Gen wrote: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.
Man, a mini-map in
Shenmue would absolutely
suck; not to mention it would be deeply flawed, too, what with the game having so many time-sensitive occurrences which would nullify the very point of a mini-map in the first place.
When you're supposed to walk towards You Arcade at 7pm during your search for information about Charlie, for example: at no point in the game are you told to head in that specific direction except for the tid-bit of information that he hangs around the jacket shop at around that time. How would this be represented on a mini-map? An exclamation mark suddenly appearing on the map on top of You Arcade at 7pm? That would be extremely arbitrary in practice, and there would probably have to be a diary entry giving a hint of the even more specific location to justify the exclamation mark appearing in the first place. It's pointless and completely goes against the game's ethos of being grounded to reality and appreciating the player's freedom and sense of discovery, etc. It would also remove the need to talk to any of the NPCs for help and/or directions, too.
Besides, it's not as if the layout of the locations are exactly confusing or so extremely vast that a mini-map is required. Yamanose is boomerang-shaped; Sakuragaoka is shaped like an 'H'; Dobuita is shaped like an 'A'; and the harbour, while the biggest and potentially most confusing location in terms of layout, is pretty self-explanatory with the amount of signage plastered around the place. Plus, every location minus Yamanose features a map located somewhere in proximity. Remember the 'good old days' where players were expected to actually use their brains instead of going from one glowing waypoint to the next? If it worked perfectly fine back then, what's wrong with it now?
In other words: Gen, you're spot-on.
Shenmue needs a mini-map as much as it needs a damn crouching button
EDIT:
Dark Souls and
Bloodborne are perfect examples of contemporary games that give very little - if any - hints as to where you should go next, hence why exploration and the sense of discovery in those games feels so organic and wonderful. In
Dark Souls, as soon as you land in Firelink Shrine, there are three directions in which you can head at your will with absolutely no restriction: the Catacombs, Undead Burg, and New Londo Ruins. Only after getting absolutely massacred at two of the three does it occur to the player that Undead Burg is the right way to go at that point in the game.