Support NeoGAF

[MouldyK]

Man, I hope he gets the funding he needs.

Man, the visuals still appeal to me.

Shenmue was probably the game which got me fascinated in Japanese Culture and things.

It's so different from living in London that it feels like a magical place to me sometimes lol.

 

[Trojan X]

Man, I hope he gets the funding he needs.

You have no idea how many times I actually did that for real after playing Shenmue....

Heck, now I am in Japan, I'm going to do it tomorrow.

 

[painey]

You have no idea how many times I actually did that for real after playing Shenmue....

Heck, now I am in Japan, I'm going to do it tomorrow.

drink a soda?

 

[Trojan X]

drink a soda?

Ha, you know exactly what I meant.. Drink in one go and the same style as Ryo.

 

[Shadow2222]

drink a soda?

Speaking of that, my mind was blown a few years ago when I discovered that there were actual Coca-Cola machines in the Japanese version of Shenmue. I had no idea before then!

 

[MassiveNights]

What's happened to the AMA?

 

[MouldyK]

Ha, you know exactly what I meant.. Drink in one go and the same style as Ryo.

Then stare at the can?

 

[Shadow2222]

What's happened to the AMA?

Looks like it is 9:30 PM PST

 

[amstradcpc]

Man, I hope he gets the funding he needs.

Those graphics will be always magical.And run in a Power Vr 2 GPU 1000 times slower than those Power Vr GPUs in mobiles now...
I remember reading Shenmue was one of the first games to model and handle individual fingers in hands.Graphically was a beast.

 

[breakYODAy]

What's happened to the AMA?

They clarified on Kickstarter its scheduled for 9:30 PM PST, not AM.

 

[Theonik]

The voice acting issues is an epic facepalm. Now wonder I never liked the English voice acting that much even though it had its charms here and there. Let's hope that mistake will never happen again. A person who is not fluent in English language cannot have creative control on English vocal localisation. It doesn't work. Just like a person who can barely speak Japanese can not go and localise Japanese voice acting. The person they got in spaced though was the voice actor for this guy - absolutely awesome:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1GsgK0UyKbo/hqdefault.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEw72ocD3ss

Shenmue's translation process was bad but not uncommon for high profile Japanese games from that era. MGS suffered from a similar fate, where the people that were translating it were changing dialogue to make sense in English until Kojima realised it and took close charge of the translation himself. Lines like 'Love bloom on the battlefield' are the result of that.

Glad to see he'll also be putting forward Shenmue 1 and 2... hopefully he can convince Nagoshi

I hope they succeed in their Nagoshiations!

 

[danwarb]

Wooo! PC.

 

[MaxiLive]

You have no idea how many times I actually did that for real after playing Shenmue....

Heck, now I am in Japan, I'm going to do it tomorrow.

Film yourself getting a Winning can?

 

[crimilde]

I didn't see this posted already, there's a blog article up on the PS blog where Shu talks about his E3 highlights, here's the part about Shenmue:

“I was talking to Suzuki-san last year when I saw him at an event. He said that, as so many people were asking for Shenmue III, he was exploring a good way to restart the project – and he has a really good relationship with Sega who own the IP. So I’m really happy to see that the SCEA third party relations team was able to work out an agreement to support his Kickstarter project. Once the Kickstarter project is funded we will offer the same kind of support that we’ve been doing with many independent projects.

“The reaction to the announcement was so great. I had dinner after the show with Hashimoto-san, who is the top guy on Final Fantasy series at Square-Enix, and Suzuki-san on the same table, and we were such happy people!”

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/06/19/shuhei-yoshida-looks-back-at-e3-2015/

 

[Shadow2222]

I didn't see this posted already, there's a blog article up on the PS blog where Shu talks about his E3 highlights, here's the part about Shenmue:

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/06/19/shuhei-yoshida-looks-back-at-e3-2015/

Thank you for sharing that!

 

[LizardKing]

Speaking of that, my mind was blown a few years ago when I discovered that there were actual Coca-Cola machines in the Japanese version of Shenmue. I had no idea before then!

Yeah good idea. YS net should sell in game advertising. Coke, duracell, nike whoever wants in! (Need to keep to 80's styles and products though) Would also be cool for 80's immersion reasons.

 

[Mugen08]

For the reddit, maybe someone can ask if there will still be a Virtua Fighter-like fightingsystem? I'm worried it will be severely simplified with the scrolls Suzuki has mentioned. Practice and sparring seems to be redundant/absent?

 

[sixteen-bit]

Speaking of that, my mind was blown a few years ago when I discovered that there were actual Coca-Cola machines in the Japanese version of Shenmue. I had no idea before then!

I wonder how that arrangement went? I laughed when I found out Sega had actually paid Tower Records, Pizza Hut, et al to use their likenesses in Crazy Taxi, haha.

 

[Spaghetti]

Yeah good idea. YS net should sell in game advertising. Coke, duracell, nike whoever wants in! (Need to keep to 80's styles and products though) Would also be cool for 80's immersion reasons.

for all we know they could be the additional funding sources

 

[Krejlooc]

For the reddit, maybe someone can ask if there will still be a Virtua Fighter-like fightingsystem? I'm worried it will be severely simplified with the scrolls Suzuki has mentioned. Practice and sparring seems to be redundant/absent?

He mentions a skill tree, so perhaps that's what pratice will be for.

 

[NekoFever]

I wonder how that arrangement went? I laughed when I found out Sega had actually paid Tower Records, Pizza Hut, et al to use their likenesses in Crazy Taxi, haha.

I've read the same thing happened with Shenmue, on the Coca-Cola machines, Timex watches, etc. Shows how mismanaged Sega was back then. They're supposed to pay you for product placement!

 

[MrCunningham]

Shenmue's translation process was bad but not uncommon for high profile Japanese games from that era. MGS suffered from a similar fate, where the people that were translating it were changing dialogue to make sense in English until Kojima realised it and took close charge of the translation himself. Lines like 'Love bloom on the battlefield' are the result of that.

Kojima didn't actually read the English script for MGS until after the localization was released, and even then he didn't actually read it, it was dictated out to him by others who could read English. The original MGS1 had a great localization for the most part outside of a few quirks like "can love bloom in the battlefield?". Jeremy Blaustein did take a lot of liberties in re-writing the script, but he tried to keep it in the style that Kojima would've written it in while making it sound fluent for English audiences.

Blaustein was pulled off the project for MGS2 and onwards, and the translators after him all had to work with tighter restrictions. IMO, MGS1 had a better English translation than either 2 or 3. MGS2's English translation was the worst one IMO.

This concept art is from when it was still VFRPG as seen in the corner there, so story is not quite the same, as is the scope but it gives you a rough idea of what was planned to put some things into some perspective.

Yeah, Ryo was originally planned to be Akira from Virtua Fighter. The original Project Berkly CGI trailer showed an early prototype version of Ryo that looks like a younger version of Akira seen in CGI promotional art for Virtua Fighter 2.

Ryo from the Project Berkly trailer:

CGI Promotional art made for Virtua Fighter 2:

http://www.satakore.com/sega-saturn...-CG-Portrait-Series-Vol.3-Akira-Yuki-JPN.html

Same red and black arm bands, white shirt and spiky hair.

This is also why the game took place in the '80's, as it was suppose to be a teenage Akira. Lun-Di may have also originally been planned as Lau.

 

[Theonik]

Yeah good idea. YS net should sell in game advertising. Coke, duracell, nike whoever wants in! (Need to keep to 80's styles and products though) Would also be cool for 80's immersion reasons.

Who knows, he talks about that wrt Shenmue I in his GDC14 postmortem.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219314/Video_Shenmue_postmortem_from_Yu_Suzuki_and_Mark_Cerny.php
Everyone should watch it.
Edit: better video.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

I've read the same thing happened with Shenmue, on the Coca-Cola machines, Timex watches, etc. Shows how mismanaged Sega was back then. They're supposed to pay you for product placement!

Yeah, that's funny. That's the whole point of product placement, to offset costs since you are advertising for them.

 

[Surta]

Who knows, he talks about that wrt Shenmue I in his GDC14 postmortem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7-lLf-v29Y
Everyone should watch it.

Indeed, starts at 31:30 and shows that these things aren't as simple as people think (Coca-Cola having strict demands on how vending machines are presented in the game world).

 

[thelastword]

WOW, never saw that gif in the OP. Between their horizon coverage and that gif, these GT guys have made me a fan, haven't been to GT since guys like Satterfield were all jaded and full of it. These young guys seem genuinely excited for games and that's good for the industry.

 

[Sectorseven]

Is Bailu village really going to have vending machines or Tomato marts?

 

[Mahonay]

Is Bailu village really going to have vending machines or Tomato marts?

That's the only let down in all of this for me. One of my favorite parts of Shenmue was slowly walking through the streets in these carefully crafted, highly detailed, city neighborhoods. It gave the whole thing a cozy feel that's hard to describe.

I'm curious to see what Shenmue is going to really be when it's entirely outside of that setting. I mean Shemue III was also going to take place in these small villages and the wilderness, so maybe Yu already had something in mind to retain some of that.

 

[Krejlooc]

That's the only let down in all of this for me. One of my favorite parts of Shenmue was slowly walking through the streets in these carefully crafted, highly detailed, city neighborhoods. It gave the whole thing a cozy feel that's hard to describe.

I'm curious to see what Shenmue is going to really be when it's entirely outside of that setting. I mean Shemue III was also going to take place in these small villages and the wilderness, so maybe Yu already had something in mind to retain some of that.

From all the work AM2 was doing at the end of Shenmue 2, working on generating enormous, organic forests, and what they said in the livestream about taking place in smaller villages, I think it's pretty obvious this one takes place in rural, wooded china.

I am curious to see what Yu Suzuki's forest simulation algorithms look like. Shenmue I and II were awesome because they did 2 very different things - Shenmue I was an insanely intricately detailed tiny city, where everything was scripted for months upon months down to the smallest detail. Shenmue II was, of course, a full simulation of one of the largest cities on the planet. It's neat that they're doing something different yet equally ambitious with Shenmue III. There are videos recently of Yu Suzuki talking about how they generated forests at the end of shenmue II and where the tech would have eventually gone, and how he had created this system to store ridiculously huge, detailed forests into tiny pieces of code that resided a very little space in memory. Crazy stuff, especially for 2000.

I have no idea what type of odd jobs they'll have this time. But man I can't wait. This is going to be so freaking cool.

.

 

[J2 Cool]

I don't really want urban environments and tomato marts or really even forklifts, unless it makes sense. Some of the best parts of 2 are just the direction changes when they happen.. Going to Kowloon, the unsettling nature of Ryo not being home, or the epilogue's change from being in an urban environment. I'm all for him keeping it specific to his intent, not trying to relive Shenmue but continue it.

 

[openrob]

I don't. He was a terrible voice actor, along with everyone else in Shenmue 1 and 2. The voice acting was so amazingly bad. If they do make him the voice actor for Ryo, I at least hope they give us a JP language option with EN subs.

It really wasn't his fault.
Speaking about the VA experience, firstly they tried to select vioce actors that 'looked like' their in game counterparts. And during recording they gave little context and so they were never really sure how the statements should be stressed, etc. It was all recorded individually.

Seems like it was really mismanaged. Saying that I still can't imagine anyone else doing the english VA.
Japanese, Corey or bust

 

[Mahonay]

.

Ah thanks. Yeah it makes sense that he had most of that planned out already.

 

[Laevateinn]

Update: interview with Tak Hirai

Is that footage of an early build? Looks pretty cool running through the forest.

Edit: the end of the video is really interesting. It seems Tak wants to experiment a lot with the battle system merging the QTEs and traditional battle systems into something new and unique. I wonder what he has in mind.

 

[Mahonay]

Update: interview with Tak Hirai

Is that footage of an early build? Looks pretty cool running through the forest.

Nice. Looks like they're playing around with how much mobility Ryo will have now.

 

[Theonik]

Speaking of Shenmue and GDC I remembered this talk about Shenmue I in GDC2000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzEt6yZPVcY
Pretty surreal watching it now.
Edit: Stuff like watching Peter Molyneux's introduction of Yu Suzuki.

Update: interview with Tak Hirai

Is that footage of an early build? Looks pretty cool running through the forest.

They posted it on their site earlier and was posted here. Nice but really short interview.
It looks like the test level they had on the KS reveal. The model he is using is one of the testing rigs that comes with UDK4.

 

[Die Squirrel Die]

Shenmue's translation process was bad but not uncommon for high profile Japanese games from that era. MGS suffered from a similar fate, where the people that were translating it were changing dialogue to make sense in English until Kojima realised it and took close charge of the translation himself. Lines like 'Love bloom on the battlefield' are the result of that.

I remember an interview with Alexander O. Smith talking about how for some of FFX's localisation they didn't even have a copy of the script, they had a VHS of the cutscenes and had to translate from them. He also talked about having to write and record the english dialogue in such a way that the lip movements matched the movements for the Japanese lip sync, and that's why much of the FFX voice work sounded so stilted.

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

Are the known Shenmue 3 villages situated in the Guilin region? There's potential for the story to make a trip through Guilin city itself, which in the mid-'80s would have been urbanized and maybe economically liberated enough to have a kind of convenience store. Otherwise we're going to have plenty of local stores that might have a radio or some older music player for ambiance.

 

[Mahonay]

I remember an interview with Alexander O. Smith talking about how for some of FFX's localisation they didn't even have a copy of the script, they had a VHS of the cutscenes and had to translate from them. He also talked about having to write and record the english dialogue in such a way that the lip movements matched the movements for the Japanese lip sync, and that's why much of the FFX voice work sounded so stilted.

That sounds like it must have been a nightmare to work on. Jesus.

 

[Theonik]

That sounds like it must have been a nightmare to work on. Jesus.

Nightmare visualised.

 

[Mahonay]

Nightmare visualised.

How do I not remember this? Holy shit.

 

[danwarb]

They definitely need the original US voice actor for Ryo.

He'll take it to the kitten.

 

[maquiladora]

Speaking of Shenmue and GDC I remembered this talk about Shenmue I in GDC2000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzEt6yZPVcY
Pretty surreal watching it now.
Edit: Stuff like watching Peter Molyneux's introduction of Yu Suzuki.

"Please welcome Yo Shim-eh-zuki"

:lol

 

[Krejlooc]

Nice. Looks like they're playing around with how much mobility Ryo will have now.

That's the default ue4 third person actor template. It looks like they're just loading the test level from the kick starter pitch video into ue4 without having changed anything yet.

This is like day 1 stuff. The very beginning of the project.

 

[Theonik]

How do I not remember this? Holy shit.

To be fair, that scene is meant to be bad. The script was like [awkward fake laughter] and for what it's worth it's what it was intended.

"Please welcome Yo Shim-eh-zuki"

:lol

Molyneux pls.

That's the default ue4 third person actor template. It looks like they're just loading the test level from the kick starter pitch video into ue4 without having changed anything yet.

This is like day 1 stuff. The very beginning of the project.

Yes. I wish they had done more by the time they started the KS. Other projects will go pure concept art and then show prototypes. Doing it the other way around is also viable but I feel the first impression of a project is important for selling people on the game, more so when it's a Kickstarter.

 

[Die Squirrel Die]

I must apologise, I found the interview in questions and I got the details a bit muddled. It wasn't that he did the translation fron VHS tapes, he had to watch the VHS tapes in order to work out length of the lines and rework the translation to fit those timings, since it seems like recording the lines with natural english speech patterns and redoing the lip sync wasn't an option. Still a nightmare

http://www.rpgsite.net/interview/3030-alexander-o-smith-interview

 

[kewlbot]

This has literally been mentioned every page of this thread. It's not going to happen. Sega own the rights to Shenmue and Shenmue II so you need to ask them. It's out of Yu's control and is impossible for them to be a part of this Kickstarter as they don't have the rights to them.

well that sucks
thanks for the reply though, didnt really feel like going through all the pages in this thread
so uh anybody know how i can play shenmue on dreamcast without spending a crap ton of cash?

 

[Shadow2222]

Just a random thought. One of the things that truly amazed me was how fun it was to do nothing related to the story.

I don't know what website it was, but they had a full walkthrough that was intended to be used for a slow-and-steady playthrough. It even had a daily itinerary for Ryo. Part of it was getting a capsule toy for the day, calling Nozomi, and playing arcade games. I love that the game allowed for quick and slow playthroughs.

 

[Theonik]

Kojima didn't actually read the English script for MGS until after the localization was released, and even then he didn't actually read it, it was dictated out to him by others who could read English. The original MGS1 had a great localization for the most part outside of a few quirks like "can love bloom in the battlefield?". Jeremy Blaustein did take a lot of liberties in re-writing the script, but he tried to keep it in the style that Kojima would've written it in while making it sound fluent for English audiences.

Blaustein was pulled off the project for MGS2 and onwards, and the translators after him all had to work with tighter restrictions. IMO, MGS1 had a better English translation than either 2 or 3. MGS2's English translation was the worst one IMO.

Ah, yes, you are right I was misremembering the story. I remember there being a GAF thread about it too, probably from the year I was waiting to be approved.

Edit: Ah here we go http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532419

 

[Mahonay]

That's the default ue4 third person actor template. It looks like they're just loading the test level from the kick starter pitch video into ue4 without having changed anything yet.

This is like day 1 stuff. The very beginning of the project.

They should probably just wrap up the project now and put it on Steam Greenlight.

 

[Krejlooc]

Just a random thought. One of the things that truly amazed me was how fun it was to do nothing related to the story.

I don't know what website it was, but they had a full walkthrough that was intended to be used for a slow-and-steady playthrough. It even had a daily itinerary for Ryo. Part of it was getting a capsule toy for the day, calling Nozomi, and playing arcade games. I love that the game allowed for quick and slow playthroughs.

There are soooo many random small side quests and stories to unfold in shenmue if you take the time to find them. The most random and best known is the duck race bit, but there are others. Did you know you can get fuku a girlfriend in shenmue 1, as an example?