Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 26

Time has not been kind to Shenmue. That's my big takeaway from this ER. I have no desire to ever play a Shenmue game at this point, but I am extemely curious to see what Shenmue 3 ends up looking like.

This was a really fun watch.

Thanks guys!

@gregalor: I understand your point, but I think I still have a good impression of what Shenmue is now. I'm not sure how much sidequest stuff they missed, but I don't think it would vastly change my impression of the game. Honestly, this run has made me interested in Shenmue, and if the third game ever comes out, I'll probably play it. I would hope that the game has evolved, added more variety, and quality of life features though. Better voice acting would go a long way as well.

The amount of times Dan had to say, "it was good for its time" speaks leagues about this game. It was passable and maybe intriguing then, but now it's largely nostalgia-bait. Thank you to the crew for sticking with this. This is the first endurance run I was convinced would actually run out before this ended, but you soldiered on.

@oasisbeyond said:

If you mean strictly those 3 engine genres then I guess, but to be fair dude, quite a few games before Shenmue had multiple engines, depending how you consider the term. Even something like a Crash Bandicoot 3 or FFVII. And QTE is attributed and popularized by Shenmue/Yu Suzuki, but the concept is not that new. Like Die Hard Arcade. But I understand you're praising its scope.

@gyozilla: Just wanted to say that was a great post! Incisive, and critical but fair.

Shut er down!

It's really sad to read so many people's takeaway from this series is "Well, looks like Shenmue is terrible just like we all thought!" like it's "cool" to hate Shenmue or something. Stop trying to compare Shenmue to other games, Shenmue is just Shenmue and if you don't like it that's fine but stop trying to justify your distaste by shitting on a game that doesn't deserve it. This whole series has just been a cluster of confirmation bias.

@hotjala: I am dreading Friday's podcast discussion, especially if Dan doesn't call in to temper some shit.

@nasar7: Sure, definitely. It was an impassioned long screed b/c I see some of the magic behind it. But personally speaking, I don't think I enjoy playing Shenmue, maybe just watching where the story goes. I'll definitely seek out a run of II now (probably your GT suggestion); it'd be a good base to compare against and see how different the game gets when/if the Beast guys do it.

And I guess perceptions/expectations are definitely a hell of a thing. People seem to get attached to the "early open world sim" proposition and maybe associate / fill in the blanks that it'd at least tonally feel like a GTA or Sleeping Dogs. Throw in fighting game and revenge epic and people might expect even more like Sleeping Dogs, a pulpy Kill Bill, or literal boss tower rushes like The Game of Death (which I've heard actually happens in II?). And in a way it is like a Kill Bill / GoD and it isn't, b/c it feels like it's trying to straddle a slice-of-life and pulp, all with another layer of Chinese kung fu mysticism on top. (Also I really think Ryo so far is a bland character, or the game shows his anger poorly. That's why his quest doesn't hold my interest.) If anything, it's being more mystical and contemplative than an action flick. Even someone like me who's played some of it before was expecting more Sleeping Dogs b/c Vinny summoned that image. It really is the mysticism tinge to it that I didn't expect. But I think it's the ponderous "Japaneseness" of it that threw them off the most. I never thought being waylaid by the Japaneseness of it would matter so much. It was like watching city people at city pace being dropped into the boonies and forced to slow way the hell down to rural pace.

@gregalor: Thanks! I think my biggest criticism is still that the plot is too vanilla/by-the-book and thin even for Japanese style standards. But maybe it's somehow impressive that Ryo can go through 2 games doing a ton of stuff and the grand story still doesn't really move that much? (I guess you could also argue THAT's not the important story.) Revenge epics are often thin in premise and plot but they make a trade-off between plot and pace. If plot is thin, move faster, or cover more material. If it's slower, the story needs to be more interesting / less linear. Slow epics tend to benefit from a deep main cast bench all with their own motivations and abilities fighting and helping each other in the drama, and II seems to have realized that. But at this point I think 3 really needs to get into the thick of the grand story b/c Ryo's revenge plot holds no interest for me (mainly b/c it's a constant meandering wild goose chase and not beat-down city).

@gregalor: @hotjala: You're being way too sensitive about it. Give the keyboard a rest. Maybe try and live a little.

@gyozilla: You're spot on about the contemplative tone and the sheer Japaneseness of it being a barrier for some people. I don't think Ryo is bland per se, the game just makes you suss out the details for yourself. He's the son of a super stoic martial arts master who's been learning jujitsu since he was 7. In addition, he is clearly wealthy as his family can afford a live-in housekeeper and his home is literally situated on the hill overlooking town. His father could afford to travel in China as a young man in postwar Japan. Ryo clearly loved his father dearly, but probably rebelled against him as any teenager would as evidenced by his spiky hair and leather jacket. He has his motorcycle license. You can probably conclude that before his dad died Ryo thought he was hot shit. Now he is obsessed with revenge.

Glad you'll be checking out Shenmue II. The nice thing about the Game Trailers run is that those guys are much more enthusiastic about the game which colors the play through in positivity. In addition, Michael Huber (of E3 reaction video fame) is a total bro which I really appreciate.

@lovcol: That's an easy thing to tell someone. I could easily say it to those who come in here to say "Wow, Shen-poo, amirite?" or those who get incredibly bent out of shape if you criticize the GB crew in even the slightest way.

Please play Shenmue 2 soon so I don't have to.

I think I bought this game around the time FF9 came out. I played it for maybe an hour before I quit? I think it was more due to FF9 than the game itself.

Anyway, I'm glad to have seen how this game plays out, even in the midst of a playthrough that may not have hit all the checkboxes. That maybe says something about this game, though. Maybe it was fine enough to grab its diehards, but it's a game that clearly needed to be tightened up in many aspects. I'm not sure if I can blame Vinny for missing bits to clear up parts of the story or put more of the blame on making finer points of the plot feel only accessible as 'side-quest' bits. We should know the full relationship between Ryo & Nozomi and even what precisely who Ine-San is without having to gleam it from a conversation we *maybe* have. Shenmue feels like a game that would have been benefitted from a reboot back in the early PS3/360 days. You certainly can't do it now with the current reverence. It's almost a great attempt at something different at the time.

I can't even fault the voice acting for the time (and hey, it is bad. No getting around that.). I think of the voice acting of games like Shadow of Destiny back then (2 years after Shenmue, but still) and realize we have better now.

I'm not sure what the issue is. I remember liking Shenmue back in the day but based on what I've seen here, I was wrong to like it, it's terrible.

*wipes tear away* MOOOOOORE!!!

So, Shenmue 2 starting next week?

I just finished watching it and I already forgot what happened.

Thank you! and OMG MY MONITOR IS SINKING DOWN

I never played it back in the day, but it seems like it wasn't so much "good for its time" as it was important for its time.

We live in an age where people have generally solved the major design issues involved in making open world games. It can be hard to think back to a time before that was the case. Prior to GTA III, the rules of how you make a 3D open world game were not quite as well-defined, and making a small, obsessively detailed world that recreates all the boring mundanities of real life seemed just as viable a future for video games as anything else.

And it's something that would have impressed people at the time as well. That kind of attention to detail felt like the future at the time. All of the manually dialling phones, or looking in drawers, or waiting for shops to open would have made that world feel more believable. This was at a time before everyone realized that all those little things were choking the games pacing.

I don't think Shenmue is a game to be enjoyed nowadays, so much as a game to be appreciated and respected for what it tried to do.

Man, every piece of this game was a piece of shit. The open world design, the writing, the bland art, the voice acting, the pacing, the combat, god dammit.

I guess there's a nice erhu theme but whatever!

With that being said, I really want to see a Shenmue II ER in 2017.

It's up to you to decide whether all the details of the game "choking the pace" is a bad thing or not. Feel free to think that slow-paced things are bad, that's your personal taste, but for better or worse Shenmue is 100% deliberate about it. You can't say that Suzuki is unaware. There's too much evidence to the contrary. The manual of Shenmue 1 has a whole page lecturing the player to take it slow, and Shenmue 2 doubles down on it by actually putting a character at the start of the game reiterating that you should take your time.

Acting like this is a mistake that we've grown past, just because it's not to your liking, is condescending. There are no mistakes in creative media, there are deliberate choices that might not be to your taste. Those who are expecting Suzuki to speed things up in Shenmue 3 are going to be disappointed, I think. He has explicitly stated that he's resisting the urge to pick up the pace in case there is no 4, because it just wouldn't be Shenmue anymore.

Calm down dude.

I'm not trying to suggest that the pacing was a mistake, or even a bad thing, but that it was a potential direction that open world gaming could have, but ultimately didn't, follow. In a world where we've had roughly 15 years of open world games copying the GTA III mould, it can be hard to appreciate that there was a time when that mould didn't exist, and the future of open world games hadn't been decided yet.

The gaming world is littered with ideas that we sneer and laugh at now, but a lot of times, it's that hindsight isn't kind to them in the face of trends swerving in a different direction. So the trend in open world games is to sacrifice verisimilitude in favour of convenience. Again, I'm not saying this is bad or good or right or wrong or whatever, but it is the direction things have gone in for the mostpart. And when something catches on, people have a tendency to assume that it was only natural that it caught on. And since a game like Shenmue is at odds with this trend, that makes a lot of its design decisions appear to be mistakes in hindsight.

The important thing to remember is that there's a difference between appreciating the context of when this game came out, and nostalgia. People need to keep in mind that this game really was released during a transitional period in gaming, and that appreciating the context of when it came out doesn't mean "lowering your standards," it means remembering that a lot of the design decisions we take for granted nowadays were not set in stone.

I don't like Shenmue, but I admire and respect the hell out of it. Even if I don't share the same love for this series as other people, I think it's completely unfair to dismiss their passion as being solely the result of nostalgia, because there's so much more to it than that.

@melodiousj: I think we're on the same page here. (Except the not liking Shenmue part. I extend my respect and admiration to liking it for the things you mentioned.)

Shenmue was definitely a game for its time. I can definitely see why it was so popular when it came out, but my god just about every aspect of it is absolute TRASH now. I'm just glad I didn't have to play it and the Giantbomb guys made it fun to watch. Really looking forward to Shenmue 2! Thanks guys!

I know I'm late to the party (too much great content on the site), but I want to extend a huge thank you to Dan, Vinny, and Alex for doing this ER. I've been a fan of the site for years, just recently signed up for premium, and this is my first ER. I truly enjoyed and appreciated it.

This was a great series and so funny and relaxing and entertaining all at once. Thank you @vinny@alex and @danryckert!

The most interesting thing to me has been this clash between modern expectations and the reality of a an open world game from 2000. The guys constantly expect the game to make modern concessions and be streamlined in a contemporary way, rather than approach it in the way that most people did when it came out, without those expectations.

The biggest example is probably the interaction with the other characters. Modern games, particularly open worlds, signpost critical interactions pretty heavily, and you can see that all of the guys are thrown off when the game doesn't do this. So much of the world-building (especially with Nozomi), comes from you directly pursuing meetings with her like you might do with a real-life friend. But the game doesn't tell you to do it at all, and never indicates when is a good time or if you'll get anything new out of it. Games have trained us to try something once and if it doesn't give us any feedback, abandon it. So the reaction is understandable if unfortunate when stuff gets dismissed immediately. To modern sensibilities it seems wasteful, stupid and backwards not to indicate to the player what you want them to do, or what they even -can- do.

Playing it back on release, I always spent a lot more time examining the world, testing out all the important characters each time the story progressed, and messing with the different activities in the game just to see what would happen. I didn't spend time stopping the random NPCs in the street, or getting lost in the harbour, though, so maybe I had more time to delve into those side stories.

How does Shenmue 2 work? Everyone in this game knows you, either from the get go, or shortly after meeting you. He's literally going to another country, Tom won't even be there. WHAT'S THE POINT???

@blikketty: You're right, no character in a video game should ever go to a place they haven't been. They might have to meet new people. Never go to past the first town of an RPG -- it's scary out there!

@gregalor: Eh, 90% of the game is Ryo asking "Hey (person I know to some degree or another), do you know anything about the (next milestone)?"

I just find it genuinely hilarious to wonder if the entirety of Shenmue 2 is Ryo doing this only with strangers.

Not that there can be all that much of a delta between how much sense that will make and how little sense the story made in the first game.

Shenmue is a bad game

What a bad bad game.

Watching this endurance run made me really excited for Dan's move to the east coast. I am really loving the chemistry between Alex, Dan, and Vinny.

Thanks to GBeast I was able to experience a game I otherwise would have never checked out. Shenmue comes off as kind of a mess in retrospect but I do admire it for what it was trying to do at the time.

It really, really is. : \

And not just by today's standards, Shenmue was bad when it came out.

Ehh, I kind of take exception to this. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver came out the same year, and its voice acting still holds up to this day (in terms of performances, if not in terms of the compressed quality of audio).

Sure, not a lot of games were hitting that mark in those days, but there were games that were doing it very well, even in the late 90s.

Never played this, sure it doesn't hold up as much as people say but this doesn't seem like a terrible awful game. I'd be excited for them to play 2 so I can see that as well before 3. I would then play 3 after all that.

Man, thanks for suffering through this terrible mess for our enjoyment GBEast.

I don't know why, but I half expected this to end with 'Girl in the Tower' from King's Quest VI. Probably says something about their shared legacy as impressive games in their day that don't hold up at all.

Thank you for a great pun and some banging justice music.

I really hope they play through Shenmue 2. This was hysterical.

Finally I have closure. If I imagine this game in Japanese with good voice actors and writing I think it would be a pretty epic game for the time, even with the sluggish gameplay.

Or, you know, they're just rational people... and at least the first Shenmue has SO many obvious flaws that I honestly wonder if the designers were trolling their players rather than ACTUALLY thinking some of this "wait for days with nothing to do shit" was a good idea. It's also obviously half the scope of what it was planned to be and mostly feels very empty, on top of all that.

I don't feel any of this because it's "cool", it's popular opinion because it's true - you may have liked it when you played it, is IS unique, but it didn't hold up when it came out and doesn't now, even moreso.

It was very fun to watch though, just like it's fun to watch the MST3K dudes rag on a ridiculously bad movie!

I would be my life savings that even you would not like it at all, had you played it today after playing many of the great games since the 90's and through to now. It's a technical mess, the characters are robots, Riyo is not relatable in the slightest because he has no care or attachment to anyone but "revenge" and "looking for fist fights", and there is nothing to do but wander around and talk to empty people trying to find the key that will get you to the next bit of nothingness to do... objectively, I do not see anyone's having a valid defense for it being a good game in retrospect. MAYBE extremely average at the very best.

But again, it's definitely funny in a "laughing at it" and not "laughing with it" sort of way, combined with the endurance run format of having fun either way, even if that fun is just mocking it.

what a shit game.. lol

What it desperately needs is a few more cues early on so that the player knows it is an option. Ryo comments often enough on what he is doing, so a few lines of "Maybe I should call Nozomi/Naoyuki later" to replace a few of those would go a long way (especially if Nozomi said something like "You never call anymore" if you don't but talk to her in Dobuita).

And that was the last time they ran the Yokosuka Marathon through the warehouse district.