I know it's not a piece of paper and not a measurable way of an achievement. Just I feel I have achieved ultimate forgiveness and a path towards being truly happy.
I still remember when you told that about meeting your boss and how freaked out he was.
About the piece of paper. You know, a virtuoso guitar player once said something close to : money and fame is nice but doing something for yourself and getting a feeling of personal achievement also means something.

My "achievements" then? Hm, reaching a certain level of guitar playing. Doing some concerts where the audience is in the palm of your hand (strange feeling though). Being among the few who got chosen for an audition. More recently I started studying again. I've only finished a few courses but it's more of a personal achievement since I used to think that I wouldn't manage.

People spend 8 hours a day at a cash register or sit in a cubicle getting paid very little to be some rich guys bitch. If you have a job you will always be a whore to someone hiring you.
I agree, that's true for many people in the work force. Actually, in some companies you sell both your soul and body. I've seen burnouts, depressions as well as problems with the back, stomach etc.

There is one thing that made me wonder though : people wait in line for over two hours to get on some ride? :-k

Damn respectless long haired... oh wait... ;)
But he has a point even though I think the teacher might have been more open if he told this during a separate meeting. And yes, the teacher probably just follows guidelines but approaches like this made me suffer through school. The way things are presented is often horrible. I think it was astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson (and some of his colleagues) who said that school sucks all the enthusiasm and curiosity out of kids while it should do the opposite. With the result that things that might have been interesting turn into boring requisites to pass some standardized tests.

It's amazing that the people who want to believe this stuff are the only ones to have experienced it.

Neuroscientists confirmed that a region of the brain creates visions under certain circumstances according to what people already have stored previously. So depending on your ideology/religion/belief you will get a specific vision that corresponds with it. There's also data on mass suggestion and how the brain makes people think that they saw something a specific way. That's the reason for the scientific method : scientists know that they can't even trust themselves despite the training.


The appearance of ghosts can also explain by electromagnetic fields than can cause mass hallucinations.
Also since M Theory suggests are multiple mirror universes there could be some scientific explanation why some people see them. Could be like a faint trail crossing over.

I also read that about EM fields. And I actually happened to take a course where the instructor was one of the originators of mirror symmetry. He added that it's still mostly a mathematical model that they're exploring. That being said, several times theory has come before experiments that confirmed it. So who knows, right?

I myself am open to much and have seen odd stuff before. But one problem with the supernatural is that quantum field theory has a description of all particles and forces that affect everyday life (beyond that is still being researched). Some add that ghosts might be beyond our space and time instead. But the problem is then : how can it interact with us? Seeing, touching etc. are electromagnetism at work and we wouldn't notice anything at all if ghost particles didn't interact with the observer's.

At times I've seen more fans around the internet than you would think just judging from this place. Some Shenmue Youtube videos even have people writing that they became interested because of the amazing soundtrack. I've also seen new fans around 13 years old, who discovered the game more recently and joined the ranks of those who wait for more ;) So personally I'm certainly not overestimating our numbers, but not underestimating either.

Earlier in the topic I made some screen grabs how the shoulder and that bit match up and how floating islands in both games match up. If it's not a direct sequel I believe it's no doubt set in the same world.

It feels like it judging from the trailer.

I still like this one showing areas from Xenoblade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAYBui5ghJ0
The soundtrack was part of the reason why I got interested. It gave me a sense of adventure and had some kind of old school quality. I hope that the new game has something similar to this.

Edit : I got in the mood to listen to the OST now and just heard Main Theme and Satorl Marsh-Night. I'm playing some Witcher 2 but fuck it, as soon as I'm back home I'm starting this game again.

I just read that Hayter gave up half his paycheck for Twin Snakes so they could get the original cast back. It sucks then to not even contact someone so dedicated to the series and discuss things.

Kojima said that he wanted an older actor to play the role. But Hayter is only 2 years younger than Kiefer and his voice actually sounds more gravelly to me. No matter what, the voice work is good in the trailer. It just seems like an odd explanation from Kojima. Maybe it has to do with the fact that they're also doing facial motion capturing?

What the fuck. So much drama around the internet from both sides :roll:

The Kotaku comment sounds as if the industry will die just because this change has been made. And that developers can't be certain now that all users are connected so they can use certain features. Well, they couldn't know that before either. People will have connection issues so your game needs to be built around that limitation no matter what.

Besides, the expression "the cloud" is PR talk in the end and not totally new technology. Where I worked we used server based software and whole OS's (including heavier calculations) for a very long time. Within the gaming world, GT5 had online tournaments where ghost cars were saved on their servers. PS+ had "cloud saves" etc. That being said I liked the idea because I'm quite sure that some developers would figure out clever things eventually.

You can PHYSICALLY hand a disc to your friend. Now you have to actually hand it to them.... or mail it to them. Perhaps y9u could take your horse carriage over to their house or send it via pony expres. Or you could have simply hit the share button and instantly allowed for it, but apparently that tactile feedback is really important to some of you
An answer on the same level : "Oh no! Human contact and non-instant gratification!"

It's not about it being important, it's about not caring . All my friends can wait until we meet. We all keep busy with other games/hobbies in the meantime. Not that the feature isn't handy, the article is just silly.

Edit : I see that ShenmueTree just made a similar remark :P

The Saboteur is a great game and its a shame we are unlikely to ever see a follow up.
I agree. It isn't the most polished game around but there's something fun about taking down those watch towers, tanks etc. Be it guns blazing or sneaking around. I also found the character Devlin not that bad actually.

Eurogamer: ...Those games are punk, but Killer is Dead is just posturing. It's just product.
They were too crazy for crazy's sake. Killer7 and NMH were crazy with heart. That's the difference.
This actually captures what I've been thinking for a long time. What I liked about killer7 was the more serious, dark undertone mixed with absurd humor. There was more to the game than just a layer of crazy stuff.

You're just getting older and interpreting your not giving a shit about the new generations of stuff as meaning its not good or doesn't have merit. It happens almost everyone.

Believe it or not the shit from when we were teenagers was just as crappy and the people were just as dumb as they are now. Everything just seemed more fun and interesting because it was new and let's face it, we were dumb. Same goes for the previous generations.
I understand your point and it's true that nostalgia can make people talk about the "good old days". Texts from ancient Rome/Greece already talked about dumb, younger generations.

On the other hand, I've read about a measured decline in intelligence worldwide that has been documented for quite a while. As one of the researchers said : why should we expect things to always go forward? Even progress can slow down or even reverse temporarily. Looking at schools they could see a huge difference in level/results and it seems to have slowly declined for a long time with a faster pace around 2000.
This can be extended to art. Researchers compared current pop with older and noticed that the new one literally contained less music and compositional sofistication compared to the 80'ies and earlier. Over here the radio still plays 60'ies to 80'ies songs. Less from the 90'ies and almost never stuff from 2000 and later (except current hits of course).

There are several papers detailing possible causes. Society being too nice so crap art is as valid as a masterpiece. Laziness. Globalization/capitalism (looking for infinite profit) dumbing down. Internet facilitating the spread of dumb ideas faster than ever. Or several controversial studies about "the dumb outbreeding the smart". Modern society leads to educated women having less children, while less educated in general often have more kids and can do so with support from the state.

I think it's laziness plus science/art budgets getting smaller. People marvel at a new smartphone update but just check how fast humanity went from the first flight to standing on the moon. As Neil Degrasse Tyson said : back then people dreamt about the frontier.

By the way, the last possible cause seemed to be quite controversial :P

Edit : Administration/business types infiltrating music, art, games and science have made these fields more corporate-like than before. This leads to less risk which results in mainstream work. Science needs to produce fast results (it doesn't work like that) or it doesn't get funded. The same for music and games where marketing often wins over art etc.

I've read a lot about the changes when Sammy took over and it wasn't too pretty. The way they closed and merged teams was extremely detrimental to Sega. Before Sammy, Sega had teams that were largely specialized in a certain genre and they all had their own culture and management styles. Then Sammy comes along and throws together teams who used to make totally different games..to sometimes have them work on another genre. It surprises me that they still managed to kind of continue considering this.

But on topic : I would almost vote yes these days. I would even rather see Sony buy the rights and try to do the series justice as intended by Yu. Which says a lot coming from me since I used to hate the idea, you know early DC/PS2 era and all ... :P But I actually suspect that Sony could do it justice and make sure that it gets the right attention. I mean, they do support some less commercial games here and there and maybe they could gather some key figures from back then to work on the project?

I don't have a clear favorite but what surprised me was that I didn't find Trevor as menacing as expected. Many outbursts felt comical somehow lacking an undefinable calm evil underneath. So I think that I found Michael the slightly better character in the end with the family dynamic and so on. Considering Franklin they could have shown much more about the conflict between the hood, the people he knew and moving up. It felt a bit unresolved to me.

No disrespect but did you read the article? It says nothing of Sega.
Of course I read it. I never comment on things without reading what it is about. The part about Sega wasn't meant seriously at all. More like : great, with one console out of the way Sega can get back in ;)

So why would this bother anyone? All I and others are suggesting that "Hey if Xbox were to be sold off, Sega would be a nice owner." Wishing this on a Shenmue forum? How dare I have an imagination! Sega exculsives being mined back into full fruition like the days of old? Get out of here idealist! Us realists know sudden change is impossible! Especially when a new CEO has a new direction for the company and certain departments are unprofitable. Nothing could ever possibly change there!
The suggestion didn't bother me. Hell, I just posted in another topic that I would almost prefer that even Sony takes over instead of nothing happening. But I would gladly see Sega come back. They already cooperated for the Dreamcast with Microsoft and were having meetings when the Xbox started. If Microsoft would leave the console business, Sega could pick up from where Microsoft left instead :P

Shenmue 2 is the best shenmue i have completed it 14 plus times
nope shenmue gai is the best shenmue
Make that Shenmue Online. Pre- Yu Suzuki involvement.

Or more seriously, after Shenmue 1 and 2 I would like to give honorable mentions to Shenmue Zero and Shenmue : The Boat. Their creators at least cared enough about the series to try and make something while fans wait for an official continuation. According to their resources of course. Actually, they even got Gai beat by having worldwide releases.

I lost another character just after they released their 1.06 patch that would eliminate this once and for all :roll: They would give me back my level and money but forgot the latter.

They're really messing up GTA:O. Glitches, hackers (the "cloud" didn't help) and as you said, most missions are the same : Go there, kill, take what you needed to take, take cover quickly since reinforcements will show up, kill them, drive back.
Some mentioned false advertising since the trailer didn't imply that there would be no heists/content creator/stock market/properties months after the release.

Also, the media are fucking hypocrites. Almost none of them reviewed GTA:O by itself despite Rockstar claiming that it's separate. IGN tried to, lost a character and then decided that the offline is such a masterpiece that a bad online doesn't detract from it :roll: I was looking forward to the game but eventually found LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 better, memorable overall experiences.

Haha look out it's the grammar police officer mittenz :lol:

No I'm not Japanese just didn't check what I wrote.
Grammar nazis actually and mitts is the furher. Make such a mistake again and you will be promptly shot


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I don't want to be that guy now. But since we're talking about language I would like to mention that it's written Führer :mrgreen:
Or that's how I remember it at least from my latest Nazi party gathering. Eeh, I mean, class.

I like a lot of characters actually and many of them have been named in earlier posts.
But one that I would like to add is Shozo Mizuki, the homeless man at the harbor. We don't know much about him but I got curious when it became clear that he knew about the Hazuki family. I wanted to know how he became homeless, his martial arts skills, etc.
I could check some of my Shenmue guides again, but I don't seem to recall that much more was known about him besides that he had lived at the harbor for three years and knows martial arts.

I also thought that it had a decent amount of extra activities actually. And the fact that finding items often involved some street fighting was great. It prevented the search from getting monotonous.

I read that they are working on a new Sleeping Dogs game. As improvement, it would be interesting if you could enter more stores or have some fighting tournament maybe.
That's really something that I think Shenmue did better than most games : the fact that a city felt more alive since you could enter many stores and talk to people. Instead of the city being like a facade/background scenery in many open world games.

^^And even if you couldn't enter a door in Shenmue/II, Ryo would still at least interact with it, either knocking or trying to pull it open to no avail since it's locked. Gave off the feeling that even if you couldn't enter, something still exists behind it. More games ought to do that kind of thing.
That's exactly what I meant. This made such a huge difference to me. Acknowledging a place, commenting that the store isn't open yet and so on.
I thought of this when playing GTA V. It does have features like a huge map and people walking around talking on their phones. But something small like not being able to walk into a bar that was in a mission makes me feel like I'm not part of the world. There were a couple of places that I wanted to check out instead of just standing outside. But I suppose I'm not the average GTA-fan and too biased by Shenmue ;)

Now playing : nothing after just finishing some games. I will probably start Skies of Arcadia soon. I haven't played it for years but listening to the soundtrack earlier got me in the mood.

When that guy asked about Space Harrier I was thinking : Damn it, don't waste precious time, we're talking about Shenmue specifically here. It might be slightly relevant with Space Harrier being at the arcade, but yeah...

About his age getting mentioned, I don't know if it's really that. I mean, producing and overseeing a game should not be impossible. People with regular jobs are out there. Or looking at art/entertainment there are several actors older than him playing roles. Or musicians older than him on the road, touring.

Good stuff from alimn. While I want Shenmue III to be released this is exactly what I want to hear regarding Yu Suzuki and the series. It really sounds like he does not want to do a shortened version of the story and conclude it all in Shenmue 3. Rather he seems to want to do the whole thing as intended. Which I always preferred since a rushed, cut version of the story in one game would not create the immersive feeling and pace that we like.

@Kenshin, exactly. Giving some insight into what he and his team were capable of with the available hardware at the time. And alimns reaction seems to confirm this.

Damn...
I can halfly relate. I had been having diffuse pain down there over a year ago, got some infection apparently but tests didn't show any bacteria or transmittable diseases (which they suspect first of all). With some pills the pain eventually went away but came back a few months ago. I also have some trouble with a nerve in my back (due to work before) which radiates so I thought that this maybe was the cause.
But I did notice a "floating" lump where the pain seemed to radiate from. Finally they checked with ultrasound two weeks ago and told me that it didn't seem dangerous. Just today I got a letter again, confirming that it was a benign cyst attached to the pipe work down there ;) We'll see.

Typical, I'm gone for a week or two and stuff happens again.

ChaiOgawa>Shenmue 3

My good man! ChaiOgawa = Shenmue 3.

Gotta get my kickstarter going, and put my one elective class of video game design to good use.
Wow, Chai! So I guess it's true when they say that many members never really leave this forum. Even if it's just having a short visit every half decade.

Guys.

It's fucking nothing.

This thread is why the Shenmue fanbase and the games themselves are considered a joke by gamers. Nothing is going to happen.
But the thing is that they are mistaken and are confusing "a joke " with "dedicated" and "worthy of dedication" ;)

Puppeteer

http://youtu.be/0GECUR5Wgyc


Wow.. just finished the last episode in The Walking Dead Season 2. Simply amazing experience. Season 2 was even better then the first.
That's promising. I have it "lying around" but haven't had the time yet to start. The same goes for The Wolf Among Us and a few other games. I'm having a bit of a backlog which would probably be even worse if I owned one of the newer consoles.

Yesterday I was at the store and noticed a gaming magazine containing an interview with two people who worked on The Last Guardian. They basically mentioned that they eventually left the team, things weren't progressing well etc. The magazine is in Swedish so it's not really useful to scan anything. Besides, I don't have access to a scanner at the moment ;)

But I looked a bit on the internet instead and found some information about their small team and project. It's very Shadow of the Colossus-like in style and is supposed to be an open world game with puzzles. I'm curious if their experience might lift the game a bit despite the size of the team.

Platform is pc but others to be anounced. I have to say though that their release date "When it's done" is hilarious considering the circumstances :P

http://www.friendandfoegames.com/devlog-vane/
http://www.friendandfoegames.com/vane
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-24-ex-the-last-gaurdian-artists-reveal-shadow-of-the-colossus-like-adventure-vane

Jesus Christ, I just had a terrible nightmare.
...
MOTHER OF GOD, THE STARING IS WHAT GOT TO ME.

Interesting, detailed dream. I know what you mean with the staring though. A dream (long ago) once had me enter a small bathroom but as soon as I entered I knew there was a presence inside. Still, for some reason I had to check and find out what was behind the closed shower curtains. When I dragged them to the side I saw a hanging corpse over a bath tub with all the skin stripped away. I knew I had to get out but before I could do so the eyes opened and stared intensely. Seconds later there also came a weird, unreliable smile during the staring. First I couldn't move but I then realized that I had to chop it up etc. etc. Anyway, for some reason I can still recall the stress entering the room and that stare years later :P

Random thought : Deus Ex contains quite a bit of foreshadowing when dealing with topics like states, politics and terrorism.