Shenmue 3 is a Terrible Game and I’ve Wasted My Life

oh god oh no it's bad 19 years 19 [ __ ] years life is a nightmare don't ever believe in anything would be a brief summation on my thoughts on shenmue 3 the long-awaited sequel to unsurprisingly shenmue 1 and 2. and i love these games granted their gameplay has aged about as well as this very real richard nixon presidential campaign badge but in 1999 these games were insane they were the industry's first foray into massive 3d open world games with a budget and scope that was new and different and mind-blowing and it was their director yu suzuki that drove that a strange but passionate fellow who in a very real way revolutionized the games industry again and again and to him shenmue was the opportunity to bring about a new era of gaming which is why it was so hard to watch and move fade into obscurity and why each failed attempt to bring it back was so painful because you knew at the heart of these games there was a person who really cared who really believed in them but as the years went on you suzuki too would disappear from the industry but that's why it was so exciting when in e3 2015 yu suzuki re-emerged walked out on stage and announced that after 14 years shenmue 3 was entering development fueled by a kickstarter campaign that would go on to be backed by 69 000 people and as one of those people i can tell you it felt like more than just backing a video game but giving this legend one final chance to cement his legacy which is why it's so hard to write this next sentence i have played shenmue three to completion twice and oh god this is the most disappointed i've been in the game since i realized peter molyneux was a crazy person and until the last third of the final fantasy 7 remake and if you've followed me for a while you'd know the deal here i don't like to [ __ ] on stuff for the sake of it but i will if it's something that means a lot to me and if you've seen my other video shenmue does i have tried god help me i have tried to love this game but shenmue 3 feels like a relic of outdated game design while simultaneously being a far worse experience than the original games destroying any potential the series had but before we get into how disappointing i feel this game is i think it's only right to acknowledge that there are some positives to it a lot of talented people put a lot of hard work into this and so i think it's only fair to take a moment and talk about some of the things i genuinely liked about shenmue 3. shenmue 3 raised 6.3 million dollars on kickstarter and despite some additional funding from sony deep silver and slacker backers any reasonable estimate of its budget would still only be at a fraction of the original games which adjusting for inflation was about 70 million dollars but despite this very few of my problems with this game are budget related in fact i think if anything the team has done a great job building an open world on limited resources technically the game runs fine and even more than that it can be at times straight up beautiful from the apricot skies of bailu village to the torch flame soap knights of niallo city the environments of shenmue are gorgeous and particularly its interiors this one section of the game will explore the home of a rural chinese stonemason and wow it really feels like the home of a rural chinese stonemason the house littered with all these unusual tools jars of ink and even magazines on stone masonry and even by modern standards it's really impressive this same sense of presentation carries through to a lot of shenmue 3 from the game's really well directed action scenes to the occasional injection of goofy humor there's a care put into these moments that make them shine and that's also true of the game's mini-games every side activity whether you're chopping wood training a one-inch punch or just gambling it all looks and sounds great and one of these activities is even the return of the capsule toy minigames now featuring these really nicely modeled little miniatures of the characters of shenmue in a very cute and welcome homage to the originals even if rio holding a tiny forklift version of himself is a little there's a real nostalgia here the moment the game opened up and i watched rio exit a cave i'd walked him into 19 years ago i made a noise like wow and likewise seeing characters fully rendered that for years have only existed in concept art is awesome even chai's back guys chai this is clearly a game made by people who really love shenmue and nothing about it feels like a shameless cash in and that's maybe the most impressive thing about shenmue 3. it exists after 19 years and a nearly endless avalanche of delays cancellations and setbacks you suzuki did it he released his vision and made his game and whatever else i say this video i still have a massive amount of respect for this man and everything he's been able to achieve and unfortunately that's the last positive thing i have to say about shenmue 3. this is a game so baffling in its game design and construction that just trying to piece together how it all ended up like this was a huge part of putting together this video and unfortunately a lot of this comes back to you suzuki as a game designer and you can feel this the moment you step out into shenmue's bizarre and broken world all around me are familiar is worn out when you first step out into bailu village most of your time in shenmue 3 will be spent locating the correct npc to talk to in order to advance the story and by advance the story i do of course mean be told about the next npc you need to talk to these interactions are the breadcrumb trails that lead you to the game and they are so strange some of the character models for npcs look fine cute even but others look like the titans for attack on titan shrunk down and squeezed into people clothes and if they look kind of uncanny just wait until they speak there is nothing i could write to illustrate to you how surreal these conversations are so i'm just going to play you the very first one of the entire game enjoy hey we have to get to the village let's go do you have any idea where your father might have gone no i don't hm [Music] has this ever happened before with my father yeah has he ever disappeared without telling you no never i see conversations are filled with these really strange fades to black only to continue like nothing happened characters will constantly react to things that have not been said or even referred to events that have already happened as if they're about to happen making it feel like the characters are talking to each other from alternate universes i'm looking for someone named yuen no i have it come to apprentice under me have you oh nothing and look i'm a huge fan of weird interactions with strange characters but the problem is when you get past the sheer uncanniness of these conversations no one ever really says anything 95 of your conversations will be about where rio needs to walk next with very little character given to these characters meaning they just feel like living breathing signposts their sole existence in service of pointing rio to his next destination and yet the dialogue of the original shenmue games were also bizarre and you could argue that that was part of their charm i do but localizations like this did not exist back then and that charm comes from the fact that no one knew what the [ __ ] they were doing but trying in earnest anyway leading to decisions like you suzuki who spoke no english hiring english voice actors based on how much they looked like the characters they were playing and so you can't recreate the sincerity of that charm because it was indicative of the time the game was made and seeing those problems echo 20 years later when everyone should really know better that was my first indication that maybe not all was right with this game because it hadn't made any attempt to learn from the two decades since the original game and man i hope this isn't foreshadowing for a much bigger problem oh god in interviews leading up to shenmue 3 you suzuki's been outspoken about the fact that he not only does not play video games but also that modern video games had zero influence on the design of shenmue 3 and look on the surface that doesn't need to be a problem in the same way outsider art can be cool and weird and different because of its ignorance of established conventions i think that's part of what let you suzuki shatter expectation with shenmue 20 years ago a big part of what made those games special is that they were some of the first games to ever try and create a feeling of versamilitude the feeling of an experience being true or real it was [ __ ] crazy and new and different to experience a game that lets you open every drawer and pick up every item a game that brought mundane daily life into focus in a way that nothing else did the problem is that that was a mind-blowing concept in 1999 but in 2019 it's not instead it leads to the kind of game design that is so tedious and maddening but permeates every square inch of this game and to show you what i mean here i want to walk you through a typical morning in shenmue 3. shenmue 3 runs off a 24 hour clock with ryo waking up at 8 am and going to bed at 9pm and here is how your typical morning goes you walk through shanwa's house shinwa being the girl chosen by fate to assist rio and quest and being the sidekick of his adventure and some days you'll meet her in the kitchen and when you do this cutscene triggers good morning leon good morning did you get enough rest yeah and okay that's a little annoying but where things get a little more frustrating is that off to the side of the main hall there's this sitting area which if you enter automatically triggers a cut scene of rio taking off his shoes and so then you have to turn around 180 degrees and leave exiting the sitting area triggering yet another cut scene of rio putting back on his shoes the problem being that rio controls like a forklift whether or not he is actually driving a forklift so nudge the control stick a degree too far and you'll send him into the sitting area triggering the taking off shoes animation turn around leave trigger the putting on shoes animation and then finally we can leave and start the day except we can't because take a couple of steps out of the house and this cutscene triggers leo see you later yeah this happens every single morning you cannot skip it and it does not change and if that sounds aggravating just imagine playing it and we've only gotten as far as our front gate it might sound like i'm being pedantic but what you gotta understand is this is everything in shenmue three everything is a struggle right down to moving rio through this world while running around you may notice that rio's health is constantly falling and this is because of the game's brand new hunger mechanic over the course of a day ryo's stamina will fall until eventually he stops and voices his displeasure in this honestly quite relatable line i better eat something before i fall over but when this happens he also loses the ability to run meaning if you have no food items your only choice is to slowly walk back to the village while you wait for rio's health to regenerate and compounding this problem is that your stamina is also your health meaning it can fall over the course of a day as you run about and do your daily business only for you to be surprised by a story related combat encounter and enter that encounter with only a sliver of life to make it through and what this usually means is you have to lose run back and get food and then run back to the encounter to repeat it there is so much more when you get to the hotel in night woo a second unskippable cut scene with the hotel receptionist is added to each morning in addition to another unskippable cutscene with xinhua if you play the flower sun bird and moon gambling game you have to watch the entire animation play out every time and if you try and skip it you automatically forfeit the bet although maybe that's a little petty i mean it's not like there's a section of the game where we'll have to play a lot of this there's a small shrine in yeah woo that the game forces you to walk not run through the problem being that you have to pass back and forth through this area several times a day and there are several areas across niagara like this if this is to hide loading i genuinely think loading screens would have been less frustrating and look at how slowly rio picks up these apples look at it no we're just gonna sit here and watch it all i'm sorry i just i need you to understand what this game is there's way more but i'm going to stop there what i'm not saying here is that games should be designed around the convenience of the player in fact inconveniencing the player forcing them into situations that are awkward or difficult or mundane can actually be a really powerful storytelling tool forcing them to reflect on how their actions shape their place within the world or story and there's one really great example of this that parallels shenmue's own focus on one day and daily life but builds on it and it's in god help me david cage's heavy rain this is a game where you play as ethan a pretty normal father and architect the early hours of that game focusing on these mundane daily tasks having a shower brushing your teeth playing with your kids with one section in particular sitting you down at your workstation giving you a simple prompt that leads into a sequence of timed button presses as ethan gets lost in his work in a novel if slightly dull little moments however later on in the game after ethan's son is killed in an accident we find ourselves in the same scenario at the same workstation given the same prompts but this time ethan instead turns to a nearby tv set and watches an old video of him and his son playing before he breaks down crying heavy rain is a silly silly game but in this moment i do think it really succeeds in communicating how broken ethan now is and the loss of his son has crippled his ability to do things that once came so naturally to him and that moment would lose a lot of its power without the earlier sections to give it context in other words there's a point to the mundanity it says something about this character and in the last 20 years a lot of games have done this they've used the concept of daily mundanity to say some beautiful and profound things but shenmue 3 ignores this it ignores the legacy it created instead it's a game content to wheel out the same tired game design that was so impressive in 1999 but so meaningless in 2020 and expecting that same reaction when games have moved so far beyond those ideas it shows shenmue 3's inability to move on from what it once was resulting in a game that feels like a tired tedious relic i get at this point that some people might say that i'm criticizing shenmue 3 for basically being shenmue and to an extent i get that those games could be dull this game can be dull and so now what i want to talk about is an area where shenmue 3 is so catastrophically worse than the originals that it destroys the entire experience [Music] i want to quickly talk about two ways games can motivate us to play them intrinsically and extrinsically intrinsic motivation comes from our own internal desire to get better at something to raise our own skill set within a game so for example wanting to learn to reliably pull off a dragon punch in street fighter that's intrinsic motivation because when we do nothing about the game has changed we have we are internally better at it whereas extrinsic motivation is the opposite this is when the game gives you something for performing a task say beating a turn-based battle in an rpg and being rewarded with experience or items you likely haven't improved much after a single battle but the game creates that feeling of progress by giving you an external reward it's motivating you extrinsically neither of these systems is necessarily superior it just depends on the kind of experience the game is trying to create take the combat from the original shenmue that was mostly intrinsic there were slight stat increases you could gain from repeatedly performing the same moves but these were so off to the side that they barely mattered and so your ability to succeed was largely determined by your own skill and that was because it was based on the virtua fighter combat system fighting games being one of the purest examples of intrinsic reward and so it had this emphasis on spacing timing and execution so learning a new move meant really learning a new move take the tornado kick to perform this you had to tap forward twice in quick succession before double tapping kick in a specific rhythm the move had a long start up and left you vulnerable so if you wanted to incorporate it into your moveset you had to understand its timing and distance and considering how few fights there were in shenmue you could only really do this by going to a parking lot and practicing it but the reward was when you actually managed to pull it off in combat man that felt amazing it looked great and it had high damage but most of all there was this feeling that your skills had advanced you had learned the subtleties of this move and made it your own and you could feel the same intrinsic motivation with each punch kick block throw and counter all of which had their own weight and timing that felt um it felt so good watch someone who really knows what they're doing with the combat system in shenmue and there's this kind of hypnotic flow to it and it shows you just how high the skill sealing of this game actually was meaning there's this real intrinsic motivation to get better at it and what's cool is this intrinsic motivation was the player's link to rio about ryo's only defining character traits besides his wooden stoicness and dead dad was his love of martial arts and a big part of his character was his drive to get better at them and to grow stronger and so by incentivizing you to master each new move and learn the combat system as well as you could each new technique you mastered felt like it brought both you and rio one step closer to being able to face lon d and what shenmue 3 does is it takes all this and fires it into the [ __ ] sun my first clue that something was very wrong with shenmue 3's combat came in its tutorial screen just hit the circle triangle square x buttons try pressing the or two button this is how shenmue 3 introduces you to its brand new combat system and thanks but it was only later when reading over an old game informer interview with you suzuki that i started to understand why the tutorial is like this as well as the core problems plaguing shenmue 3's combat as he stated he wanted to create a more approachable combat system that even players with a low skill could play where just pressing buttons randomly would make something meaningful happen and on the surface yeah appealing to a wider audience is admirable but the problem is how that entire philosophy warps the combat of shenmue into something that barely resembles the original here is how combat works in shenmue 3. it doesn't and i mean that the focus of shenmue 3's combat is not the actual combat it's these minigames throughout the game's world there are a variety of these training spots where rio can take part in a variety of tedious activities in order to level up his attack and defense stats and it's these stats that dictate how much damage rio will deliver and receive in combat in other words the entire focus of this series combat has shifted from intrinsically raising your own skill to extrinsically leveling up rio's stats so he has the numbers to survive encounters and again on the surface that didn't need to be a problem but where the real issue lies is how under-considered the actual combat mechanics are forcing you to rely on these stat increases and this is something you can feel as soon as you take control of ryo and instantly something feels very very wrong in that when you hit a button rio won't actually perform the move associated with that button instead he'll enter this kind of delayed buffer state this is likely done because all special commands are now mapped to the four face buttons rather than using directional inputs like the old games in order to simplify combat but the problem is that it creates this lag as rio waits to see if you're going to enter any additional button presses after your first to be clear this is not the same as a slow startup animation but that there's an inherent delay between you hitting the button and rio performing the animation and it's that way by design this creates all kinds of problems but one of the biggest is it takes away your ability to meaningfully react to your enemy as by the time rio actually performs the move you entered the combat situation will have moved on and the spacing and timing will be completely different and what this results in is that you never feel in full control of ryo but more like you are suggesting actions to him that he may perform at some point in the future you can quick bind moves to or two that he will instantaneously perform but all this does is incentivize you to spam one move over and over and over this is not the only thing that makes you feel barely in control of shenmue's combat in the original games a successful block would trigger specific block animations depending on the move being blocked and not only did this really add to that satisfying weighty feel as you blast your opponent's attacks back at them but it also created openings for both you and your opponent to counter but in shenmue 3 this does not happen blocking an opponent's attacks just triggers ryo to flail his hands randomly in the air with no blowback to your enemies at all and not only does it make all the impacts feel floaty and weightless but that lack of impact makes it difficult to tell when you're getting hit and when your attacks are actually landing meaning you don't have the visual information to make meaningful split-second decisions in combat instead fights have all the weight and strategy of two people flailing their limbs in front of each other until one gets tired and lies down so what all this means is you inevitably come across a high level enemy and god help you if it's enemies and because the combat system doesn't give you either the tools or visual information to meaningfully react to your opponents they will break your guard and burn your health in just a couple of attacks and so your only option is to grind out stat increases over and over and over until finally you have high enough numbers to just steamroll whatever enemy is gatekeeping your progress and i know this is how the game is intended to be played because practically every enemy in the game tells you this tells you to go and train after they beat you meaning combat is no longer a test of your strategy skill or reactions but just your patience in enduring these mini games and in fairness yes this in a way is a more approachable combat system in that anyone who is willing to grind out the experience points will be able to randomly mash their way through it but in that misguided attempt to draw in a wider player base shenmue 3 has destroyed that satisfying intrinsic motivation that was so core to the original games and replaced it with something lifeless limp and meaningless all around me are familiar faces worn out okay here's where we're at exploration bad combat very bad but there's still hope there's still a way shenmue 3 could make good on all its potential and it's in its story we've been waiting at 19 years for rio's quest to avenge his father to continue and the fact that it's here is huge which is why it's so frustrating that for 95 of this game the story is nothing and as for the remaining five percent oh we'll get there don't you worry we'll get there what i mean here is that for 95 of shenmue three things happen people say things but there is no story and to show you what i mean here i am now going to take you through a couple of hours of shenmue three and i will warn you now you are on the precipice of a world of madness and insanity so just imagine playing it instead of listening to it and welcome to my hell not long after rio arrives in bailu village he discovers that shunwa's father has gone missing and from here you follow a breadcrumb trail that eventually leads you to this big strong man who with two of his cronies has taken over an entire suburb of the village holding its residence hostage rio and the big strong man fight the big strong man beats oprio and you awaken two days later where you learn that the big strong man is still in the same area of the village and still holding it hostage and for some reason no one's done anything about it bailou village is home to a martial arts temple a patrol of armed guards and several different martial arts masters but no it's up to this teenage boy to solve the problem and no matter how many days pass the big strong man is always standing in this one area waiting for rio to come fight him in order for eo to be able to fight the big strong man ryo decides he needs to learn a special technique to beat him so you go and talk to the village's resident kung fu master not this one not this one but this one but he refuses to teach you anything because it will take too long while also not explaining why he won't go fight the big strong man himself but then rio remembers grand master sun an old hermit who lives in a temple who you've previously met on a different questline where the only way to speak to him was to leave wine and buns by his front porch and then hide waiting for him to emerge like he's some kind of strange kung fu squirrel and then approach him at which point you can ask him one of two questions both of which you need answered to progress the story but try and ask him more than one question and he's like hey [ __ ] more wine and buns and so you have to run back to the village buy his wine and buns go back to him and he answers your second question okay back to our current timeline you go back to sun explain your problem but he's like ah wine and buns back to the village buy the wine buy the buns ask him to teach you some martial arts but then he's like oh you want me to teach you martial arts well that's going to take a lot of wine and buns and specifically 50 year old lao joe wine and so your quest now is to track down this ultra rare wine without any indication of where throughout bailu village it might be and when you ask around everyone tells you to check out this one store and so when you go there the old lady who runs it is like hmm i'm not sure if we have that maybe take a look around the store yourself which i mean i really think it's her job but okay okay so you look around the store and eventually rio just says there's nothing 50 years old here i'd better try another but why did the game tell me to come here if this was not how to progress the story okay i'm sorry i'm just getting frustrated see it turns out the actual wine is hidden in this barrel in this general store at the start of the game so finally you found the wine you bring it to the counter and it costs 2 000 yuan this is a massive amount of money in shenmue's world at this point you have maybe two or three hundred total and collecting herbs or chopping wood it will only add a pittance to that so this is going to take hours so surely there's a better way and there is at least according to the people of bailu village many of which point you towards a fortune teller that can predict the results of the flowered sun burden moon gambling god damn it and it's like oh there's my solution only not quite see you pay the fortune teller to predict the correct colors go bet on the color but you can't bet money you have to exchange money for tokens then gamble those tokens which you can only do in very small amounts but then you can't just exchange those tokens back for money you have to take the tokens to the prize exchange in a different part of the village exchange those tokens for prizes and then take those prizes to a pawn shop and then pawn those prizes for money and it's a pain but fine this is how you do it this is how you get the 2000 yuan except kind of not because the predicted results from the fortune teller only work some of the time the fortune teller will give you the correct color to bet on but all this does is raise the likelihood of the ball landing on that collar it does not guarantee it and it only lasts a short amount of time meaning you have to run back to the fortune teller to keep your predictions somewhat accurate with a bad run of luck meaning you can actually lose money doing this no matter what the fortune teller predicted a reminder that we are doing all this to beat this big strong man in a fight and so you do this for an hour and you take your winnings to the prize exchange to the pawn shop and you don't even have close to enough back to gambling a back-to-price exchange back to pawn shop and at this point in the footage i was nearly there so back for one more gamble and i lose and i lose and i lose nearly a third of my money and do you feel yourself staring into an infinite abyss of a world without logic or compassion but no it's fine it's fine we'll do this back to gambling back to prize exchange back to pawn shop and finally we've done it we have two thousand dollars to buy the [ __ ] wine back to squirrel man and now finally we learn the move after we undergo his special training where we have to catch 10 chickens the day ends back to bed off to the temple more chicken catching more training back to bed off to the temple [ __ ] back to the temple get sent to another temple fight these guys back to the original temple and finally we learned the move the body check and in fairness it's it's pretty cool back to hermit's nest not enough health back to village eat food back to big strong man who has at this point been standing here for about a week but what does it matter what does anything matter defeat big strong man save the day you may now progress the game and oh my god oh my god this took hours the story has not progressed we haven't learned anything new about landi why did we do this why did we have to do this and then something really weird happens shenmue 3 gets good not long after your showdown with the big strong man at this location change and you travel to the portside city of niau and yaowoo is really beautiful it has a totally different energy to bailu village and is packed with all these really interesting stalls and shops the story even starts to pick up with the introduction of both the red snakes a violent criminal gang and reigns back guys ren rio's very real distain for his sexy pirate boyfriend being genuinely quite entertaining other fun side characters are introduced there's a really well done chase sequence and it's just fun and it's like oh my god yes this is awesome this is all i wanted this is shenmue and then you meet a big strong man who beats rio in a fight and ryo decides he needs to learn a special technique to beat him and you have to search the entire city for a technique scroll and when you find it it's it's 5 000 yuan and everyone's like have you heard about the fortune teller and it's like no no you suzuki why why would you do this why is this what you made and then and then when you finally after hours by the scroll the last page is missing and you can't even learn the move but then an old man with a bird just teaches you the move anyway and it's the same move it's the same move you already learned like the animation's the exact same and why why and oh my god i've wasted my entire [ __ ] life waiting for this game was shinmu ever actually good no no no i do i love shenmue i always have they can still turn around there's still hope they're still [Music] despite the fact that he appears for less than 10 minutes total across all games in a lot of ways landy is shenmue it's been two decades since he set the story in motion by killing ryo's father in shenmue 1 and left that story on an agonizing cliffhanger as he disappeared into the horizon at the end of shenmue ii and in the time since then his absence has made him legendary the prospect of finally facing landi after so many years that was a huge part of what made that initial announcement so exciting and also why it's so frustrating when 19 hours into this 20-hour game landi has barely been mentioned until i am now going to spoil the final hour of shenmue 3. if you have not played this game and still want to skip here i do not recommend this but you can rio and his allies storm an old castle where the red snakes have taken shunwa only to learn that landi is waiting for them and after wading through more enemies than you face the entire rest of the game rio and ren break into the castle's highest chamber and they're surrounded by his men sitzlan d and honestly i gotta say this moment got me i had waited most of my life for this and finally experiencing it was thrilling and in that instance every problem i had with this game just fell away ryo steps towards landi and then landi blocks all your moves beats rio gets distracted and rio runs away 19 years meaning the last 5 of this game is also nothing was that disappointing is the fact that i alluded earlier in the video that there might be something here now a massive disappointment will multiply that feeling by 19 years and now you know what it's like to be a fan of shenmue there is no narrative progression both rio and landi end this game the exact way they started it you could cut this entire game out of shenmue cannon and it wouldn't matter meaning we waited 19 years for a shenmue filler episode and what kills me is that it didn't need to be like this i'm not going to do something i very rarely do i'm going to say how i would fix the end of shenmue 3 and i want to acknowledge that it's the height of hubris to say a piece of art is bad and that you could fix it despite having never worked in the industry it was created but that's what i'm about to do so first some rules one my new ending cannot add any additional cost to development so no new asset creation we have to work with what's already there two you suzuki has expressed that his goal with this game was not to conclude shenmue's story so we can't do that either and three finally i'm not gonna change anything outside the events of this throne room even with these limitations in place i think it would have been totally possible to give this entire game meaning with this one scene and this is how i do it first off take everyone who is not rio or landi out of this scene they only take away from the magnitude of this moment and so now it's just rio and landi face to face and alone and that's huge we give the player a moment to take in the weight of 19 years just as we do they both know what has to happen here and without a word the fight begins and it's the same rio can't touch landy while landi's attacks are overwhelming and unstoppable but just as the light begins to fade for rio time slows to a crawl and the quick time event for the body check appears on screen we hit it and boom rio slams his body into landi for the first time ever landing an attack on the man who killed his father and landi doesn't go down but he does stumble the music cuts out and for a moment there's just this stillness landy slowly turning to face rio and rio stares back at him his eyes filled with determination fury flashes across landy's face and he lunges forward striking ryo down with the same attack he used to kill rio's father at the very beginning of shenmue one ryo collapsing to the ground crumpled and lifeless landy stands over the fallen rio readying one final killing blow but suddenly he just freezes and he stands there staring down at the unconscious boy and a glimmer of conflict flickers across his face maybe it's his pride refusing to let him finish and downed opponents or maybe he's just now realizing the cycle of bloodshed he's become a part of we don't know and slowly andy turns and walks away later ryo's friends discover him just as he's regaining consciousness rio his face a cocktail of disappointment and determination whispers lon d we cross dissolve to a scene of londy staring out over a vast ocean his brow furrowed his lips tense a conflicted distant look in his eyes i'm not saying this ending is good i am saying it's something think about what we achieve first off it takes the body check that completely pointless move we spent the entire game building to and it gives that build purpose there's now a massive emotional payoff to all that time and all that pain it took to learn this move because now it's become the bridge over the gap between rio and landi and this fundamentally changes their relationship landi is no longer the invincible god he was at the start of the game there's now a crack in his armor and that crack is the ultimate testament to the 19-year journey it took to get here ryo's groan meaning to landi he isn't just an insignificant threat anymore but someone who's forced landi to actually get serious and by doing so not only humiliating him but making landi reflect on his actions that brought them both to this point resulting in his moment of hesitation and this moment humanizes landy even just a little and we've spent two decades chasing this villain it's time to give him some nuance and develop his character and so both rio and landi have progressed but more importantly so has their relationship meaning the central narrative thread of this whole story has advanced and that's not something the actual ending does making this entire game and the 19-year wait for it meaningless the only question i have to ask now is what is the point of this game it's clearly not intended as a conclusion to the story and you suzuki was open about that before its release but it's also not a continuation of this story either evidenced by the fact that the story does not continue so what is it then and i think there's an answer to that question and it comes after the closing credits in a personal letter from you suzuki to the player ending with the words i will never give up on my own personal journey to complete its story together we can continue to spin the tale of ryo and his adventures in shenmue for i don't know you suzuki and i don't know what's going on in the man's head but my feeling is that shenmue 3 was not created as a sequel to shenmue 1 and 2. it was created as a prequel to shenmue 4. the entire driving philosophy behind this game doesn't feel like it was to continue shenmue but to reboot it to bring the series back exactly as it was 20 years ago and all the fanfare that surrounded it and when you look at it like this it explains so much why it's open world feels like a relic from the past why the combat has been simplified in the hopes of bringing in a new audience and white's story does nothing except reintroduce this world and these characters shenmue 3 is an attempt to return to an era when open world games were still virgin territory and yu suzuki was still a rock star of the video game industry and when i look at this game now what i see is a person trying to recapture their past but at the expense of the game they were trying to make and the story they were trying to tell and it doesn't work and it hasn't worked in its first week shenmue 3 sold less than 18 000 copies less than both astral chain and code vein and if you haven't heard of either of those games exactly with its publisher deep silver even publicly commenting on the disappointing sales figures with similarly low numbers posted all over the world and yet despite everything you suzuki is adamant that shenmue for will happen still i'm never gonna [ __ ] on someone for it following their dreams but as someone who really loved this series i think this might be it i think shenmue is over when you first enter your hotel room in the elude there's a book beside rio's bed and if you open it it's filled with notes from the different kickstarter backers people thanking you suzuki writing what a big part of their lives the original shenmues were and how it ignited their passion for japanese culture and shaped their careers how now a lifetime later they want to have these same experiences with their kids some even dedicating their entries to lost loved ones who will never get to experience this third game and it's hard to read this and not to get a little emotional not to feel what a big part of people's lives these games were and i really mean it when i say this but i hope these people found what they were looking for in this game and if they did i don't mean for this video to diminish those experiences if anything i envy them but for me ultimately what shenmue 3 is is what happens when you can't let go of the way things were and i don't just mean that about you suzuki i mean about me i mean about us and i think it's time to move on and honestly that kills me [Music] friends thank you for joining me today i want to give a brief thank you to brobex on twitter for doing the incredible storyboards on this video she's an awesome illustrator of go check her stuff out if you'd like to help me make more videos like this you can do so for just a single dollar over at patreon.com forward slash super eyepatch wolf where you'll get access to patreon only video logs my discord and hey even the occasional early video this video in particular i'd like to thank knight of knights naomi spicer slim stephen jess simpson sheena big boopy and a kim bob find me over on the let's fight a boss video game podcast or on twitter at ipatchwolf friends take care of yourselves and i'll see you next time

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 2,029,017

Keywords: Shenmue, Shenmue 3, Yu Suzuki, Video Games, games

Id: FpNAKDx4CwY

Length: 48min 26sec (2906 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NietzscheIsMyCopilot]

The thing that gets me the most is the AUDACITY of Yuu Suzuki to think that he can squeeze another 4+ games out of this franchise after abusing so much good will

[u/DogzOnFire]

Holy shit the bit where he talks about the process of getting enough money for the wine...that sounds hellish. I wonder how many people just gave up at that point. Who in their right mind on the development team decided that this would be a fun experience?

[u/MortalJohn]

"This is the most disappointed I have been in a game since I realized Peter Molyneux was a crazy person

Ouch, I wonder if he's said anything about the new Fable title being developed yet?

[u/[deleted]]

Nostalgia isn't always a good thing. The people who enjoyed this the most were those who played Shenmue 1 and 2 during a time where those games were revolutionary. But just because they revolutionized the gaming industry, doesn't mean they can do it again. The gameplay, the animation, the voice acting was literally on par with the first two games with an improvement here and there graphics wise. It was outdated which is what I mean. I have no problems with people who enjoyed the game and I'm glad they got a sequel but you guys definitely deserved better than what you were given.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/SonaMidorFeed]

As someone who kickstarter backed for a physical copy of the game on disc and ended up with a DVD with the installer for the Epic Games Store instead, fuck Shenmue III and fuck Yu Suzuki.

[u/In-Media-Res]

Quick question for Shenmue fans: Is there any particular reason why Lan Di doesn't just straight up murder Ryo? We know Lan Di is much stronger than Ryo and we also know Lan Di is capable of murdering people. With Ryo becoming more of a nuisance to Lan Di, why not just kill him? I've been wondering about this for a while.

[u/Katana314]

Based on my passing understanding, I get the impression that it sets up a mystery that won’t pay off until its sequels as part of some growing escapade. That’s the kind of thing that I’ve been very alert for in TV as well as game series.

Ideally, even if building thoughts toward something larger, an individual media should be satisfying; begin and conclude an arc and be enjoyable on its own merits. Part of what makes that so valuable is that even if the writers age into senility, or simply never had a concrete plan, the original is still fantastic.

Half-Life and Trails both seemed like series that keep spinning things out. Though they’re largely well-regarded, I could see an ending where they just “don’t know” where to take things. Kingdom Hearts seems like another based on what I know of it, and it sounded like people were pretty upset that 3 didn’t fulfill that hole.

Basically, play individual games; don’t force yourself into a whole series unless you’re enjoying it all.

[u/Fcarvalhost]

I will consider myself a fan of this franchise because I played this since Shenmue 1 and had a lot of good time with Shenmue2 because that it's amazing, great story and nice places to explore considering limitations of that generation.

So.. I got Shenmue 3 in the launch week with so much expectation to have fun and progress with story, kind of emotional after waiting a lot of years. But, this happiness gone away very quickly, unfortunately.

Shenmue 3 have an awful plot, boring missions and exploration doesn't work. The map is just less attractive than other ones. And, I'm not considering here the festival of notable technical failures that happens almost all the time.

Obviously I still love the franchise and want to keep this going, mainly to see Shenmue 4 like a redemption. But well, they absolute have to do everything work better.