the world is a constant concern, and sometimes there are days where Ryo just has to kill a bunch of time waiting for his next opportunity to act.
Adventures aren't fun, not real ones - they're stressful and shitty and stressful and painful and tedious and stressful. Sure, sometimes you get into a fight, and that's exciting, but you're usually outnumbered and it sucks because you're a naive kid trying to take on the world alone and you don't have practical street fighting experience or any options for crowd control because, like, do you have any options for crowd control? What's the status of your wide attack combo? Do you have a wide attack combo? I'm guessing you don't. Sure, Ryo's a martial artist, but like, four dudes are still three more dudes than Ryo is.
Shenmue is tiny compared to the majority of open world games (though probably not much smaller than Yakuza 1, at least), but that space Shenmue occupies is so massively detailed. Did you know that not only does Shenmue have a 24-hour cycle (well, more like 14 hour cycle because Ryo's bedtime is non-negotiable), but every day it snows or rains is 100% accurate to the real-world weather in Yokosuka in 1986? Because it is. Also, Shenmue has exactly 250 NPCs and they're all unique, they're all voice-acted, and they all have schedules they follow. 250. Later, Deadly Premonition would become a cult classic for having this level of detail with a significantly smaller set of NPCs.
The real reason I think Shenmue is the first and most open world game is that it is archetypal of the problems a game acquires when it metamorphoses into the open world genre. When I look at Shenmue struggling under its own weight and costing more than it could ever make back, I can't help but think of Final Fantasy XV, a game that tries to paint a world-spanning adventure like its predecessors into an un-abstracted physical space that's about the size of the town I live in. The thing that means Shenmue, the series, will never be finished is the same thing that means Final Fantasy XV, the game, will never feel like it's more than gesturing at what could have been.
My time with Shenmue 1 is over. I got to the bit with the forklifts. And Shenmue models "having a tedious job" so accurately that the idea of having to do forklift stuff a second time was actively depressing to me. I've seen SuperGreatFriend's let's play of Shenmue (and Shenmue 2), so this wasn't a great loss. It's a shame that Shenmue 3 is, by all accounts I've heard, pretty bad and actively worse than Shenmue 2, because Shenmue 2 has been brilliant so far. Shenmue 2 found solutions to Shenmue 1's problems without taking out what made Shenmue Shenmue. You can get a minimap now, and mark stuff on it! But you do actually need to buy a map of the local area to have that, and maybe that's money you can't spare right now.
Speaking of money, you can now ask anyone you meet on the street for the way to the nearest pawnshop, gambling corner, or side gig. And Shenmue 2's core of "How do I find THING? I should ask people about THING," is not only present, but enhanced with more detailed instructions despite there being a larger space to explore and sometimes NPCs will just straight-up lead you to places you need to be without a quest marker or glowing arrow in sight. Ryo uses the same navigational skills in Hong Kong that you might use in Hong Kong in the era before smartphone GPS. And every single line of dialogue is voiced.
I think the single biggest thing that has made Yakuza profitable where Shenmue was not doesn't have to do with Yakuza's better combat, better characters, or better stories, but rather that Yakuza isn't dedicated to having voice dialogue for every single character. In an age where abstraction is a faux pas in the eyes of AAA venture capitalist suits who have never actually understood video games, Yakuza understands what is important about open world games, and knows what can be abstracted at no loss to the final product. Shenmue didn't. And Shenmue doesn't. That's why I think there won't be a Shenmue 4. And yet the clear passion and love in the work that Yu Suzuki and the Shenmue dev teams had and have for the craft is why I think it's heart-breaking there won't be a Shenmue 4.
Thanks, as always, for reading my slightly rambling thoughts on video games.
Addendum:
It is deeply funny to me how rapidly Joy adopts fledgling Ryo. She takes one look at that boy and goes "Mmhm, this adventure himbo is my himbo now, thanks." Equally funny is how utterly oblivious Ryo is to the fact that he has been adopted. Where's the Shenmue side game where we play as Joy and learn how she knows literally everyone in Hong Kong. She has so very clearly done a bunch of Protagonisting herself in the past.
Last edited:
