orient wrote:Awesome. It's always interesting reading articles from before the game was released.
It becomes rather apparent that Shenmue I & II were being developed at the same time, almost as one game. In fact, most of the pre-release screenshots are from the second game's levels and scenarios, which poses questions as to when they started fleshing out Chapter 1 and deciding it should be its own game.
Yeah, I saw so much more Shenmue II gameplay before Shenmue itself. Especially the AT&T disc when I bought my US Dreamcast. I have to wonder how the series would have faired if it did start off with Shenmue II, only with a small prologue in Yokosuka (playable of course). Obviously I prefer it the way it is, but it would be interesting nonetheless.
Ryudo wrote:Shenmue 1-2 were going to be one game but at some point to make the deadline to release it they split it up. I remember the article and think I still have it somewhere.
Interesting stuff. I'd imagine Shenmue itself was to be much shorter then, makes me think a lot of it was added on top of the original storyboard and such.