The following is a story exploring the crushing weight of nostalgia and the realization that some things are better left in the past. The Waiting Game

By the time I reached the ending—another cliffhanger, another promise of a sequel that might never come—I wasn't angry at Yu Suzuki. I was angry at the boy I used to be. I had spent eighteen years mourning a franchise, building a shrine to a memory that was never as perfect as I’d told myself.

The world had moved on. Games had learned how to tell stories with nuance. They had learned how to respect a player’s time. But Shenmue 3 didn't care. It was a fossil, unearthed and blinking in the harsh light of 2019, stubbornly refusing to adapt.