I previously posted on this blog about a project I ended up spending some years (on and off) working on, the Shenmue II Character Database, with the aim of cataloguing all 700+ characters in the game, using the official Japanese strategy guidebooks for Shenmue II as sources (two of these books between them have names and short profiles for each and every character).
However – it turns out one of the characters listed doesn’t actually seem to appear anywhere in the final game at all! Frustratingly, this realisation came long after I completed the project and already included them (10 years later in fact!!) Read on to find out how I only very recently discovered this, and about the assumed role of this NPC before they were (seemingly) inexplicably removed at some point in development!
In the Shenmue II Perfect Guidebook, there are four NPC’s who are listed under the ‘Lucky Hit Customers’ section – referring to customers Ryo encounters while working the part-time job at the Lucky Hit stands. This comes with a caveat – these particular NPC’s don’t actually play with Ryo, they just ask him for directions etc., or flat out state that they don’t want to play against a ‘part-timer’. The customers that do play against Ryo are actually seen elsewhere in the game and are mostly made up of bookies from other gambling stands, or pawnshop owners. Hence their profiles are included elsewhere in the guide.
The non-playing customers profiled in this section are (left to right)
Dong Yangming – scroll down a bit on this blog post on the great Phantom River Stone site for some background and info about this guy’s originally intended role!
Zhang Xianghe
Han Xuan – this guy is quite distinctive for his shirt that says ‘GET!’ on it
And… Gao Ding… who we’ll come to…
While Yangming only appears when working the Lucky Hit job in the final game, you may recognise Xianghe and Xuan as also being two of the generic ‘pedestrian’ NPC’s you see wandering around (in both Hong Kong and Kowloon). In fact, in another official guidebook, the Shenmue II Complete Guide, lists these two under the ‘Passerby’ section of the character profiles (it also includes Yangming, but I can’t say I’ve ever personally seen him wandering around as a pedestrian in normal gameplay, only ever during the Lucky Hit job)
You can see below some examples of what Yangming, Xianghe and Xuan say to Ryo when he asks if they want to play him at Lucky Hit:
But what about this guy on the end here, Gao Ding?
At the time I was putting the character database together, I must admit it seems I simply assumed this guy appeared in the final game, so of course included him within the database – assuming that he’s seen while Ryo is working the Lucky Hit job, and presumably also as a generic pedestrian wandering around. But is that actually true?
I recently came to question this is while I was rifling through Shenmue II’s character models to root out the ones that are unused (thanks to Switch of the Phantom River Stone blog for sending me images and file name references of every model!). Below is one NPC I initially identified as unused, as I certainly did not remember seeing such a distinctive T-shirt design on a character anywhere in the final game! He has the character ID of YM2 (the ‘YM’ presumably stands for ‘Young Male’ if the other characters with this prefix are anything to go by…I’ll get to that later…)
But wait – his head and shoulders are suddenly recognisable, right?
Once I realised this, I started investigating and to see if he actually does appear in the final version of Shenmue II. After working the part-time job at each Lucky Hit stand that it is possible to do so at a few times, he never seemed to appear for me. The other three previously mentioned did (hence I was able to take the screenshots of this above) – but never Gao Ding. I just assumed he’d behave similarly to them and either ask Ryo for directions or just refuse to play him at Lucky Hit. But nope, never appeared for me, at any of the Lucky Hit stands you can work at. He seems to have eluded the folks at this Shenmue Wiki as well, as his page has no info!
Because the Complete Guidebook also lists him under the ‘Passerby’ section, I then did sweeps of Aberdeen, Wan Chai and Kowloon to see if he is indeed seen as a pedestrian wandering around in normal gameplay. But I had no joy there either – this was after looking everywhere, including inside shops. He simply doesn’t seem to appear in either of these roles.
Now, it’s not unheard of of the guidebooks to have slightly inaccurate information – I went into this in a previous post where two NPC’s I initially thought were unused turned out to be in the game after all (e.g. the Perfect Guidebook claims an NPC is found in Worker’s Pier, when in reality he only appears very briefly in the background of a cutscene in a totally different location! While the other only appears at her shop at one very specific point in the game, at least in the final release – I later found out she’s there all the time in a recently discovered prototype!)
But Gao Ding has completely eluded me. He doesn’t seem to appear at all while you’re working the Lucky Hit job (as the guidebook suggests he should), nor can he be seen as a pedestrian wandering around like Xianghe and Xuan. I’ve also checked to see if he perhaps appears in any cutscenes in the background/in a crowd etc., but it seems he cannot be seen in any instance like that either. I was somewhat hopeful he might appear as one of the people walking around in the introductory cutscene as Ryo’s boat pulls into Hong Kong – but alas, he is not one of the eight NPC’s that is shown over and over again in that scene!
I also tried looking for him both as a Lucky Hit customer and a passerby in the recently discovered ‘Game Jam’ prototype – but he doesn’t seem to appear there either. So just when did this guy actually exist in the game??
And just for clarity’s sake – these are all of the Lucky Hit stands where the owner will offer Ryo a part-time job – I tried all of them multiple times but Gao Ding never appeared. Feel free to try yourself on the small chance his appearance is ultra-rare or tied to some sort of conditions!
Aberdeen
- Fortune’s Pier (by No. 10 Warehouse) – run by Ji Hande
- Queen’s Street (near the Big Catch Tackle Shop) – run by Chuan Yueshan
Wan Chai
- Green Market Qr. (next to Bar Man Mo) – run by Liu Feng
- South Carmain Qr. #1 (by Carmain Pawnshop) – run by He Shenshi
- South Carmain Qr. #2 (Alleyway behind Sunny Capital Pharmacy) – run by Yan Yuxiang
- South Carmain Qr. #3 (next to the Wise Men’s Qr. gate) – run by Xu Yingnian
Kowloon
- Dragon Street (near Thousand White Qr. entrance) – run by You Canbai
- Thousand White Qr. (by Stand Qr. path) – run by Yang Chengfu
- Thunder House – run by Duan Zhaozhi
- Moon Child Bldg. 2F – run by Hong Youshen
This brings me to another point – his character model is in the files for Discs 1, 2 and 3 – suggesting that he was indeed meant to appear in Aberdeen, Wan Chai and Kowloon, as either a Lucky Hit customer or passerby (or both)
As mentioned, he has the character ID of ‘YM2’. I said that I assumed the YM stood for ‘Young Male’ – based on the other characters that have this prefix. Indeed, the character with the ID ‘YM1’ is actually Han Xuan, our friend with the ‘GET’ T-shirt who wanted a jacket like Ryo’s to complete his look:
There are three other characters with this prefix – all of whom are unused characters not actually seen anywhere in the final game, if that means anything (and aren’t profiled in the guidebooks, unlike Gao Ding!)
As for our other two Lucky Hit customers – Dong Yangming has ‘KOO’ as his character ID, while Zhang Xianghe’s is ‘KOW’. (probably just referencing how their names are pronounced in Japanese) I only bring this up as I was interested to see if these four characters had similar ID’s, but only Han Xuan and Gao Ding do. So this doesn’t give us any clues, aside from the observation that 4 of the 5 ‘YM’ characters are all apparently unused! (do stay tuned for a future post going into all the other unused character models though!)
CONCLUSION
So in short, it would appear that while Gao Ding is listed as a character in both the Shenmue II Perfect Guidebook and Shenmue II Complete Guide-as a Lucky Hit Customer and a passerby pedestrian respectively-he doesn’t actually seem to appear in either of these roles in the final game. In fact, we wouldn’t even be aware he was a missing character if it wasn’t for these guidebooks – this is similar to the situation with both Wen Huachun and Tao Paikun, who I initally thought were profiled but actually unused, but sadly in Gao Ding’s case I haven’t then later discovered he’s in the game after all. It does seem very odd, and I can’t really offer any explanation why he’d later be removed – and it’s particularly frustrating the Game Jam prototype offers no clues either! I may have to revise my character database to exclude him, or at the very least, add an explanatory note…
Can you prove me wrong? Can you prove that Gao Ding does appear somewhere in the final game? Are there some special conditions you have to meet while working the Lucky Hit job to get him to appear? Does he appear in some cutscene or location I’ve managed to overlook?
Or are any more technically minded fans out there who would be able to investigate if the game’s internal files/workings offer any clues, beyond what I’ve shared in this post?
While the simplest conclusion may indeed be the correct one – that he was in the game at some point and was later removed- for whatever reason- I would very much appreciate it if anyone is able to assist with shedding light on this mystery!
Stuart/Miles
Shenmusings 