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dprog1995

1 May @ 3:36am

I think Shenmue needs a reboot.

Sadly, I'm not sure if Shenmue 4 can become successful due to these reasons.

1.How can you convince newcommers to give Shenmue 4 a try when the game's story isn't that accessible for people that didn't play Shenmue 1-3 ?
In franchises such as GTA,Yakuza and Resident Evil each game has it's own standalone story and new players can still enjoy the story without the need of knowing the story of previous games. But in Shenmue that is impossible.(And forcing them to watch 1-2 hours of recap ain't gonna cut it imo)

2.We have franchises that are more popular than Shenmue that became much less successful when they followed the episodic format.
1.Final Fantasy 7 remake episode 2 isn't selling well according to the reports.
2.Half Life episodes became failures and Valve cancelled the 3th and 4th episodes.
3.Hitman 2016 was episodic and failed but it's sequels didn't follow the episodic format and became much more successful.
4.Shining Force 3 was episodic and sadly that game killed the shining force ip.
5.Metal Gear solid V was supposed to be episodic but Ground Zeroes reception resulted in them scrapping that idea for The Phantom Pain.
6.Sin episodes flopped
7.Telltale did lots of episodic games and that wasn't successful enough to save them.

So, Shenmue 4 will become even less successful than 3 based on analyzing the market for episodic games. And sadly that will scare away any publishers from funding Shenmue 4.

3.It also doesn't help that Shenmue 4 will not finish the story and it will result in some players deciding "I'll get it when the 5th game comes out.I'm not gonna play a game with unfinished story."

I think the best approach for this franchise it to reboot Shenmue. Start the story from Shenmue 1, change the story in lots of ways(Remove unnecessary characters and filler moments, have Ryo leave Yokosuka in less than 1 hour of gameplay time), progress Shenmue 2 and 3 story much faster, add some time skip moments in the story to progress Ryo's age and finish that game with Ryo beating Lan Di.

And they can use unused story ideas in sequels for different protagonists.

In terms of gameplay, maybe that will result in the game becoming more of a RPG game than an open world game, but I think it will be ok for Shenmue fans since they still have 3 open world shenmue games to play and at very least the story will get some closure.

tl;dr Episodic games are financial failures, I think Shenmue can benefit from having a 1 full game with a complete story.

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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments

AC Denton

1 May @ 5:39am

Originally posted by dprog1995:
Yakuza and Resident Evil each game has it's own standalone story and new players can still enjoy the story without the need of knowing the story of previous games.

All the Yakuza games connect and directly continue Kiryu's story. You can't just hop into 2, 3, 5 or 6 without playing the others. That's madness.

Resident Evil 0-3 also all connect and continue that story. RE3 makes no sense if you didn't play 1.

Originally posted by dprog1995:
Episodic games are financial failures, I think Shenmue can benefit from having a 1 full game with a complete story.

Shenmue isn't episodic. There's a difference between episodic and sequels continuing a story. E.g. at the end of The Last of Us the story wasn't over so that made Part II, but that's not episodic.
If you look at Hitman and Telltale then think Shenmue has the same release structure, you're mad.

Originally posted by dprog1995:
I think the best approach for this franchise it to reboot Shenmue. Start the story from Shenmue 1, change the story in lots of ways(Remove unnecessary characters and filler moments, have Ryo leave Yokosuka in less than 1 hour of gameplay time), progress Shenmue 2 and 3 story much faster, add some time skip moments in the story to progress Ryo's age and finish that game with Ryo beating Lan Di.

This is awful. I really hope this *never* happens. I don't think you really understand Shenmue or why it was so good, you want to change everything about it lol
-----
All they need to do is remake Shenmue 1 and 2, exactly how they are, just remade. If anything they could expand Shenmue 1, replace the tedious warehouse parts with other stuff around town.
Simple as that. It doesn't need rebooted or re-imagined. There is nothing wrong with the way Shenmue 1 & 2 did things. Those games are awesome.

dprog1995

1 May @ 7:00am

Originally posted by AC Denton:
Simple as that. It doesn't need rebooted or re-imagined. There is nothing wrong with the way Shenmue 1 & 2 did things. Those games are awesome.

Not saying that they aren't awesome. It's just that episodic video games aren't successful and that's the way it is unfortunately.

A Shenmue 4 will sell worse than 3 similar to how Final Fantasy 7 remake part 2 sold worse than part 1.(Or similar to all the episodic games that have flopped)
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Originally posted by AC Denton:

All the Yakuza games connect and directly continue Kiryu's story. You can't just hop into 2, 3, 5 or 6 without playing the others. That's madness.

Resident Evil 0-3 also all connect and continue that story. RE3 makes no sense if you didn't play 1.

If you play RE 2 or 3, the games themselves give you enough context that you don't really need to know the story of previous games to have fun with the story.
And each game tells a complete story and reaches it's own conclusion without ending in a cliffhanger with "to be continued" text.

Shenmue games story isn't like RE:
1.Always ends with "to be continued" endings.
2.Has lots of returning characters
3.You need to actually know the story in previous games to understand returning character motives or why they are doing what they are doing.
4.Has lots of references to previous games that can confuse new time players.

And each Yakuza game tells it's own complete story. Unlike Shenmue that is still stuck in "I have to find Lan Di and avenge my father's death" storyline.

Originally posted by AC Denton:
Shenmue isn't episodic. There's a difference between episodic and sequels continuing a story. E.g. at the end of The Last of Us the story wasn't over so that made Part II, but that's not episodic.
If you look at Hitman and Telltale then think Shenmue has the same release structure, you're mad.

Shenmue is an episodic series let's not trick ourselves. The first game is like a prologue or the first episode of a TV series that in it's end promises more story in the next games.The 2nd and 3rd games are like episodes that are in mid of a tv series.
None of the Shenmue games have a complete stand alone story due to the way they are so connected.

If Shenmue wasn't episodic it's first game would have become kinda like vampire the masquerade redemption.(In this aspect of having some time skip moments)
When you play Shenmue it's obvious that the story has been divided in different parts.

Making a Shenmue RPG with 40-50 hours content with a complete story is imo can become much more successful than Shenmue 4.(Which is gonna end in a cliffhanger obviously and can you even convince someone to play Shenmue 1-3 before playing Shenmue 4 ?)

SupperJones has Shenmue III

13 May @ 9:50am

Originally posted by dprog1995:
Remove unnecessary characters and filler moments, have Ryo leave Yokosuka in less than 1 hour of gameplay time

Damn son that's the craziest take i've ever heard.

Shenmue community seems to have pretty skilled people when it comes to fangames and music. Imagine for a second if the existing novelized version of the full story were released, with artwork. YouTube even has unused music and the cancelled Shenmue Online soundtrack. I bet within a week someone would start organizing work on episodic Shenmue sequels with OG Dreamcast aesthetics. They would find patrons (patreons?) from the small but dedicated fan community. SEGA likes to pretend these games don't exist, but if this plan d happened it would also be a great opportunity for them to show they truly hate the series. Just kidding.

Remakes I can't imagine materializing, but weirder things than Shenmue Remakes happen all the time in the world, I guess.

I hope they find a partner and publisher to condense the remaining story into planned two games and end with a bang, making it feel like a journey the originals set the stage for. But... That Shenmue novel... Knowing it exists with all and every story bits, that's like a holy grail, getting hands on that would be revitalizing

dprog1995

16 May @ 9:58pm

Fanmade games are much lower quality than games made by actual game developers.(I have played lots of those fanmade games)

The Shenmue novel, I'm not sure if that is an actual novel. It feels like to be more of a story treatments for the next games.(cities Ryo travels to, who he meets in those cities,personality of each NPC, some conversations he has with other characters, what events happen in each of them, where he goes after that)

In my opinion, making a Shenmue 4 would be a mistake. It will fail even if it is a 10/10 game. Episodic games are flops and Final Fantasy 7 remake has proven that yet again.

Edit:
https://www.ign.com/articles/yu-suzuki-talks-shenmue-4-air-twister-and-40-years-of-game-development
Even Yu Suzuki knows the flaw of episodic games hence why he wants to make Shenmue 4 accessible even for people that haven't played 1-3.
But adding flashbacks is a very tricky solution and can confuse new time players a lot.
making a new Shenmue game that starts from the beginning of the story to the end makes more sense than making Shenmue 4 with lots of flashback scenes.

Last edited by dprog1995; 16 May @ 10:03pm