I'm stealing this from a conversation with @kerwin where he was telling stories about Shemue III - Shenmue being one of those series whose interactions you would never really mistake for any other.
Here are two stories he told:
so they added this mechanic where your health is constantly dropping and if it drops most of the way you can't sprint anymore, which would make the game basically unplayable. you eat food throughout the day to keep your health up. so in the kitchen in the house ryo is staying in, there's a shelf where a single apple and a single banana spawn every morning. and picking them up is this very surreal sequence instead of just pressing A to get them instantly or whatever
you go into first person mode and look at one of them, then the camera kind of sweeps in and the music turns to this ominous "investigating" music that happens when you look at something close up in first person
then ryo says to himself (every morning) "banana...? do they grow these in the village?"
then you press A and he says "guess i'll take it." and his hand extends out and does the exact same stiff animation from the first two games where his fingers awkwardly enclose the object like a claw game
then the camera shifts to the apple. "looks good." press A. "guess i'll take it." claw fingers
then you press B to get out of investigation and the music goes back to normal
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at the end of every day you can talk to shenhua, the girl whose house you're staying in, and ryo will ask her questions about the village and she'll ask him about japan. but of course to make it as awkward and weird as possible, shenhua is often sitting completely still totally upright at the kitchen table, and ryo is just standing looming over her wherever you were when you pushed the talk button
at the end of one of the conversations ryo says something about how his quest for revenge drives him. and shenhua says that revenge always ends in disaster and that he should let it go. ryo uncharacteristically gets heated and says "I've had enough of this!" and the conversation ends
and then i'm just standing there above her in the kitchen and i notice there's a prompt for another conversation so i press A
and ryo says "Shenhua, do people celebrate birthdays here?"
i thought the funniest possible thing was him crowding her at the table and being like WHAT GAMES DID YOU PLAY AS A KID but that sudden shift was just too perfect
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What other perfect "this encapsulates this game" experiences have struck you? I'll come up with one of my own after stealing this one :P