Back when Shenmue was first announced, SEGA leaned heavily into a buzzword: FREE. An acronym, the term stood for “fully reactive eyes entertainment”, and it was essentially used to describe the type of gameplay that we more commonly consider open world today; it meant that the title enabled you the freedom to go anywhere and do anything you wanted at any time.
To encourage this, the first game includes multiple moments throughout its story where you needed to wait to meet a character or attend a certain location. Governed by an in-game calendar and clock, this meant that there were periods where you’d quite literally have to “time waste” in order to progress the story. It was a divisive feature, and Shenmue II added in a time skip option in response to the criticism.
There had been some speculation online that this feature would be retroactively added to the first game as part of SEGA’s upcoming Shenmue I & II remaster, but according to VG247 that’s not the case. “We’ve tried to stay as close to the original feature sets in each game as possible, so Shenmue I will not have the time skip feature,” a spokesperson told the website.
We think it’s the right call personally, but it’s yet another reason why we reckon series newcomers should be cautious before playing these cult classics.
[source vg247.com]
Comments 16
personally i think this is as good thing but who knows with the modern gaming crowd, most have the patience of a nat
I’m glad they’re keeping bits like this as they originally were. As someone who’s never played them before, I want to experience them as close to their original form as possible, short of not actually playing the original discs on a Dreamcast.
All I want is improvement on the loading times of the game,it was dreadful on dreamcast.
Also want at least a 5 month gap, between the 1 and 2 collection, to part3.
I would if they will include the comic tie in that featured Ryo on a ship heading to Hong Kong between 1 and 2?
@adf86 Never heard of that. Is that anywhere online to view?
All I remember about Shenmue 1 was being automatically transported home at the end of the day and having to travel all the way back to where I was in the morning. Apparently that stops at some point into the game but I didn't get far enough into it.
All it really needs is some twin stick controls and increase the size of the areas which load. That's the only annoyance for me when playing these games today is it loading every small area individually, I didn't mind the time thing and actually think more games should do it 😀
@hulkie I assume it will be. Only heard about it yesterday on Digital Foundry's YouTube channel on their look back on Shenmue 2. It was meant to be part of the game but due to time it was skipped in favour of a comic that you can view in the game's menu.
If it’s in the second one, then why not do it? Have it make fun of the player for using it. If it was so important that it wasn’t in 2, I would agree, but it wasn’t important enough and it’s be optional to use.
Please fix the save system and let us save anytime, anywhere.
Even in the second one, I never used (nor wanted to use) time skip. This is the main goal of the game ! And there is so much to do. Arcade games, for example!!
@Jaz007 Because it wasn't in Shenmue I originally and as they said they want to keep it as close to the original game as possible.
Real life ain't got no time skip feature!
@hulkie @adf86 that was only available on the xbox version, may not end up in the collection although I'd like it to, only played the Dreamcast versions.
I almost never used the advancing time cigar smoking feature in MGSV. I much rather roam around and knock out enemies to Fulton out and add to my base while I waited. I hope Shenmue 1 has time killer activities.
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