I do agree that they should have left this in the grave. Lord knows the movie industry bringing back old ass sequels has been nothing but shit. (Matrix 4??! Whyyyy?!?) However, with this already made, and with the success that Bloodstained was with a industry vet doing his thang, I'll remain hyped. Sorry this has turned out as a shitshow for alot of people. I'm enjoying the piss outta Death Stranding too. What a time to be alive and capable of gaming.
I'll go on a big rant on why Shenmue wouldn't work today, but let me stress that i'll still likely enjoy this thing (even though i'm pretty sure i'll never receive a copy i paid 100€ for, because i have no way to fix the shipping address, so i'm just gonna have to pirate it or something).
Anyway, my point is, i played Shenmue 1 & 2 on Dreamcast when they came out, they were incredible, mind blowing experiences, to this day i'd rank them among my top 5, because of how unique they are... and yet i don't think without that technical marvel, they would've worked as intended.
The story of Shenmue was peculiar for games, because of how grounded it felt, compared to shit with demons and aliens you'd get in any other action game, in this one you talked to shop keepers and grandmas, about where to find common thugs, you worked your way up some massive Triad ring, from the ground floor, it was like a martial arts action movie mixed with a spy thriller.
That part is still unique to this day, and would still find its niche i think (even though the hints of supernatural shit already started to creep in).
What was in support of all that though, was a massive budget to create the most realistic, immersive, and just plain amazing looking world you'd seen by that point in a videogame.
If Shenmue didn't look as it looked, if you couldn't touch and rotate tangerines, if you couldn't go to an arcade at opening hours, with a realistic day/night cycle, talk with any npc (all voice acted), etc. it wouldn't have made the impact that it has.
Now 20 years later, we've had GTA, Red Dead, Assassin's Creed, BotW, about a million open world games and about 15 of which are Yakuza games; the bar for what is considered an incredibly immersive environment has been raised a hundredfold (and even Yakuza, structurally the most similar game to Shenmue, relies a LOT on meme magic, to get by in the space).
What's left?
The tank controls?
The sub par combat?
The QTEs (cool idea at the time, but everybody got fed up with them)?
Below average graphics and world building (in terms of AI routines, interactions, weather cycles, etc)?
Small world with minigames that Yakuza already tested the stress point of, anyway?
All you have left, really, is the story, which only nostalgia-ridden fans are going to engage with, and it's not gonna be finished in this entry (or any other
) anyway.
Shenmue couldn't realistically be made today, because to be what it was back then, it'd need to impress in the way those ones did; to do it, it'd need 200 million dollars, an international team of top developers... i mean even Final Fantasy failed to do that jump, with XV.
Cindi, they're selling the story BECAUSE it's the only realistic thing they CAN sell, not to a general audience, but the handful of people who still care, and a couple of extra weirdos, who jumped in because of the memes.