Wei Shen

"You're a cop. I'm an undercover cop. The rules are different" 

-Wei Shen

Age:28

Occupation: Undercover Cop/Professional Badass

Bio

Born in the city of Hong Kong, Wei and his family moved to San Francisco when he was 10. He proved to be an excellent student, and would go on to join the SFPD, graduating from the Police Academy at the top of his class. His intelligence and intimate knowledge of Asian gang culture from his time growing up in Hong Kong quickly got him promoted to the SFPD’s plainclothes anti-Tong division. Wei’s techniques though proved to be heavy handed and aggressive, and were further aggravated by the death of his sister Mimi Shen from a drug overdose and his mother’s following suicide. He gunned down gang member Charles ‘Two Hat’, and later tortured and killed drug dealer Ming Ming Trin for supplying his sister with the fatal dose of drugs.

Wei’s propensity for violence and his skill in undercover work got him noticed by Thomas Pendrew, the superintendent of the Hong Kong police department. Pendrew was trying to bring down the notorious Sun On Yee Traid from the inside, and needed Wei to replace dead undercover agent Charles Ho. Using his old friend and Traid associate, Jackie Ma, Wei managed to infiltrate the Song On Yee, and began his mission to take it down from the inside out. I won’t spoil the rest of the game here for those of you who haven’t played it. Its got an awesome story, and is a great game in general, and I highly encourage anyone who hasn't played it to check it out. Some major and unavoidable spoilers are ahead though.

Weapons

*Note*: Wei cannot realistically have every single weapon in the game, so I'm choosing the best gun from each of the game's four weapon categories: handguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns(I'll probably do the same thing for Max as well). Also note that Wei cannot carry four kinds of guns on him at once; only his pistol + one of the other 3.  The environment he and Max will be fighting in will give him available access to the other two, but he'll need time to swap them out, will need to consider which gun is best for each given situation, and ammo for all four will not be universal. All factors to considered for the fight. Weapons from the various DLC packs will not be included, seeing as I haven't played any of them. 

Long Range: Enfield SA80 L85A2 Assault Rifle w/Heckler & Koch AG36 Grenade Launcher 

Wei's fashion sense is almost as scary as that gun.

Range: 1,300 feet/396 meters

Caliber: 5.56x45mm NATO

Weight: 10.98 lbs/4.98 kg (not including the grenade launcher)

Length: 30.91 in/785 mm

Barrel Length: 20.39 in/518 mm 

Ammo Capacity: 30 rounds 

Rate of Fire: 775 rpm
Action: Fully Automatic

The final result of a series of prototypes from the British military in order to build a more modern assault rifle, the original L85 was first distributed to the British army in 1985. The most notable feature of this assault rifle was its "bullpup" configuration. A design that sees most of the internal operating action of the assault rifle located behind the gun's trigger and grip, the bullpup configuration allows the rifle to maintain the same barrel length and accuracy as a standard assault rifle, while having a shorter and therefore easier to maneuver and lighter weapon. Although the bullpup design has its critics, it has become increasingly popular with many of the worlds militaries' citing its improved accuracy and quicker response time when engaging targets as the reasons for its success. The L85 is regarded highly as a weapon and has been seen in conflicts as wide ranging as Sierra Leone, Bosnia, as well as the more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only notable flaw I managed to find with this weapon is that it has somewhat poor balance, but this can be counteracted by adding on a underbarrel grenade launcher. Which leads right into...

This bad boy

Range: 1,148.29 ft/350 meters

Caliber: 40x46 mm grenade

Weight: 3.31 lbs/1.5 kg

Length: 13.78 in/350 mm

Barrel Length: 11.02 in/280 mm
Ammo Capacity: 1 grenade

Rate of Fire: 6 rpm

Action: Single shot

Originally designed to be used on new American assault rifles, the AG36 was instead adopted for use by the German army. It fires the low velocity 40x46mm grenade, and is useful for giving the user of the assault rifle multiple options for how they want to approach taking out the enemy. Although it can be chambered for non-lethal options, such as smoke grenades, Wei definitely prefers the high explosive rounds.

(Wei busts out the L85 around 7:05)     

         

Mid-Range: IMI Desert Eagle Mk. 1 Pistol & Heckler and Koch UMP45 Submachine Gun 

Desert Eagle

Fear the bling

Range: 656 feet/200m

Caliber: .50 caliber Action Express 

Weight: 3 lbs/1.36 kg

Length: 10.59 in/269 mm

Barrel Length: 5.98 in/152 mm

Ammo Capacity: 7 rounds

Action: Semi-auto

One of the most powerful semi-auto handguns on the market today, the Desert Eagle was designed and marketed by the company Magnum Research, and manufactured under contract by Israel Military Industries. It's a flashy gun, known for its large size, weight, and the massive stopping power of its .50 round. It's largely favored by (wealthy) sport shooters, or gun collectors, despite being rather impractical for actual combat. Its .50 caliber round, while packing quite the punch, gives the gun a hell of a kick, making it quite inaccurate to say the least. This combined with its size and weight make it awkward to carry around, let alone shoot. It's also very expensive, and even the .50 ammunition can quickly burn a hole through your pocket. All these factors have combine to make it a gun known largely as a "range toy" for rich people, rather than something that would be a sidearm for the worlds' militaries. Despite this, fiction often portrays the gun as incredibly common among various armed forces, and even the expendable mooks in the bad guys employ. Any bad guy that would shell out enough money to arm all their henchmen with Desert Eagles must really care about their henchmen...or really hate them seeing as how impractical the Desert Eagle  actually is as a combat weapon. So at this point you're probably wondering: "Why on earth did you give Wei this gun? It hardly sounds like the best pistol in the game." Well it actually is, given that Wei doesn't really seem to suffer any of the drawbacks that your everyday, regular shooter would. This is mostly justified seeing as Wei has John Woo action movie level skills, and has been even shown to be able to fire this gun accurately with one hand, while sliding out of cover. It has the best stopping power of any pistol in the game, and is even Wei's "standard" weapon that spawns in every one of his safehouses once you beat the game.

(Wei's former boss, Winston, shows off the golden Desert Eagle that Wei later takes as his own)

UMP45

Range: 164 feet/50 meters
Caliber: .45 ACP
Weight: 4.63 lbs/2.1 kg
Length: 27.17 in/690 mm
Barrel Length: 7.87 in/200 mm
Ammo Capacity: 30 rounds
Rate of Fire: 600 rpm
Action: Fully Automatic, Burst Fire, or Single Shot

Designed by Heckler and Koch as a cheap, lightweight, and powerful submachine gun, the UMP45 was marketed primarily to US law enforcement. It has since seen its popularity grow worldwide, and is now used as the primary submachine gun of various special forces groups around the globe.While Wei's UMP seems to bear the closest resemblance to the UMP9, it fires .45 caliber caliber rounds as opposed to the UMP9's 9x19mm round, leading me to believe that the developers intended for it to be an UMP45, be just mixed up the designs. Its design is well regarded for being lightweight (due to the gun being made largely from polymers) and compact thanks to its folding stock, making it ideal for close quarters combat. Although the UMP45 can't quite match the rate of fire of its sister models, the UMP9 and the UMP40, it makes up for it with a slightly longer effective range, giving it a greater amount of versatility, although it does suffer from greater recoil than either of those models as well.

    

Short-Range: Hawk Semi-Auto Shotgun

Caliber: 12 gauge
Weight: 7 lbs/3.2 kg
Length: 35.4 in/900 mm
Ammo Capacity: 5 rounds
Action : Semi-auto

Devolved by the Chinese gun makers, Hawk Industries, the Hawk semi-auto shotgun was designed as a Chinese variant of the Remington 1100. It is gas operated and self loading. It also comes in a bullpup configuration, although Wei seems to use the original design.

Special 1: Kung Fu

Wei is an incredibly talented martial artist, having been trained in kung fu by martial arts instructor Sifu Kwok from a young age. Although giving up this instruction when he left for America, Wei's time fighting organized crime in San Francisco obviously didn't leave him without people to test his skills on, as even returning to Hong Kong many years later he was able to effortlessly beat the crap out of almost a dozen triad thugs. His skills only increase as the game progresses, as he returns to training with Kwok and refining his combat skills.

Kung Fu is one of the most well known martial arts around the world, largely due to how much it has saturated various forms of pop-culture ranging from action movies to videogames. Kung Fu is actually a series of martial art styles, and there is many of them, over 200! The exact origins of the various Kung Fu styles seem to be heavily shrouded in myth and are hard to pin down, but from what I could find, Kung Fu in general can be traced back to the martial training received by soldiers in China's ancient armies, and branched out from there. Unfortunately, I don't have enough knowledge on Kung Fu to say what style or styles Wei may have been using (or if the martial arts used in the game are actually accurate at all).

It does seem obvious though that Wei is employing a variety of styles in fights. Sleeping Dogs often throws a number of multiple enemy types at you, requiring Wei to change up his fighting styles on the fly. Brawlers for example attack with slow, but powerful strikes and are nearly unbeatable on the defense, forcing Wei to rely on counterattacks and grapples to take them down. Their polar opposites,  Grapplers, are immune to grappling and the speed of their attacks makes them difficult to counter, meaning Wei has to adapt and rely on their near complete lack of defense and go on an all out offensive to take them out.

So in short Wei is highly adaptable in hand to hand combat, and is even arguably better at it than he is with guns. His fighting style can vary from leg sweeps to knees to the gut. He frequently makes use of the environment as well, ranging from smashing people in the face with car doors, to impaling them on meat hooks.

(I'm not sure if these videos are canon, but they're a good display of Wei's combat abilities)

                                                              (In game combat)

                        

Special 2: Vault Shooting

Like his upcoming opponent, Wei posses the ability to enter a "bullet time" like state where time seems to slow down for him, allowing him greater accuracy when using his guns. In Wei's case this occurs whenever he vaults over cover and right into the thick of the gunfire. Now before you call "gameplay mechanics" on this, it should be noted that in real life, it is possible for people to have their perception of time slowed when entering a high risk situation, as your brain is working overtime to process information at higher speeds than normal. It seems that Wei has found a Wei to channel this when in the middle of a tough gunfight. Or if you want a less science-y explanation Wei's essentially a John Woo character, and they move in slo-motion all the time :P

Defense- 

Note: Major Spoilers

Despite being a regular human, Wei can take one hell of a beating. This is made most apparent in the final two missions, where after being sold out to rival Triad boss Big Smile-Lee, Wei is captured by Lee's most notorious enforcer, Mr. Tong. Wei endures several hours of torture at the hands of Tong, including have his toes broken with a hammer, and having a drill bit put through his freaking kneecaps. He manages to escape, kills several dozen of Tong's men, and then fights a machete armed Tong  mano-a-mano, killing him with his own weapon (and this was all occurring right after his sustained injuries that would leave any other man hospitalized, if not dead).

Still not stopping to seek medical condition, because things like having all your toes broken and nearly being hacked to death by a maniac with a machete are only deterrents for mortal men, Wei tracked down Lee, killed several dozen more of his Triad thugs, walked off a point blank shotgun blast to the chest, chased down Lee's getaway boat on foot, survived said getaway boat exploding after it crashed into a pier, and then proceed to beat and finally kill Lee by throwing him into an ice chipper, despite barely being able to walk by the time all this was over. And yes I realize that was a massive run-on sentence, but I felt it would be a crime to break up how amazingly over the top Sleeping Dogs last two missions are into multiple sentences.

(The last two missions)

   

Additional Factors

Tactics: Wei is a pretty straightforward tactician. In a gunfight he at least has the common sense to take cover, although his vault shooting may not serve him quite as well in this fight as it would against common Triad street thugs, as his opponent can also bullet time. While Wei displays a decent amount of adaptability in a gunfight, targeting explosive objects for example, he seems to mostly rush into firefights without much forward thinking mainly relying on his natural skill with guns to get him out alive. That said, Wei's intelligence and adaptabilty elsewhere should not be underestimated. He graduated at the top of his class at Police Academy after all, and managed to accomplish some of impressive feats with quick thinking during his time infiltrating the Sun On Yee, including managing to get close enough to their chief drug distributor to gather evidence against him by posing as a harmless drunk, tracking down a surgeon turned serial killer, and slipping generally managing not to get caught gathering evidence against those he was infiltrating. He has also shown to be competent at stealth, slipping into a guarded Triad controlled restaurant, as well as the home of a prominent Sun On Yee boss.

Motivation: Wei is a very driven individual, known for violently pursuing vendettas when working undercover in San Francisco. His primary motivation for infiltrating the Triad being to get revenge on fellow Sun On Yee member Sam "Dog Eyes" Lin in particular, and the Sun On Yee in general for getting his sister hooked on drugs. Although his handlers were initially concerned that this would drive him to recklessly pursue his goals, it turned out it made him the near perfect undercover operative. Over time though Wei found himself growing closer to his "brothers" in the Triad. Wei slowly losing track of whose side he was on, leading him to suffer deeply from doubt and regret concerning the many violent activities he had to participate in as a member of the Sun On Yee. By the end of the game, Wei is a very conflicted person emotionally, and is not really sure what his motivations are. Despite this, you make him angry and he will come after you with a fury you will wish you had never unleashed.

Experience: Wei is a veteran cop, having served in undercover operations in  both San Francisco and later in Hong Kong. He has participated in numerous street brawls, illegal fight clubs, and shootouts against the worst scum rival Triad gangs could bring against him.

Weaknesses- Despite being a brilliant fighter, Wei is as mentioned above, very emotionally and psychologically unstable, suffering from doubts regarding his position as an undercover police officer. He secretly fears that he is morally no better than the criminals that he fights against, and his conflicting loyalties have worn away at him by the end of the game. In addition he can be extremely reckless at times, willing to relentlessly go after Big-Smile Lee no matter the consequences.

Now Wei must face his greatest challenge yet, as he goes up against a fellow psychologically damaged gunman in a battle for supremacy. When the bullets stop flying, and only one of these videogame anti-heroes is left standing, the question will be answered

WHO

IS

Deadliest?!!