Shenmue, or, How I Stopped Killing And Learned To Love The Open World Video Game

[Hyp3hat]

I did a search and couldn't find an all-purpose Shenmue thread. If I was wrong, do your worst Mods!

I recently played Shenmue, for a number of reasons. Shenmue 3, a new gaming PC that could run NullDC, and a sense of curiousity about it. My dad had a copy of it, but I don't remember much about Shenmue. I was 10, and had an insultingly short attention span with games. But with 15 years hindsight, I was astounded by it. In a lot of ways. 

I suffer from depression. It affects me in ways I don't even know about. But one way I know how it does affect me is that I will spend a lot of time playing videogames. it's escapism, and also a way of feeling accomplished in a day where I don't get much done.

Shenmue is a game about that. 

Ryo Hazuki witnesses his fathers murder, and three days later, goes out to avenge him. Three days. 

To the untrained eye, Ryo's interactions with people seem stilted and weird - the voice acting does nothing to dispel this - whilst he pieces together everything that happened 'that day'. Ryo doesn't mention his fathers death to anyone in game. 'My father...' 'That day', 'Lan Di', sure, but actually acknowledging his fathers death? He can't. 

Ryo seems to be barely keeping it together, in the way that a true depressive would - sure, he gets up, but does a sane man waste 1000's on yen on toy capsules, hang out down the arcade, and place the utmost importance on the smallest of tasks, like feeding a stray cat? Shenmue's bizarro voice acting helps with the unreality of it - Corey Marshall's dispassionate tone sounds like someone who barely knows how to go through the human interactions you're forcing him through. Similarly, the people he meets sound like caricatures of accents and people - I feel like that about the random people I see.

But Ryo gets things done. He can make an appointment. He can feed a cat. He can fight some random goons. But when the plot demands he talk to people, he shuts down. he constantly tells those who express worry that he's doing fine, to not worry, and shut them down. I'm like that. Ryo doesn't let people in. Perhaps more strikingly, the player isn't let in - you just move Ryo through his grief.

His grief moves to unexpected places - working a forklift, getting a complete set of Sonic figurines, asking about sailors, before going to Hong Kong in Shenmue II, where you can cheat people out of their money, intercept mob hits, lift crates at the dock to pay his rent, sleep on a boat, reform street performers, and air out books in a library. Ryo moves and learns throughout these disparate experiences, although the possibility that Lan Di may kill him is on everyone's mind except Ryo's. 

The way we look at open-world videogames is haunted with the spectre of GTA. GTA allowed you to murder anyone, and so the NPC's were disposable shells, waiting to be knocked down. This approach is fun in the short term, but GTA is a world with a million beat cops and no detectives, and thus, no consequences. And the narrative suffers as a result of this unrealistic world -  GTAV attempted to let you into the damaged psyche of Michael Townsend, but also let you commit a genocide on the streets of LA. That doesn't compute.

Shenmue offers a tantalising look at what an open world game could have been, before GTA let you murder people in it. Shenmue had people. They had routines. They worked shifts and went home. They go to bars. They shop. They commit crimes, but they also have families. Spend enough time in Dobuita and the Man Mo Temple and you will know the people.  GTA offered bowling pins.

All we've had since is an attractive bowling alley, with pins to knock down. GTAV offered the greatest, most accurately realised bowling alley of the entire history of bowling. What would be great is for a game developer to attempt to create a real world in the same way that Shenmue did.

[TCB]

I'm on the bus so I'll make this short:

I've read all I can know about the series for the past few years, about it's development to its standing at the time of release. It's not only one of the best games for the system, but in my opinion, one of the best games of all time for what it brought to video games.

Yu Suzuki was already a genius in the market with games like Outrun and Virtua Fighter. Shenmue has to be his magnum Optus in that regard.

[Agie]

I really ought to play the Shenmue series one of these days. Especially with number 3 finally becoming a reality.

[TCB]

Here's something that the OP was alluding to that Suzuki also stresses; that you're just not the protagonist, but you ARE Ryu Hazuki. Not only that how Ryo interacts through the world (which by the way when it comes to the sheer detail and accuracy still holds up today) is also important.

FREE, or Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment, Suzuki coined as the term for its gameplay is highly immersive for what it set out to do. People in the games have actual schedules, seasons change in such an interesting way, the passage of time is paramount. You don't have to rush through the game's story and he also stresses that too.

[Hyp3hat]

Yeah, the sheer depth in the world is astonishing - Especially in 2, which has so much going on. Currently going through Kowloon, which in the hands of a crasser developer would be murder central (and I would play the hell of out that game - Sleeping Dogs 2?). But Shenmue really digs into what Kowloon, which in 1987 had been condemned by the Chinese & British governments and would be totally demolished by 1994, would be like. It's oppressive and dirty, with labyrinthine streets and alleys, crumbling buildings and piles of rubble in the streets. The buildings are, quite frankly, cesspools, and everything's broken. Even the docks of Hong Kong seem like a paradise compared.

One weird thing is that whilst Shenmue's 1 Dobuita is a polite suburb with tonnes of old people and kids, Ryo would get into occasional random street fights with people who presumably went home to places you walked past every day. Kowloon, a city with no government, run by warring street gangs and with at least 7 streetfighting rings per square mile, running 24/7, has Ryo walking throughout with no incident. Shenmue's weird. 

But yeah, still in Kowloon - just went through the streetfight gauntlet that gets you into the Yellow Head building, the whiplash from playing, well Shenmue (I dreamt about playing Lucky Hit last night - and I still lost) to Virtua Fighter to stealthing through this building like MGS with quicktime events is super weird. And Super Great.

I'm loving Ryo's ragtag band of people who hang around him - nothing like being greeted in the morning by a guy called Cool Z with John Lennon Glasses, a mohawk and a ghetto blaster playing the same low bitrate rap song welded to his shoulder. Or Ren, who hates you (still can't believe he bet against me in that street fight, bastard!). And Joy, who seems to be into Ryo and he just doesn't give a crap.  Am honestly conflicted about whether I want all of Shenmue's elements to go full 21st Century - is it Shenmue if the voice acting doesn't sound like it was recorded on a boombox? 

Seriously, if anyone hasn't yet, go play it - go download this version of NullDC, which is optimised for Shenmue http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=46995  and the roms (on that website there's Shenmue 2 with full English voice acting too, which is ace), and just go. It's the best way until SEGA re-release the games, which may not happen for a few reasons - one of which I've heard is that the quicktime events have serious compatability problems with current gen hardware, to say nothing of internal politics. These are really great videogame history.

[Hyp3hat]

On 2/13/2016 at 0:56 AM, TCB said:

I'm on the bus so I'll make this short:

I've read all I can know about the series for the past few years, about it's development to its standing at the time of release. It's not only one of the best games for the system, but in my opinion, one of the best games of all time for what it brought to video games.

Yu Suzuki was already a genius in the market with games like Outrun and Virtua Fighter. Shenmue has to be his magnum Optus in that regard.

I think Yu Suzuki's greatest gift for this medium was actually giving players an inhabited, full, realised world. Thinking about how other developers attempted this, besides the 'bowling pin' model of GTA, Saints Row, and other knock-offs, is how every other developer just leaves that to the player base. If it fails, the game is dead.

Every single MMO does this. But those attempt to make everyone a hero, which begs the question - how can everyone be a hero? If everyone's special, no-one's special (which becomes increasingly torturous when you make an MMO out of Conan The Barbarian). I read a super interesting article about Star Wars Galaxies, and how it took off as an MMO by having everything in the game player-generated. Shops, buffs, entertainment, bars, armories, and an entire economy sprung into life within the game. People ran businesses within an MMO. They did the entire work of Shenmue's development team themselves. 

They killed it because it wasn't WoW. I got angry reading that article, and I never played it. They managed to create an entire functioning economy in virtual space, which was the dream of much loftier projects like Second Life (lol) or Playstation Home (remember that?), and nah. It's done. 

And yet, Shenmue predated this, but did it on the Dreamcast!