So, for all the crap David Cage gets for getting his head up his ass about games being the new filmmaking and whatnot, he’s also one of the dudes at least trying to push the envelope. But like everyone who wants to be an auteur, he stands on the shoulders of giants. The main giant Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain owe their bones to is Yu Suzuki, who had this crazy idea back in 2001 to take all the processing power of the Dreamcast, and sink it into a 60 hour action RPG. And then, Sega gave him more money to do it again on the original XBox. now, neither of the Shenmue games has aged particularly well, but at the time, those games were like NOTHING else on the market. Now, persistent QTE action sequences, open world gameplay, character interactions with far-reaching consequences are the next-gen norm. YOU’RE WELCOME, INDUSTRY.
So, needless to say, having David Cage have a sit down chat with Suzuki, courtesy of Game Informer, to talk about storytelling in games has a fascination to it. Obviously, because of the language barrier, Suzuki is a little quieter, and often has to delay his responses, but seeing two guys who’ve been actively thinking about pushing “interactive drama” forward for a little over a decade now trade ideas is one of those things that doesn’t happen often enough. And I dunno, just maybe it’ll spark interest in Shenmue 3 materializing. The whole interview is worth the time just to hear Cage ramble, but the crossover action starts at 21:56. Have a look:
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