Shenmue Story (Chapter Cards)

hmjohnny said:
That being said, the booklets clearly say The Legend of Akira and contradict the tiles. Those pictures never came out before S3 development but we have no clue when they were written. It just seems to contradict earlier sources which show Suzhou as a later chapter and no Baisha.
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The Yokosuka and Hong Kong chapters were shown in some early Japanese promotional video, that I can't for the life of me find right now. It actually showed some of the pages as well. The video quality was extremely poor, though, so I could only make out a conversation between Yuan and Dou Niu, in his office, about failing to find Yuanda Zhu. Those are the "novelizations" of the story everyone talks about.

Suzuki has said before that he doesn't rely on the manuscripts to plan out the gameplay elements at all, though. I suppose another possibility is that the 11 chapter cards represented the in-game chapters for the original VFRPG, and not necessarily the story chapters.


hmjohnny said:
It's definitely Baisha if you ask me, the tulous are very distinct. However, those are S3 concept art. It seemed like he really wanted to put Baisha into the game because he liked the strategy gameplay mode.
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I mean, basically, divorce the idea of tulou from the idea of Baisha. The concept art doesn't technically say it's Baisha, so it could have maybe been the Chuxi Tulou in Xiayang, Fujian, south of Shanghai, just as a suggestion. Baisha comes later in the story, but maybe it relies too much on Xi'an. So my speculation here is: Remove/postpone Xi'an (and I guess whatever location Baisha actually was), and replace it with a previously cut location from the Suzhou chapter. I think there are potentially some inaccuracies with this idea, but it was something I couldn't technically rule out.

I guess the other thing, though, is that Miyawaki mentions just one town being cut from Shenmue II (where there were a bunch of people who trained like Shaolin monks).


hmjohnny said:
It's so hard to tell I agree. I think the kenpogi isn't an indicator though since all the S3 concept art shows him in it.
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Akira is shown in his VF2 kenpogi from the eighth chapter card on, though (after Cangzhou). It doesn't necessarily have to be this way, I just think it's most likely that any concept art after a certain point in the story (training with the grand masters) would have shown Akira in his VF2 kenpogi, and not the green one.


hmjohnny said:
Regarding the great wall, I was corrected on this by another user, but there is actually remnants of a wall near Guilin.
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I am highly suspicious of this information. I could certainly be wrong--I only minored in East Asian Studies, and China wasn't my focus--but the closest thing to Guilin I can find is the section in about as far northeast as you could go in Hunan province.
Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg


That is technically just the next province north of Guilin, and apparently it's close to Fenghuang, but still.



hmjohnny said:
My thought is Niaowu covers a lot of what the original Suzhou chapter was supposed to while incorporating some of the Guilin chapter (Niao Sun). Baisha was originally supposed to be an expanded castle section essentially with a new gameplay system. When it got scrapped the essence of the story elements got used for the games ending. I do think some Baisha story elements remain for S4 though, namely the 4 bosses. If these were meant to be the CYM leaders we will definitely see more of them, unless they were meant to be sub bosses for S3 only.
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I kind of see it the opposite. I think most of Niaowu was the Guilin chapter, with parts of the storyline of Xi'an, While Baisha would have continued with the Baisha chapter story, along with some elements from Suzhou/Shanghai (ending up partially rolled into the castle in SIII). That's sort of similar to what you're saying, I just think the origins are slightly different. I do personally believe that the initial showdown with Lan Di was originally meant to come before Guilin, though.



hmjohnny said:
What I'm curious is about is how much development was done on the Saturn. We know they got up to Guilin but is that following the original outline i.e. was Suzhou or even Baisha completed on the Saturn? Or was it a similar structure to what we got in S1 & S2? If it's the latter then it shows the story changed early on, but other sources indicate that the games didnt change in scope until the Dreamcast
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That's a really good point, I would think it should follow the original structure, but even a lot of the beta footage for Shenmue on Dreamcast only ever seemed to show Yokosuka, Hong Kong, Kowloon, and Guilin.


I'm kind of throwing my hands up at this point, though. I'll just wait to find out more.
 
Rydeen said:
Suzuki has said before that he doesn't rely on the manuscripts to plan out the gameplay elements at all, though. I suppose another possibility is that the 11 chapter cards represented the in-game chapters for the original VFRPG, and not necessarily the story chapters.
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I've always assumed that the 11 chapters were the original novelization. After that the structure of the chapters changed as they expanded or got broken out with more gameplay ideas or as the story changed.
Rydeen said:
I mean, basically, divorce the idea of tulou from the idea of Baisha. The concept art doesn't technically say it's Baisha, so it could have maybe been the Chuxi Tulou in Xiayang, Fujian, south of Shanghai, just as a suggestion. Baisha comes later in the story, but maybe it relies too much on Xi'an. So my speculation here is: Remove/postpone Xi'an (and I guess whatever location Baisha actually was), and replace it with a previously cut location from the Suzhou chapter. I think there are potentially some inaccuracies with this idea, but it was something I couldn't technically rule out.
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Well in real life the Tulous could be anywhere but since Baisha is a fictional place that is likely representative of Fujian, but not geographically similar to it, I'm going to assume it is Baisha. Similar to how Niaowu is a stand in for Fenghuang without actually being it. If the concept art shows Tulous it should be for Baisha since i can't imagine Shenmue having a second location with the same unique architecture. Also, these are all concept arts from S3 when Baisha was meant to be in scope.

Baisha is/was supposed to come after Guilin so either it is still in scope for S4 or the story ideas were already folded into S3. I'm not sure Baisha replaced Xian in terms of the original 11 chapter structure or not, that is a possibility I suppose.
Rydeen said:
Akira is shown in his VF2 kenpogi from the eighth chapter card on, though (after Cangzhou). It doesn't necessarily have to be this way, I just think it's most likely that any concept art after a certain point in the story (training with the grand masters) would have shown Akira in his VF2 kenpogi, and not the green one.
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Sorry, I meant the green kenpogi. I know Baisha is supposed to take place before Cangzhou.
Rydeen said:
I am highly suspicious of this information. I could certainly be wrong--I only minored in East Asian Studies, and China wasn't my focus--but the closest thing to Guilin I can find is the section in about as far northeast as you could go in Hunan province.
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I was suspicious too as i had thought the walls were all only in the north until someone pointed it out to me. It is in fact the one near Fenghuang which you point out. This aligns with it being near Niaowu, a Fenghuang proxy, but the games give no indication of where they are so this is all assumption on my part.
Rydeen said:
kind of see it the opposite. I think most of Niaowu was the Guilin chapter, with parts of the storyline of Xi'an, While Baisha would have continued with the Baisha chapter story, along with some elements from Suzhou/Shanghai (ending up partially rolled into the castle in SIII). That's sort of similar to what you're saying, I just think the origins are slightly different. I do personally believe that the initial showdown with Lan Di was originally meant to come before Guilin, though.
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You're probably right. Especially Master Bei and Niao Sun/Li Feng. I was more thinking in terms of fighting Lan Di which I believe was supposed to happen in the Suzhou chapter. IMO it would have been better that way, losing to Lan Di before going to Bailu makes better pacing overall.

I think this is indicative that the story just got chopped up and spread out over the games rather than following the strict chapter structure.
Rydeen said:
I'm kind of throwing my hands up at this point, though. I'll just wait to find out more.
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Yeah me too lol. It's so hard to do any meaningful analysis when most of it is just speculation.
 
hmjohnny said:
This aligns with it being near Niaowu, a Fenghuang proxy, but the games give no indication of where they are so this is all assumption on my part.
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Niaowu was said to still be on the Li River (I'm fairly certain) which doesn't technically make its way outside of Guilin. So Niaowu should still be in Guilin, as Bailu is.
 
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