Play as Guizhang | Q&A

Shenmue Dreamcast (Undub Definitive Edition): Play as Guizhang in the 70 Man Battle by Richard Payne

Related video: https://youtu.be/UwBvFin8aqo (Shenmue - Play as Guizhang [Moveset Tutorial] | MOD Release)

||||| Questions & Answers |||||

[Q0] How do I play?

A: Simply select the build you'd like to play, download the disc files and the vmu file; then set up a Dreamcast emulator and boot my mod from there, and you're good to go.

Download Guizhang Mod → https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12lzgUWx25vehD_bszoU8lZ4qHiv2_762

That's the gist of it, but in case you want a more detailed explanation, take a look at these other documents, where I provide much more info on all the required steps [1] and Guizhang's moveset [2].

[1] HOW TO PLAY: Guizhang in the 70 Man Battle → https://pastebin.com/XtKkv1GC

[2] Guizhang Chen’s complete Move List + Notes & Hints → https://pastebin.com/MAMZFw0w

If you need more help or run into issues, please let me know in the comments section of the video.

[Q1] Why did you make this mod?

A: Guizhang Chen is one of the most interesting characters and formidable fighters in the Shenmue world. He’s a mirror to Ryo in many ways: both are practitioners of an ancient martial art handed down by generations; both were trained by their respective fathers; both show a similar level of skill (albeit Guizhang displays more confidence and knowledge being the older martial artist), both would put their life on the line to protect their fathers or chase down their fathers’ murderers for revenge, and more.

Guizhang is such an important character he’s even given a complete, fully developed martial art style, gets to shine alongside Ryo in the 70 Man Battle (though he does chicken out against Pedro for some reason lol), and is teased to follow him in his journey to China, only to be forced to forfeit due to an injury, stating he will catch up to Ryo once he’s fully healed.

When I played the game for the first time, I was dying to play as him and I’d assumed he would unlock as a secret unlockable fighter for the 70 Man Battle (all the necessary assets were made after all). I looked this up online, only to realize he was no unlockable fighter at all, but just a CPU ally. Ever since then, I’ve dreamed about creating this mod, though I had no idea I’d actually make it one day. It might not look like much for experienced modders and game developers, but for someone like me, with zero Dreamcast modding knowledge, the journey to making this mod possible was a giant rollercoaster and an intriguing learning experience.

[Q2] Why is it limited to the 70 Man Battle time trial mode only?

A: Well, from a story perspective, it makes sense to play as Guizhang there, but he wouldn’t really fit anywhere else in the story. It’s not hard at all to make him playable pretty much everywhere in the game, but the fights would be over in seconds anyway. I considered the idea of allowing players to fight Chai at the harbor as Guizhang, but unfortunately I had to scrap the idea as it would always lead to a crash*.

I also considered the idea of making him playable in the actual 70 Man Battle story fight, but the problem is I’d have had to change a whole lot of things in order to make it look decent, such as cutscene models, voice lines, subtitles and so on. Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t worth going for.

*The game loads Guizhang’s animations from one file and Chai’s animations from another one, and there’s no way to force the game to read animations from two files at the same time, so it just crashes. I tried “fusing” the two files together and creating a single file out of them, but that only led to more crashes! In the end, I just gave up and moved on. ;’/

[Q3] Why Dreamcast only? Will you make an HD remaster version?

A: There’s plenty of reasons for that.

1. The Dreamcast version is still the best version of the game for many reasons, one of which is the combat system not being a broken mess.
2. It’s the only version I’ve learned to mod funnily enough, and as of now I wouldn’t be able to recreate it on the PC version, though I imagine it couldn’t be too hard.
3. Testing is much easier on Dreamcast for me, since I can use the debug mode build and I also have a ton of save states and VMU saves to jump through the game if necessary.

I will however make a version for HD remaster on PC if there's enough demand from the Shenmue community.

[Q4] Is it emulator-exclusive? Will it work on real hardware?

A: I don’t own a Dreamcast, so I could only test my mod on emulators (Flycast, Redream, Demul). Despite that, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on Dreamcast, as I haven’t really made any huge changes, just some file/ID swaps and some altered data in a couple of files.

[Q5] What would happen if I used this build to play the 70 Man Battle story fight?

A: Despite saying I didn’t include that, you can actually play the story fight as Guizhang in my build! How, you may ask? It’s simple. The story fight and the time trial mode share a lot of data together, hence why it sort of works. However, assuming you get to that point in the story on my Disc 3 build, there will be two Guizhangs, both in cutscenes and FREE battles. However, Ryo's model (now Guizhang) will appear glitched in cutscenes, since I did not touch anything outside the fight. The 70 Man Battle story segment should still play fine though. Ryo will eventually revert to his model and moveset once the segment ends.

[Q6] Why can’t Guizhang perform the Swallow Flip?

A: That’s one thing that really bothers me about Guizhang’s Diving Swallow Style. He’s meant to have learned the style from his father, Master Chen, who then goes on to teach Ryo one of the Diving Swallow Style’s signatures moves, the Swallow Flip… you’d assume Guizhang can do it too, and he kind of does a Swallow Flip in the QTE against Terry (though he’s not able to complete the reversal due to Terry’s dirty move), but his FREE battle counterpart does not have the Swallow Flip at all.

I’ve tried to add it in, but since the Swallow Flip is a complex, 3-part reversal move, it’d be almost impossible for me to include it with my current knowledge, not to mention I’d have to sacrifice 3 additional moves to make room for it, so I ended up just scrapping the idea. Luckily, Guizhang has a lot of unique, interesting counters he can use, which kind of make up for it.

[Q7] Is the Terry boss fight at the harbor part of the mod?

A: Nah, it’s just something I included in the video to make the move tutorial more enjoyable, plus you get to see throws and counters used on an actual opponent, instead of what I originally had in the first draft of the video (Guizhang using throws and counters against an invisible foe lol).

The whole segment was inspired by LanDC’s iconic mod video titled “What if”.

LanDC's What if scenario Mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgRNbLXKqg

Basically, Terry assaults the group instead of Chai, and it’s Ryo who gets injured and it's Guizhang who travels to Hong Kong. That video was an eye opener from the day I saw it the first time, I can’t really state how much it’s inspired me, eventually leading to get into Shenmue Modding. LanDC, if you're reading this, thank you so much!

I recreated the scenario through dozens of different modded builds I made with the purpose of recording specific footage from, then slapped all the relevant clips together with video and audio editing. Unlike LanDC, I don’t know how to change camera angles, something I tried to figure out as I went on, but eventually decided to stop pursuing, hence why some scenes don't mesh too well.

Terry’s fighting style is mainly taken from Minoru Okayasu and Satoshi Nagata, both high ranking Mad Angel members. Supposedly, Terry used to have his own fighting style (not sure if unique or just recycled moves from other fighters), but was cut sometime during development. The only remnant is a single reference in the boot file (EN_TERRY.BIN), which can't be found in any of the known Shenmue builds.

I could have kept the Terry fight in, but it would’ve been a pain to access (you’d have needed to replay the entire final portion of the game from after the 70 Man Battle), cutscene modding would’ve taken too much time for me to figure out and implement, and the fight itself is honestly nothing to write a book about, as Terry isn’t really a match for Guizhang.

[Q8] Will you make other mods like this one? Like a playable Chai or Pedro?

A: I’ve actually already had, kind of! Playing as other characters is in fact not really a difficult thing to achieve in Shenmue 1, as it’s just a bunch of swapped files and IDs. The “hard” part is adding voice grunts for the characters and fixing “bugs” (such as blocking becoming unusable when these movesets are given to the player).

I can potentially create all kinds of weird FREE battles swapping characters and movesets around, but it takes a while to polish them and make them feel real and not just a quick swap job.

If you have any characters you’d like to play as, or any FREE battles you’d like to see happen, write your ideas below one of my YouTube videos. It’ll be interesting to see whether I can make it happen.

[Q9] What's the name of the music tracks you use in the video?

A: I kinda forgot to make a track list... only realized after everything was already out. Here's a list of the music used in the video, in order of appearance.

► Track List:

Track 1 [0:09] - "A New Journey" | Shenmue Orchestra
Track 2 [0:37] - “Fukuhara's Confession” | Shenmue in-game music
Track 3 [1:02] - " A Predestined Encounter” | Shenmue I & II Sound Collection
Track 4 [4:23] - "Shenmue OST 10 " | Shenmue Online
Track 5 [6:37] - " Nuisances" | Yakuza 5
Track 6 [8:51] - " Dynamic & Magnificent” | Yakuza 5
Track 7 [10:54] - "Defender of the Castle” | Bully Soundtrack
Track 8 [12:06] – “QTE Battle” | Shenmue in-game music
Track 9 [12:47] – “A New Journey” | Shenmue Orchestra

► Special Thanks:

⇒ SHENMUE MODS: https://github.com/Shenmue-Mods
Hosts a lot of great modding knowledge and tutorials, including a moveset mod tutorial!

Moveset Mod Tutorial: https://github.com/Shenmue-Mods/Knowledgebase/blob/master/Shenmue_I/Changing_Fighting_Style.md

⇒ SHENMUE DOJO & OLD FORUMS: https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php & https://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/
Arguably the best Shenmue community on the web, plus the staff is made of some truly passionate and talented people. Their hard work is one of the reasons the Shenmue community is still alive today. They also still host their old forums, which are a huge archive of info and discussions that would've been lost to time.

⇒ SHENTRAD TEAM: https://shenmuesubs.sourceforge.net/
Offers an impressive amount of tools, all built specifically for exploring and modding Shenmue! This video wouldn't have been possible without their efforts.

⇒ LanDC
For inspiring me to learn the basics of Shenmue modding (plus for the Shenmue content he has archived, documented, and produced in the past).

CONTACTS:

https://www.youtube.com/@RichardPayne5
https://twitter.com/Richard_Payne5
https://x.com/Richard_Payne5
https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum
https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php?members/richard-payne.3632/