Why are people refering to this as a new model? It's obviously a photoshopped version of the same model from the kickstarter video. They probaby felt they had to show something because of impatient fans pestering them with questions about how terrible Ryo (and Shenhua IMO) looks in the kickstarter video. Now I agree with this, but I don't think it should be a concern since there is no way that this is how the actual models will look. And no they don't need a clay model to get the right look, they just have to look at some pictures / old 3d-models and put some work into it, which they didn´t do with the kickstarter models.

I questioned specifically on whether having both Japanese and English VOs would be detrimental to the budget towards other game elements, such as sacrifice of NPCs and extended dialogues or refinement of certain game mechanics. That's why I personally prefer Shenmue 3 to have only Japanese VO, as Masaya Matsukaze is already attached to the project, but I understand my view is on the minority side.[/color]

Agreed wholeheartedly. I'm not even sure you're in the minority to be honest.
I get the impression that a lot of American shenmue fans dig Corey Marshall for the nostalgia factor (their initial experience, etc.), but the buck stops there.

A lot (most?) of us outside of the US/Canada would welcome JPN vocals arms opened.

Yeah, alot of europeans will prefer japanese voices since they got used to them in the european version of Shenmue II, me included. The japanese VO was superior IMO. Even though the english dub is nostalgic, the acting is terrible to be honest and I was very happy when I saw that Masaya is returning as Ryo.

Supa wrote: Oh come on, it's not THAT bad.

Yes it is.

I made this introduction video to Shenmue and the Shenmue 3 crowdfunding. Was going to put it on youtube before the kickstarter ended but didn't have time to finish it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64u9TUtTMa0

Captured on emulators NullDC and Demul. Has some unavoidable graphical glithes but looks good most of the time IMO.

If you like it, spread it or perhaps show it to someone unfamiliar with Shenmue.

Yeah please ask about Japanese VO with English subs. Very important to me.

Shenmue doesn't have a great story, but it's presented very well as a game .

Video game or nothing -- I don't want no stupid Shenmue Anime.

I totally agree with this. That's why I also have a hard time understanding fans who say they want shenmue 3 mainly so they can finish the story. Because if you take just the story and make it into a movie it will just be a b- kungfu movie with some supernatural elements. The magic of Shenmue lies in experiencing the game. The story is a part of that experience ofcourse, but I think that too much emphasis is being put on the story in game development sometimes.

Shenmue is a game after all. To make the third installment as something other than a game makes as much sense as making Return of the jedi as a boardgame instead of a movie.

That being said, I don't think Shenmue has a particularly bad story compared to other games. Most games don't have a great story. Modern games might have a darker or more mature theme though. But Suzuki's intention from the beginning was that young kids would be able to enjoy it. Personally I wouldn't mind if S3 took a turn to more mature/complex themes and it's possible that it might from the details we know.

And as was mentioned by Thief, the story is presented very well in the game, it's an exciting adventure and I'm eager to see where it leads. I also think it has wonderful characters. Shenhua for example is an interesting character and beautifully written IMO.

It's unfair to compare stories in games with movies or novels, because I don't think games excel at telling linear stories like those media. Thematically though, I don't see why the Shenmue saga couldn't approach something like a Miyazaki movie in terms of complexity. Dostojevsky-level storytelling is obviously something only a novel can achieve.

On the note of Shenmue being a has been game. That may be the case, it's 15 years old. However, it has aged better than probably all games from that era. And a game like Shenmue has basically not been made since. Sure, other games have embraced the concept of an open world that Shenmue revolutionized, but none has done it quite like Shenmue, with a world that felt handcrafted and living compared to the much larger sandbox-design of modern games. And we know that Yu Suzuki always likes to innovate and will surely bring something new to S3.

Also, GTA V is really not a groundbraking game. It has fantastic production values and is massive in scale but in terms of game-mechanics it's still basically the same as GTA 3. And frankly the series probably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for
Shenmue.

End of rant.

Fair and interesting review of Shenmue, mainly because the reviewer never played the game before this year.
It gives a good hint about how newcomers could/should react when discovering the saga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzpHb3U1HLw

I find interesting that most of the gripes I read about Shenmue (like not beeing able to skip time forward or slow paced rythm) are the result of Yu Suzuki's choices and not conceptional flaws.

Similarly, most of the positive aspects of the game are the result of audacious decisions and could still be considered as a reference in modern gaming.

Yeah. That's one of the reasons why the series is so special. It's one of few AAA titles that goes beyond mere entertainment. Some of the things I like most about Shenmue are aspects that are more about immersion and being interesting rather than 'fun'.

It's sad that most games these days are so hand-holding and that the attention span or tolerance for slow pacing of people in general seem to be so low. Not to get into the whole 'games as art' debate but game critics, who are ones who should be recognizing new and innovative ways to use the medium, often seem to not have a very expansive view of what a game could actually be as a form of expression.

As an example of impatience, I see people calling for including a map-mode similair to GTA in potential HD-remakes of the games. Was it really that bothersome to go look at the town maps? (there were quite alot of them) And wasn't it part of the charm of exploring the environment? Being lost in Hongkong and feeling somewhat insecure in a new environment was surely something Yu Suzuki wanted the player to experience. A GTA-style map with everything pointed out would have changed that experience completely.

The pacing is absolutely brilliant, and unique to the series I think. It allowed the mundane aspects of life and the world to be communicated, and also made the game more epic.

About time-skipping, I can see why some people would be frustrated with not having that option. But I still respect Suzuki for not including it in the first game. It made it more immersive, more real.

Personally, the Battle System is the least thing I would care about Shenmue 3. The Guilin region in Shenmue II, didn't have fighting at all, and it is a glimpse of where the true spirit of the Shenmue series resides. It's a glimpse of the quintessence of interactive storytelling.

I had rather wish Yu Suzuki to spend more money on the Rapport and Character Perspective System, than that. I want humanness and spiritualness to reach a higher quality this time, and feel more empathy and deeper emotions for the characters and a stronger contextual bonding with the world.

As for the Battle System, I fully support Yu's vision to it depend mostly on decisions/intuition, a thinking-based one, rather than mostly on reflexives.

Yeah, fully agree. Wouldn't hurt with an amazing battle system though. :) But like you said I wouldn't want it to take up too much of the resources.

I remember have read here that some famous Xbox 360 games like the Witcher 2, Gears of Wars or something else cost around 20m only.


Here are two articles claiming both these games cost around 10m:

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Witcher-2-Cost-10-3-Million-Make-58698.html
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/gears_of_war/news/gears_of_war_has_cost_10_million_to_produce.html

Bear in mind Gears was released in 2006.

Yeah it was cut due to budget.

I have been working on bringing it back via mods for about 3 years now. It's a very technical process.

What budget lmao, Yu didn't have anything of the sort.

Yea, I imagine It's very tricky to create a bike, to work in a way that would be fitting for a Shenmue game.

But they had a time constraint, and probably had to cut alot of stuff that weren't good enough for release.

To Shengoro: I look forward to riding downhill through Yamanose :)

To David: Amazing collection!

The photoshopped face is actually a good thing IMO, since it makes it clear that they are going to bring the familiar face of Ryo back, or at least something similar. Current S3 models are clearly just placeholders and I see no indication of improvement on them, the real models will likely be made from scratch. I think it's likely that modeling of the main characters have not begun yet and that it's something that will happen late in the development process. That may be somewhat true for the graphics in general.

I actually don't think the environments look that great now, but again, I don't think they have spent that much time an resources on it, much of it will be replaced later. A lot of it is probably random generated, causing the somewhat generic look. For instance, the mountains are clearly just random generated with some preset, they look nothing like Gui-lin mountains and will have to be replaced. The only thing so far that looks finished is Shenhua's house and that looks perfect IMO. Detailed, very nice texturing. Feels very much like Shenmue. So that's hopeful. They may start to work more on graphics next year though, so it will be interesting to see how things develop. E3 might be too early for a trailer with more "finished" graphics, but who knows.

We don't know what's actually possible though, right? Was Shenmue designed to run at 60fps or will that screw with game logic like AI-patterns/behaviour and animations? I suppose the quality of the port and enhancements is subject to them having access to the source code of the original games (unsure if they do). I'd expect some of what we've seen on PC emulation side is at least achievable for this port though. I've noticed some other games like Fable anniversary and batman arkham games were put on newer engines (to mixed reception). Imo I don't think 60fps is necessary for this port. Stuff like improved AA and/or HQ motion blur would be cool to see though.


If you do a "real" port where you're actually changing the source code anything is possible, it all depends on how much work you're willing to do. 60 FPS is important to me in any game and I think alot of gamers expect ports of older games to be 60 fps. But it's not all about the target framerate, there are other issues like pop-ins and occasional severe slowdown. Not a big deal for Shenmue-fans perhaps but thinking from a modern gamers perspecive they should be fixed and you really need to do a proper port for that.

EDIT: Motionblur could be nice unless it's overdone like in S2X

Oh yes, not only music, the audio on SII was highly compressed (and some lines had different levels), hopefully they still have the masters (and are recorded well).

Now I'm watching Shenmue E3 revel again, still getting chills.

Fuck this, I'm actually hyped.

I'm pretty sure they have the masters, I think they used some of it in Sonic allstars racing and it's not compressed.

I hope they change that ugly font and go back to the original Shenmue font. Don't understand why YS was so insecure about something that's not broken.

Could be copyright reasons...

Also Shenhua in my profile picture was on the official Shenmue 3 website which I hope they'll use her instead.

That's the same E3 model only from a different angle.

I beg to differ. It's a different model. Look at the side hair bangs.

Side hair bangs looks exactly like the e3 trailer model, and everything else. Same eyes , same nose, same lips. Here is the same model and from different angels: http://imgur.com/R2RftPd you can clearly see it's the same model as the one used in the e3 trailer.

I don't see why people shouldn't expect passport Ryo... after all just a few months ago they photoshoped Ryo's DC face into a screenshot, implying they were still going for that look.
Ryo's in-game model is not passport Ryo, though.

As you can see in the video I posted, they literally introduced Ryo for the first time by actually morphing from a Miyawaki design to the in-game model. That's arguably always been their approach to the characters in-game. Passport Ryo is a Dreamcast technical showcase.

The morphing doesn't prove that the design went straight from Miyawakis 2D-drawings to the in-game characters and it clearly didn't. Ofcourse his drawings are important as the first version of a character.

The point is that the in-game models were not meant to replicate those drawings. As Yokosuka pointed out,
the 3D CGI images were the targets for the in-game models. In-game Ryo is a low-poly version of this:
https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/square_small/3/34651/1188145-0ryo3.jpg
and the passport-models are simply more detailed models with the same target.

It's pretty clear that the design process for the main characters was something like this:
Miyawaki makes concept drawings of a character, then a 3D/CGI-model is made based on this concept but much more realistic, detailed, and different from Miyawakis "comic-book" style, although still stylized. For some characters clay busts are also made.

Then the actual model used in the game is made to look like the CGI image but they obviously can't fully replicate it in real time.

So, to take Joy as an example:

Original concept drawing:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/shenmue/concept-joy.jpg

CGI model:
http://i.neoseeker.com/ca/shenmue2_conceptart_njFRi.jpg

In-game model:
http://cdn.staticneo.com/w/shenmue/thumb/4/4e/Joy.jpg/300px-Joy.jpg

Thanks to great modeling and texturing, the in-game model manages to capture the essence of the CGI image although less detailed.

Honestly, I don't think timeskipping really has a place in Shenmue I.

I agree. Forcing the player to wait for a day and pay attention to opening/closing-hours was obviously a design-choice and something that contributed to a sense of realism and immersion. They shouldn't alter that original design just because gamers have become more impatient nowadays.

Dat Ryo and Nozomi one looks REALLY good! Seems like some bloom lighting is in effect. Don't mind the 4:3 if it's gonna look that good. But we will see.
Huh, so I wasn't the only one that noticed bloom... IIRC it never was in Shenmue, and only in the XB version of Shenmue 2.

I really liked what the bloom added to the XB ver. of Shenmue 2, especially in Kowloon at night. I'll wait and see if I would like it in Shenmue 1 too after more images and videos are released. I know purists will be upset about it though, as it may change the atmosphere of certain scenes.

It may be toggle-able in the PC version too, as is the case with many PC games.

I liked the bloom on windows and signs during the night, but thought it was overdone in many scenes. I don't like it when characters appear to be glowing.

This 16:9/4:3 thing is getting confusing. I guess we're gonna have to wait for them to confirm how it will end up. Or maybe they are intentionally vague about it because they don't know yet if they'll achieve 16:9 cutscenes.

Personally I wouldn't be too upset if the cutscenes weren't 16:9, there are other issues I think are more important, like a stable framerate and improved audio. The option to play the whole game in 4:3 is probably a good idea since it might be a bit weird constantly switching from 16:9 to 4:3.

Found this comparison between AV/RCA and VGA:



RCA does look squeezed compared to VGA. I mostly played Shenmue with RCA cable on a CRT TV so that explains why I'm used to the thinner image.

I saw a tweet by National Geographic about the The Fujian Tulou in my Twitter feed yesterday.

It reminded me how little we know yet about that part of Shenmue 3.

https://youtu.be/aRIYP-HWqBU

Interesting that the people are called Hakka, since in the japanese version Bailu village is called "Hakka son" - Hakka village. I always wondered why they changed the name for the english translation.