by GYO6161 » Tue Jan 12, 2016 6:07 am
Hopefully it will be a optional feature. i always perceived the story of Shenmue be about the Journey of Ryo and his quest, the game starts with a very powerful scene depicting the murder of Ryo's father, right there the conflict of the main character is established. Later we learn that there was a story behind the mirror and Iwao's role its further teased developed etc, so the whole story basically revolves around Ryo and his father in a way with some teases here and there of Shehua in 1.
To take this already established plot that was expanded in 2 very long flesh out titles that can top at almost 200+ hours combined, it would feel very out of place to play as someone else all the sudden, now that we are getting closer to the truth of Iwao and the mirrors, i feel like the focus is shifting away from what it started in the beginning. I could see if Shenhua was playable since 1 or 2, the whole journey of Shenmue would have always felt like something more than Ryo's tale for revenge and the mirrors (which i believe the story will later shift into more of that different direction)
It's just that for me, after 2 very long journeys with Ryo, to all the sudden make this switch in 1 game and just be like ''here, play as Shenhua in this part, Oh! and Ren too!'' it feels forced in my opinion.
The fact that the definitive way to play these games is too do the save conversion and to have all your remaining items and moves sets transfer between titles always gave Shenmue this development feel to it, you are playing as this inexperience boy learning all about martial arts and different cultures and people, growing not only skillfully, but also as a human being. Too all the sudden take away control of you from this aspect of the game and introduce to you these other characters that you haven't played as before and don't know much about feels.... very unshenmue. I mean we all love Ren and Shenhua, but honestly, we don't know nearly as much about these characters as we know Ryo so i can't see these characters fitting that well in a playable form.
All i hope is that Suzuki has a very good plotline and structure and that he can incorporate Shenhua and especially Ren in a playable way that doesn't detract much from the original roots of how the story started and was fleshed out. I sure don't want to see this playable multi characters as just extra cool stuff that we get because we reached a Kickstarter goal,i want this to be the best for the overall experience, but then again, this is all speculation, maybe this was all meticulously planned by Suzuki 20 year ago. Hell, for all we know Ryo could die in between the chapters that S3 starts and the end of the whole story of Shenmue and another person would be the Main central playable character. It's all speculation at the end of the day so lets hope for the best.