Of all the things Shenmue performed, evolved, and pioneered fifteen years ago, which of these things do you think it did better than most games of today?
I'll start with perhaps the most obvious: QTEs. Shenmue wasn't the first game to use QTEs as a gameplay mechanic, but it absolutely popularised them and gave us perhaps the best examples of them we've ever seen (or are ever likely to see). Whereas nowadays many QTEs feel as if they've just been plopped in there for no reason other than to justify their existence and gimmick-ify them, Shenmue's use of QTEs was done in such a way that directly involved players in cutscenes and made sure their involvement was given the utmost importance; if you failed the QTE, you were either sent back to the beginning of the sequence so you could learn from your mistake(s) or you were put in a position where you would have to head somewhere else in order to progress. In this sense, players were valued highly, whereas something as laughable as the tap-A-to-crawl-to-the-detonator part in Halo 4 has absolutely no value whatsoever, and could easily have been a cutscene. (The microwave sequence in Metal Gear Solid 4, however, does an excellent job of evoking an emotional response from, and giving a sense of importance to, players, despite being similar in nature to the Halo 4 example. Not only is Snake struggling like never before to complete his objective, but so too is the player via their input. The latter is basically soulless.)
Imagine Shenmue without QTEs - many of the cutscenes in which QTEs feature simply wouldn't be able to exist without seeming immersion-breaking and pointless (the Jimmy chase and Charlie pursuit through the harbour, especially). Certain sequences were built around QTEs as opposed to QTEs being built around certain sequences. In my opinion, both Shenmue and Shenmue II had the perfect amount of QTEs (with the possible exception of the jog through the forest in the latter) and made excellent use of them, too.
So, what do you think Shenmue did better than most modern games? GO!