Shenmue 3

Guozhuoyan Zhang

Everyone knows that GTAV has sold for over 50 million copies [1]. Let us hypothesize that there is a game which possesses the same game pictures, music and scenes comparing with GTAV. And the only change of this game is related to its core gameplay. It becomes completely terrible to play and only sold for one million copies [2]. That is what Shenmue was.

The fundamental difference between Shenmue and GTA is that players can do nothing except exploring the main story in Shenmue. You can drive, rob, make some money for a living and even enjoy American lifestyles (though it is about bay guys) in GTAV. However, Shenmue owns nothing except the main story. As a sandbox game, it has a wide and broad world which possesses more elaborate details than GTAV did.

Someone might heard that ordinary Non-Player-Characters in GTAV has their own schedules and personalities. But Shenmue’s are greater than those. Every NPCs in it has their background stories, lives and elements related to many side quests. However, players cannot do any interactions with the NPCs in Shenmue except greeting with them. The rest of the things that players can do is to hang out and watch some scenes. Also there are numerous little games which were like triathlons of GTAV in Shenmue, but they has less richness. Assassin's Creed I has lots of common points comparing with Shenmue’s design. It also owns nothing except the main story. Making some sneak attacks on guardians is exactly what players can only do in AC1. No, actually Shenmue did worse than AC1. You cannot climb the wall like an assassin and enjoy the beautiful views. Going for a walk in a 1980s East Asian city is what Shenmue offered to players’ experience. The core of Shenmue is just like learning some experiences from Japanese businessman’s retired life.

In other words, most of the elements in Shenmue’s content are only designed for constructing a realistic atmosphere without any interactions with players. This kind of luxurious game design thought could only be driven by Yu Suzuki’s status and reputation. Any other game companies could not imagine that this game would come true.

Shenmue’s level of game graphics [3], conception and design scale are far more than any other games at that time. People thought that Shenmue was not only a 3A game, but also it would make the present game industry evolve into a higher generation comparing with FF7 and Super Mario. Nonetheless, the result of Shenmue’s failure was going to be disastrous. It directly led SEGA (which was one of the strongest company at that time) to bankruptcy. SEGA would not exist if not for the money donation from Isao Okawa.

Shenmue series possesses two specific enlightenments to the future game industry:

① It proved that simulated reality full 3D sandbox games are feasible.
② Sandbox game needs to find the core gameplay methods by utilizing game content adequately.

The main beneficiary of those enlightenments is likely to be GTA series. At the age of Shenmue, GTA (it was still 2D) was a shocking and antisocial game which was required to deleted any illegal elements in it. It was very lucky that ROCKSTAR insisted on doing a special GTA so we could witness GTAV’s great success now. No matter how antisocial GTA would be, it provided players a colorful experiences.

-What shows will we enjoy tonight?
-I’m so sorry but I can’t let out the news. However, some of the shows are extremely vulgar.
-That is what I want!

Assassin's Creed is the material for teaching by negative example. The first generation of this game’s series was definitely a Shenmue with climbing wall function and random battles. It was criticized by a lot of people in game industry. However, UBISOFT has the advantage of advertising and there was no limitations of game consoles. Assassin’s Creed sold and developed successfully.

Frenchmen of UBISOFT are looking for core gameplay changing after they made the game. They finally found out the naval battle gameplay for Assassin’s Creed III and it attracted players [4]. In other words, UBISOFT owns more resources and money than SEGA does, otherwise AC series would disappear quicker than Shenmue.

Yakuza’s game content shrunk drastically comparing to Shenmue [5]. However, Yakuza did a great job on corrections of Shenmue’ failure. On the one hand, it has massive sums of battles which won’t make players feel bored while finishing the main story. On the other hand, the scale of the game world in Yakuza is smaller than Shenmue. There are only several streets which are related to the main story and little games are designed. Basically Yakuza is like an action role-playing game. In addition, it has changed the system of battle which was switched from VR warrior mode to SPIKE OUT ACT. Yakuza is easy to understand and more lively than Shenmue.

Someone might feel confused that Shenmue was such a boring game to play, but why there are still so many crazy fans of it? [6] First of all, it is about some game feelings. In 1990s, SEGA has the same position as Nintendo in North American game market. Many veteran players would not reconciled to SEGA’s sudden failure and they are always trying to make up something with their feelings. Second of all, it is about Shenmue’s atmosphere. In some persons’ views, Shenmue contains eastern Buddhist mood everywhere.

Has a porcelain cup, slightly skim the leaves on top of it and taste the tea gently. The garden’s pear flowers outside the window are blew away by the breeze and fall into the water.

Citation:


Fan art inspired by M. Huber's epic Shenmue 3 
http://shenmuelegacy.tumblr.com/post/121832184598/fan-art-inspired-by-m-hubers-epic-shenmue-3

1. Karmali, Luke (9 October 2013). "GTA 5 Currently Holds Seven Guinness World Records". IGN. Ziff Davis. Archived from the original on 9 October 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/09/gta-5-currently-holds-seven-guinness-world-records

2. "Microsoft Announces Leading Sega Games for Xbox: SEGA-AM2 and Sonic Team Are Developing Popular New Titles for Xbox". Microsoft.com. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
http://news.microsoft.com/2001/10/11/microsoft-announces-leading-sega-games-for-xbox/

3. "The Greatest Graphics of All Time". IGN. March 17, 2009. Retrieved May 2, 2014.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/03/17/the-greatest-graphics-of-all-time-3

4. "Assassin's Creed Review // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer". Eurogamer.net. November 13, 2007. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/assassins-creed-review?page=3

5. Linneman, John (7 February 2016). "Kiwami is the next best thing to a Shenmue". EUROGAMER.net. Retrieved 11 February 2016.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-hands-on-with-yakuza-kiwami

6. "Slacker Backer Campaign!". Shenmue3 Official Website. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
https://shenmue.link/order/