CelJaded’s Best Video Game Moments, Vol. 11

Best Video Game Moments is a series about memorable moments and mechanics in video games.

Photo of Nozomi …For Shenmue

Year: 1999

“Which do you want, Ryo?”

I so wish I had this website when I played my Sega Dreamcast games one last time before selling my collection. After all, a blog series about games for that system is something I could have written in my sleep! Nevertheless, I can now dedicate a post to talk about a very memorable scene in the most revered of all Dreamcast titles.

I’m of course talking about Shenmue — the renowned martial arts role-playing game which released exclusively for Dreamcast right at the turn of the millennium. Set in Japan during the 1980s, the story follows a Japanese teenager called Ryo Hazuki who vows revenge on the villainous Chinese crime boss who murdered his father. Shenmue pioneered a modern style of video game adventuring with incredible 3D graphics and a cinematic adherence to world-building realism and immersion. The most expensive video game ever made at the time, there really wasn’t anything else like it.

Shenmue was rethinking how narrative-driven games could tell stories through even the subtlest of player interactions, and so it goes during this moment between Ryo and his love interest, Nozomi Harasaki. As well as being Shenmue’s most sympathetic character, Nozomi is a kind and intelligent young woman with hopes of becoming a linguistic interpreter. Nozomi adores Ryo, and she can be refreshingly open about this fact — I say refreshing because video gaming has always been a repressed medium when it comes to the topic of romance — and yet this is a love destined to remain tragically unrequited. For me, the tension in this subplot is best captured during the scene where Ryo is given the Photo of Nozomi.

The setup is simple. Nozomi visits Ryo at the harbour when their mutual friend (Eri Tajima) appears and snaps a photograph of the pair with her instant camera. Dissatisfied with her first shot, Eri urges the couple to pose before taking a much warmer photo of them being close. Eri then holds out the developing pictures and offers Ryo one to keep, with the implication being Nozomi will take the remainder. And so players must decide, do they take the lesser photo showing Ryo and Nozomi apart, or the much nicer one showing them closer together?

The choice of photograph begs many questions. Ask yourself, does Ryo take the “close” photo to keep the best possible memory of his and Nozomi’s time together? Or does he take the “apart” version as a way of leaving Nozomi with that happy memory instead? But what message would that send to her? Does taking that photo suggest Ryo doesn’t care? Would Nozomi be left with a painful reminder of what could have been if she kept it? Is taking the close photo a way of Ryo telling Nozomi he cares about her without actually saying as much? If nothing else, this choice certainly gives players pause for thought!

Afterwards, Ryo is shocked to learn Nozomi is departing for Canada very soon. Not even the wooden English voice acting can spoil the thought of all being well if Ryo would just tell Nozomi how he truly felt about her right now. Surely she’d stay if he urged her not to go. Do the right thing, man, and accept this cat-nursing, child-helping, affectionate wonder of a woman into your life, and maybe there’s still a chance to save yourself from the destructive vendetta consuming you. For the sake of good storytelling though, we know it won’t happen.

I’ve always appreciated this psychology surrounding the Photo of Nozomi, and I still remember how torn I was when confronted with the choice for the first time. (For the record, I chose the “apart” photo.) Nevertheless, I don’t expect this scene to hit quite the same way for players today as it did in 1999 because there can be diminishing returns with older classics, especially if you didn’t get to play them when their style of presentation was cutting edge. And I’ll admit, an appreciation for moments like this do require an active imagination, as well as an understanding of the real world time they were made. Remember Shenmue was set in a year when video calls and social media didn’t exist. Back then the idea of two people drifting this far apart would likely result in them never seeing each other again, just as the Korean romance flick Past Lives shows us, with its theme of immigration creating impenetrable barriers to even the most powerful of human connections.

The Photo of Nozomi isn’t consequential to the wider story, but it does have some mechanical relevance. Whichever photo Ryo chose, will be the same version you see when viewing it from his inventory. Ryo always keeps the Photo of Nozomi with him, and he’ll keep the version you chose if you import your Dreamcast save when starting Shenmue II. (Non-imported saves receive the “close” variant which presumably makes it the canon choice.) The item is otherwise only used once at the very end of Shenmue II where Ryo can present it during an optional conversation with Shenhua Ling. There is no achievement or other benefit for doing this, it’s simply an opportunity for players to feel something. This is exactly the kind of thing these games were good at doing — adding emotional relevance to a digital world in ways not driven by long chains of reward-based interaction.

In closing, the Photo of Nozomi is a compelling piece of game design as well as a memorable moment in video game history. Even if younger players struggle to accept Shenmue’s ageing presentation, they won’t fail to recognise the sadness in Nozomi’s eyes as she turns away at the end of this scene.

“I’ll always treasure this …” Nozomi says of her photo.

Likewise.