by szymon247 » Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:08 pm
When Shenmue 2 came out I thought - "wow, this world is so awesome. How amazing are games going to be like in 10 years?!".
Obviously everything went wrong from what I had imagined and games aren't more complex. Only graphics and sometimes mechanics are, but not the worlds and experiences/vibes.
I only wish they made the game similar to Shenmue 1 & 2 (to me they weren't that different in the way they played), perhaps an "alive city" like in S1 but with S2-style action and events. However I wish they made everything more "usable". Which means, the great part of Shenmue was how you could interact with everyone, everywhere in the "city". I wish it would go further and into more detail. So you could actually interact with different people in different ways, chat about more/different things with different kinds of people and most of all focus on the experience itself and not some virtual outcome.
I wish you could enter and explore more unique buildings, perhaps visit random people just for a chat and some little unique experiences (like, entering a Chinese village hut and having a chat with a Chinese Civil War veteran and getting a scroll from him or whatever) etc. Basically Shenmue was the most life-like game ever made. You could totally feel that you're in the 80s, knocking on random peoples' door and expect them to react life-like, and to some extent the game totally delieved that at least better than anything else. I expected more from the "future games", not only Shenmue and certainly I'm left with disappointment and perfect games remain only in my imagination.
It felt like Shenmue was kind of an entry gate to the awesomeness of life-like experiences in video games. You didn't get the experience you already know, what you're familiar with - in that sense it was more like holidays in a foreign world mixed with time travel to the 80s, filled with things you would actually do there and they were presented just like they could really happen - in detail and slow paced, so you felt like you were actually living through that day.
I wish Shenmue 3 would take that concept further. That's all I'm wishing for actually.
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