Shenmue Postmortem Discussion

[shenhua legend]

Very disappointed, never expected an announcemnt but I expected more in-depth discussion and something about the story. The Q&A was mediocre.

[shredingskin]

Very disappointed, never expected an announcemnt but I expected more in-depth discussion and something about the story. The Q&A was mediocre.

It was a developers talk. There were some great insights, but for a game like shenmue 1 hour (it was even less than that, including the Q&A) is just too little. The best we got around Shen "future" was the Shenmaster interview, but this was not the time (even then Yu seemed that he doesn't really recall shenmue story that much).

I agree the Q&A was really bad, I'm still fucking sour about the space harrier question.

I would have asked the man that his 10 year game is still avantgarde in terms of narrative how he thinks the medium can evolve, what things had to be cropped for both games and their reasons, what things in the games he should add/delete in retrospective, (talking about Shenmue III) how does he think that the interactive conversations between shenhua and ryo affect the game (or at least how would he handle narrative branching).

There was a fucking lot to ask.

His talk was still awesome.

EDIT: he wasted some quite a long time talking about china...

[IrishNinja]

man, i really don't get why some of you are so bitter with Yu, how many times does the man have to say he wants to give us a finale but he's not allowed to? exactly what role do you think he plays at Sega in 2014...? would you rather he'd lied?

we got some great info, and yeah the Q&A wasn't so hot but i dug the origin of Space Harrier story, myself. still no idea when 2 will be discussed (next year?) but yeah, i understand the disappointment but again Cerny being around isn't nearly what everyone made it out to be; he's translated for Yu before & they're old friends from the golden AM2 days. if you didn't at least enjoy some of the details & stories (much less sketches/etc) how are you enough of a shenmue fan to be here to begin with?

[blacktorn]

I quite enjoyed the one hour talk on shenmue,yeah it actually didn't go into depth enough,one hour isn't nearly enough to cover all the topics needed plus with the wait time for the translator look alot of time up.

Interesting to know about the prototype about the peach tree and how Yu went to china and gathered inspiration there for shenmue.

Ok we didn't get what we want but i really enjoyed that session,thing is the last slide shows Shenmue 2 to be continued...Yu is coming back next GDC to discuss shenmue 2???

If so at least we know better now than to hype a GDC post-mortem LOL

Also the art cards that went along with the 11 chapters i guess revealed more about the plot points,and i think we kinda did get our conclusion,Ryo obviously avenges his father/kills Lan di but Yu revealed that Ryo doesn't know what to do with himself after all the turmoil and struggle and he makes a new life with a "new friend" which must be shenhua,the last art card depicts Shenhua walking off with Xiuying in the background saying goodbye i guess.

Im guessing Ryo and Shenhua form a close bond during the later chapters of the game and maybe they feel like they only have each other...or they fall in love or idk they had enough with what they went through and just go off and make a new life for themselves...seems like a great ending to be honest,oh well no more needing to ask what happens at the end of the shenmue saga lol

Will be looking forward to next years gdc if he does a post-mortem on shenmue 2...im majorly disappointed but satisfied nevertheless.

Been an exciting last week,cya shenmue dojo...until next year

[Icehotman2004]

I still play Shen 2 to this day even Shen 1 especially playing Shen 2 for those gambling games

[FlagshipFighter]

I'm honestly shocked at most of the responses here. I found the actual post mortem to be very insightful. It was great getting a peak into the inner workings of my favorite game series.The anecdotes, and early prototype stories - particularly the Peach Tree one, as well as the humorous convenience store one - really breathed some life into the talk, which was colorful and full of fan service. Hopefully Yu and Cerny do a Shenmue II post mortem soon, especially given the fact it's my favorite title.

[Thief]

I think most people were mostly dissapointed with how abruptly it ended and of the quality of the questions being asked. Of course the actual talk was interesting -- the Peach Tree, Plot Outline for Virtua Fighter RPG (aka spoilers for Shenmue 3), and the convenience store bug. I'm just especially bummed they didn't talk about Shenmue 2 --

[Who Really Cares?]

Yeah as I said it was fine up until the Q&A which wasn't helped by some poor questions and that they got rushed out.

We saw a good number of new things during Yu's presentation.

But as I said (sadly a lot) too many seemed to be hyping themselves up for this. The clue was in the title but people convinced themselves some sort of announcement would be made and now they get pissed at YU????

[Gojiratron]

It was a talk about a hugely influential game for developers by a developer albeit a hugely respected one. It was never at any point billed as anything else, so those who got their hopes up were always going to be disappointed. I enjoyed the talk but I'll concede the Q&A wasn't the greatest.

Suzuki-san isn't in control of the IP, Sega is so while I understand it's frustrating or disappointing for many people here, getting angry at him is stupid. His response doesn't indicate we'll never see Shenmue 3, just that the series is in exactly the same limbo it has been in for over a decade. Even if it is secretly in development, it was unlikely to be announced at GDC but at E3. It's also solely on Sega whether or not we see 1&2 HD, so even if a question would have been asked about them, Suzuki-san probably couldn't or wouldn't have been able to answer it anyway.

[Henry Spencer]

I wonder if he'll do a talk about Shenmue 2 talk at another GDC conference. Would be interesting to hear what new features they couldn't fit in. The only talk about it was when he talked about the "Magic Room" system in Kowloon.

The Q&A was pretty bad though, but the presentation off Suzuki was informative and very interesting stuff we have never seen before, which is what we were hoping to see. I don't get why people are hating Cerny and Suzuki though, people assumed far too much because they are best buds, that's why Cerny was chosen to translate Suzuki's lines.

And when he was asked about Shenmue 3, the translator who took over from Cerny just saying "dot dot dot" was incredibly annoying since Suzuki's answer was nicer then that ["I'd love to make it given the opportunity"] but it's still the same answer we've heard for years so it puts any thoughts of Sony possibly talking with SEGA about it to rest now, I think.

[Latin King]

I wasn't expecting much in terms of an announcement, but I still had a little hope we'd hear something. Anyways, it was a very interesting and informative presentation. It offered a good retrospective look into Shenmue's history. Despite all the disappointments the Shenmue community has faced, I will always have hope that the third game will come one day.

[Ryo_Knight]

Seemed like quite a good advertisement for another company (Sony) to pick up the franchise from SEGA.
No doubt this is one of the most interesting games ever made somebody will want it to continue something which has already been mapped out and groundwork done for them.

[Miggi03]

Seemed like quite a good advertisement for another company (Sony) to pick up the franchise from SEGA.
No doubt this is one of the most interesting games ever made somebody will want it to continue something which has already been mapped out and groundwork done for them.

This is totally logical and possibly the most realistic outcome.

[Gangsta Ren]

Ahhhh Shenmue, this was the biggest game back in 1999. I was a huge VIrtua Fighter fan and Martial Artist. Shenmue was originally dubbed the "Virtua Fighter RPG". Needless to say I imported my Dreamcast in 1998 for VF3tb and imported Shenmue in '99. Bought a Japanese / English dictionary and kanji books to translate as I play. It was like virtually visiting Japan. Damn that game was awesome. Praying we get part 3.

As for the Post mortem, very interesting, especially the part about Magic Maze, and the AI bug with the convenience store. The solution made people late to work ! Awesome. Shenmue lives on, the AI schedules of townspeople were recently aped in Assassin Creed 3, " the journal of common man". Shenmue 3 or not, Shenmue series has left its legacy on the game industry . They can't take that away from us. They can't take our enjoyment of Shenmue 1 and 2 away from us. That said, this was our last chance. If they weren't going to announce it at GDC, they never will. All eyes were on them. If they were to announce it at E3, it would be buried under the headlines of Titanfall 2, Call of Duty 9 , and Mario part 33.

I don't want to here shit about E3. I wasted the entire generation of the original Xbox getting my hopes up for S3 at E3's or TGS's . I'm not going to do it again. God Bless Yu Suzuki, he's going to die of old age in a few years and Shenmue will die with him.

[Dangerous-3]

Hello guys.

10 year lurker here, hardcore SEGA fan from the Master System days to the present, owned all the consoles (defected to Xbox in 2002), bought and loved both Shenmue games when they first released. Shenmue II still stands as my most absorbing game experience of all time.

Thought I should finally register/post here to sign off as it were.
The series is done now.
If Sony had any plans whatsoever to fund anything they would have at the absolute bare minimum announced the HD remakes were on the way. Nothing is ever going to happen now.

I've got to say there are some pretty whacky opinions on this board...
Shenmue is not SEGA's most popular IP, not even close. Sonic is by a landslide.
Yes Shenmue was incredible & loved by it's fans, but is was a MASSIVE commercial failure and Shenmue 3 would evidently not sell enough copies to warrant an investment from Sony. These are just facts.
Shenmue 3 has got petitions online with so many thousand names attached, but that's nothing compared to worldwide sales. They mean nothing.

Most moronic post would have to be this one-

God Bless Yu Suzuki, he's going to die of old age in a few years and Shenmue will die with him.

Yu is 55, middle aged and the Japanese have one of the highest life expectancies in the world.
Unless he has a life threatening condition he won't be dying anytime soon.

At least I don't have to buy a PS4 now.
All the best guys.