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Wasn't the entire game of Dragon's Lair based on Quick Time Events? That predates Shenmue by like 15 years.
More than Super Mario Bros, Doom, GTA3? Nah, son. False.
I think the point is that GTA3 would likely not exist the way it did without Shenmue. Shenmue was a life sim with a hyper interactive 3d world with tons of different gameplay mechanics, non-playable characters with schedules, day and night cycle. It had a hyper cinematic story with dynamic cutscenes (interactive cutscenes), 3d melee combat, just a ton of stuff that no one was really doing at the time.
The game itself left no impact on gamers because of how 'weird' it was, but devs completely changed the way they make games. GTA3 as an example.
EDIT: Reading the list, they specifically mention then "Living and alive world" aspect of the game. Something at the time was novel, but every modern AAA game has tried to achieve.
But then GTA3 was already the natural progression for the series. It's not that different than the 2D GTA games in terms of design... the technology just wasn't there yet to build it out in 3D until that point. I'm sure they were already in process of developing the game before seeing Shenmue and it would have turned out very similar had that game never existed.
Shenmue was insanely cool when it came out in 1999. To consider Ocarina of Time came out the year before, open world games were a brand new thing. Shenmue paired that with an epic action life-sim. It was just so unexpected; so many minigame-like mechanics for doing things around the world. It was incredibly immersive and ahead of its time.
I don’t think it has as big an impact on players as it had on developers.
The Yakuza series sticks out as greatly inspired by Shenmue / spiritual successor, as with Persona series. Also games like Lake, Fahrenheit / The Indigo Prophecy, GTA/RedDead, FFVII Remake, all owe a little to Shenmue.
I feel like this list has some games that are too new to put on a "most influential" list. Let's give it at least a few years to see how Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 influence the industry.
On the other end, how is Rogue not on the list? The number of games calling themselves "roguelikes" or "roguelites" has been ballooning every year for the better part of a decade now, and some of its ideas have found their way into other genres, especially the use of procedurally generated level layouts.
Edit: Ohhhhh the poll methodology was to ask people to pick one game, and then they sorted them by popularity. So even though I think Rogue is definitely a top-20-most-influential game, it's harder to argue for it being top 1. But... that makes it even crazier that KCD2 is on the list. A significant number of people voted for KCD2 as "THE most influential game of all time"? It just came out!
Any poll that asks the general public to pick something is inevitably going to turn into a popularity contest, irrespective of its original intent.
I wholeheartedly agree with Rogue. As far as "New" games that are the most influential, my vote goes to Vampire Survivors.