Rikitatsu wrote: Thanks Switch!
This isn't the first time someone mentioned how Shenmue inspired or paved the way for GTA3... Has anyone at Rockstar ever admitted that Shenmue was an inspiration? Because GTA3 just seems like a 3D imagining of the older 2D GTAs... I don't feel it borrows anything from Shenmue at all.
I suspect it would be closer to the truth to say Shenmue set an early, ahead of its time benchmark for what (fully) 3D open world games could be, but that many different devs were already pursuing some vision of it in their own ways.
Body Harvest, developed by DMA Design which later became Rockstar North, already displayed some of GTA 3's design concepts.
The difference of course being that GTA and BH both focused on large vistas, vehicles, big picture scenery, and gunplay, whereas Shenmue is massively more focused on up close, personal detail, and a slow journey of meticulous interactivity.
Morrowind was also in development when Shenmue arrived.
Shenmue I feel influenced devs more through setting consumer expectations of what was possible. Though I'm sure there had to be SOME influence from a design standpoint as well, because it was just SO far ahead of its time.