What is this "complexity and depth" you speak of? That's absolutely so untrue. If anything, nowadays games are the exact opposite because they cater to casuals so much.
As example, look at the strategy genre scene of today. In games of the past most battles are confined within an area, at most maybe civilizations fighting each other for the dominance of a planet. Nowadays, there are games (see Planetary Annihilation) that take battles on multiple fronts: land, air, space, other planets... Simultaneously! While someone has his full focus on securing a victory within a planet, another is losing battle after battle to diverge attention from the fact that he dedicated all his resources instead on building up a Death Star type of weapon from space with the end goal of pulverizing said planet altogether with the enemy main army and win galactic war. Can you really go back and play old Starcraft 1 after knowing that there are games out there with a much grander scope and vision?
Street Fighter V. Even Yoshinori Ono himself admitted that they simplified the gameplay so that casuals could get into it.
Having simplified gameplay is not the same as being a less complex game. Just looking at the myriads of block, counter and gauge mechanics already tell me SF V has come a long way since the days of SF II. If the game was just truly made for the casual crowd, I find it hard to believe that it would still be featured on EVO championships year after year, and played by professional gamers around the world.
And For Honor? Seriously? For Honor's combat isn't even martial arts based, it's developed entirely around the use of weapons so they're not really comparable.
Yes, seriously go look at the concept of martial arts first. And that was not my point anyway. For Honor has refined 3D fighting mechanics with concepts such as targeting specific body parts, stamina based attack and defense, terrain advantage and even using it as a weapon. It's simply not just a 2D fighting mechanic transported to a 3D space like most of the genre.
And besides, it's combat isn't better than Shenmue. That's for sure.
Sure. Keep telling yourself that. I got no problem with it.
Look I've played many modern and games from the past alike. Things like Uncharted 4, The Last Of Us, Ocarina Of Time, Okami etc. Shenmue is better than every single one of them.
So tell that to Bill Gates ASAP and have those $15M running already.
Actually Uncharted uses QTE's quite a lot, mostly in set pieces and I think Shenmue can learn a lot from it. It mostly does it in a more subtle fashion than Shenmue did and the commands don't always pop up on your screen, but still there are a lot of momemnts where you are on some kind of battlefield having a shootout with the bad guys but no matter what you do, you'll always have to pass one specific point on the map and once you pass that point, this huge guy appears out of nowhere and starts choking Drake and you have to repaetedly tap the button displayed on screen. If you fail to register x amount of button presses during a set time frame, you die.
You are right. All I was trying to say is that we do not need to conform ourselves with the archaic input on screen to get that cinematic moment fix in our games today.
Um, Super Smash Bros is played at Evo as well. Does that mean it's a deep and technical fighting game that isn't for casual players? Of course not. I don't really care what fighting games professionals play or not. That doesn't prove that the game is complex just because they play it. In fact, a simpler and more easier game with a lower skill cap means that they have a higher chance of winning so really, there should actually be more of them playing it! The Street Fighter series is one of the many examples that shows modern does not equal better. 3rd Strike is still the best Street Fighter even though it's older. And SF2 is way better than V. I've played the latter and it's one of the worst (IV is THE worst)in the series.
Well really, the only thing that transfers over from martial arts into weapon fighting is the footwork (which is the most important thing). I don't know much about fighting with weapons so I can't say anything else but I know that footwork is the most important thing for both. Also, in Shenmue you can attack different body parts too. You can classify it as "targeting" because if you know which moves hit whichever part of the body, then you can exclusively target that area or whatever. Shenmue's combat is much more fluid and smoother. Not to mention the fights also look way better. And the diversity, variety and the uniqueness of the moves also adds on to all this.
Finally, the QTEs in Shenmue are done better than any game and are unrivaled in their awesomeness and nostalgia! They're not mindlessly used without reason, they're appropriately placed for the right situations. I LOVE hearing the "beep, beep, beep, BLINK!", sounds cool. The QTEs in Shenmue are not annoying or a chore like most games, they're very special and actually add on to the experience.