Shenmue III Gets New Developer Progress Video All About Facial Animation

Ys Net released a new video for their upcoming adventure game Shenmue III, coming to PlayStation 4 and PC in mid-2018 worldwide

[ibrake4naps]

very robotic :-(

[cleft5]

It does, but it looks better than that trailer. I think the point of this video is to say, yeah we get it. We know the facial animations in that trailer wasnt great and that we are still working on it. It looked robotic, but it didnt look anywhere near as dead and plastic as the previous trailer. So the game is still coming along. As long as they fix it before it releases than thats fine.

[OoglyBoogly]

Nice assumption you made out of thin air but I see nothing that hints towards what you're saying. The animations look like crap in this video while they clearly are trying to "impress" us.

I mean, I don't give a shit because Shenmue is one of my fav's and I'm sure the third will be great but let's call a spade a spade and realize that facial animations probably aren't going to be the greatest.

[CrimsonWing69]

Man why can't they get this right?

[DigitalRaptor]

You see the title of this? Progress report, not "final product".

The background to this, is that they removed facial animations from the Gamescome trailer build because they had completely re-done the facial mesh and how bones move and it wasn't ready to show back in August, so they've only really put it back in recently and are still working on it. Hence, them calling it a "progress report"...

[CrimsonWing69]

I've worked with Blendshapes in Maya and made better facial animations than this, but let's say it is a progress report then they've got a lot more work to do.

[C-H-E-F]

Bruh I just hope the gameplay good cause the animations are trash on here, character models trash, graphics trash FOR A PS4 game yes TRASH especially if it's Shenmue, Shenmue shouldn't be disrespected like this WTF. If it were any other game being rebooted like Syphon Filter, Socom or something yall would be outraged but cause it's shenmue yall turn a blind eye I really don't get it.

[showtimefolks]

Maybe because we never really expected a 3rd entry? I know that's not an excuse but shenmue 1 and 2 had huge multi million dollar budgets that were used to show the power of Sega console

Now it's a game in development with limited budget

I wish suzuki instead of going with crowd funding instead went to Sony. Sony are responsible for marketing but I am sure they wouldn't mind spending money because the game would make a huge impact maybe not sales wuaw but one of those big gaming pr hits

But suzuki instead wanted to go with crowd funding

[C-H-E-F]

Dude, limited budget isn't an excuse either though, You have tools like Unreal & Unity that is FREE, that in itself gives you a HUGE edge in the graphical department, and then from there you will be able to build your gameplay mechanics. There's dudes out here that made a total remake of Tomb Raider that looks better than AAA developers and it's just 1 guy doing it. Remember that DBZ game? One guy did it, so no, I will not allow "budget" to be an excuse or crowd funding. They went bare bones with the development and that worries me as a super fan because if you aren't taking the time to make the game this gen equivalent what else is the game lacking. Shenmue is about the story, the gameplay that's why i'm like I wish they have the gameplay right, but it's looking like they are cutting corners.

[CrimsonWing69]

Have you seen Hellblade's facial animations? Don't try to make excuses for this.

[ZwVw]

Limited budget still doesn't excuse lackluster animation, especially in the the facial department.
Just take a look at single person developed games like Lost Soul Aside and Bright Memory (also running on Unreal Engine 4, as with Shenmue 3), the facial animations in those two games blow Shenmue 3's out of the water easily and more than likely, on a fraction of it's budget.
You should have higher expectations. Especially with a franchise the likes of Shenmue.

[_-EDMIX-_]

Why would Sony go to spend money on an intellectual property they don't own? I think Sony is okay with marketing the game but they're not going to waste the funds to fully funded the development of a game they don't even legally own as it just doesn't make any sense.

I mean you're saying you're sure Sony wouldn't mind doing that but lots of evidence actually shows that they most likely would not, look at what they did to Insomniac they're not going to be giving money for full development of an intellectual property they don't even own.

He wanted to go the crowdfunding route which is his choice and Sega had no problem licensing out the property to him. Unless Sega is willing to sell the IP to another company is hands are tied and Sony doesn't really have much say in the matter.

I'm just grateful that we're even getting a shenmue 3 as opposed to complaining that it wasn't this big AAA type title. Shenmue 1 and 2 had huge multimillion-dollar budgets and look at how deeply it hurt Sega.

In regards to how the animations look now I don't think is that relevant because they've only shown a very small amount of it.

[DigitalRaptor]

@ C-H-E-F

The game isn't close to finished and has recently garnered support from Deep Silver which will pave way for more resources to achieve something more than even Suzuki planned after the Kickstarter and Shibuya Productions funding. Wave your armchair dev concern elsewhere.
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@ CrimsonWing69

Hellblade uses never-before-seen facial performance capture. It embarrasses a lot of current-gen AAA tech. It's currently unique to Ninja Theory. The game didn't have amazing facial animations through this process until maybe 2 years after it was announced. The scale of Hellblade by comparison being completely flat at a linear 6-7 hours compared Shenmue III's 30 hour open-world story with complex systems, world building, and huge array of NPC characters is something you should be considering if you want to try and compare, but you haven't done.
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@ ZwVw

I wonder if you could tell me what the scale of those games like Lost Soul Aside are though, or how deep the story or gameplay systems are. Or how many characters do they have to model and uniquely animate for in those games? Did you factor any of that into your comment, or perhaps you missed that when you overlooked the title of the update which is "progress report" A.K.A. a game that is still in development - now with added support from a major publisher like Deep Silver which will only do good things for problems like treating unfinished facial animations that don't represent the final product in any form whatsoever.

All you concern artists are completely ignorant and misled by imbalanced logic and its embarrassing.

[DigitalRaptor]

Environments look BEAUTIFUL.

Bodily animations look IMPRESSIVE.

Facial animations need a lot of work. That's pretty much its greatest flaw at the moment.

Actual Shenmue fans would be happy with Dreamcast-tier graphics for Part III, yet we're not getting that. We're getting modern Unreal Engine 4 graphics that still will advance substantially before release. Do you really think that AAA game graphics look as good as they do throughout the development? No, just AAA developers don't release progress diaries like this, and if they did do, all hell would break loose as toxic, ignorant gamers go for the jugular.

[C-H-E-F]

modern? What year is considered modern for you?

[showtimefolks]

I hope we get a shenmue 1 and 2 HD collection announcement during PSX

[_-EDMIX-_]

I think very likely.

[DivineAssault]

They missed the point people were trying to make about the faces.. I hope im wrong.. I really REALLY hope im wrong..

[boing1]

Not sure why people have such a problem with facial animations. They are all in spirit of Shenmue and other Sega games. VF anyone? Perfect nostalgia trip IMO. I'm old though, so maybe my expectations are too low.

[cfc83]

Those animations are perfectly fine. Some people seem to have an agenda. Maybe they should form their own anti-gameplay society.

[DigitalRaptor]

Right on. More importantly, they are from a game that is still being developed and iterated on.

The clue is in the title "progress report", but that part is ignored by the opportunistic. These people are going to be eating their own words when the game comes out.

[bouzebbal]

i'm fine with that.
let's see how everything else is, but i'm not expecting to get the same slap in the face as the one i got in 98.
it actually still hurts..

[kevnb]

i dont care what anybody says, I still want this game.

[roadkillers]

That old lady had a difficult life..

[AAWELLS09]

The animations are seriously on the level of an N64 era game. Comments on Youtube are claiming they're some of the best animations they've seen.

[Ashlen]

Is this going to be another game that gets broken down over stupid shit that doesn't matter. If you have been playing Shenmue on systems with 15-20 year old hardware all this time why get bent out of shape over little stuff like this.

If the story isn't there and the little details that made the cities seem alive aren't there then complain, but not over dumb graphical nonsense.