Shenmue III - ‘Ryo & Master’ Trailer [MAGIC 2019]

[Prine]

The art is all over the place, there's such a huge disparity between Ryo, Shenhua, Lan Di and everyone else. You can tell this is being done on the cheap, quite depressing really. And as a fan of the originals simply continuing the story with little evolution from the originals is not nearly enough, that's a low bar for anyone to expect, as the old games haven't aged well at all.

 

[MilkBeard]

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I agree with Huber, I like the hyperstylized characters. He also points out some things I didn't notice, but then again I'm actually not finished with Shenmue II yet (just reached Kowloon).

Edit: Also, the more I watch it, the more I notice things they do well. On my first watch I was more nervous, but there are a lot of promising things in the video. Everyone is hyper focused on nitpicking some animation quirks, but after comparing it to other AA games, what they've shown isn't worse than other games on average. Also, the cutscene direction is a step above a lot of games with AA budgets. They nail the Shenmue cinematic feel, the camera angles, everything.

 

[harlekin]

You know that there are real people with that kind of face ?

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Hrhr what did you google to find that... ;)

But then if you look at all characters in the trailer that Ryo is interacting with (apart from Shenhua), the all have their "main character emotion" plastered in their faces.

- We have dumb fist of the north star guy.
- The guy from the picture (but tuned to 11.. ;) )
- Cheeky and sneaky drunken boxer type guy, with the big nose, and oversized head...

It can be a stylistic choice to save animation budget (use almost archetypal character design), but even then it doesnt fit with the subtlety that Ryo and Shenhua try to put on display... The reveal moment of the big lip guy hass a certain "Here's Johnny!" quality to it, that isnt intentional. :)

Also - the art Design of the sorroundings still tries to be hyperrealistical in detail... Its all a bit of a mesh that doesnt jell.

Now if you look at the fan made trailer above, that leaves out that stuff - it suddenly works and looks like a much more interesting game. Because there is cohesion all of a sudden. :)

Leave a couple of characters like that in there for comic relief, but not make them your excuse for laying it on thick until the game becomes a parody of itself. Thats my current concern.
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Hyperstylized is the word, yes.

Shenmue's emotional delivery was subtle in the past (thats why many people dont get the appeal), now its "let me hammer it into you, what this character is all about". They always overdrew some elements of the game (comic relief, wierd baddies, ..), but they didnt present you with one tone characters out of the bat.

Now the trailer shows three of them, and we all have seen the last baddie they featured (mr muscle). It all becomes a little much.

I cant get into that and think about Ryos meaninful journey to find himself in fairytale land.

Doesnt fit.

I could get into the design aesthetic in principal - but here it clashes with other elements.

 

[GhostTrick]

Hrhr what did you google to find that... ;)

But then if you look at all characters in the trailer that Ryo is interacting with (apart from Shenhua), the all have their "main character emotion" plastered in their faces.

- We have dumb fist of the north star guy.
- The guy from the picture (but tuned to 11.. ;) )
- Cheaky and sneaky drunken boxer type guy, with the big nose, and...

It can be a stylistic choice to save animation budget (use almost archetypal character design), but even then it doesnt fit with the subtlety that Ryo and Shenhua try to put on display... The reveal moment of the big lip guy hass a certain "Here's Johnny!" quality to it, that isnt intentional. :)

Also - the art Design of the sorroundings still tries to be hyperrealistical in detail... Its all a bit of a mesh that doesnt jell.

Now if you look at the fan made trailer above, that leaves out that stuff - it suddenly works and looks like a much more interesting game. Because there is cohesion all of a sudden. :)

Leave a couple of characters like that in there for comic relief, but not make them your excuse for laying it on thick until the game becomes a parody of itself. Thats my current concern.

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Just the name of the actor. :")

My point being, yes, there's more and more stylized characters. But I doubt there's only that. And I also dont feel like it's out of place. You had a lot of stylized NPCs in Shenmue. In Shenmue 1 you had Goro, that Jimmy guy selling tickets, you had Tom, heck even Fuku-san felt like less realistic and more stylized than his friends.
Compare these characters with Ryo or Nozomi and they'll feel a bit out of place.
And the same can be said for Shenmue 2.

As for the art direction, I feel like it looks great. They're not going for realism but for a more anime, stylized look overall, without going for cell-shading.

I think that, with more refined animations, it'll look perfect.

But to say it's a thing that never happened in Shenmue is wrong.
Heck, that's a serie with a weird small bald guy making weird noises and jumping everywhere.
Tell me how Chai fits in a game where Nozomi, which is a more realistically looking character, also exist.

 

[Mahonay]

I'm not sure how I feel about the trailer. Looked fairly janky to me to be frank.

This is hitting in August, so that's not too much time. I'll be crossing my fingers that the final game pulls off that Shenmue charm.

 

[MilkBeard]

harlekin I can see what you are saying, but I just don't agree with you. The environments are more realistic, but there is still a sort of cartoonish "sheen" on everything, and you can see it with the lighting, the shading, etc. To me it doesn't look out of place, and Ryo and Shenhua don't actually look all that realistic to me, just moreso than some characters. They still look like a blend of real and sort of a "shonen" design. They are pushing less realism overall, and it doesn't look out of place for me to see more hyperstylized characters.

 

[SixelAlexiS]

You know that there are real people with that kind of face ?

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Yeah, this guy is the older version of the S2 guy on the bottom right:

But it has nothing to do with the giant lips, large ass nose and extremely accentuated eyebrows and cheekbones of the S3 guy...

This guy hase no nuances or characterization, it's only big and exaggerated in any aspect of his face, it's just generic and doesn't resemble any human.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Going by the story involved this time the Chi You Men or another organisation entirely raided the village in search for the Phoenix Mirror? Wonder how Ryo and Shenhua get out of that one. And that guy at the start of the trailer could be one of the bad guys who was looking for the Mirror? I suppose he could become another Goro (enemy at first meeting, then friend later).

 

[Aniki]

Great trailer. It feels good knowing i will get to experience all this myself soon. Pure Shenmue goodness.

 

[GhostTrick]

Yeah, this guy is the older version of the S2 guy on the bottom right:

But it has nothing to do with the giant lips, large ass nose and extremely accentuated eyebrows and cheekbones of the S3 guy...

This guy hase no nuances or characterization, it's only big and exaggerated in any aspect of his face, it's just generic and doesn't resemble any human.

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And I'm sure you can find real people with a strong face like this.

 

[Magoo]

And I'm sure you can find real people with a strong face like this.

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Reminded me of the baddie in Tango and Cash.

 

[MrCunningham]

I mean, Shenmue I and II had people like this:

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Shenmue still has some of my favorite character models from that generation. I honestly think the designs are really fantastic for the most part. Sure there are some funky looking low polygon and low priority NPC's in the original Shenmue series, but the main cast and secondary and thirdary characters were all really well designed and stood out. The character designers literally made real physical head busts of most of the character models just to get their designs right. And I believe the were 3D scanned and turned into models. The head busts in the passport disc for Shenmue 1 showed off some of the higher quality 3D busts.

Shenmue III is staying in spirit to the originals in design. But I can see the budget restraints. It's funny how the Shenmue III models look technically better, since they are higher polygon and have more shader effects and better textures, but the original games still manage to feel bigger budget, even with the technical limitations of the Dreamcast. Shenmue III still feels a little rough, but I think Yu Suzuji and his team are still doing a good job delivering this game. I never thought I would see a part III, and it is not being developed by Sega for UE4. UE4 is a capable enough game engine for this task. I'm excited for this one.

 

[Spikey]

How old might that trailer footage be? How much time goes into selecting and building scenes for a trailer?

 

[ianpm31]

Maybe it's just the lighting but at about 1:10 it seems to be in a more advanced polished state.

 

[Sirank]

Trailer looks good and I'm super encouraged by the stuff they are saying. Seems like it's going to be a lot bigger and more in depth than I ever would have imagined. 500 characters would I think be about in between 1 & 2 in terms of NPCs. The face animation is fine for what it is, I don't know if it's worth minutely hand polishing and iterating cut scenes or building a new complex procedural cinematic dialogue system (which is funny because Shenmue was the first game I remember talking about having one). The one still somewhat jarring thing for me but I think I've finally come to terms with it is that Ryo's model is gonna look off compared to the previous games. Like maybe they modeled it off the GC renders from the old games rather than the in game models?

Would be cool if there was a "What's Shenmue" style trailer before release. Showing Ryo just slowly walking around, looking at stuff. Observing NPCs going about the day, exploring various features and all that.

 

[Asbsand]

I agree with Huber, I like the hyperstylized characters. He also points out some things I didn't notice, but then again I'm actually not finished with Shenmue II yet (just reached Kowloon).

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I think it's a Link's Awakening Remake scenario.

There's two imagined camps:
Camp A: "The game looks too stylized, I want a more modern look!"
Camp B: "I love the artstyle, imagine if it had been modernized, that would suck"
Hidden third camp: "I just wish it looked better as a stylized thing."

The aesthetics in Shenmue 1 and 2 is better than this. No doubt about that. It's not about whether it's stylized or not, or aiming for Shenmue visuals or not, I think it's that original Shenmue wasn't aiming for this level of "stylized", it was aiming for realism but with a certain stylish cut-back because it was a Dreamcast game, but somewhere in the middle of it all there's a modernized art direction for Shenmue III that would look a lot better than this and please anyone who simply aren't against the rural japanese tone of the franchise. Think less bulky-looking but also not photorealistic, more desaturated color hues and slimmer character models.

 

[FreeMufasa]

Yep, that's good enough for me. Can't wait

 

[super moustique]

As I see it, the game will likely be decent or great on the quality of its story and gameplay second, because it has to wrap up the series Shenmue fans have been waiting for.

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S3 won't wrap up anything though :P

 

[Glass]

Watching Huber's reaction, I realised the fighting animations really arn't that janky, they're quite smooth, its the quick edits and cuts which make them look janky, the cuts almost blend the moves together but not quite, creating the arkwardness.

 

[Gelf]

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I love these gifs because they appear to indicate the gameplay will still be fighting game style much like the originals. I had this fear they would go to the now more often used "modern" approach of a more automated system where a lot of movement and move selection is taken out of your hands, aka Batman combat.

 

[Asbsand]

How old might that trailer footage be? How much time goes into selecting and building scenes for a trailer?

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I sincerely doubt it's old enough that you can't call it representative of where development is lately.

Remember Mass Effect Andromeda. So many jumped to its defense before reveal going "They're just teasing it!" but in the end it really was because they hadn't put the game together until the very last months of development.

 

[Resilient]

Yep, that's good enough for me. Can't wait

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exactly

fuck the music for this game is gonna be sweet as fuck

 

[bell wood's jet cola]

Just took a look at the trailer stats on YouTube. Thousands of like, less than 100 dislikes. I think we're going to be fine.

 

[IronicSonic]

, it has the Shenmue vibe front and center. And that's incredibly reassuring. To think Yu can pull it off nearly two decades later almost makes me tear up. He's a true legend through and through.

After seeing this I have no doubts. This really is 100% Shenmue. And I'm pleased as punch.

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True. I mean there arent many other games with a gap that large between titles where the last game keeps the magic of the early titles.

And I think this game looks good enough, not just in the KS space but overall.

 

[nightopian]

I don't get all the dislike. The game reeks of Shenmue. Some faces are ugly but then again some men can be pretty ugly in real life. I'm excited about it coming out this year. I still would happy to take a delay if Yu needs one.

 

[ILikeFeet]

You know that there are real people with that kind of face ?

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I disagree, in your image, there is sag in the fat under the skin, but in the Shenmue picture, there's a permanent tension on the muscles around the mouth and the brow. It's like dude shoots botox on the reg.

 

[IvorB]

That trailer is hilariously bad ha ha. What's with the faces? Seems like they are maybe going for some kind of 'student project' vibe...

 

[Deleted member 5359]

This looks pretty bad. Lan Di looks so different. Younger and softer.

 

[Shadow2222]

We should get more impressions soon - just browsing for any news articles that sites were putting out, and VG247 (not familiar with them personally) states they got to see 15 minutes of the game and their impressions will be out within the next few days. Not sure what other outlets got to see it, but we have a lot to look forward to!

 

[bell wood's jet cola]

That's what I'm dying for, actual impressions. I'm hoping the people who got to see the game aren't afraid to be honest. I saw a caveat about odd animations in that VG247 write-up, so I'm hopeful.

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

Looks like a Shenmue game!

You can tell that the budget is being stretched thin, but it still looks surprisingly authentic!

The fighting gameplay looks especially impressive; especially considering that they couldn't just re-use the existing VF codebase like they did with the first two games!

 

[bell wood's jet cola]

If they pull off the fighting, that'll be a triumph in itself. That's why we need gameplay trailers and fewer cinematic trailers. Graphics clearly aren't going to sell this game to the masses, but that GIF of Ryo fighting that Pai-lookalike should thrill any fighting game fan.

 

[Maligna]

All the people complaining about weird looking NPC's obviously never took a look at the You Arcade owner in the first game.

 

[Xx 720]

im looking forward to it, and it looks like a Shenmue game....but the graphics look a generation behind imo

 

[Glass]

Whats the team size on the project? This is essentially an indie passion project right?

 

[bell wood's jet cola]

Ys Net + Neilo, and Lakshya is helping with character models. Don't think anyone really knows actual size.

 

[Ænima]

Only thing i dislike is Shenhua face, she was so beautifull in Shenmue 2, and she looks so bad now. Everething else looks like a shenmue game, a low budget Shenmue game, because thats what it is, but still looks alot like a shenmue.

 

[KiLAM]

Well that is a Shenmue game allright.Which is all I wanted honestly. Nothing like Shenmue out there.
I just hope it doesn't end on a huge cliffhanger or something.

 

[doof_warrior]

i was already on board with the stylized characters, i like it, but the more i think about shenmue 1 & 2 the more i realize those games had just as much of that stylized character design. i think maybe because they were flat painted textures on the faces of the models made it less "obvious" where-as, in the case of the dude with the big lips, having it modeled out makes it more obvious and people are kneejerk reacting?
cuz man, go look at the faces in the first 2 games lol barely any of those people look "real". they all look like anime/manga characters

i'm so excited, this trailer nails the shenmue feel SO well


edit: but i continue to hate that stupid new logo and think shenhua looks not great

 

[Suede]

Only just got around to watching it, it's bringing me to tears. Finally seeing cutscenes with audio and some combat footage along with that music. I've waited so long.

 

[Virtua Sanus]

I am really positive of it overall. It is starting to actually feel like the game exists!

The stylized look for NPCs has always existed, but something about how many of these characters look currently comes off as an almost claymation look or something. It is awkward and jarring, but I think it will grow on me. If nothing else, I appreciate that it has a distinct look to it.

The combat segments of the trailer REALLY had me happy though. I feared that the combat would be entirely unrelatable to the originals from some comments we heard of it's development.

 

[Iwao]

Game will be out in five months, this is what you are going to get...

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They've been showing old footage to the public as long as I can remember.

We're going to see improvements in every regard before August, as we have each time the game has been shown so far.

 

[JayBee]

I think why the characters look more stylized is also because they have more polygons to work with compared to dreamcast

On the dreamcast they had a round head and all they did was texture them up. Now they can do more.

 

[XodiousBlack]

I put together a very short supercut from the past three trailers in a couple of hours on iMovie:

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I love this!

 

[GhostTrick]

Neat little detail:
Not only Shenhua's earrings move but her ear lobules (the part where the earring is attached) is also moving too because of the earrings movements.

 

[breakYODAy]

So I'd like to actually talk about the content of the trailer. I really appreciate that they put an emphasis on showing that Ryo will be going into investigation mode early on in the game. Investigation and "uncovering the mystery" is integral to the Shenmue experience in my opinion.

I expect based on what's shown here, that Ryo will simultaneously be looking into his father's past in Bailu village, while training with this new master and working small jobs to pay him during the first part of the game. That should make for a solid gameplay loop.

I can see the Bailu section being slower, akin to Shenmue 1, with the port town being faster paced like Shenmue 2, and a confrontation with Lan Di there.

 

[@ShenmueGuru]

Just back home from Monaco, and it's great to see so many people full of positive emotion for this game.

The trailer... it doesn't even scratch the surface. It's just that. A trailer, and yes, one without much gameplay at all. But please, don't be worried about that, at all!!!

Anyone who wants to hate, they can and will, i'm sure, but this is the Shenmue 3 i have waited for, for over 15 years. To me, it's just at a stage now where i just laugh at the hate, and sometimes weird comments. I cannot wait for August. People will be blown away.

 

[GameBytes]

Looking good, imo
Have they said anything about a physical release?

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Looking good, imo
Have they said anything about a physical release?

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You could preorder physical releases during the backer period.

 

[JayBee]

Just back home from Monaco, and it's great to see so many people full of positive emotion for this game.

The trailer... it doesn't even scratch the surface. It's just that. A trailer, and yes, one without much gameplay at all. But please, don't be worried about that, at all!!!

Anyone who wants to hate, they can and will, i'm sure, but this is the Shenmue 3 i have waited for, for over 15 years. To me, it's just at a stage now where i just laugh at the hate, and sometimes weird comments. I cannot wait for August. People will be blown away.

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Thanks for sharing this bro. Yes the trailer touched all the right spots for me which is something I did never expect. I was expecting dissapointment or just satisfaction of the fact that it would be a good game, but the trailer doesn't just show that. It shows that the game is being made with the same vision Yu Suzuki had with the originals. This is why a good lead on a project is so important. This game is proof of that more than any other because shenmue was such a distinct game with such a distinct feel to it. Yu Suzuki is a lot older now but he's still got it man.