Magic Monaco Press Conference March 9th 2019 Part 2 Discussion and Reaction

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As for the art consistency, I think this element is just going to be ultimately divisive. I am currently in the former camp because out of the 500 NPC’s we’ve seen only a few stand out as cartoonish. Remember that Choubu screenshot we were shown a little while back? Did any of those characters look cartoonish to you? Or how about the shrine girl or the little girl Ryo befriends? I don’t think two minutes of footage which ultimately showed gameplay in Bailu (only one of several areas in the game) means the entire game is going to have this inconsistency.

I think Yu is just remaining true to his word when he said he wanted to create some stylized realism. Not saying anyone has to like it or that you’re wrong for not liking it but I think it’s too early to be jumping the gun when we haven’t seen the full game yet.
 
Spaghetti said:
In what respect does it look older? (genuinely curious, even if it sounds a bit standoffish)
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Unless I'm in dire need of a Specsavers appointment, I could swear the top image with Ryo looks a bit more advanced that the bottom left (Magic 19 trailer) and bottom right (Gamescom 18 trailer).

So yeah, I suspect we still haven't seen what Shenmue 3 truly looks like in its current build. So perhaps these animation/NPC hiccups everyone is noticing have already been improved upon given some of this might be earlier footage. That, or I just need an eye test.
 
Just wanted to say that as much as I loved this trailer (and I did absolutely love it), characters DID look cartoonier than I was expecting. Yes, there was always some level of cartooniness in Shenmue without even counting concept/design art which was very cartoony. And yes, S3 has been pretty open about taking the stylization a step further than previous entries. I was still a bit surprised, so I can understand where SpaceLion is coming from. As beautiful as I think the game is, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish it weren't just a LITTLE more realistic looking in the character model department. Just a little. Just a personal preference. That doesn't mean I don't ultimately respect whatever Suzuki chooses to with his game, I know it's going to be great no matter what.
 
People can complain but I like this recent trend in games of hiring actors from old TV shows and putting them in games. I never saw the Bionic Woman so wasn’t aware of who she was when she appeared in Death Stranding but loving that Yu has included the Dad from The Wonder Years.


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Jibby said:
I don't mean to be disrespectful to yourself, but as an outsider looking in to the development process, I really don't think you're in any position to be making assertions like that.
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At this point in development no reviewer should be walking away with an impression of stiff animations. That fact alone is enough for me to assert judgement.
 
I’m only posting about this game so much because I’m currently playing through it, but look at this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/kotaku.com/red-dead-redemption-2s-puppet-like-npcs-make-its-world-1830081078/a

This is a multi million-dollar game hundreds of people worked on for over eight years! And it got the same criticism. Honestly, I don’t find the animations and NPCs in RDR2 particularly exceptional. Maybe I’ve lost the plot. Maybe people expect too much from this generation of video games. I don’t know!
 
I think the art consistency is pretty much the same as the two original games, it's just that the lower polycount and the grittier looking low-res texture prevented the more grotesque/cartoonish characters to stand out too much, also most npcs/secondary characters are still showing that somehow plasticky skin shader.
 
I think the video looks like an older build to some people because of the video format compression. (loss of hair and texture detail for example.)
To me it looks on pair with the recent screeshots we got.
Lan Di seems different because of the angle he's being filmed and the lighting and setting arround him.
We obviously don't know, but to me this seems pretty recent.
Notice how they only show cutscenes for Bailu? Maybe because the bbeggining of the game is the part that's polished the most so far?
Also, @Revan Why would you compare those photos? The lighting is totaly different. Even if its the exactly same model, they all gonna look different. Lights and shadows are the most important factor considering how a character looks in a given image.
 
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Revan said:
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Unless I'm in dire need of a Specsavers appointment, I could swear the top image with Ryo looks a bit more advanced that the bottom left (Magic 19 trailer) and bottom right (Gamescom 18 trailer).

So yeah, I suspect we still haven't seen what Shenmue 3 truly looks like in its current build. So perhaps these animation/NPC hiccups everyone is noticing have already been improved upon given some of this might be earlier footage. That, or I just need an eye test.
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I'm not sure the shot you've picked to represent MAGIC 2019 helps because it's a shaded area with understandably flat-ish lighting, but it has a lot more in common with the latest screens than The Prophecy does.

I think the eyes are the true indicator, because they respond a hell of a lot better to light than they did at Gamescom 2018, which was one of the big improvements I noticed personally when Cedric released that new screen. Same with the character lighting, and trimming Ryo's jaw down a little bit.

And I mean in other respects it's a big leap from last year too, when you really start scouring the details. Everything just... moves a lot more. I know the animation isn't finished yet, but a lot of micro elements like hand and eye movement are now included or improved, alongside other details like Ryo's hair moving a little bit when before it was pretty static.

Macro elements like speech even saw a boost, even though I'd say it's the area they most need to work on now. Shenhua at the start of The Prophecy started out okay, but by the end her mouth was just alternating between shapes pretty bluntly to reach the end of the line. There are some low points in the MAGIC trailer, but generally the mouths and lips move better between phonetic shapes, and the kid with the bowl cut looks pretty well done in my view.

I wouldn't peg the build any earlier than December last year, honestly. Which might be encouraging to some of you, who knows.
 
Space Lion said:
You don’t know what a caricature is. A caricature isn’t someone with a big nose. People with big noses exist. Italians can have big noses. A caricature is an exaggeration of the human form. That pic of Mario you posted isn’t an exaggeration in the least.
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You missed the part where I humbly ate crow and said it’s more along the lines of exaggeration and stereotype and that calling it caricature was wrong on my behalf, didn’t you?

The character is an exaggeration. It is a stereotype. The only Italian guy in town has a big moustache, typical exaggerated Italian look and speaks like Mario. Yeah, that’s what I’d call borderline stereotyping. That’s like the one Black guy in South Park who sings soul songs of the 70s and gets a whole lot of loving ;)

Again, caricature was indeed the wrong word and I already ate crow on that, I’m wrong and admit I’m wrong, but the character is not far off exaggeration and stereotyping.

I’m not saying you have to like it or you can’t criticise it. I’m just saying exaggeration has perhaps always existed to a point in Shenmue.
 
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OK. First off; this is not a trailer. Someone somewhere (here, YouTube, Twitter, sorry, late to the party) said that it was like a "previously on Shenmue III" recap, which fits. Further supported by the info that this isn't being showcased anywhere as an official trailer. This is for us, as smn here said, several people said actually. And when I got my head wrapped around this (bc like many I was expecting a trailer trailer so was a bit wah...?!) it is gorgeous. A couple of views later and I like it more and more.

We get lore, we get the fighting system, we get hints of things to come. And can we please talk about Ryo the robot evolving? Haven't seen it mentioned here yet but listen to the voice acting! Cannot wait to hear Corey do it too (I don't even care for the English dub much, but c'mon!, he's been all over the new directions). Ryo sounds ... resigned, in pain, excited! That is amazing.

As for the graphics, minefield apparently, for what was put in (money wise, lest we forget it was and is limited), they maintained a Shenmue vibe imo. Which is terrific.

Hearing Earth and Sea playing .... Good grief, talk about pandering to us fans. I'm not worried they won't have something to lure newcomers in, as said, this was for us. After all, the fans paid for it to get going again.

Of course it's not perfect. I was underwhelmed going in expecting something it wasn't set up to be. Yet, this will keep me on until the next bit drops and it will. They already said there's more to come. I trust that.

Meanwhile, let's nitpick away. If you wanna hang your head, go a head. I'll discuss details with you but won't be dragged down cause it delivered within its boundaries, for me. Again, the expressed emotions really did it. That's something new, that's something I've been waiting for. High five to Matsukaze-San.
 
Araviel said:
Meanwhile, let's nitpick away. If you wanna hang your head, go a head. I'll discuss details with you but won't be dragged down cause it delivered within its boundaries, for me. Again, the expressed emotions really did it. That's something new, that's something I've been waiting for. High five to Matsukaze-San.
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Indeed!! Character emote really well! You can really feel Ryo's and Shenhua's emotions!
 
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Does the Kickstarted nature of this game mean that we sometimes assume we have more ownership in this game than we really do?

My feeling is that the artists vision is their own. Sure, we paid but we didn’t pay to be armchair directors. We paid for them to realise their vision, not ours. In this case, the look that Yu Suzuki is going for is clearly the look that he wants.

That doesn’t mean that criticism shouldn’t be valid and I’m certainly not saying that criticism becomes null and void. Before anyone assumes that.

But I’ve seen some people online really go to town on the “cartoon” look to the point where they treat it like they have ownership in the game just because they funded it. Which I think is kind of wrong and missing the point. You didn’t pay for your vision of Shenmue III, you paid for Yu’s vision of Shenmue III.
 
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