Missions

Welcome to Hong Kong

This mission is in a very rough state, likely due to it being a late addition to the game

Cutscenes are at storyboard stage
Level art is at grey box stage

Going Under

Cut interaction between Jackie and an angry woman about unpaid debt
Cut parkour sections

Listening In

Listening In, referred to as ”Pendrew’s Bugs” in the build, had already been substantially reworked and mostly resembles its final form gameplay-wise. Some notable leftovers from earlier iterations still remain both in-game and hidden among the files.

Gameplay differences and other oddities

The stolen equipment doesn’t have an in-game prop and the mission begins with the thief already running away.
The thief uses an older character model and if chased until he turns hostile, another NPC will join him in the fight.
At the restaurant there’s an optional cop objective for hacking the camera on the skywalk. The objective will fail if Wei drops into the restaurant through the skylight without hacking the camera.
The car waiting for Winston and Conroy behind the restaurant that’s driven by Duke in the final build already has a generic NPC driver sitting in it. When Conroy and Winston enter the car Duke is just left standing in the alleyway.
Unused audio indicates there were plans for a fail scenario where Vincent and Conroy would have been able to catch Wei in the act of planting the bug, probably intended for when the timer runs out. The lines are text-to-speech in this build but exist even in the final release, voiced by the actual VAs.
There’s no timer for planting the bug.

Missing/changed/unused cutscenes

The build has leftover audio for a deprecated opening cutscene where Wei first meets with Pendrew in person before he heads to Ping’s PC. Originally the mission would have had Wei bug Club Bam Bam in addition to the restaurant - hence the name Pendrew’s Bugs, plural - but the club segment had already been entirely cut. The cutscene never plays in-game and Listening In begins at Ping’s PC just like in the final release.
The cutscene where Wei gets the equipment from Not Ping is an earlier version and still features different VAs for both characters. Instead of picking up a package for ”Orange Lotus” Wei asks for a graphics card. This follows directly from what Pendrew tells Wei to do in the deprecated opening cutscene.
After Wei beats up the thief a black screen indicates a cutscene was intended to show him getting back the equipment. This ended up never making it in the game.
The short cutscene that shows Winston and Conroy exiting the restaurant is missing.

Missing/changed/unused in-game dialogue

Duke has two greeting lines, one by his previous VA where he says ”Hey, new guy! What are you doing here?” and perplexingly, a text-to-speech ”Goodnight”.
Vincent has a greeting that never made it in the final game, asking if Wei has any food. Most of his idle follower ”babble” that plays if you try to enter the restaurant through the main entrance is missing in-game but text-to-speech audio for it exists within the voice files.
The conversation between Vincent and Calvin you can hear in the background while planting the bug in the final build is also missing. Text-to-speech audio for a version where the conversation involved Conroy in addition to Calvin and Vincent exists within the files. Conroy would have returned to the restaurant due to forgetting his phone.

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The Funeral

The Funeral contains some of the only mission objectives with the cut Sniper Rifle weapon, as well as some different character appearances due to story changes.

Removed and Changed objectives

Upon arriving at the Cemetery, four black cars can be seen near the entrance. Going to the nearby mission marker will spawn Wei and Jackie into the fourth car, where a new objective called Follow the funeral procession starts. The player simply follows the other cars into the main parking lot of the Cemetery to progress the mission like normal. Cops can be seen while driving, which sparks new dialogue from Jackie and Wei.

There are three unused objectives called Take out the Snipers nest and Eliminate/Defeat the 18k Sniper (there's one for Eliminate and one for Defeat, indicating the player would have had two separate objectives to take out 2 different Snipers).

The final part of this mission featured a section where the player had to protect Conroy using a Sniper Rifle.

Characters removed and changed from the mission

Two-Chin, Conroy and Duke were removed from the mission, with Two-Chin having a file for his model ('TwoChinTsaoFuneral.permbin) but only a placeholder sculpt exists.

Two-Chin has both a regular and HD (cutscene) model for his Funeral outfit, meaning he would have likely been seen in gameplay as well.

Conroy still has his voice lines for this mission in the game files, where in one of them he shouts "Duke, keep down!", confirming Duke was supposed to be in the combat section of the mission as well as Conroy.

Broken Nose Jiang has combat voice lines, mostly shouts and giving instructions to Wei based on mission objectives, indicating she was to be seen in gameplay too.

Civil Discord

Civil Discord’s gameplay mostly resembles the final build and just lacks polish, but the story aspects are a notable mix of old and new.

Changed and missing characters

Calvin’s role in Civil Discord was originally inhabited by Vincent who in the final build is dead by this point. Calvin himself is not present in the mission.

Gameplay differences and other oddities

Conroy and the generic Water Street Boy who in the final build can be seen standing outside the chop shop before the mission begins are instead waiting in a car in the shop’s yard. Once approached they get out and Wei exchanges a few words with them.
The mission features two text messages that went unused in the final build.
- One is sent by Vincent during the chop shop brawl to let Wei know reinforcements are coming.
- The other is from Ricky after the grenade launcher segment, telling Wei to meet him at Vivienne’s.

Changed/unused/missing cutscenes

The opening cutscene where Wei confronts the triads beating up Tran already matches the final but is unfinished. The facial animations are mostly missing and the model of the generic Water Street Boy is untextured.
- Curiously the debug NIS launcher features a cutscene under the name nis_civil_discord_tran that can’t actually be played in-game but audio for it still exists in the files. It’s similar to the opening scene but the enemy triads are specified to be Ricky’s men.
A black placeholder screen indicates a cutscene after the brawl with the description ”Wei and his crew grab guns and get in the car”, but in the final build the cutscene only shows Tran handing a gun to Wei.
The cutscene where Wei and the Boys arrive to the restaurant is indicated with a placeholder screen when playing the mission, but the animation can be triggered through the NIS launcher. It mostly matches the final but lacks polish as it’s still missing dialogue and effects.
The scene where an enemy triad threatens Mrs. Chu still uses old audio based on the plot where Ricky was behind the attack.
The cutscene where Conroy hands the grenade launcher to Wei is indicated with a placeholder screen.
The ending cutscene features mismatched animation and audio. The animation is overall rather unfinished, the characters lack facial animations, props aren’t animated or are missing entirely, and the room layout seems to have changed at some point since Vivienne and Ricky are clipping into a table.
- The premise of the animation is similar to what you see in the final build with Wei and Conroy meeting up with Ricky and Vivienne, but the resulting conversation seems to have a much less amicable outcome for Ricky. Instead of walking away with his girlfriend the cutscene ends with Ricky still being held at gunpoint by Conroy while Wei leads away Vivienne.
- The audio is for a completely different scene where Jackie has found out the truth about Wei from Ricky and angrily confronts Wei over Conroy’s death, speculating that he may have killed Conroy to silence him. Wei states that Conroy was killed by the 18K and denies being a cop, but the scene ultimately ends with Jackie declaring their friendship to be over. Both Wei and Jackie are portrayed by their previous VAs.

The Election

Early version of Mr. Tong's torture scene, titled 'torture_temp', which is a pre-rendered video unlike all other versions (video remains unused in-game but exists in the files). There are no flashback videos at all in this version, but the flashback dialogue can still be heard.
Flashback scenes featuring early character models
Cut Guitar Hero easter egg, including the cut 'Game Guitar' weapon, dating back to when Activision was still the publisher of the game

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