:) Another World. It was one of the first videogames I ever played.
http://umbcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AnotherWorld-boxart.jpg

This item is not mine, but this is the EXACT same version I still own after so many years :cry:
https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/ZjcAAOSwo4pYic5R/s-l225.jpg

:) Here's the original artwork by Eric Chahi himself:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/437199346625214492/CC5EAFC7DBE6EF0CD114C6F04833CFEE7263CF61/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|1024:*

Interesting game to pop your cherry on.

Definitely watching the first 2 seasons of Twin Peaks is a must to understand this new one. Overall I find the new series a must watch for anyone who appreciates film. Which other TV series had a gap of over 25 years, and it still presents you with the same original actors in it and the best part, it all ties in perfectly in narrative as if everything was a deadly premonition?

Here is a quick 5 minute recap of the first 2 seasons: https://youtu.be/n_64-4c_E3o

Just for the record, the YsNet website recruit section has been updated.
The only notable difference is that the mention "urgent" disappeared from the point 6 (Cut scene artist).

March 8 2017 (screen capture).
http://i.imgur.com/gPQdWDA.jpg

June 1 2017.
http://i.imgur.com/rMRAYbb.jpg

What I'm about to post here might seem a bit biased compared to what I wrote in the topic regarding the first game since it's going to include a lot more stuff. I do like Shenmue II quite a bit better than Shenmue and I think it's well known how often I have been speaking up for it in the past. But there is just so much refinement in Shenmue II that needs to be mentioned so I'm trying to make this my definitive "what's better" post.

As mentioned in the other topic I do feel that the changes in Shenmue II made it more streamlined wich leads to it becoming more (even if only slightly) of what's typical for a video game. Some of the things I'll mention here are very much doing that but I think that they make the overall experience more enjoyable, especially when you replay the game multiple times.

I'm not going into the story or the characters and how they are written. Shenmue II obviously has a lot more to offer in that regard but I think it's unfair to compare the two games here. The first one was only ever intended to be the opening chapter, almost just a prologue of the whole saga so naturally it's not as full and rich yet.

- Much bigger game world
- More NPCs
- More dialogue options
- More things to collect and play with
- More secrets and sidequests to discover
- More gameplay elements that always introduce something new (rock smashing, leaf catching, etc)
- More instances of failure leading to a branching path instead of a retry
- More fights, more QTEs
- QTEs are more varied and inputs better represent fighting actions
- Better cinematography, better action scenes
- Overall more refined graphics and a more vibrant look
- NPCs blink and have more natural looking mouth movements
- Drastically improved sky box
- Larger and more diverse soundtrack (it's extremely hard to say if it's better overall)
- Better Jukebox music (that I can say for sure)
- Money plays a bigger role and comes with lots of ways to earn and spend it
- Costumizable move set (at the expense of having some moves at the same time)
- Improved camera respone for zooming and especially turning
- Faster capsule toy animation
- Enemies have life bars
- Submenus that make the overall menu less cluttered with items
- Shenmue collection easily allows access to fights and minigames
- Maps and leading NPCs (I just wish there was a way to turn off owned maps)
- Cutscene skip option (after clearing the game and also after fails)
- Time skip option
- Save anywhere
- Uninterrupted disc swap

"More" really is the keyword here as Shenmue II simply has more to offer in just about every aspect. Shenmue II simply is a game of a much bigger scope. In order to reach this goal it made some sacrifices in areas that made Shenmue groundbreaking and unique but I feel that this is a good thing for Shenmue aswell. It makes it worth to always go back to it, just for the different feeling between the two games. I really hope I have cleared this up for me now...

If there is one person within the community whos work gets overlooked, and doesnt get nowhere near enough praise as he should, its Kiske.

There are a lot of people who do great work for Shenmue, but he really is one of the silent heroes since Shenmue 3 became a reality. His passion is unmatched, and his ideas and support across all of the Shenmue community sites is something that is to be absolutely commended.

Just wanted to give him is due live and respect.

Bravo sir, and thank you for so much hard work! =D> =D> =D> =D>

Let's play a little fun game. All you have to do is say Yes, or No, (no maybe's allowed!) for each prediction. Let's go.

1. Will Ryo and Shenhua kiss?
2. Will there be a love interest besides Shenhua?
3. Will Ryo fight Lan Di?
4. Will Ryo kill Lan Di?
5. Will any major character die?
6. Will there be any type of racing mini game?
7. Will Ryo finally eat something!?
8. Will there be a Tomato Market?
9. Will there be street fighting gambling?
10. Will you be able to cook the fish you catch in the fishing mini game?
11. Is this an annoying post?!

Hi there people, I´m Sebastian Riera, aka SebasRD82 in the social media, and I´m working on a Shenmue manga. Just opened a Patreon to help make this possible. Maybe some of you may be interested, or not. Just in case, I´m sharing the info ;)
This is the Patreon link: https://patreon.com/user?u=695795&utm

Here you have some of the manga pages:

http://i.imgur.com/wzCbjM5.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/t9GHLPp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VG40VR9.jpg

For next month's Gamescom event, I've plans to make a motivational banner for YsNet on behalf of all of us here (and other fan groups), and will deliver this to him during the show, as Switch mentions in his post: http://www.phantomriverstone.com/2017/0 ... .html#more

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i6oha9kv_p8/WXsr96yzF2I/AAAAAAAACqw/Ulk2OZ7YAeQEyPWwjjnnZaizWMyqBgODgCLcBGAs/s400/20370881_10102406428505150_445185908_n.png

I will be going to the show Weds-Fri, and hopefully can meet some of you guys there for you to sign it before I hand the thing over. I'll be hanging around Asia Wok restaurant in the showfloor (see here: http://www.gamescom-cologne.com/redaktionell/gamescom_1/downloads_21/pdf_26/fuer_alle_2/Gastroplan.pdf), and timings will be dependent on when the meet and greet with Suzuki-san is.

PM me if you want to get involved!

Btw the message is literally "Ganbatte!", or "Do your best!"

well well i was here since yesterday reading all the debates going on with specifically the models and i will cite my opinion on the matter..

first of all both of the new models are on track and vastly improved upon and far away from being bad or unfaithful to the concept designs available from the past. they only and only need some small tweaking (which is to be expected since there is about 1.5 years left at least before release)
and maybe i will be first to say it here but i am more pleased with Shenhua's new Model than Ryo... yes you heard that right!

Shenhua has never had a consistent model artwork.
the one they choose to go for here is clearly something more akin to these 3D renders

http://www.shenmuedojo.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/fSKLL2J9Gsjgbvduhn01SxMPoDV.jpg
http://www.shenmuedojo.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/orchcdart04.jpg
http://www.shenmuedojo.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/orchcdart06.jpg
http://www.shenmuedojo.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/orchcdart10.jpg

i always adored those back in the day and i feel they are going to a similar direction here.
now don't get me wrong i absolutely love the original design used in SI and Shenmue Passport, the thing is and i might be one of the few to say this but i don't like how she looked like in SII at all.

so going from this
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ALKUcr6oaEo/maxresdefault.jpg

to this
http://i.imgur.com/xZqNA4X.jpg


is a step up in art direction IMO.

again those new models are not perfect but still very close from some of designs used in past materials.

i will not talk about the location seen in the picture (which is looking gorgeous BTW!) but damn i wasn't expecting the great wall at all! the events in this game are supposed to take place far from it!

as for the logos i don't know but i find them both great unlike the shitty one used from before, it's not a big matter anyway.

Its been a great journey.

:?: Not convinced by Ryo's look yet, I think there's something off in his eyes and his cheecks, though I'm not sure what it is.
It may still be too early to judge, anyway and these may be older assets too: just look at how they're using a new logo, even though they they recently said they were going to use the original one (I doubt they could've changed their mind :D ).

P.S.: :) I'd love to know if Ryo and Shenhua's models already looked something like this at the time of the backer's dinner.

It's Ryo's hair. Too boofy. In previous models his side bangs were waxed down, now he looks like other Asian high schoolers with boofy side hair.

Heading in the right direction though, just still jarring because it's not the old Ryo we know and love.

This Ryo looks much better

https://twitter.com/WillJPowers/status/ ... 2463557632
https://twitter.com/WillJPowers/status/ ... 1117132800

How did Ryo manage to get that tanned after being stuck in a cavern for so many years?

The printed version shown below will be what I'll bring on Wednesday, hoping to find friends to sign before handing over during the Meet and Greet on Thursday 1pm-ish

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/fr/cp0/e15/q65/20933939_10102435280515490_4193777466295988822_o.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=f7f71a661ba247c58e2b060ea4ecc2a9&oe=5A2DED2E

How did Ryo manage to get that tanned after being stuck in a cavern for so many years? :D
https://archive.is/MLBhg/dc2a97d2081b166138454197c09b3e93ff9ff53b
YS: He probably goes to a very expensive tanning salon. Probably not one of those cheap 100 yen salons in those communal baths. [Laughs]
Source: https://archive.is/0vaIT#selection-717.0-719.133
:P :D

:lol:

There's also a nice answer to show to all those smug smartass-wannabe shitposters on NeoGaf & co. that were so "concerned" about how Deep Silver's involvment was going to make the game sooo bad like MN9

JM: So, back to your plans for the future. I don't know if you've heard, but [Resident Evil creator] Shinji Mikami's studio, Tango, was recently acquired by Bethesda parent company, ZeniMax. Would you ever consider working with a Western publisher if you could get the funding to make Shenmue 3?

YS: That depends on the terms of negotiations. If we're given the freedom to make what we want , it doesn't matter where the company is from. I would take my family and move to the States.

Enjoy!



(Credit to Kiske and SheepheadCG for getting the jumps on this. A few confusing posts and topics were deleted prior to this topic.)

Loved the trailer. It actually calmed many worries. This is a trailer that should have been a Kickstarter update and not at a game show, however. The game show atmosphere gives it higher expectations and legitimacy, when all it really was is a sneak peek for supporters.

It's an unwinnable battle the man has to face, and I feel sorry for him.

Absolutely with you here. My least favorite thing about all this mess is thinking of Yu getting discouraged. I know the man has been patient and perservered over the last 16 years, but it has to be frustrating to hear some of the backlash (constructive criticism is one thing - even with a work in progress - but the hate/toxicity/unreasonable idiocy...). As a fan, I can ignore a lot of it pretty easily. As the creator of the game who has devoted (along with his team of course) countless sleepless nights over the last couple years getting the game to look as good as it does (which I'm overall very happy and excited about), I'm sure it's much more difficult to ignore. Honestly, I probably won't bother giving them feedback on the logo, because I don't think it's worth it to distract him over. If he is happy with the newest one, I think I'm willing to just give in. It's not going to affect the in-game experience.

I know you will, given the chance, let Suzuki-san know how grateful MOST of us are for his tireless efforts. I could go on, but really, I just hope he knows that most (at least I hope most) of the Shenmue fanbase is still very happy and has faith in him. I want him to be happy with his game, he deserves it. From the looks of it, I'll be quite pleased as well (even if I'm not 100% loving everything about how things look in a WIP).

I've posted up a full translation of a Famitsu interview held yesterday with Yu Suzuki at Gamescom.

"Tortoises, ducks and frogs will be making an appearance!"

Link to interview:
http://www.phantomriverstone.com/2017/08/translationinterview-with-yu-suzuki.html

http://i.imgur.com/ZLKRROxl.jpg

A sample of the full interview:
http://www.siliconera.com/2017/08/23/shenmue-iii-teaser-trailers-character-models-arent-final-plenty-work-left-done/

We can put a name to the person who accompanied Yu in the backer dinner. His name is Hideaki Morishita and he's the executive producer of Shenmue 3.
https://i.imgur.com/5uNoN4U.jpg

Any ideas about the executive producer's pedigree? Can't find any information on Google.

https://jp.linkedin.com/in/hideaki-harry-morishita-a315102b/de

There you go. That's his Linkedin profile.

Started his career way back in 81, so he's probably around the same age as Yu-san, maybe a bit older. Held executive positions in Square Enix for two years and Sega for five years. Then he worked as a freelancer and now seems to be working for a company called Catch Media Inc. in Japan. However, his name is nowhere to be found on their website, neiter on the board nor in executive management.

https://www.catchmedia.com/about/

Assuming he is working full time for YS Net now, YS Net would be his 7th employer since 2000. :| Talk about bumpy career paths.

Well anyway, let's hope for the best, the guy has held leading positions in companies like Square Enix and Sega for about seven years in total, so he's a video game industry veteran who should have a good ability to execute and deliver on projects. However, the guy seems to have focused more on digital entertainment outside of video games during the last ten years.

Here's a new article translation from Game*Spark Japan, interviewing Yu Suzuki and executive producer Hideaki Morishita.

I think it contains a lot of interesting insight. They speak about the fuss surrounding the teaser trailer despite the fact that many of the characters in the trailer are nowhere near their finished form.

Read the interview here:
http://www.phantomriverstone.com/2017/08/translation-interview-with-yu-suzuki.html

http://i.imgur.com/1xOO0HZl.jpg

Oh man, I'm still a bit exhausted from the trip and the whole event.

It was amazing to meet you guys! I was just too thrilled to have the chance to get together with other fans and to see Yu Suzuki in person, shake hands with him. I must've looked totally freaked out all the time. And then out of all the people they had to chose me, posing with Yu Suzuki, as the first picture in the article on that Japanese website... 8-[

I'll post some of my photographic impressions of the Gamescom compiled into a little video later today. Still trying to process all of this and catch up with everything here. I'm just so happy that everything worked out so nicely! =D>

An spanish website will put a full interview with Suzuki, but at the moment, they have a few highlights:

"I'm afraid of not meeting expectations". "Not only do we have a budget and a limited team, but nostalgia is a dangerous factor. People can remember the game much prettier or better than it actually was."


- Suzuki wants to make Shenmue 4 after Shenmue 3.
- The scope of Shenmue 3 will be similar to Shenmue 2.
- The game will be oriented a bit more to adventure instead of more action.
- About 30h of gameplay.

http://www.vandal.net/noticia/1350695945/suzuki-sobre-shenmue-iii-la-nostalgia-es-peligrosa/

http://www.vandal.net/noticia/1350695878/yu-suzuki-los-personajes-del-teaser-de-shenmue-iii-son-provisionales/

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but this tweet confirms the existence of an extended version of the Teaser published by Sony on Youtube.

https://twitter.com/TheLeeMather/status/900677758849777664

I've just had the huge pleasure of viewing the extended Shenmue 3 trailer with Yu Suzuki himself! What an experience. Even gave him merch

- Pinball, punching ball and whac-a-mole as mini games.
- The new QTE system consists of QTEs based on "sounds" and "lights".

source: http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/700176/ga ... ritage.htm

According Julo from Gameblog, YSnet got a technical issue with a build of the game two months ago and it lead them to disable the facial animation in the trailer.

Hello guys,

2 new interviews have been posted on Japanese websites. Full translations will most likely be done by Switch I think, but I've decided to translate some stuff quickly on my free time.

Hope you'll like it !

https://s2.postimg.org/6be2u47rt/003.jpg

From Dengeki :

- Anticipated things (best 3) : 1. Continuation of the story, 2. Open World, 3. Forklifts

- Suzuki san thought at first that it'd be difficult to have something like an open world (because of the budget), but with the recent partnership with Deep Silver and development's improvements, he might be able to provide something that has the atmosphere of an open world. Volume of the 2nd area that we can see in the PV should be around 3 times bigger. That's also why they had to announce the delay, because the game's content has been improved and they need more time

- In the "Shenmue World", players can earn money through different ways like gambling, selling items (to a pawn shop for example) and purchase new moves (scrolls) to get stronger and beat a boss

- He's also talking about Shenmue's logo changes. "My father wrote Shenhua's kanji (莎花). And my mother worked on the "愛すべき友を持て" (Keep friends, those you love, close to you) calligraphy. However, I thought it'd be great if I could do it myself this time

https://s2.postimg.org/z2awk6dll/shenmue3_006_cs1w1_900x360.jpg

https://s2.postimg.org/6qty0vj2x/shenmue3_007_cs1w1_900x206.jpg

- Players who haven't played the first two games will have no problem playing the 3rd one. For Shenmue II, we added a 15 minutes movie of the first Shenmue so players could catch up, but this time we'll work on something more simple based on images and texts

https://s2.postimg.org/qmpxgf049/009.jpg

4Gamer :

Can you tell us why you decided to work with Deep Silver ?

- Suzuki san : We worked on the Kickstarter Campaign right after announcing the game and it was a success. However, it's difficult to do an open world with the budget we had, that's why we kept looking for a partner. They already worked with Sega in the past and they were a recommandation from people I trust

- About improvements, Suzuki san is providing an example. For the 2nd city we are going to visit in the game, they planned around 50 to 60 NPC, but now, this number could reach 200

- Shenmue III will start 6 hours after the end of Shenmue II

Other things are mostly stuff we already know like the phone calls etc.

Original links :

Dengeki

http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/001/580/1580312/

4Gamer

http://www.4gamer.net/games/305/G030593/20170824023/

That's it for now. Have a nice day !

Here it is, a full translation of the GAME Watch interview. Enjoy!

http://www.phantomriverstone.com/2017/0 ... uzuki.html



(masterchan, you might like to put this link in the OP)

Spaghetti wrote: Haha, I was gonna say, a tape recorder sounds like our boy BlueMue, and so it was! How did Yu react?

Both he and Hideaki seemed to recognize it. They both showed great interest and laughed when they saw it.

Here's the promised video:

We did it!

I just want to give a huge thanks to Yuc02 and everyone else involved in this. Seeing Yu-san with the message from all of us was a great thing to witness indeed. This is why i love the shenmue community!

The banner presentation

Here is a full translation of the Dengeki interview.

Link to article:
Dengeki Online Interview with Yu Suzuki @Gamescom

Maybe Chai got kicked out of the Chi You Men for his failures, and now is following Ryo around wanting to be his protege. lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For the exact wording:

As for anything released at gamescom, it will be made immediately available for the public. No worries there!

I think the key word is released here. The extended trailer hasn't been released. Kinda the opposite, kept captive.

All in all, it's not the biggest deal in the world. They've followed the letter of what they said, even if not exactly the spirit of it, and that's perfectly within their rights. Especially when they do need to play the media game, and give the press something to chew on.

As for it leaking out via phone, if it hasn't already it's not gonna, not by the media or Peter. The only way it would have anyway was if YSnet were okay with it, and if that was the case they could maybe have released the whole thing in the first place. If the media secretly films it, it's a breach of integrity and could get the leaker fired. If Peter films it, it's a breach of the trust of Yu Suzuki so he's obviously not going to do that.

We'll have to live without that extra minute & change for now.

We may get a treat by the end of the year according to what Suzuki San says in this interview:

https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/yu-suzuki-le-plus-difficile-est-de-creer-de-bons-personnages-3050797909.html

Tout d'abord, j'aimerais savoir pourquoi vous avez choisi de ne diffuser qu'une version raccourcie de la vidéo que vous venez de me montrer ? Est-ce une question de marketing ou une éventuelle exclusivité pour les soutiens de Kickstarter ?

First of all, I would like to ask why you've decided to publish a short version of the video you have just shown us? Is it a marketing strategy or maybe it's meant to be an exclusivity for the Kickstarter backers?

Il discute un peu avec son traducteur, également responsable de la partie business d'Ys Net, qui prend le relais pour répondre) C'est une bonne question ! Il n'y a pas de raison particulière, honnêtement, mais certaines personnes pensent qu'il est un peu tôt pour montrer la version longue. L'idée derrière ce teaser pour la gamescom était avant tout d'accompagner l'annonce de notre partenariat avec Deep Silver. On voulait surtout montrer qu'on a désormais un meilleur soutien financier, que l'équipe est prête et que le projet avance. Nous sommes restés discret pendant trop longtemps et je trouve qu'il était important de montrer quelque chose pour ce salon, sans que ce soit une véritable stratégie marketing.

Yû Suzuki (en anglais) : Peut-être qu'on va réaliser une version plus peaufinée et plus longue de cette vidéo pour la fin d'année, un vrai trailer promotionnel.


... (I'm not translating the first part since it's basically something Yu did explain already about the fact that the teaser was meant to show they are making progress since they were relatively quiet since then and it was to come with something substancial now that they have signed a deal with Deep Silver.
There are also people within the team who think it's too soon for showing the long version of the trailer.

Yu Suzuki (in English): We may create a longer and more polished version of this video for the end of the year, a real promotional trailer.

Place your bets... PSX, Christmas backer update?

PS. If you are interested in a translation of the rest of this interview, I can do it tomorrow morning ;)

VG24/7 Yu Suzuki interview:

https://www.vg247.com/2017/08/25/shenmue-3-open-world-dead-eyed-characters-shenmue-4/

A big part of Shenmue 3 for fans is nostalgia. How do you bridge the gap between nostalgic nods and new stuff? The first two games are quite unique in that you really have an all-new cast in each game, but that isn’t so good for nostalgia…

Yeah, this time we will see a lot of new people in the game. But at the same time, you can make a phone call to the characters of Shenmue 1 and 2. When you call those older characters, all of the images come up as your flashback, your memory.

In the form of original screenshots, or new recreations of those scenes?

Movie, a movie from the original.

The environments look fantastic, but there’s been a lot of chatter about the character models this week. What do you have to say to that? Are improvements coming?

You know, to be honest… the faces, they’ve not been properly deployed yet. This is a behind-the-scenes story, but up until a point 2 months ago the face motion has been removed. The developer changed some structure to the bones of the character model, and this caused a problem. Because of the problem, we decided to stop working on face animation for now.

[Suzuki opens his laptop and brings up an internal, unreleased development video showing facial animation tests for Ryo and Shenhua. The animations look fairly decent, and certainly avoid the dead-eyed stares seen in the recent Shenmue footage or Andromeda-style exaggeration.]

This is still the sample model, the older one, but… this is a test. We’re going to make this even better. We’re incorporating about 11 different types of face motion, and we’re working towards that. That will be improved a lot.

...

For real this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_G1FiovxP8&feature=youtu.be

The latest post on the Phantom River Stone blog picks out seven details that appear in the Shenmue III teaser and digs into them a little further.

http://i.imgur.com/oFyAxZLl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WCSNQeLl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gwABoSul.jpg


Read the article here:

http://www.phantomriverstone.com/2017/08/seven-interesting-details-from-shenmue.html