Gamer's Month - Shenmue

Ambitious game creations can be a wonderful thing, pushing at the boundaries of what was thought possible and delivering new experiences, or clever twists on old ones. Of course ambition has its dangers as being overly ambitious can all too easily lead to seriously shonky gameplay (just look at Rockstar's attempts to create social interactions with NPCs in GTA IV) or the complete failure to deliver on any of the developer's intentions (I feel Skills would ban me if I didn't mention Peter Molyneux at this point).

One developer who wasn't short on ambition is Yu Suzuki, the man behind titles such as Hang On, Out Run, After Burner II, Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop and the series I chose to talk about, one so ambitious it doesn't have an ending: Shenmue. It's a series that I harbour incredibly fond memories of, and at the same time a nagging feeling of frustration. However, when presented the opportunity to discuss any game I felt it had to be Shenmue (though I'm slightly cheating by covering both Shenmue and Shenmue II), which probably rank as my favourite games on possibly my favourite system (though the games actually started life on the Saturn, though abandoned that machine and found a home on Sega's last hardware hurrah).

Here is a series of games that weren't just ambitious in terms of their gameplay, but nearly every aspect of the development seemed to try to push what could be done in an RPG, which is possibly the closest thing I can think to label it; Yu Suzuki coined the rather silly genre name 'FREE' (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment) for the games, who's total lack of adoption (or meaning) clearly shows you how well that one went down. The games work as a sort of weird semi-open-world, RPG, adventure, fighting hybrid that worked on a day/night cycle — including the need to sleep and the passing of time from your start point in 1986 — and saw the player (filling the shoes of protagonist Ryo) wandering around talking to people trying to work out how to proceed and occasionally getting into scraps with all sorts of no-good scoundrels. You could improve the character by learning new moves, either from scrolls or from various 'masters' dotted around the game world, and the fights themselves took play in real time as a sort of simplified fighting game (various combos required to pull of certain moves), though with the potential to be facing multiple adversaries.

Perhaps one of the most ambitious aspects of the game, ignoring the story and scope for the time being, was perhaps the game worlds themselves, which were graphically stunning (certainly at the time) and the environments which were crafted with an enormous amount of care and attention to detail. Despite lacking the sheer power of today's systems (or even the PS2 and Xbox that followed shortly after the Dreamcast) the Shenmue games did a remarkable job of creating worlds that felt real and were a joy to explore. There was all manner of little touches, from being able to open every draw in Ryo's home, to shops having their set opening and closing times, buses that ran on schedules, particular times of day where people would be doing certain things (including hidden cutscenes if you were in the right place at the right time in the first game); there was a richness to the world of Shenmue and Shenmue II that was incredibly appealing and this was certainly an aspect of the titles that got me hooked. This extended to the various side attractions you could occupy yourself with, which included a variety of mini-games or even stuff like the local arcades including fully playable games (amusingly these took the form of various Yu Suzuki classics such as Space Harrier, Hang On and Afterburner II).

Even the voice acting, which looking back is horribly stilted and lacking in emotion (think "You were almost a Jill sandwich"), was ground breaking for its day, with absolutely every NPC in the game world having recorded lines; so never once did you come across a bizarrely mute character who's lines would randomly be delivered via text boxes. The only slightly jarring element was the fact that whilst the first game received voice work in English for the western market, the sequel that arrived only a year later received only Japanese voice work with English subtitles. This seemed odd at the time since I had a particular voice in my head associated with Ryo's character, though in the end the Japanese VA proved to be somewhat less stilted seeming and a more natural fit for the game.

All in all the gameplay of Shenmue was a reasonably straight-forward affair, though the one aspect I've not yet mentioned is one that, these days, is likely to be met with either animosity or a massive rolling of the eyes: Shenmue featured a number of instances where during a cutscene user input was required to perform certain actions. Yes, Shenmue was one of the first games to heavily feature Quick Time Events. Whilst they had appeared in games previous to Shenmue, it used the more prominently and Yu Suzuki is actually credited with coining the QTE term (which unlike FREE did actually stick). At this point in time QTEs have become a rather overused and lazy fallback for developers, but back in 2000 they felt fresh and Shenmue used them to sensible effect. In Shenmue II the balance between free battles and QTEs did get somewhat skewed to favour the latter (with some rare occurrences actually leading to a branching story path), though they still felt rather novel and fun.

So about that rather ambitious and epic story then: Yu Suzuki reportedly came up with the original idea for the Shenmue games to be about the characters from the Virtua Fighter series, though as they progressed with development the idea abandoned its VF origins. The game revolves around mentioned protagonist Ryo Hazuki, the son of a veteran jujitsu master and respected sensei. Returning home one day he finds his father in a confrontation with a mysterious fellow dressing in Chinese clothes named Lan Di who is demanding a Dragon Mirror. Daddy refuses, Lan Di threatens Ryo, daddy gives up the location of the mirror before Lan Di then kills papa before scarpering (cue scream of "Nooooooo!", camera panning out to young man knelt beside his father's dead body and lighting cracking in the sky; oh yes). Ryo then decides to do the only natural thing and seek revenge for his father's murder.

In the first Shenmue, after witnessing the aforementioned event, Ryo sets out to track down Lan Di by quizzing anyone who had seen the car the killer disappeared in, though without much success. His progress is then helped massively by the arrival of a letter to his dad in Chinese. Turns out it was a warning (oops, too late) but provided a vital phone number that put Ryo in touch with some local allies, in the form of Master Chen and his son, who are found at the local harbour. Ryo eventually discovers Lan Di has gone back to Hong Kong and sets out to follow, though not before he stumbles upon another mirror, the Phoenix Mirror, hidden in his house. Once he discovers the price of flights (pricey) he decides to get a job driving a forklift truck at the local harbour to save up the money. However, this has Ryo coming head to head with a local gang affiliated with Lan Di's organisation, which eventually leads to the kidnapping and rescue of Nozomi the long-time friend and requisite love interest (well I say that, she basically declares her love for Ryo early on and he just sort of goes "Oh, OK" and that's about it). Insert cheesy as all hell sequence of Ryo driving her home on a motorbike with her arms wrapped around him and a ballad plays (you can definitely roll your eyes at that one). After beating up the local gang (all 70 of them) Chen sorts out travel to Hong Kong for Ryo, though not before you have to beat the crap out of a bandage covered Kung Fu Gollum-a-like. The game ends with Ryo boarding his boat (cue brief flashback to cringe worthy farewell with Nozomi) and then cut to a speech by a random girl, who is glimpsed in dreams randomly during the game, talking about a young man arriving from the east and fulfilling his destiny: "And thus the saga begins ...", zoom in on mysterious girl's face as she looks to camera. The end. WHAT?! I'm not going to lie, right at that point in time I was annoyed. If you played Halo 2, you should know the feeling.

See Yu Suzuki had evidently outlined a massive 16 chapter (yes, 16 chapter) story. What makes this epic tale seem all the more impressive is that the story of the first Shenmue covered just chapter one. I'm not sure if it was ever explicitly stated, but rumours certainly suggested that the original plan was to make each chapter its own game, so we're talking a truly epic tale here. However, one of the largest criticisms levelled at the game was the pacing, which was rather slow and purposeful, and perhaps the rumoured $70 million that had been spent on development of just one game prompted a little bit of a rethink. So along came Shenmue II, which covered chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5; though some people claim it also covered 6 and 7, and 2 was supposedly the boat journey which doesn't feature in the game, so it's possibly just 3, 4 and 5, but whatever. As a result Shenmue II has a larger scale, covers more ground and has a quicker pace to boot.

Picking up where the last game left off, Shenmue II starts with Ryo arriving in Hong Kong, and since you could carry across all the items you acquired in the first game if you had a Shenmue save file on your VMU, you naturally found Ryo getting mugged as soon as he steps off the boat and losing all that hard-earning cash (bastards + further eye rolling). Ignoring that set back Ryo sets out to track down Master Lishao Tao, as instructed by Chen at the end of the first game, but when he finally meets her she refuses to help and tries to dissuade Ryo from pursuing revenge. Ryo's a persistent bugger though and eventually runs into Ren, a local gang boss who helps him track down Yuanda Zhu, who had sent Ryo's father the late warning in the first game. They successfully find their man, but run into another Lan Di affiliated gang in the process of kidnapping him. However, Ryo's superior fighty skills save the day and Yuanda Zhu provides information about the true use of the two mirrors, sending Ryo off to a random village where he meets Shenhua, the girl from the end of the first game. Apparently her family is tied to the destiny of the mirrors and when they head to find her father in some caves the discover he's gone and they set off a crazy device revealing two giant versions of the mirrors and another "To be continued" style cliff-hanger ending. GOD DAMN IT! At the time I figured fine, another game will be along in a year or two. And well, it's 8 years later and no Shenmue III has appeared yet. GOD DAMN IT!!

The games are undoubtedly flawed gems, with grand ideas, though for me the good far outweighed any of the niggling little issues and the ambition shown can only be applauded. However mileage tends to vary and for some the games were just too slow and too plodding, with elements like the need to get a job and earn money certainly turning some people off. To me Shenmue and Shenmue II are two of the fantastic games Sega gifted the world on their sadly doomed Dreamcast. I still hope that one day we will see a Shenmue III appear that will conclude the story, and whilst that's clearly not going to happen, I can dream can't I?



As a sort of aside down here at the bottom, it's worth noting that Shenmue also had a pretty sweet soundtrack, or so I thought.

Jam it back in, in the dark.