sand4fish wrote: Just a matter of perspective. Maybe they could have done 4k, but would it matter much? Personally do I want to see how muddy some of the textures are and exacerbate how old this game really is graphically speaking in even finer detail? Not really as it's not a remake, just a HD enhancement as it is being advertised.
Is this a lazy port by d3t? I can't tell because I don't know the budget d3t was working with like AG mentioned. But I don't really think so, as they could just have used emulation and be done with it.
About the 4:3 cutscenes, those are Yu's cinematography at play. Others have pointed out before how old films originally 4:3 scanned to widescreen ended up showing stuff not meant to be seen like camera crews and out of place objects, in the end changing the original intended atmosphere of the scene. Well, the same can be said here as npcs shown in the 16:9 emulation, not meant to be seen in the original frame shot, are frozen in place as example. Even worse as the draw of extra geometry already shows distracting artifacts in the emulation, who is to say that in the engine d3t worked with it won't break the game? Either way, changing the original ratio of the constructed shot cutscenes is the same as changing Yu's original artistic vision imo.
Another thing I see it being complained about in other forums is the 30 fps. Well, besides being hard coded I believe it's tied to the time system in the game and it would mess with its mechanics and probably break the physics in the game. I'd imagine Shenmue HD 60 fps looking like this in execution:
Anyway, I'm stocked for the release of Shenmue 1 & 2 HD not because of me playing it, but it is finally the chance the franchise ever had to draw in new fans towards Shenmue 3 and beyond. And I'm confident the newcomers won't nitpick these games that are nearly as old as they probably are.
I understand why they don't release the game with 4K in mind, they are using assets that are decades old and were initially meant for 480p, jumping to 1080p is already quite the stretch, and redoing assets was surely out of the budget scope. But as we have seen with so many games... the modding community will probably do a 4K overall at some point in time.
In relation to emulation, I'm skeptical that they could have opted for emulation as easily as some make it sound. First, I'm not sure how much of a walk in the park it would have been to build a Dreamcast emulator engine for the the intended platforms in comparison to porting it. Then, taking into consideration the current state of emulation on the PC, you may not fare very well unless you have a mid/high-range hardware; maybe this wouldn't be such a problem these days but still worth considering. Then you probably wouldn't have as much control over the game as with a port. If the port was really a nightmare, then being constricted to use a DC DevKit surely wouldn't have been better.
On the issue of 4:3 in cut-scenes, the argument about the scenes being ruined by whatever (unintended) that is outside of the 4:3 bounds seems completely plausible. The drawing of artifacts on the ported engine seems less plausible assuming that the gameplay itself will be able to run in widescreen without any artifacts, I don't see why the cut-scenes that use the same engine in real-time should be different. Still, the point of what is beyond the bounds being inadequate for scenes is a good one. As for the artistic direction, I don't see it. 4:3 aspect ratio wasn't a choice, it was simply the result of the standard at the time, bound by hardware limitations.
As for the 30fps lock, I think it is very possible that the undertaking to update the engine to 60fps might have been too great for the payoff. As we have seen in the modding community, the game can run smoothly at 60fps and the animations can be slowed down by 50% to make up for the 50% acceleration, but it is very probable that other things in the game beside animations are dependent on the FPS cycle to be regulated, not sure what though - maybe physics, AI in general.
Honestly, I'm just considering arguments and giving my opinion, these things don't bother me in the least. While some people criticize for the sake of it, I do so because I care and I wonder. Because of this wonder, I can't help but wonder how much better it could be with an adjusted budget. As with what I think is the majority, I'm happy enough with the remaster as it is being advertised. I'm not so confident that non-fans will see it in the same way, I do hope so because after all the release price-tag hints that SEGA is trying to maximize profit and minimize risk, understandably.
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 1:48 pm