As 2023 kicks into gear, I continue my journey of weight loss. For the past five months, I’ve been trying to correct the wrongs in my life by building a better lifestyle for myself. Last year, at my heaviest, I weighed in at 225 kg. Not by any means a number I’m proud of. Come to the end of 2022 and I’ve lost 30kg in total, weighing in at 195 kg as of this date.
While I’m proud of my achievement thus far, I still have a long way to go in my journey, but the biggest thing I took away from last year was the importance of building a routine. As stressed by numerous influential people in my life, routine is key to building a better lifestyle both mentally and physically speaking. Boy, oh boy, did I take that message to heart as I went out of my way to build one.
When I was a child, I guess I didn’t have much in the way of routine or discipline. Being the youngest in a family of three meant I was left to my own devices a little too much. Not to blame my parents, but routine is something usually stressed from childhood. A child who grows up with a strong sense of routine is more likely to be self-sufficient and capable in adult life than not.
Take the life of a martial artist, for example. A martial artist lives a life of strict discipline and rigorous routine. The importance of these fundamentals is stressed from childhood, helping the child to grow into a balanced adult. Such is the life that has been stressed upon ‘Shenmue’ protagonist, Ryo Hazuki, from childhood by his mentor and departed father, Iwao.
For those uninitiated, 'Shenmue' is a series of open world action-adventure games created by the legendary Yu Suzuki. On the surface, it tells the story of a young Japanese martial artist seeking revenge for his departed father, but peel back its layers and you'll find something a little more than just that. It's best known as being the pioneer of the open world genre. One thing I appreciate about these games is the life lessons they have always stressed. Its game design has always operated around four basic principles: seek, fight, work and indulge. Four basic principles that could be said to be the fundamentals of life, which is only fitting considering ‘Shenmue’ is part life simulator.
One aspect of the original ‘Shenmue’ and its gameplay loop revolves around daily training. Being an Adventure game whose roots stem from a one-on-one fighting game, it allows you to spend time in the family dojo or the nearby parking lot training your extensive list of moves. While this is not necessarily stressed as a requirement to finish the game, it is something that makes up a part of Ryo’s daily life and helps to further flesh out his role in the world.
On the one hand, the fighting system in the first game is lenient enough to allow even button mashers to finish the game without much difficulty. But for those willing to devote time to learning the fighting system, there is a surprising amount of depth involved, as you can train and evolve your move set just by shadowboxing in the parking lot. Perhaps, at one point, this was meant to be a more significant part of the original game. Maybe somewhere along the line in development, AM2 decided to make the game more readily accessible to a broader audience. Whatever the reason, training played a part in the original game, but it wasn’t until ‘Shenmue III’ that it became a requirement of Ryo’s daily life.
While ‘Shenmue III’ wound up dividing the usually loyal fanbase straight down the middle regarding its debatable lack of story, I’ve always found it to be, in some ways, the most interesting of the franchise thus far. At least in terms of how it further fleshes out some of the gameplay ideas that were in place harking all the way back to the original game.
The main point of division among the fanbase regarding the gameplay changes made in ‘Shenmue III’ was the inclusion of a stamina meter. In previous games, there was no stamina meter. Ryo was free to run until his heart was content. ‘Shenmue III’ incorporates the new function of allowing Ryo to eat, alongside that comes a stamina meter. However, the stamina meter also plays host to your health meter.
Everything of vital importance is tied to this meter. If your meter runs out, you lose the ability to run as the game forces you to walk until you eat something to replenish the meter. Or if you enter an unexpected fight and your meter is half way down, then you are at a disadvantage to your maxed out opponent. The reason for this was to stress the importance of eating. This all ties back to the importance of finding a way to earn money to buy food. Which, in turn, sends the player navigating the various odd jobs and distractions that the game has to offer when not progressing the main plot.
‘Shenmue’ has always stressed the importance of money with regard to general plot progression. In the first two games, you literally can’t progress at specific points of the plot until you’ve earned enough in-game money to do so. What fascinates me about the third game is how YSNet attempted to go even further by making the in-game currency a vital part of everything you do. Earning money is a daily necessity and further feeds back into the game's strong sense of routine.
The other significant addition to ‘Shenmue III’ was the inclusion of strength and defense attributes for Ryo. Moving more into traditional RPG territory, the game stresses the importance of rigorous daily training in order to level up Ryo’s stats. The game level gates your enemies to a higher level. Training becomes a vital necessity if you want to beat your enemies.
While the original game did allow you to level up individual moves, it didn’t necessarily change Ryo’s physical stats. Ryo had no physical stats in the original games. There was no level gating. Instead the game catered to the skill level of the player with an automatic adjusting difficulty scale. While some have argued that the inclusion of these new physical stats was to mask the game’s shortcomings in its weaker battle system (as compared to the ‘Virtua Fighter’ engine of the first two games), I would argue it’s kind of a stroke of genius that helps convey the importance of routine through gameplay.
A typical day in ‘Shenmue III’ for me was spent as such. I would wake up, grab the fruit from the tiny kitchen of Shenhua’s house and have a quick chat with her. I would then leave the house, stroll casually down the path picking wild herbs along the way; then I would stop at the nearby martial arts dojo, where I would spend at least 30 minutes strength training by way of Horse Stance and the One Inch Punch. Afterward, I would go and spar with some of the martial artists of the dojo before bowing out and strolling into town to carry on my day.
That was my daily routine during my entire first playthrough of the game. It never wavered from that. That was every morning spent in Bailu. I would build my stats up every morning without fail. Even now, when revisiting it, I still adhere to this routine.
Harking back to the four WUDE learned in ‘Shenmue II’, it becomes all too clear that it’s a sly means of incorporating the principle of GON (to train every day without neglect) into the actual gameplay loop. Doing so does something that the original game touched upon but never entirely made into a necessity. It slyly stresses upon the player the virtues of routine. Live by the routine and Ryo will grow stronger as a result. That's not exactly a bad lesson as far as life lessons go.
As of now, in my current daily life, my real-life routine is as such. I’ll wake up, apply some skincare, have breakfast, read a couple of pages in whatever book I’m reading, drink at least 2L of water a day and do strength training for 20-25 minutes working with weights or resistance bands. Then I’ll do some work followed by a 7km walk around the neighborhood in the late afternoon. I’ve kept to this since August of last year. In many ways, it’s not unlike the one I fashioned for Ryo.
Due to this, I have developed an appreciation for the benefits of building a routine. It helps clear the mind of all anxieties. It helps to build muscles. And it most certainly helps to lose weight and improve my quality of life. It also gave me a further appreciation for what Yu Suzuki and his team at YSNet were trying to communicate with ‘Shenmue III’ and its gameplay loop. Sure, I could delve into the many shortcomings of the game, but I’d rather focus on what the game did right and what the game was earnestly trying to convey.
‘Shenmue’ has always stressed patience over instant gratification. It’s a game that wants you to earn its riches through exploration and discovery. 'Shenmue III' simply takes that to the next level by further stressing the importance of daily routine through actual gameplay. Much like life, it’s a game that wants you to learn key fundamentals through rigorous discipline and routine.
In many ways, the overarching revenge plot that fuels ‘Shenmue’ has become a bit of an afterthought for me. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still invested in one day receiving closure to this epic saga of revenge. I still want to know how the story plays out like everyone else in the fanbase.
But the natural charm of ‘Shenmue’ lies in the journey underneath. At its heart, these games are less about revenge and more about living a martial artist's life as he grows and develops in technique. Along with that come the many principles of life imparted by the numerous influential people he meets along the way. Be it the necessity of striving to do the right thing, keeping friends close, always being humble or even striving to improve oneself every day by training.
‘Shenmue III’ may be a flawed game in many regards, but for those willing to invest their time, it does an earnest and fantastic job of conveying the fundamental necessities of life through gameplay. Perhaps that's not what everyone is looking for in their escapist medium, but I personally appreciate the lengths it goes in order to express these ideas.
In an industry that is mostly about instant gratification and mindless thrills, I believe that ‘Shenmue’ deserves a round of applause for at least trying to impart the core values of patience, discipline and routine. It’s a shame it took me 20 years to fully cotton on and apply them to my life, but at least I got there in the end. Also, who said video games couldn't teach you anything important?
- Daniel M
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