How Sega Broke Narrative Design In 1999 With Shenmue

Shenmue's villain barely appears in his own game, which was downright confusing at the time. When it came to AAA games in the 90s, the formula was always the same. You'd get a big, evil, god-like villain hellbent on destruction. Think Sephiroth or Kefka in Final Fantasy, or Devil Kazuya in Tekken. With Shenmue (1999), Yu Suzuki went an entirely different direction. Lan Di is just a man who appears in the opening cut scene. That is it. There's actually no real looming threat driving the story. Instead, Ryo is just navigating the world after the threat leaves. And because there's no impending doom hanging over everything, the world gets to just... breathe and exist. Mini-games make sense. Side quests make sense. Everything fits, because you're seeing it through the eyes of a teenager in 1980s Japan, not a hero racing against the apocalypse. That's what makes Shenmue a rare open-world game: no matter what you do, your actions always fit the narrative. It's something we rarely see attempted even now, let alone in a game from the 90s.