Shenmue Dojo

Switch wrote: For anyone having trouble locating Ryo...


Kickstarter #77 Commentary

Switch wrote: For anyone having trouble locating Ryo...


Kickstarter #77 Commentary

Hyo Razuki wrote: Looks ike Lashya know what they're doing. Now let's hope this will also help YS Net to be able to release the game in 2018.

I think releasing S3 later than 2018 might not be a good decision. We can probably expect the PS5 to come out around 2020 and with the PS5 on the horizon or even out by then, a lot of people won't be interested in PS4 games anymore.

O Rei do Frango Assado wrote:
I was just thinking, she could indeed be Japanese. Not only that, but what if that's actually a Shinto shrine? It doesn't look like one, but many mosques in China, for instance, have Chinese traditional architecture and don't really stand out from any other traditional-style constructions, until you go inside and see all the Islamic art, Arabic writing and prayer halls.
The thing is, there has been a sizeable Islamic community in China for hundreds of years (most notably, the Hui and, more recently, the Uyghurs), but I've never heard of Japanese people in China (that do exist, obviously) feeling the need for Shinto shrines. Shintoism is uniquely Japanese and doesn't really exist anywhere else, as far as I know, so the only people who would feel the need for a Shinto shrine would be the Japanese.
Now, I've travelled a lot around China, from the biggest cities to the most remote places and never have I've seen a Shinto shrine there. I just did a quick (definitely not thorough) Baidu search and, apparently, the only Shinto shrines built in China were built during the Japanese occupation, during the Second World War. Pretty much all of them (or even all of them) have been demolished or converted into something else. It goes without saying that such shrines didn't exactly bring happy memories to the Chinese.The area around Guilin was indeed occupied by the Japanese, but I don't really see a fully-functioning, happy-feeling Shinto shrine existing there in 1987.
So, when all's said and done, I doubt that's a Shinto shrine, but who knows? It's a videogame, liberties are always taken.

As for that sign being done for localization purposes, that's always a possibility, but I think it's unlikely. I mean, Shenmue 1 and 2 did have some English signage, because there is English signage in Japan, what with English being today's "international language", plus, it gives out an exotic, hip feel to things (for the Japanese). Still, most things in the game are written in Japanese, just like real Japanese streets. As for Hong Kong in Shenmue 2, the presence of English writing is only natural, what with it being a British colony.
Again, I just feel that they are being careless, unfortunately. I mean, there really was no reason for them to use Japanese kanji variants in Hong Kong street signs, yet they were there.
I've said this before, in a game famous for its attention to detail, this kind of stuff becomes immersion-breaking, not to mention that it's very odd that they got careless in such a visible aspect of the game, when, for instance, they actually went to the trouble of getting real-world weather data for Yokosuka, among other things.
Anyway, let's wait and see. It's too early to jump into conclusions regarding Shenmue 3.

qwerty3w wrote:I don't think the series was ever meant to be immersive outside of Japan. It's very difficult to get unfamiliar foreign cultures right, and the main audience (Japanese and Western gamers) won't care about it anyway, so Shenmue mostly went with stereotypes and exoticism for Chinese and Hong Kong elements, probably largely based on the local Chinatowns much like the Hollywood movies.