Shenmue - Was Shenhua Pai Chan?

[Sharky]

I was thinking about how Shenmue was once going to be the storyline of Virtua Fighter or a Virtua Fighter RPG.

You can still see which characters were going to be witch. For example the most obvious:

Akira was going to be Ryo


and Lau Chan was going to be Lan Di


There were other characters along the way which looked a lot like they'd taken more than a bit of inspiration from VF... But one thing I noticed nobody had put any thought into who Shenhua was in Shenmue. Maybe she wasn't any of them but that seems unlikely!

Then it dawned on me the very simple story of the VF series (mostly conveyed through manuals) had told us that Lau Chan had a daughter, who was also a playable character in VF Pai Chan! The story of Shenmue was written after and so it would surely include a daughter for the character that would become Lan Di.

I went and looked at some character designs of Shenhua and VF2/VF3 designs of Pai and I suspect that it's possible they would have been the same person.

Pai


Shenhua


They share has the obvious pig tails, traditional Japanese clothes and even similar hats.
Less obvious is that Pai Chan always has one pink outfit in her selectable clothes even if it isn’t her default design and if you cast your mind back to this cancelled Shenmue Online CGI trailer where ludicrous things are happening Shenhua appears wearing pink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJsUhPT7MBk

So what do you think? Was Shenhua going to be Pai Chan? Does this mean Ryo is in the cave with the daughter of Lan Di? Who knows!

[Ben]

I think you hit the nail right on the head.......that actually makes total sense. I actually feel bad that this may have spoiled what would have been a huge plot twist, lol. But then again, game probably never will be made, so eh.

[Sharky]

Well I wouldn't worry to much, there is just as much chance that it isnt the case- for example whilst the birth dates of Ryo and Akira match up perfectly those of Shenhua and Pai don't at all.

Also in Virtua Fighter, Pai Chan lives in Hong Kong and works as an actress, that is clearly not the case with Shenhua.

So there is just as much of a chance that they share some similar design choices but don't have much else in common.

I know I'm questioning my own theory here but I think its still very much up in the air, so who knows!

[SEGA_Portuguese]

I played Shenmue just a little so i do not know if i understand your theory, but Yu Suzuki said that they had the character design of Akira in mind when they created Ryo. And   according to the history of Virtua Fighter, Akira just want to fight to become stronger, not to revenge his father or something like that.

[ROJM]

Well that doesn't mean she wasn't based on Pai, all it means was she could have been developed from pai into her own character, much like Ryo was. Too bad, for some reason this brings up memories of that VF RPG game that was to appear on gamecube which everyone was excited about....until they saw the first screenshots.

[Sharky]

Well that doesn't mean she wasn't based on Pai, all it means was she could have been developed from pai into her own character, much like Ryo was. Too bad, for some reason this brings up memories of that VF RPG game that was to appear on gamecube which everyone was excited about....until they saw the first screenshots.

Haha- Oh yeah... Man, I had put that out of my memory!
I never did play it but it looked dreadful, what a waste.

[Barry the Nomad]

I keep seeing VF Quest at the local Gamestop, and the price keeps dropping: $15 to $7 to $3... and it still doesn't look worth it.

[max_cady]

That's really nothing new... Shenmue started off originally as an RPG with Virtua Fighter characters.

But it moved on to new characters. Ryo is based off of Akira, Lau for Lan Di and so forth, it's the same CG artist who did these characters.

It would be cool to see the Yakuza 3's engine being used in an adventure game.

[George]

We should do a sexy article with this information. Maybe an article 'SEGA parallel universes you never knew existed' or something.

[ROJM]

That's really nothing new... Shenmue started off originally as an RPG with Virtua Fighter characters.

But it moved on to new characters. Ryo is based off of Akira, Lau for Lan Di and so forth, it's the same CG artist who did these characters.

It would be cool to see the Yakuza 3's engine being used in an adventure game.

Yes we knew that at the time too but everyone at the time Sega announced QUEST for gamecube that they actually decided to go with the actual original idea of the VF RPG.