Sleeping Dogs Unseen

First act

FPIntro is a placeholder mission that replaces the Welcome to Hong Kong and Going Under missions on the graph, although they were already being worked on and are simply disabled. Judging from its leftover staging layer FPIntro featured Wei riding around North Point in a taxi.

The missions Night Market Chase and Vendor Extortion were originally flipped in the mission structure. This must have persisted for a while because it comes up in unused dialogue.

The Popstar case is split into its own branch rather than being intervowen as a part of the main story. The Hotshot case seems to be missing entirely, as well as racing as a whole.

Stick Up And Delivery unlocked the Repo job which while similar to Tran's Deliveries in the final release still functioned somewhat differently. They might have even existed concurrently at some point, but ultimately Repo got the axe.

Debt Collection is linked to Vendor Extortion, potentially suggesting that the job's narrative purpose was originally something different.

the Minibus Racket mission unlocked the cut Bus Driver job. Vincent still refers to this in Listening In, asking "Minibus starting to make money for you?".

Loose Ends is in act 1, unlocked by a mission under the mystery abbreviation "JPC". There's nothing in the game files to indicate what this could have been. At this point in development Loose Ends most probably featured Ming instead of Naz as well since the two characters' roles were shuffled around in the final release.

One of the biggest changes in act 1 is RTNC, the Listening In precursor. Similarly to Listening In the mission had Wei spying on the Water Street Gang but featured the club as a location to bug in addition to the restaurant, and ended on Jade Gang's assault on the Golden Koi that triggers the events of Payback. RTNC still has a very fleshed out staging layer in the game's files that shows the mission made use of many scrapped game mechanics such as the social interactions system and crouching to stay hidden, which might have been the reason it ended up getting so radically scaled back in the final.

As mentioned, RTNC/Listening In originally led directly to Payback instead of having to play through Chain of Evidence first. Chain of Evidence is already present in this graph as well but linked to FPIntro instead.

The first act ends on Payback, just like in the final release.

Second act

The structure of the second act seems much less fleshed out than the first. The act still begins with the Uncle Po mission but the subsequent missions are very spread out and seem disjointed. Within the context of cut content and leftovers though it still reflects some actual story changes.

Compared to the final release, the act 2 missions Meet the New Boss and Final Kill are missing entirely. Compared to later versions of the mission structure before the final, it's also missing the act 2 iteration of Big Smile Lee and the Broken Nose Jiang mission that ended up getting entirely cut.

Missions involving Ricky and/or the Three Circles Entertainment - Fast Girls, Intensive Care and Important Visitor - are all placed earlier on in the graph than in the final, pushing the Wedding further down the arc. The movie industry subplot as well Ricky's role in the story were scaled down during development so the mission order might have been shuffled around because of that.

Bride To Be isn't unlocked by any previous mission but is still listed as a dependency for Important Visitor.

Important Visitor's placement before the Wedding is reflected in later (unfinalized) iterations of the mission structure, so its original place early on in act 2 was definitely intentional.

Intensive Care, the only mission on the graph that takes place in the third act in the final release, is for some reason dependent only on Uncle Po. Internally the mission is referred to by two names - Hospital Shootout and The Bosses Meet - so it might have been eventually combined with something else. No leftovers to explain its old placement remain so if it was initially placed there on purpose, the original narrative function of the mission is a mystery.

Initiation was seemingly intended to be played much earlier on - unlocked here after Fast Girls - while in the final release it only unlocks after Final Kill. The mission changed drastically during development and the game files still contain loads of leftovers from an older completely different iteration featuring Wei and Jackie going to the Aberdeen Market to gather ingredients for a "Virility Concoction". The mission ends at the temple like in the final, but Yung is not present at all. The placement in the graph might reflect this older probably more light hearted version of the mission.

In the final release Dockyard Heist serves as the closing mission for the second act. It's already present in the graph but has its dependencies disabled.

General notes

The graph is completely missing all transitive events like phone calls/text messages or Wei's nightmares. Only two of the Checking In cutscenes are included.

The Snitch is Caught cutscene is missing. This might be due to Ming originally (probably) surviving the events of the game, if only because he occupied Naz's role in Loose Ends at this point.

Some entries are repeated several times in the graph, namely M_JPC, PSJ4 and GNPS.

The grey "misc" entries are most probably specifically npcs, since in the final release after the Club Bam Bam mission Benny can be found in the club in freeroam.