Shenmue Is A Beautiful Grief Simulator

Discussions of death, loss and child deaths are subject to a content warning.

In the 22 years since Shenmue’s debut, I’ve played the game 23 times. Twenty-three times I’ve lived the life of protagonist Ryo Hazuki, watched his father die, and navigated his world and experiences. Each time I’ve realized something new about the game, the people who made it, or something new about myself.

Playthrough number 23 was by far the most emotional of them. I saw, noticed, and felt things I hadn’t in any other, and it’s given me a new appreciation for Yu Suzuki and Sega’s AM2 development team.

Shenmue, more than any other video game, is about the grief and loneliness experienced by a person who has lost a close friend or family member in an actual world.

We lost our baby in 2020. Henry died even before his first breathe. It was no one’s fault; just bad luck or some undetectable condition. Nobody knows. It was devastating that my son died.

The death of a young, innocent person was a shock I never expected. I’d lost something irreplaceable and wasn’t ready for what came next.

Every hour I thought about Henry’s death. I dwelt upon what I’d lost. My worries were projected to the future onto my 2 daughters who are 4 and 6 years old. A greasy fist grabbed my heart. What if something else unanticipated happened? What if it happened to me and my girls? It was the middle of an epidemic at that time and we couldn’t get through a single day without being concerned about our daughters.

The grief and anxiety transformed into depression with sinister subtilty. Unrelenting sadness overwhelmed me, as I struggled with these new emotions and how to cope. First time ever in my life I experienced panic attacks.

The bottom fell out of me. I saw a psychiatrist. In months of working with a psychiatrist, I learned to recognize and stop the catastrophizing cycle, which is destructive and occurs when those who suffer trauma are obsessed by their worst fears, believing that they will eventually come true.

I’ve emerged into a better place. While I think about Henry daily, I don’t think of him in such a morbid way, and I am no longer afraid of the impossible.

Through the prism of my experiences, I looked at my most recent playthrough of Shenmue.

Shenmue starts with a captivating cinematic. Ryo hazuki is helplessly witness to the murder of Iwao by a mysterious Chinese man. Before dying in Ryo’s arms, Iwao gives his son one last piece of paternal advice.

“Keep friends, those you love, close to you.”

Ryo’s grief is left behind after Iwao’s death.

Here, the player is in control. Shenmue was an open-world, sandbox life simulation. The player can choose how they want to live, just like in all life simulations. We can play the game and ignore the theme – that unmanaged grief will consume us – or we can pay attention.

We meet Megumi, a girl, at a neighborhood shrine. She is carefully tending to an injured kitten. The kitten is like Ryo; the same men who killed Ryo’s dad made it an orphan. As it sped from Ryo’s house, their car struck and killed the kitten’s mother. The kitten is also symbolic of Ryo’s grief.

The player has the option to either help or not to nurse back the kitten. It is not made clear what the decision will mean. But if we help, we’re treated to interesting character developments.

Ryo and Megumi develop a close friendship. The kitten becomes stronger. Nozomi, Ryo’s would-be girlfriend, also appears and helps the kitten; in these moments, we learn more about Ryo’s relationship with Nozomi. If we continue paying attention to the cat’s health, we can find it wholly healed near the end of the game. In a happy turn, Megumi’s family adopts her. This kitten is now happy and has a family.

In the 22 years since Shenmue’s release, plenty of people have commented on the supposed absurdity that Ryo would pause for even a moment to pet a cat, buy capsule toys, or play video games at the local arcade in the middle of his quest to avenge his father.

But that’s wrong.

Something happens when we’re adrift in a sea of grief. We’re soaked in it. It’s everywhere. After losing my son, I grabbed for any glimmer of hope.

My wife and I painted the name my son’s lost on a stone that was placed near its trunk. I gently rubbed between my finger and thumb the willow’s leaves. I smelled the blossoms and ached to think of my wife’s pain. Spending days tending to a nearby garden, I was able to relax. There, I spent hours staring at a bench. I held the cold rock with Henry’s name on it and cried when no one was looking.

One day I recalled the Game Boy games I loved as a child: Kirby’s Dream Land, Link’s Awakening, Donkey Kong Land, and many more. They were all bought on eBay. I amassed a collection of distracting trinkets – my own capsule toys.

I wrote essays. I learnt how to solder my Virtual Boy. I was obsessed with getting my grass greener than last year. Then I abandoned those hobbies to start new ones. It must have seemed like I was doing fine from the outside.

Every morning I had to fight panic attacks and I would cry and tell no one.

The many diversions of Shenmue do not undermine the importance of Ryo’s grief. This is what happens when someone’s lost in their grief.

I believe Shenmue’s creators understood this. After all, the Shenmue soundtrack contains songs poignantly titled “The Sadness I Carry on My Shoulders” and “Daily Agony.”

Other criticisms often poke fun at the stilted dialogue of the game’s NPCs. And while some of it is, yes, simply bad acting, there’s also a beautiful realism in how many NPCs react to the death of Iwao and his living son.

During one missable scripted scene, Ryo’s two friends from school visit him at home. They joke and laugh, but there’s an uncomfortable subtext. They want to see their friend again. Ryo is told to be a regular kid again. He rejects their kind words and tells them everything will be fine. They leave Ryo’s house a bit deflated.

Nozomi later in the story tries to make Ryo share with her what he feels. She almost begs Ryo to share his feelings with her, hinting gently that the smallest gesture will change the course of her entire life. She’ll stay in Japan to be with him, to help him, rather than follow her plan to attend college in Canada.

But he doesn’t reach out. It’s because of his grief.

Shenmue’s NPCs act as real people act. They’re concerned, sad, and uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, and they wish everything could just go back to normal. Ryo behaves like a normal person. He’s withdrawn and sad and alone, even amongst friends. His friends are slowly disappearing. He struggles quietly, carrying the weight and watching, paralyzed with grief.

Iwao hazuki, who died, hoped that Ryo’s friends and loved ones would remain close. Instead, because he can’t process his grief, Ryo spends the entire game unwittingly pushing everyone away.

This is all real life. This happened to me and my wife when we lost our baby.

When someone dies, people don’t know what to say. Friends and acquaintances may avoid discussing the topic. Some friends and acquaintances express condolences, but then try to return life to normalcy as soon as possible. Others try to be helpful, but some fake a false sympathy.

These well-intended responses are all equally irritating. Nobody’s words could make a difference. The answer was no. The loss was irreparable. That’s death. It’s permanent. People who are suffering often smile reassuringly, like Ryo.

What’s remarkable about Shenmue, especially when recalling that the game debuted in 2000, when very few games approached serious subject matter with care and attention, is how the game handles it all deftly. There’s a rare lightness of touch. So light, it seems, that it’s possible to miss the game’s message for 22 playthroughs.

Ryo looks like a child in pain. Ryo has no power. He can’t fix what happened, and he can’t achieve what he thinks will heal him. He feels worse. No victory. By the end of Shenmue, everything’s gone wrong. Without his knowing it, Ryo’s grief has destroyed everything good in his life.

The plans he had to go to school have now been abandoned in pursuit of a ill-conceived form of revenge. He’s lost a girl who loves him completely. Ses friends are no longer interested in him. They’ve painfully said their goodbyes and gone on to walk their own paths. Though all these people care about Ryo deeply, he’s pushed them so far away that they’re now beyond reach. He is the only one left at the end of this game.

Shenmue’s tragic resolution is yet another way that the game can reflect real life.

Shenmue’s plot moves forward in the game’s sequels, but the story is unfinished. I don’t know what happens to Ryo. I don’t know if he realizes his mistakes and heeds his father’s dying words, or if he falls deeper into the loneliness of his loss and grief.

But it is perhaps fitting that the series hasn’t concluded, that the story isn’t over. We who are grieving for someone we care about will always be affected by death and grief. No satisfactory conclusion can be reached. There’s nothing to do except hold hands with the grief and go on.

But if we’re smart, we remember the vital lesson that Ryo forgets: to keep those we love close to us.

Original published in Play Informer Issue 355.