Ryo Opens a Mysterious Crate in Warehouse #8 | Hacks & Mods

The jaws of veteran fans dropped on seeing screenshots of an in-game cut scene that is little known to many, including myself: Ryo casually opening a large wooden crate in Master Chen's Warehouse No. 8 in Shenmue I. Images were shared by Japanese fan lu_lu_lu_uesgi  on Twitter from a livestream playthrough, with the tweet crediting the finding to a viewer on the stream with intimate knowledge of the game.

In this post we'll visit Warehouse No. 8 ourselves and open the crate in question - and also bring out a hacking tool to move the camera around and dig even deeper into the secrets of the mysterious crate!

After Ryo arrives at the warehouse, first walk towards the center of the room, passing around the large crate on the left.

Veering left, near the staircase is a low wooden crate. This is the crate that Ryo is able to open! Walk up to stand next to it.

Zoom in on the lid, and the action button will become enabled. Press it, and a short sequence will play of Ryo opening it to examine the contents...

...which turns out to be a statue of Buddha, sitting in a bed of straw or sawdust-like material.

Ryo then comments that "This warehouse is different from the others", probably referring to the nature of the antique goods being stored here. After this, Ryo automatically closes the crate again and the sequence ends.

It is easy to see why this interaction may be missed by the majority of players, as there is no obvious visual clue that this crate is any different from the others (which are not able to be opened). And even if discovered, it might be easily forgotten during subsequent playthroughs as it is not critical to the story.

One question remains, however: when playing in-game, Ryo only checks the left part of the crate, with no option to investigate further... so what lies on the other side? 

To answer this question, we will make use of the free cam tool created by LemonHaze, which allows us to peep inside the chest directly.

The first interesting point is that when the Buddha statue is viewed from a different angle, it can be seen that the same face texture has been applied to the rear side of the head, which is normally hidden from the player.

This was probably a decision made for efficiency on the part of the game developers, as it removes the need for creating a separate texture for a part of the object that would not be closely examined in the game.

Next, we move the camera across and into the adjoining compartment of the crate, which is not able to be opened during game play. It might be reasonable to assume this would be empty, but surprisingly it actually has something inside.

The corners of two metallic blocks of some type can be seen protruding through the packing material.

By moving the camera down, we can get a better view of them, but their identity is not clear:

The official Warehouse No. 8 description (from the Suka Pass app) reads: "It is used as a warehouse for works of art, but it is said that contraband cultural assets, for which export overseas in prohibited, are secretly stored here".

In any case, it seems that Master Chen's importing business is certainly not all it seems...

Were you aware that this crate could actually be checked during the game, or are you like us, and were surprised to find out? Let us know!

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