walt whitman wrote:Architecture wrote:I would argue that they were obtuse out of the gate
shenmue is still mad obtuse but will always be the pinnacle of open-world game design. the sight-seeing, exploring new rooms and buildings, interacting with objects, mini games, working, noticing how a whole neighborhood moves and breathes... the beauty of it was exploration for exploration's sake.
i don't think any game has rivaled the total experience of immersion found in shenmue
Yeah. I would definitely agree with those who say it’s not the first open world game, but I’d also argue it’s the first open world game that felt lived in and alive.
The recent interviews with Yu Suzuki are incredibly reassuring, in that his vision seems like it’s basically remained unaltered in the past two decades:
4Gamer: Even Story Mode will have a fair amount of content, won't it.
YS: That's true, but here too, it wouldn't quite be accurate to say that the fun of Shenmue III lies in going through and completing the story that's offered from start to finish. Taking it to extremes, I'd go so far as to say that you'll only enjoy about 20% of Shenmue III's fun that way.
4Gamer: Meaning perhaps that it's important to "stop along the way"?
YS: Yes. Shenmue 3 is a game about enjoying the stops along the way.
Some may consider it tiresome, but it's in doing so that you experience new things. As your experiences accumulate and they become a part of you, you'll feel as if you're actually making a solo trip. The player's experience of Shenmue 3's world will stay with them. I think this is important.
Also, once you get used to them, several of the mini-games are ones where you can think about what to do next in the game, as you play. They have a style of play that lets you spend time playing while you think about a strategy for your current problem.
4Gamer: That's an approach that's a bit different from recent games, isn't it.
YS: Yes, recent games place great emphasis on plenty of tutorials, explaining in the utmost detail how and what you should do.
But I've made Shenmue 3 to be a game that offers "the enjoyment of finding yourself". Therefore if they take their time and play through slowly, each player will be able to experience their own Shenmue.
YS: So, I don't think that learning from others in order to progress is something that should be renounced.
However, I've made Shenmue 3 so that it can't easily be boiled down to a fail-safe walk-through. For example, to take the price of a single item, it will change depending on things like the state of the game's internal global economy and the financial discount rate. Therefore you can't say "this option will always be best". Even if you were to analyze the system, I'd have to think that it would be impossible to do so manually
Forklift part-timers have evolved in the same way, not just carrying crate. Baggage that arrives at the port of Torimai by ship has various shapes, and changes to the city the next day when it is transported to the warehouse. For example, if you carry an arcade enclosure, it will be in operation at the game center the next day, and there will also be an increasing number of exhibits at the “Kashiwakan” to commemorate Shenmu's history and backers.
It seems that subquests that are not directly connected to the main story are also included in earnest. When you meet a person who has a specific condition, you can start the quest with a different button than the usual “speak”. Rather than listing quests and displaying icons on the map as in an open world game, the flow that naturally occurs when talking to people seems to be Shenmu. Through more than 20 optional subquests, the character setting must be more visible than in previous works
Open world games have grown bigger and more detailed, yet no other series seems to come close to capturing these concepts.