What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

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What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Popcorn » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:18 am

Hi all. Boring question, I'm afraid...

I've been doing lots of work on the Shenmue Wikipedia pages lately. I've been trying to find good sources that explain what exactly the different chapters of Shenmue are (that have been released, anyway).

My understanding is that Shenmue 1 is one chapter, discs 1 and 2 and Shenmue 2 are another chapter, disc 3 of Shenmue 2 is another chapter, and disc 4 of Shenmue 2 is another chapter.

However, I've also seen it reported that the "Shenmue Side Story" manga is also officially considered a chapter.

Now, Wikipedia needs reliable sources for this information. Searching around, I've seen arguments on this forum about whether the manga should be considered a chapter or not, and there are good arguments on both sides, but Wikipedia doesn't care about individual opinions. We need the information to either come from reliable sources or the the games themselves.

Are there any reliable sources out there that explain this?

Also, do the games themselves label the different chapters anywhere? I don't remember title cards or anything (eg stating "Chapter 2: Hong Kong") in the games - am I misremembering? Perhaps this information is elsewhere in the game, like in a save summary?

Any ideas? Sorry this question is a bit dull.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Amir » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:42 am

The chapters get changed around a lot. They first started as 11 chapters to a novel, which are represented in this concept art first shown at GDC 2014:

Image

But as development went on chapters would get added, discarded, combined with other chapters, etc. You can see in that image above that Chapter 2 was originally going to be Hong Kong (including Kowloon), but at some point during development on the Dreamcast they added a chapter set on the boat between Yokosuka and Hong Kong (my own belief based on the NHK Making Of video is that this came from a desire to provide an action-packed finale to the first game when they decided to split the games into two). Then this got canned, though it is still included as a 4-page side-story comic provided as a bonus in the Xbox version of Shenmue II.

Shin Ishikawa, who worked on the series since its Saturn days and ended up being director for the Xbox version (and was rumoured to be considered for role of director for Shenmue III when it was planned as an Xbox game) drew this outline of the chapters in a 2003 interview:

Image

Here's the link to the interview: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/features/interviews/am2/

In the Nico-Nico broadcast from this year, Suzuki stated that the third chapter was originally set on a train (as we can see in the concept art above, a quick glimpse was also included in the CG video at the beginning of the Project Berkley disc). The fighters from the 4th chapter illustration most likely became the fighters Ryo faces in Shenmue II to gain access to the Yellow Head building, and a chapter set on the Li River to Guilin was cut during development of Shenmue II. In interviews they mentioned moving meeting Shenhua up earlier in the story; in the concept art you can see that is Chapter 6, and that still ties in with the image from Ishikawa above.

The chapters have shifted around a lot since the original novel and will continue to do so based on time/budget constraints and delivering satisfying gameplay (i.e. what works in novel form might not work so well in a game where Suzuki wants players to explore environments in depth, so there will be less location-hopping in the game vs the original novel).
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Popcorn » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:50 am

Thank you for this detailed reply. Unfortunately, I already know everything you explained, and I'd read that Next Level interview, too!

I still have the same problem - I need to find either reliable sources or something in the games themselves that indicate what constitutes the chapters so far. The Next Level interview is, I believe, ambiguous; Ishikawa draws the chapter diagram but states that chapter 2 was cut. So is this considered an officially released chapter, or not? It isn't clear.

If there are no good sources clarifying this, I'll just have to omit the information about chapters from the Wikipedia articles. No biggie.

It might be that the entire "chapters" concept was only ever used as a development tool, and not something players were actually supposed to care about.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Yokosuka » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:53 am

All the sources you need are here : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48975

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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Popcorn » Wed Nov 18, 2015 12:38 pm

Yokosuka wrote: All the sources you need are here : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48975


Thank you!

It sounds like the chapter idea was always more of a development tool than anything, then - so worth discussing in the Development section, but too confusing and vague to use elsewhere.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Yokosuka » Wed Nov 18, 2015 12:45 pm

Looks very confusing indeed. Even more since we learned recently that the chapters were fixed one year only before the Japanese release of Shenmue I.

I take it with a positive insight, that means the novel is very flexible and Yu is free to make the best game possible (rather the best adaptation) as long as he follows the big story lines he planned earlier.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Popcorn » Wed Nov 18, 2015 12:50 pm

Yokosuka wrote: I take it with a positive insight, that means the novel is very flexible and Yu is free to make the best game possible (rather the best adaptation) as long as he follows the big story lines he planned earlier.


Absolutely - it's natural for a project to change as it develops.

For the article, I was interested in knowing if the story we have so far (S1, S2 and the comic) are actually split into different chapters in any really definitive way, but it seems not.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Popcorn » Wed Nov 18, 2015 12:53 pm

By the way, it would be really good to have a reliable source I can use to show that Shenmue 1 and 2 were developed simultaneously, and the decision was made to split them during development. This is common knowledge but I can't find a good source for it. Any ideas?
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Yokosuka » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:24 pm

No sources at the moment, it would be a good question to ask in the next Shenmue 3 Q&A.

I read in the Yu's biography (written by Benjamin Berget who is a Shenmue Dojo member) that the split was decided in 1999 because the development took forever while Sega initially planned to release Shenmue with the Dreamcast.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Amir » Wed Dec 02, 2015 8:07 am

Interesting that here at E3 2001 Suzuki says that Shenmue II went up to Chapter 6, just like Ishikawa said at TheNextLevel interview:

phpBB [video]


I would think this was in the context of the total being 16 as opposed to 11 but then in the Twitter Q&A he talked about there being more than 11 because of branching. Maybe 16 was the total when chapters like the boat journey were considering being added and they thought the series would be a greater success?

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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby Ryuman » Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:56 am

Yeah, it's all very tricky, as it seems even Yu's definition of a chapter has changed over time. I'm still kinda confused what chapter we're on in the new breakdown. The 11 chapter total is still thrown around, but we already know that chapters 2-5 of the VFRPG outline it's based on have gone through cuts and merges. I'd like Suzuki to give us an up-to-date chapter total and where we're at.

As an aside, I hope that when we've got Shenmue-whatever and the story's finished, Yu releases the original story novel in some fashion. I'd buy a copy.
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby SMDzero » Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:28 am

Yu Suzuki wrote the final chapter of the Shenmue novel a long time ago and it hasn't really changed. Yu's favorite part of Shenmue is contained in this chapter when Ryo makes a speech after defeating Lan Di.

Here is the text directly from the novel:

SPOILERS:
Ryo:

Thank you.

I came here to China...

and I didn't know what to expect.

I've seen a lot of people hating me...

and I didn't know...

what to feel about that, so...

I guess I didn't like you much either.

During this fight...

I seen a lot of changing:

the way Lan Di felt about me...

and the way I felt about Lan Di.

In here...

there were two guys...

killing each other.

But I guess that's better than million.

What I'm trying to say is...

if I can change...

and you can change...

everybody can change!

I just want to say one thing to Nozomi...

who is in Canada.

Merry Christmas, babe!

I love you!
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Re: What constitutes a "chapter" in Shenmue?

Postby dietsoap » Tue May 01, 2018 8:51 am

Amir wrote: The chapters get changed around a lot. They first started as 11 chapters to a novel, which are represented in this concept art first shown at GDC 2014:

Image

But as development went on chapters would get added, discarded, combined with other chapters, etc. You can see in that image above that Chapter 2 was originally going to be Hong Kong (including Kowloon), but at some point during development on the Dreamcast they added a chapter set on the boat between Yokosuka and Hong Kong (my own belief based on the NHK Making Of video is that this came from a desire to provide an action-packed finale to the first game when they decided to split the games into two). Then this got canned, though it is still included as a 4-page side-story comic provided as a bonus in the Xbox version of Shenmue II.

Shin Ishikawa, who worked on the series since its Saturn days and ended up being director for the Xbox version (and was rumoured to be considered for role of director for Shenmue III when it was planned as an Xbox game) drew this outline of the chapters in a 2003 interview:

Image

Here's the link to the interview: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/features/interviews/am2/

In the Nico-Nico broadcast from this year, Suzuki stated that the third chapter was originally set on a train (as we can see in the concept art above, a quick glimpse was also included in the CG video at the beginning of the Project Berkley disc). The fighters from the 4th chapter illustration most likely became the fighters Ryo faces in Shenmue II to gain access to the Yellow Head building, and a chapter set on the Li River to Guilin was cut during development of Shenmue II. In interviews they mentioned moving meeting Shenhua up earlier in the story; in the concept art you can see that is Chapter 6, and that still ties in with the image from Ishikawa above.

The chapters have shifted around a lot since the original novel and will continue to do so based on time/budget constraints and delivering satisfying gameplay (i.e. what works in novel form might not work so well in a game where Suzuki wants players to explore environments in depth, so there will be less location-hopping in the game vs the original novel).

Ahh, so that is where the Shenmue = chapters 3 - 6 idea came from. I really hope the next time the French guy on here interviews Suzuki, he asks some questions to clear up all this chapter stuff.
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