SlySpy wrote:[...]
Whatever does happen, I hope the series doesn't completely jump the shark and keeps magic as an amazing mystical element that you rarely see throughout the story. The floodgates are open for magical stuff to happen of course, but I still believe it can be handled well enough to feel somewhat grounded within the game's universe.
Yu Suzuki incorporates Gabriel García Márquez's concept of "
Magical Realism", so you'll see e.g. Shen Hua's powers as an everyday way of acting, yet fantastical.
"
Shenhua is actually a real person. However, Shenhua has this ability to remember her ancestors. How to say... She has the faculty to link her to them." -
Yu SuzukiIn the Project Berkley video there is
a line which says:
"
Erupting into space and time."
We also have the Shenmue Online
trailer where we see: Shen Hua transforms, also the place changes, and it looks like ancient.
As you see it was hard for Yu Suzuki to explain it in that interview, so it is a complex concept. Personally, based on a
small research I've done on Chinese mythologies (especially about reincarnation) and the aformentioned resources, I can see:
- Shenhua holds the memories, experiences and powers of her old ancestors. She can retrieve them with some form of meditation (e.g. when she closes her eyes), like, imagining a place she has never visited before [at least in her (current) life], even though it is so vivid in her (inherited) memories. She's like connecting/linking the past with the present in her existence, linking past lives of her ancestors with her current life.
- It seems that there is some power (probably concerning the pair of the Mirrors; remember they can resurrect the Chi You monster, that is from the past) that can change the timespace continuum and bring from the past entities into the present and change places to their former ancient situation (maybe only partially in the world).
- Destiny plays a crucial role. It's like there is some unresolved matter from the past that is going to be solved now. Ryo seems like one of the key people to bring the resolution, as a catalyst to the endless circle of greediness and vengeance, and a battle between light and dark, evil and good ...Ying and Yang; cosmic forces of the universe, probably leading respective persons, those of the light and those of the dark, to end that. The other key person is Shenhua, but Ryo and Shenhua form a pair (probably not an erotic, too...) and only as a pair can unlock the remaining secrets.
I have gone way further from the current subject... but what I'm saying originates in it. But, as always, just imagining how the world of Shenmue and the situation of it, is.
Other random thoughts that came to mind...