Now More Than Ever, Shenmue Deserves Our Respect

thegamer.com:

Cringe culture is quite possibly the worst thing to happen to critique. It’s the concept that anything that is earnest and believes in itself is embarrassing. Based games are self-aware, self-deprecating, and apathetic. Just like us. Otherwise, we’re pretty cringe, too.

This could be partly why the first Shenmue game hasn’t stood the test of time for many. Those of us who enjoy it have to talk about embarrassing stuff like how the game makes us feel, rather than how we’d describe it if we were writing its Wikipedia entry. And sure, on the face of it, Shenmue has plenty to dunk on. The dialogue is clunky, with voice acting to match. The controls are awkward by modern standards too, and anyone playing it for the first time today may struggle to understand why it's so beloved. But Shenmue is full of so much charm, passion, love and ambition that we need to stop looking at it so cynically. It gave us a vision of what sandbox games could have been, and it’s a vision of the future that we probably won’t ever see again.

Related: It's Been 21 Years And Shenmue's World Still Feels More Real Than Most Games

Shenmue was the most expensive game to make of its time, with an estimated budget of $70 million (around $117 million now with inflation). Some estimates say that every Dreamcast owner would have had to buy the game twice for it to turn a profit. Even though games with massive budgets are commonplace today, it’s hard to imagine anything like Shenmue ever getting greenlit. Admittedly, a third game was, but that was with almost two decades of hype and a ridiculously successful Kickstarter campaign.

One of Shenmue’s greatest strengths is how much needless content it's filled with. Arcade games, toy capsule collecting, special