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How about a game of [Shenmue III]?
Rex Dart
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Let's talk about Shenmue.
I often feel a bit crazy when the series is brought up. It had a profound effect on me, but it never really left my brain. It set up a lucky hit stand in my head and marbles have been dropping continuously ever since. Nowadays, the series is most associated with QTEs and memes regarding sailors. And those are valid topics for discussing, sure, but I'd like to try and explain what I find so magical about Shenmue.
At some point, during one of my playthroughs of the first game, I picked up a book of matches. I rotated it around, zoomed in, and suddenly had this epiphany.
"Look how goddamned detailed this match box is."
In a game that's (basically) an adventure game, which (one would assume) would focus on an adventure, I realized that the environment was the real focus of Shenmue. Someone worked to make all these details and then composed an entire world of them. Avenging my father, while important, was not the only thing happening in the world. This match box, which might have sat ignored the entire game if I hadn't glanced at it, was going to continue existing, even though 99% of players would ignore it. And as Ryo held that book of matches, and I held my controller, I was suddenly struck by how many details make up the real world. I had a moment. An art game moment. I looked at a digital object in a video game and it changed how I viewed the real world.
I realize this makes the game sound pretty boring, and, truth be told, it's one of the few games I've ever fallen asleep playing. However, the slow pace of the intro pays off as the story continues. In Shenmue II, when fights start to become more frequent, it really feels as if you've left a familiar, grounded world and began an adventure. It felt like leaving home for the first time.
Like I said, there's magic in these games.
And now it's back!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bao5lasziLQThe Kickstarter is currently in its final week. There were some reports that Sony had already funded the game and that the Kickstarter was only to gauge interest, after which Yu Suzuki made a statement that Sony were only assisting with the publishing and marketing costs. All of the money raised through Kickstarter is going directly to Shenmue III's development budget.
If you'd like to kick a few dollars Yu's way, now's the time!
(Deleted link, sorry about that.)
BONUSES:
Here's a great article on why Shenmue is important (with a few spoilers): http://imgur.com/gallery/wg7MB
Why is this Kickstarter important? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4JnJDggI7o
Did I mention how great the soundtrack of Shenmue is?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0SmPIyo-h8 Rex Dart on
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I might be getting ahold of a GDEMU from a friend sometime soon (he's more than likely going to be doing a writeup on one from a technical standpoint once his is shipped, but he has no interest in the Dreamcast so he would be passing it along to me afterward), and if that happens I'm probably going to record/stream a full playthrough.
Shenmue is fantastic in that the amount of detail put into random stuff is unheard of even by modern standards. The matchbook epiphany is a solid example.The weather varies, the seasons even change based on how long you take in certain areas. You can collect capsule toys, you can go to an arcade and play Hang On, you can go into a convenience store and pick up a can of tuna and examine it, you can practice your karate with random strangers you meet, you can pick up some carrots and trigger a flashback where your father tells you how wasting food is disrespectful to the farmers that grew it, you can listen to your walkman and goof off all day, you could go to bars and listen to music on the jukebox, you could get a job as a forklift driver, or you can be a driven man hellbent on revenge, stopping at nothing to defeat the man that killed your father. It's amazing.
When Shenmue 3 is released, assuming it concludes the story, we'll have a game trilogy that started development on the Saturn, ended up on the Dreamcast, made a pitstop on the original Xbox, and finally had a decade and a half hiatus before landing on the PC and PS4, lending significant amounts of technology to other Sega games in the process. That is nuts to me.
I really admire Yu's commitment to the original vision of the series. It's very rare to see in the world of video games.
There's now a trailer for this thing and, uh.... just look at it.
I think Deep Silver hasn't yet realized that sometimes no trailer is better than a too-early trailer.
Looks like this sucker is actually coming out tomorrow. Fun fact: the review embargo was originally two days after release date. Which, uh, doesn't happen. It was apparently rolled back to launch day just today, but that's not going to help reviewers who originally planned for, well, three days from now.
At any rate, hold onto your butts.
That was seemingly a miscommunication from like 1 random website that everyone just sorta ran with because people eat that shit up.
What's the source on that? Everyone's saying it was "moved," which implies there wasn't a mistake.
Edit: Ah, Deep Silver is the one claiming it was a miscommunication, which sounds like PR-ese for "shit, we got caught."
Edit edit: "A Deep Silver PR manager has said that the publisher has “determined a different embargo” for the US." So yep, they got caught.
Not necessarily.
The source for the screw up was one person from one outlet. It seems weird that if it wasn't miscommunication that it wasn't widespread. And right from the get go the US embargo was never that delayed date so... what exactly were they trying to pull if it was only for UK reviews? The idea that there was something sneaky going on doesn't make much sense given the full information. But the idea of a miscommunication would make perfect sense.
If it was a miscommunication, Deep Silver never would have said "we've determined a different embargo." They would have said it was a miscommunication from the very beginning.
That's what was said. As in that person had no idea what was going on with the other date and only knew that the US date was not the date that people were reporting. And then later was stated that the later date was a miscommunication.
Be careful with what headlines say! People love them some drama.
Except "we have determined a different embargo for our territory" and "it was a communication" are two completely different things. By definition, one of them has to be a lie. And given how bad this situation makes Deep Silver look, I'm guessing it's the latter. It's a fairly common PR move.
I think you are reading that line differently than it is intended. That wasn't some company official announcement saying "we have decided these are different dates"
That was a person there replying to the situation saying "The date we have here for US is a different date. I do not know the situation overseas and cannot speak to it"
There's really no way to read "we have determined a different embargo" without the meaning "the embargo has been moved" with certainty. "Different embargo" means more than one, and "determined" is a semi-sneaky way of saying "moved."
adjective: determined
having made a firm decision and being resolved not to change it.
Could it have meant what you are saying? Yes!
But saying it can only be read that way means you are 100% not parsing something there which makes it easier to see why you are so certain of this meaning. Because those words in those orders can very much mean the other thing.
What do you mean from the start? The US tweet came out the same day.
And then the official correction came out the the first working day after this happened.
So there's an embargo? Fuck that - I'll post some impressions after I've spent a couple of hours with it later tonight.
It's really not that complicated. The first statement was "the publisher has determined a different embargo date."
The second statement was that it was a miscommunication.
If it really was a miscommunication and not frantic ass-covering, they never would have said "the publisher has determined a different embargo date," they just would have said "that was a miscommunication" and left it at that.
I am like 66% done with Shenmue 2 right now and may hold off until I finish it though. Ive beaten it once before but this way it'll all be fresh.
Ok my dude I already explained this part above.
A person that worked there tweeted out that response. That was not the official announcement or correction. It was just a tweet saying that the information didn't match the information they had. Then official response came out after clarifying the whole thing. Those 2 responses were not even from the same source.
But, if the embargo didn't change, it still doesn't explain why anyone at the company would say that the publisher has determined a different embargo date at all.
Think of it this way. A game release date is a HUGE undertaking for everyone, with millions of dollars and potentially careers at stake. That release date will be absolutely seared on the brains of every employee who wants to remain employed. If a question came up and a date came up that was different, anyone not on massive amounts of mild-altering drugs would immediately recognize the date was different and say "hey, that's not right."
But instead, the guy said "the publisher has determined a different embargo date." Which pretty clearly states the publisher changed the embargo date. The subsequent announcement was ass-covering, especially since it was more widespread.
Wow we covered this too.
That sentence can be parsed two different ways. You are, despite me already explaining this, choosing to only parse it the one way.
This is factually incorrect. And unless you accept that this conversation will go nowhere because you are ignoring a big piece of factual information.
This is the actual quote:
Which does not mean the thing you are claiming it to mean. Determined does not mean changed. By definition it does not mean that they changed anything. It literally just means "we have a different embargo for out territory". It could be parsed the way you are parsing it. But that doesn't make it the only thing it can mean.
In which the US PR person said this when asked "who do we contact?"
So yea. Nothing about that response says anything was changed and it is coming from a source that is completely unrelated to the UK side of things so thus them saying they can't speak to it and were just communicated the information they already had.. which is that the embargo was on the 19th... not changed.
I have specifically stated that either could be correct.
I am saying it is factually incorrect to claim that it means that specific thing when it could mean more than one thing.
That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time.
And also if you actually read the conversation that happened on twitter it makes the idea of it being changed even less likely. Because that doesn't fit into the conversation at all.
Which again is why the context here is very important. This initial conversation was quite literally 1 guy who worked there seeing the original tweet thread and jumping in saying that it didn't match what he was being told. And then in a second tweet confirming that yea that was the date here in the US but he doesn't know anything about what's going on in the UK.
And then today we got the official response.
When you read just the info from the headlines it paints a very different picture. If you commit to that narrative you are going to see it in a very different light. I'm just saying take a step back, look at the actual twitter conversation and keep in mind all of the information here. Don't try to read into specific words chosen by someone on a random tweet because you know, it's just a guy making a response on twitter. Could he have used a word that made parsing it easier and more clear? Sure! But that's not exactly unheard of.
Though at this point we should probably spare the thread any more "it depends on what the definition of "is" is."
I have said the other side was possible in just about every one of my posts but said I think the other is more likely. So that doesn't really make sense.
And good faith seems to be slipping away with every response so good luck with that.
So, how 'bout that forklift driving?
I look forward to stacking more boxes/crates...
*reads*
...is this some meta-commentary thing?
Anyway. Put me in the "holy shit I can't believe this is actually a real thing that is nearly out" group. I was a latecomer to Shenmue (and, to be fair, the Dreamcast), and while I don't have quite the same massive amount of love for it as many do, I absolutely understand why it gets that, and I do still have a, shall we say, admiration for it. It was simply flabbergasting to behold back in the day; it was one of those extraordinary moments where you could point to it and go, "one day, the rest of gaming might catch up to this". And as the matchbox epiphany goes to show, frankly we haven't hit that point yet, twenty years on. Audacious, visionary, incredibly ambitious, which it lived up to more often than not, and yes, admittedly flawed... but undeniably classic, and I was so delighted to see the first two games finally get re-released last year.
Shenmue III is definitely on my shopping list in due course, but maybe I should actually get around to finishing the first two games first...
Steam | XBL
Yu Suzuki had a vision for what this game would be in November 2001 when II came out, and he just never got the chance the execute on that.
Until now, except he (and his team) seem to have largely ignored the innovations of over 18 years of the rest of the games industry.
Maybe he's even used all of his pre-production notes from way back then?
It's EXACTLY like a Berenstein (B̯ͦer̤͙͔͐̎̃eṋ͍̰sṯ̲̀ͪa͝iṋͨ?) Bears game from 2002-ish, for the Dreamcast... It's not bad, so far, it's just kind of... bizarre? But I guess this kind of what I was expecting. A strange relic of a game.
And Ryo's English V/A is as wooden as almost 20 years ago, with the line delivery of a inquisitive, interrogative, affirmative robot.
I'm glad they delayed it somewhat to fix the faces but everyone still has a sort of stilted, odd look to them.
I don't think Yu Suzuki has played any of the Yakuza games that came out in the interim, because maybe he should have done.
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
...oh wait. :rotate:
Steam | XBL