Rain Birds

Oh, it’s not that, although the tip is useful in and of itself - the issue is that my son (who is a normal villager, not the town rep) literally doesn’t have the option to donate anything to Nook. So the hope is that I simply need to donate the initial items and that he’ll be able to do so after Blathers appears.

Hmm, having looked at the criteria, I definitely haven’t donated the required items. Hope it’s not a bug, because other people seem to be having the donation issue online.

Really? Is it that the town rep simply needs to start the museum / give Nook the stuff to make Blathers appear in the first place and then anyone can donate? In that case, I need to make a partial retraction. I started my game yesterday but my son’s playing it at home and seems a bit disappointed with the limitations so far, but he’ll be a bit more satisfied if I can at least resolve the museum issue; he loved that stuff in previous games.

As good as it is by itself, this seems like an atrocious local multiplayer game so far. They really need to allow multiple islands per Switch if only the first player is allowed to contribute to the town in a material way, although that might be less lucrative for Nintendo. The other players can’t even donate things, and all in all it seems like a far mor solitary experience than, say, Wild World on the DS.

He does indeed.

I think the strangest thing to me is that there doesn’t seem to have been a broad outline of where the story was to go. How the fuck does that work? I presume that they were thinking “The original trilogy had three different directors! Let's do the same!”, failing to take into account the fact that, despite not directing the second and third ones, Lucas was writing the stories and calling the shots. Did they not know they were giving a lot of control to a very different type of filmmaker in Rian Johnson? Like, if David Lynch had agreed to direct Return of the Jedi when asked to by Lucas, does anyone seriously think he’d have been given the opportunity to write the story and put his own stamp on it?

I enjoyed this, but it was very clearly created as fan service & merchandise opportunity first and film second. The Force Awakens struck a better balance, but I think the biggest shame is that every opportunity to go somewhere different opened up by The Last Jedi was tossed out. I haven’t re-watched that, but I thought it a bold film that played brilliantly against expectations of wise-old Jedi Luke. Yet, as I said, I enjoyed this one all the same. It’s a big-budget popcorn flick; it entertained me, I was never bored, it made me laugh at times, it did its job.

Shenmue III was made on a fairly low budget and will likely prove profitable. Shenmue IV would cost even less to make, thanks to all that has been put in place with III, so I’m quite confident that it will happen in the next few years. Given the Xbox listing that briefly appeared, I suspect that version is yet to come and, perhaps, as with Yakuza, a launch on Game Pass sometime next year might be a smart way to debut it, especially now that the first two are on there.

You know what I really miss from the first Shenmue? How just about everything has a schedule. It really, really added to the immersion going out before a shop had opened or just missing closing time in the evening. That aspect was rarely seen in Shenmue II and is essentially non-existent this time around - I’d like to think it’s a knowing comment on Chinese working conditions, but I suspect it’s a trade-off for the considerably greater scale of the sequels.

Sales seem fine. It’s a super-niche game made on a limited budget. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Shenmue IV greenlit - they know the engine, have plenty of assets in place so a sequel on a similar scale should cost a lot less. Dreamcast Shenmue needed to be a huge success because it was by far the biggest budget title on the platform. This can probably sell a fraction of the amount and end up being more profitable.

I passed 150 for the first time today! 151, if I remember correctly.

I’m addicted to wood chopping.

Yes.

RB, oddly.

One thing I really miss from Shenmue I - the fact that shops (bar the explicitly 24 hour ones) actually close at night. It really added to the illusion of a living world. In Shenmue II and, going by the stalls & store in the first village, Shenmue III, they’re all more or less open around the clock. There’s a certain irony given the presence of a conversation option in which you mention the 24-hour Tomato store to Shenhua, who is taken aback by the idea...