I must say, it's been some years since I've had a dream about Shenmue. Since the Doree/Kikizo article? Anyway, it was total nonsense, but I'll share it. I have no notion of what format I was playing the game on. It's like I was 'in' the game. It was first-person. It looked nothing like Shenmue. More like a gothic Final Fantasy.

I (Ryo) was in China. In the dream, me and Shenhua left the cave with the sword. She said it must have a connection to the mirrors. We then travelled to a wiseman in some cottage in a scary woodland. He said our time had come. The dragon and the phoenix would soon rise, and the sword was the key. Lan Di would set upon the cave, but without the sword the mirrors would be useless to him. The shaman said that we must go to central Mongolia, specifically to a part called 'Tuve', were we would find answers. He said however, that death was the key.

We had to be careful, since for the first time in Ryo's journey, Lan Di was actively chasing us. We travelled by train, and on horseback. Lan Di set his minions on us every step of the way. It was very difficult, and we both nearly died on several occasions (I was shot in the belly whilst on horseback, and had some back-alley doctor take the bullet out!). We arrived in Tuve, and there we found some kind of cathedral (?), and a kind man let us in.

Therein, we found an astounding sight - an alter with a slot for a sword and two recesses (obviously for the two mirrors). At either side of the alter were huge monolithic statues of a dragon and a phoenix. Just then, Lan Di shows his face. He kills the man tending the cathedral, and then turns his attention to us. We are powerless as he beats the crap out of both of us. I put up a good fight, but ultimately I'm still no challenge for Lan Di.

Once we are beaten, his lackeys restrain us. Lan Di, now in possesion of the mirros and the sword, places them in their recepticles on the alter. Everything begins to shake. Two huge beasts tear the roof from the cathedral - the dragon and the phoenix. They are unbelievably huge. Bigger than Godzilla. Everyone is frozen in awe, even Lan Di.

Shenhua takes this moment to seize the sword. She drives it into her own abdomen, spilling her guts all over the marble floor.

And that's when I woke up.

http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/xx318/askvera/s2cd_sigbanner.png


DOWNLOAD - https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qkby011a3tkgg2/Shenmue%20II%20Character%20Database.rar

Yep. After nearly a decade, it's done, people :D

HISTORY OF THE SHENMUE II CHARACTER DATABASE PROJECT
Ever since casting my eyes upon screenshots of Shenmue published in the (now defunct) UK magazine Computer and Video Games, I have been absolutely enthralled by the series. This game was definitely something different. As the famous tagline proclaimed in the trailers before its release – RPG had changed. Sure, hailing the game as being its own exciting new “genre” with a somewhat silly acronym as its name (FREE- Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment) was being a tad overzealous perhaps, but you had to admire Yu Suzuki’s ambition for this game. When I finally got to play it on the Christmas morning of 2000, it did not disappoint. The atmosphere created was just amazing to me – a realistic, living, breathing town with over 300 individual characters – all with their own specific daily routines and, in supplementary materials, all named and given detailed biographies! Throw in the fantastic music and the engaging (if not completely original) story and you really had something special. And this was only part one of the saga...

Bundled with the game was the ‘Shenmue Passport’ disc. Through the Dreamcast’s internet connection, this enabled access to all sorts of information about the game, as well as ranking leaderboards for the various mini-games and the chance to get exclusive capsule toys. One of the best features was the character profile section however; as you met and conversed with the characters during a playthrough, their profiles would gradually be added to the Passport. Now to some, giving all 300+ characters names, stats, and biographies may seem extraneous, (especially given characters that Ryo can’t even speak to have detailed information about them!) but it really shows the love and care put into the game by the developers and the amount of depth to Shenmue that few games have matched.

PASSPORT EXPIRED
The Passport service was eventually taken offline in April 2002, but thankfully the character profiles had also been published in Prima’s strategy guide book for the game, so the information was still readily available to fans.
Which brings us to the sequel game, Shenmue II – which I got the following Christmas in 2001. This sadly could end up being the last game in the series, despite it ending on a cliffhanger and at a game-changing point in the saga’s story. Nonetheless, the sequel’s world was even bigger than the first’s– Ryo travels to Hong Kong to continue his quest, with most of its areas completely dwarfing Shenmue I’s in terms of size, as well as the amount of characters – around 700. There was also a lot more mini-games and sidequests to discover, and fans generally agree it is more action-packed and that the plot moves a lot quicker than the first game (though some will argue Shenmue I’s atmosphere has more charm) And what of these 700-odd characters? Were they all named and profiled as per the original game? As it turns out, yes – but these were not readily available to the fans outside of Japan.

Firstly, unlike the first Shenmue, there was no Passport. There was no Prima guide either, as the Dreamcast version had been cancelled in America. America eventually saw an updated version of Shenmue II on the Microsoft Xbox, and a Prima guide was finally published. However, unlike the Shenmue I book, there were only profiles on the main characters; Ryo, Shenhua, Xiuying, Fangmei, Ren, Joy, Wong, Lan Di, Dou Niu and Yuan. The Xbox version, with the new snapshot feature, did include profiles on some of the other characters; unlocked when you took pictures of them, but it didn't come close to having profiles for all the characters. Would we ever know the names and backgrounds of the reams of anonymous characters?

A FAN EFFORT
Shortly after I had completed Shenmue II, I looked around on the internet for fansites/information about the series, ultimately finding the excellent Shenmue Dojo website. I joined the forums, and this was in fact one of the first message boards I signed up to on the internet. My handle on the forum was (and still is) ‘Miles Prower’, as I am also a long-time fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog series of games (and Sega games in general). I made a lot of good friends through the Dojo community and have many fond memories associated with the forums. I think between us we have probably discussed every single aspect of the games to death, but as many fans will attest, you find or notice something new with every playthrough of these wonderful games. Not to mention the very active hacking/modding scene that developed, mostly headed by longtime member LanDC, in which reams of unused content was discovered and many interesting and or humourous modifications made to the game. I still get a warm nostalgic feeling every time I watch LanDC’s Road to Amihama videos in particular.

And indeed, the question of whether detailed character profiles existed for Shenmue II’s cast was raised in discussion. In a thread from 2003, a member named Eek the Cat shared some scans of a guidebook he owned published in Japan called the Shenmue II Perfect Guidebook. The scans showed that there were indeed names and profiles for each and every character.
Eek was even kind enough to put all of the scans together on a CD for me and mail it to me, and even threw in a couple of audio CD’s he had compiled containing music from Shenmue II (sadly the second game never had any official soundtracks released).

The problem? Being that this book was from Japan, the character names were in Chinese and the information in Japanese. Through discussion in the topic, another forum member called khien agreed to help with translating the character names as she could read Chinese. And so began the effort to translate the many character profiles. I began by gradually posting them within the topic, and then eventually creating a website (which, thanks to Web Archive, you can still view here , albeit with most of the images missing).

Continuing into 2004 and beyond, progress was quite slow, mainly due to me starting university. Khien’s life ended up becoming quite busy as well, but thanks to the efforts of another forum member, Oda Ryo, the translation work still continued. The forum member Kiyuu (possibly Japan’s biggest Shenmue fan, and often referred to as the ‘Shenmue Queen’), also informed me that another book existed, the Shenmue II Complete Guide, which contained profiles for characters not included in the Perfect Guidebook; namely those for the many pedestrians who wander the streets of Hong Kong. I made the effort to acquire this book myself and make scans for the remaining profiles.

RESSURECTING THE PROJECT
As the years went on, however, my free time became less and less. I studied for three years at university and after graduating in 2008, I was working full time; in short I was growing up. It was also looking increasingly unlikely that a Shenmue III would ever emerge. Life went on. However, my enthusiasm to complete the project was somewhat fired up again when Peter from the forums (who most likely owns the biggest Shenmue collection in Ireland) got in touch with me on Facebook asking if I was still working on it, as the Dojo staff had managed to get an interview with one of the voice actors for the English dub of Shenmue II (a very interesting read by the way, which can be found here , and they had requested that video clips be assembled of the characters he voiced, which he supplied a list of – but only by name and brief descriptions. Using the information from my project I helped with finding some of them. I then found myself wanting to get the project finished once and for all, and got back in touch with Oda Ryo who happily assisted me with getting the remaining names translated.

I had also spoken to the member ‘thegreatchai’, who had also been attempting to catalogue the character information on her wiki site, and over time we assisted each other greatly. I began transferring the information to an Excel spreadsheet with the intention of creating a complete database of all the Shenmue II characters – which after assembling a numbered list I discovered there are exactly 700 – surely a deliberate intention of the creators? At any rate, after a few months work the project was finally finished. I am glad that this information is now easily accessible to Shenmue fans, and while some may consider me obsessive or downright insane for pursuing with the project, it was worth it for a game series that I love so much and one day hope will be continued in some form. We can but hope. The saga may still go on....

DOWNLOAD - https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qkby011a3tkgg2/Shenmue%20II%20Character%20Database.rar

Please feedback and let me know if you spot any mistakes or errors, or any factoids about the characters that I may have missed. Most of all, enjoy :D

http://cdn.escapistmagazine.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/698/698943.jpg

So, how about these concept artworks? I haven't been this interested nor pissed off in a long time. I'm vehemently against spoilers, yet hungry for even a shard of new Shenmue information. It's a shame we have to see such major spoilers before playing the game (IF we ever do see it in action), but it's oh so intriguing. On the bright side however, these concepts may slightly differ from the final version. Even if they don't, they're vague enough that much is still left to be discovered.


On to the topic at hand... I posted about this on the 500K Facebook page as well, but I figured it was time to reappear on the Dojo because this theory is worth spreading. My theory is that a deceased Ren is being carried off by Akira (Ryo) in the 10th concept image. More importantly, Ren has been killed by the hands of his friend, Akira. Firstly, at the top left corner of image 9, that's an alternately dressed Ren. In the background, a horde of people appear to be charging after Akira for an epic battle. Is Ren leading these people into battle, or is he there for Akira? Remember the concept art of Ren on a horse? It's possible that the Chiyoumen could entice Ren with promises of riches if he joins them. I would say he's there to support Akira, but who knows. They succeed in this battle apparently, defeating Lan Di as Yu Suzuki so wonderfully spoiled for us. That's assuming Lan Di didn't already meet his demise long before this scene.

http://cdn.escapistmagazine.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/698/698955.jpg

So what next? As you can see by the map, this epic battle depicted in image 9 occurs somewhere in Western China. In concept image 10, Akira is holding someone's apparent lifeless body. I'm convinced by the clothing that it's Ren as seen in image 9, minus the bandana. If you'll notice, Akira is now ironically wearing a white headband (to honor his former friend?). What happened? If the epic battle is over and Ren didn't perish there, what killed him in the following chapter 10 that appears to take place far away near Beijing (?). I'm thinking after Lan Di's defeat, Ren and Ryo now have access to both mirrors, and Ren's desire to unlock the treasures of the Qing Dynasty overcomes him. According to Master Chen, there will be trouble if those two mirrors come together. Whether that's in the form of a mythical beast resurrecting on Earth, or that's simply a metaphor for something else very grim, I think it's something that needs to be avoided. Akira may have no choice but to stop Ren, which is why he's still honoring his friend with the headband, and the fact that he's clasping his body doesn't signify a hate-filled battle.

If you'll remember, there's a flashback scene in Shenmue I where little Ryo gets into a fight with a friend at school. Iwao tells him, "A friend you can trust is a true friend indeed." I believe this flashback has a lot of significance, since everyone warns Ryo that Ren isn't exactly trustworthy. It shows in his incessant talk of money, and his giddiness towards the Qing Dynasty treasure. It's obvious that Ryo and Ren have grown closer by the end of Shenmue II, but Ren still may not be the most honest and loyal friend in the world. Thoughts?