If Shenmue had been a Saturn Release what do you think would have been sacrificed?

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Alright, let's say we lived in a hypothetical where Shenmue Saturn was a reality and had made it out. What do you think would have been sacrificed to get it running on Saturn?

Open World? I would have to imagine it wouldn't have been anywhere near the level of immersion of the Dreamcast. Like I doubt there would have been as much 3D rendering as there is in the Dreamcast in terms of capsule toys, being able to pick up individual items in every store and such. I doubt the world would have been as interactive and I think the biggest cut would have been the level of scale in the open world to be honest.

NPC's? Dialog? Voice Acting? I mean we all know they had to compress the shit out of the Dreamcast audio to get it on 3 GD Rom's. Would they have been able to get anywhere near as much dialog into a Saturn release? Would it have been voice acting for main characters only?

Combat? Combat would be the trickiest thing I imagine to pull off on the Saturn. Especially the 70 man battle. I don't think the Saturn would have been able to handle the 70 man battle. I mean, hell, they literally had to turn off the Sky Box on the Dreamcast version as was during that battle. I can't imagine the 70 man battle would have made it in tact.

I don't know, what do you think would have been sacrificed to get it running on the Saturn. I know we've all seen the amazing Saturn Shenmue video but I do have to wonder in terms of the game we know; how much of it would have been the same in that Saturn version and how much was added in the jump to Dreamcast thanks to the more powerful hardware?
 
Alright, let's say we lived in a hypothetical where Shenmue Saturn was a reality and had made it out. What do you think would have been sacrificed to get it running on Saturn?

Open World? I would have to imagine it wouldn't have been anywhere near the level of immersion of the Dreamcast. Like I doubt there would have been as much 3D rendering as there is in the Dreamcast in terms of capsule toys, being able to pick up individual items in every store and such. I doubt the world would have been as interactive and I think the biggest cut would have been the level of scale in the open world to be honest.

NPC's? Dialog? Voice Acting? I mean we all know they had to compress the shit out of the Dreamcast audio to get it on 3 GD Rom's. Would they have been able to get anywhere near as much dialog into a Saturn release? Would it have been voice acting for main characters only?

Combat? Combat would be the trickiest thing I imagine to pull off on the Saturn. Especially the 70 man battle. I don't think the Saturn would have been able to handle the 70 man battle. I mean, hell, they literally had to turn off the Sky Box on the Dreamcast version as was during that battle. I can't imagine the 70 man battle would have made it in tact.

I don't know, what do you think would have been sacrificed to get it running on the Saturn. I know we've all seen the amazing Saturn Shenmue video but I do have to wonder in terms of the game we know; how much of it would have been the same in that Saturn version and how much was added in the jump to Dreamcast thanks to the more powerful hardware?
In terms of enterable buildings it would've stayed the same but obviously less populated with details.
The FREE system would have no purpose so I could imagine some simple 1st person button like in Vagrant Story.

If the plannings were wise made its theorically possible to keep most if not all the final content but introduced to the player in a more classical rpg fashion, with more menus and less 3D models rather than the magic unfolding of final Shenmue. You can think about it as some kind of FF7 menu + RE1 inventory for visual reference of what I mean.

That goes for the items, scrolls, capsule, etc. For NPC certainly it would have to drastically reduce because even DC version struggled to show what it does. It wasn't easy to implement and some features were cut out. The voice acting would've be in same line, just looking at Saturn/PSX/N64 releases, this is non-existing or FMV exclusive. Iirc it took to FFX to have a fairly big number cast with a fairly lenght and good voice acting.

Combat probably was also pretty similar. If we take the 70 Man Battle as a pivot then note that it could be very very similar if not exactly the same. The 70 Man... Come in pairs, nothing too heavy for 32bit cpu. Check "Shaolin/Lords of Fist" (PSX) Time attack Mode. Or MGS stairs chase scene. The key is spawning correctly with rythm.

Actually we can get a taste of it with "Mizzurna Falls" also for Sony's grey.
The result can be sum in ambitious, good and glitchy game. One can hear the PSX crying, moving all that stuff. I cant recall if there was also bus schedules and NPC routines.

So, very much similar in scale but very different presentation, its my opinion.
 
It is an interesting thought. I think if we can extrapolate from the early footage and what we know from Shenmue’s development the flow of the game would have been very different. We know the Yokosuka portion would have been significantly shorter and we would be in China much sooner. In addition I don’t think elements like magic weather or NPC’s detailed routines would have been seen.
 
The open world and combat would totally be do able on the Saturn. I mean the console had Virtua Fighter 2 on it and I guess it would be really stripped down so you wouldn't get destructible objects like barrels and chairs breaking. As for the 70 man battle it would just be a smaller area. Voice acting would only have been in cutscenes. The arcade in Dobuita most likely would have not made it in and just imagine the motorcycle section near the end of the game
 
Combat is a important point, as none of the footage for the Shenmue Saturn version shows combat at all, it's just exploring and cutscenes. You'd think that they'd want to show intense battles to show off how powerful the Saturn was, right? Yet, it's completely absent, and even the cutscenes where fighting happens are cut in a way that barely shows the characters throwing punches. Lan Di hits Iwao with this weird slide punch that barely looks like a proper punch, and Xiuying paralyzes Ryo with a magical touch to the back of his neck. If the cutscenes where that incomplete, I wonder how well the actual fights preformed.
Now, they probably would've fixed it up with time, and it's possible they already did, but even then, I doubt the combat would've been as deep or fun as it was on Dreamcast. Less move scrolls, less complex inputs, really, a weaker version of VF.
And, No Nozomi, No Goro, and No Tom. Possibly No Ine. The first chapter would've been short as heck, I feel the only reason it was so long and involved in S1, was because they realized the Dreamcast gave them the power to emulate an entire village, and they naturally ran with it. These characters were added in to add depth to Ryo's decision to pursue vengeance. The Cave would've been the ending, with Legend Of Akira 2(? See below) going farther than S3 did (IMHO S3's bad pacing was because Suzuki thought it was a good idea to make the Basiha section an strategy game in a already stuffed game), and an third game finishing the trilogy on Dreamcast. (Suzuki said in a interview that Legend Of Akira was gonna be either one or two games, and I doubt he would've gotten the entire story in 2 goes, even with heavy condensing.) We got a better game on Dreamcast, but in return the series never got an proper finale! Truly, a difficult trade off.
(Did they decide to make Akira Ryo before or after the Dreamcast change? I think it's the later, since Akira's model was on What's Shenmue, but it seems unlikely to me that Akira would've stayed for that long when there were almost no other VF characters at all! Frankly, the lack of VF in VFRPG surprises me. It's like if Kingdom Hearts, which was billed as Disney meets Squaresoft, didn't have any Disney characters other than Goofy being the main character, and the entire plot was just about him killing an demon that murdered his Dad.)
 
Why though? Saturn was perfectly capable of storing/playing all those voices
In standalone mode like in a sound test yes, but remember that we talk along the rest of game code. Executing the "engine" part plus game logic. This was done accesing CDROM made with less than ideal readers (PSX, Saturn. Both had cheap CD readers for mass production) and one had to be cautious with CD sector reading error. Nasty bug.
Thats why there's duplicated files in CD games, for 3D models and textures.
For avoiding forcing to jump between CD sectors. Normally was, for each level a set of duplicated assets + that level specifics.
Check not just short lived saturn but succesful PSX. There's not anything like DC Shenmue in audio because it wasn't technically possible at that gen.
Ok, Metal Gear Solid with all the genome soldier quotes and Snake? Snaaake! Its the closest thing imo
 
Check not just short lived saturn but succesful PSX. There's not anything like DC Shenmue in audio because it wasn't technically possible at that gen.
Ok, Metal Gear Solid with all the genome soldier quotes and Snake? Snaaake! Its the closest thing imo
I don't seem to get what you mean with MGS as it was fully voice acted?
How about Panzer Dragoon Saga on Saturn which had full voice acting during gameplay?
 
I don't seem to get what you mean with MGS as it was fully voice acted?
How about Panzer Dragoon Saga on Saturn which had full voice acting during gameplay?
My fault mate, besides common non english speaker mistakes I normally make, I have a thing moving now and its obvious now for me its causing me writing worst.

I mean MGS for PSX as an example at that console generation, 32bit, of a fully voiced acted game in a scope the most close possible to Shenmue VA. Yes your example also is valid, games like those was imo the biggest we could get back then (and note the a mount of CDs for Dragoon). Maybe Im getting wrong but you seem to disagree about MGS being a fully voices game (also during 'gameplay' and cutscenes with the game engine instead fmvs).

For a Saturn Shenmue, there could be certainly a fair big a mount of audio dialogue but as you said "All the voices" I took it literal and thats why I said No.

I hope youre not even more confused now, let me know
 
I hope youre not even more confused now, let me know
I just might be, lol. Whatever, let's just move on. In the end I'm still sure that Shenmue could be fully voice acted on Saturn even if it'd have taken 6+ CDs
 
I just might be, lol. Whatever, let's just move on. In the end I'm still sure that Shenmue could be fully voice acted on Saturn even if it'd have taken 6+ CDs
You can check how many 4+ CD games were out for Saturn/PSX, none.
Im sorry, you said move on and Ill respect that. Its just because you wrote "why though?" I believed you wanted some reasonated answers. But I missed this is a matter of convincement.
Under that, sure, Saturn could do anything one wants even realtime raytracing.
Check at segaretro or copetti:
Saturn ram, sram (for sound), data read speed (2x iirc), icache (this determine the size of the instructions the hardware can deal at a time, iirc was way low than ram so it was a bottleneck).
Im not saying we could not get something very close to DC Shenmue but for Saturn, in fact if you read my post previous of answering you its the contrary what I support. But one can not simply fit the magna opera from DC (8mb ram, etc) into the previous hardware, as much as we love it.
 
You can check how many 4+ CD games were out for Saturn/PSX, none.
I just said 6+ for example, I'm sure they could've squeezed it in 4 tho and there're dozens of 4x CD games on PSX and Saturn. BTW, Saturn had a little game called "Phantasmagoria" which was a PC port and it came on 8(!) CDs. Also Riven (Sequel to Myst) came on 5
 
I just said 6+ for example, I'm sure they could've squeezed it in 4 tho and there're dozens of 4x CD games on PSX and Saturn. BTW, Saturn had a little game called "Phantasmagoria" which was a PC port and it came on 8(!) CDs. Also Riven (Sequel to Myst) came on 5
I got the feelin were going in circles around the same. Squeezed like again all Shenmue DC sounds, and most of the gameplay, no. It had to be cut.
I know what you mean, I played phantasmagoria back then on PC and I loved it btw, same for X-Files The Game,which was 7 CD (4 on psx) and all those game suffered content cut in their respective ports. Besides we cant compare such simple coded games (point & click games are basically huge state machines with conditional flags)
The switch system or state machine is present on Shenmue x100 compared to I. E. Phantasmagoria. At the same time we deal with lightning, drawing, input, physics, weather, npc routines, bus schedule... None of those in good ol phantasmagoria.
Also note that Im basing my point in technical information concerning data storage, compression, duplicates, access and stream. In the other hand, you seem to base on "I know/Im sure".

Mist & Riven serve as example of what I mean: the template for that games is state system, when you meet a condition (press up), play that "room/area" move_forward.avi/srt/mpg2
A single asset file, with video and audio, is steamed. Probably all the ram is busy.
 
I strongly believe Shenmue would have been a better success had it released on the Saturn. Especially if it got released before Metal Gear Solid. It would have fulfilled that movie like experience with its full voice acting. Bold statement, but I think it would have saved the Saturn in the same vein it was expected to carry the Dreamcast.

Side by side, Saturn Shenmue is a much more graphically superior game than MGS. That alone would have put serious eyes on the Saturn. Developers would have paid attention and consulted AM2 on how to properly program for it.

All the praise that MGS got for being a trailblazing game that really innovated the industry would have went to Shenmue if it came out on the Saturn.

The gameplay is questionable. When Shenmue came out on the DC, there was nothing like it at the time, if the Saturn version was even 60% of what the Dreamcast version ended up being, it would have garnered a lot more attention due to it being the first game of its kind in the 1st 3D generation.

It's been rumored that there are at least 12 members in AM2 that has the Saturn version of Shenmue. I really hope this leaks one day as it will open a new can of worms for our community and give us something new to discuss.
 
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