Shenmue

Shenmue is an action-adventure game released by Sega for the Dreamcast in 1999 (in Japan; 2000 in the West), created and directed by Yu Suzuki and developed by AM2. Set in 1980s Japan, it follows teenager Ryo Hazuki as he investigates his father's death, and is built around an unusually detailed, lifelike world: non-player characters keep daily schedules, shops open and close, weather changes, and the player can explore freely, talk to townspeople, take part-time jobs, and play fully functional arcade machines. Suzuki described the design as a kind of living environment, and it pioneered ideas, an open world full of incidental detail, quick-time event sequences, and a day-and-weather cycle, that would become common in later games. Shenmue was also famous for its scale and expense; Suzuki later put its budget at around 47 million US dollars including marketing, making it one of the most costly games of its era. Though commercially underwhelming relative to that cost, it became a cult landmark, earned a 2001 sequel and eventually a crowdfunded third entry in 2019, and is frequently cited as a forerunner of the modern open-world genre.