Every open world game lets you skip ahead in time. Some do it via metaphors like resting in front of a fire, going to sleep, or meditative, while others flat out just let you set what time of the day you want it to be. The original modern open world game, Shenmue, was different—it had a very strict in game time cycle, but it also wasn’t mutable. You had to stick to it. Things in the game only happened at certain times, and you had to be mindful of that, as well as the time in game, to be where you had or wanted to be.
This was not particularly well received as a gameplay mechanic, even if it admittedly was realistic. In Shenmue 2, Sega went ahead and added time skipping—a clear admission that the lack of it in the first game had been a mistake. With Shenmue 1 and 2 both getting HD remasters later this year, many were wondering if time skipping would be added back to Shenmue 1, to make it more on par with its sequel, and just more generally palatable to modern audiences.
The answer, however, is no, no it will not. Speaking to VG247, Sega said, “We’ve tried to stay as close to the original feature sets in each game as possible, so Shenmue 1 will not have the time skip feature.”
I get trying to stay authentic, but this is a bit dumb, and many who would otherwise probably appreciated the game may find this to be an unnecessary barrier to their enjoyment. Shenmue’s remasters launch later this yea
