Chapter 21
Chapter 21
“Yes. Nice to meet you. Please, sit.”
Ras confirmed that Garazt had taken the seat across from him, exchanged awkward greetings, and immediately began the interview.
First, he asked the thing he was most curious about. Garazt was still only a second-year university student, so what would he do about school if he got accepted?
“I plan to quit.”
“You do?”
Hearing that he intended to leave university and join the company made Ras feel strangely burdened. It was not that he looked down on his own company. It was probably because he had lived in Korea, where university degrees were considered practically essential.
“Uh... Is a diploma absolutely necessary to work here or something...?”
“No. Nothing like that. Understood.”
Even if it felt a little awkward, Ras himself did not even have a diploma, let alone any formal education at all, so he had no intention of demanding such things. In truth, the only qualification he cared about was coding skill.
“But you said you wanted to make games like Land of Adventure, right?”
“Yes. It’s impossible for now, but that’s my dream.”
Ras smiled pleasantly at the praise for his game, but because of that, there was something he needed to confirm.
“But what our games pursue is ‘fun.’ What will you do if we end up developing games completely different from Land of Adventure?”
Since the game had become such a huge hit, he did plan to make sequels, and the role-playing genre itself had enormous potential, so he had no intention of abandoning it. However, he also intended to experiment with many other genres, and it would become troublesome if an employee became negligent simply because the work did not suit their tastes.
In that case, no matter how talented they were, it would be better not to hire them at all. Fortunately, Garazt seemed to have already thought about that.
“Of course, it’s not my company, so I’m prepared to work on things different from what I want. And before I played Land of Adventure, I never even imagined games were my path. So no matter what kind of game it is, I intend not to jump to conclusions and to do my best to learn something from it.”
Hmm.
It was not a bad answer. He had no idea how things would be in practice, but for now, Ras leaned toward giving him a chance. Then they moved over to the computer so Ras could test his coding ability. Garazt stammered slightly from nervousness, but it was obvious he genuinely knew how to code.
Ras nodded.
“Good. Then when can you start coming to work?”
“Ah! I can start as early as tomorrow!”
Garazt became visibly enthusiastic at the joy of passing. It did not look particularly bad, but since he lived in another city and also needed time to sort out his university matters, Ras told him to start one week later.
He almost told him to take a leave of absence instead of dropping out entirely, but stopped himself. It was a personal matter, and creating an escape route might only make him quit and return once work became difficult. Coding was that kind of exhausting work.
During the week before Garazt arrived, Ras continued development alone. Part of him definitely wanted to dump work onto the newcomer and relax a little, but it was difficult to entrust core development tasks to someone who joined midway through the project.
Moreover, even if Garazt knew how to code, this would still be his first real workplace and his first genuine game development project, so it would probably take time before he could properly handle his share.
Because of that, Ras pushed himself even harder. The workload was not something that could realistically be finished in a week, but he still intended to complete as much as possible.
However, before beginning, there was one thing troubling him slightly.
The characters.
This game was fundamentally a sandbox game. Rather than moving according to a strictly predetermined objective, it let players freely play around in the provided world, so there was no forced story. Because of that, he had considered not giving the player any defined character at all, allowing them to imagine one themselves, or simply think of the character as themselves.
Just like the MMORPGs Ras used to enjoy in Korea, and like Land of Adventure, where only race and gender illustrations were provided.
However, memories of Uncharted Waters II from his childhood made him hesitate over that decision. That game inserted heavily adapted versions of historical figures, but it never felt restrictive. Instead, it conveyed the atmosphere of the historical era and the regional characteristics, which actually enhanced immersion.
Still, after poring over history books and thinking it through, Ras ultimately chose the first option instead of following the successful Uncharted Waters II model from his memories.
It was not because he wanted to be more original. That feeling was there to some extent, but the bigger reason was that Ras could not emotionally relate to this world’s history.
Objective information could be learned from books, but historical figures were layered with countless later interpretations from future generations. If he mishandled them even slightly, it could easily provoke backlash. Furthermore, the era serving as the game’s setting was relatively famous, which made it even more dangerous.
If Ras had truly been someone from this world, he might have been able to use that shared cultural understanding and create characters that avoided resistance, but he absolutely was not at that level.
So even the NPCs and the recruitable tavern companions were all made into fictional characters. Still, to preserve at least a bit of the era’s atmosphere, he based several names on historical figures. Even that felt somewhat risky, but since they were only vague inspirations, he figured it would be fine.
And since he was already using fictional characters anyway, he decided to fully exploit the advantage of coming from another world. He stuffed the game full of characters and setting stories drawn from Earth’s history and fiction.
Naturally, the first person any Korean would think of, Admiral Yi Sun-sin, was included as well.
Not directly, but as an adapted version. He created a national hero who had nearly died due to the ruler’s jealousy and barely escaped into hiding. Ras even added an event where, after destroying the fleet of a nearby pirate nation, the player could obtain the special ships Panokseon and Turtle Ships.
There was also an event involving a pirate named Drake. If the player used him to destroy a regular military fleet called the Invincible Armada, they would gain the favor of the island nation known as the Kingdom of Aranchi, form alliances with several ports, and receive letters of marque.
He also created a pirate called Red Beard, inspired by the Barbary Corsairs. If the player plundered more than ten merchant ships around the Arafe Peninsula, Red Beard would become recruitable at the port city of Sarga.
These characters and stories were cliché on Earth, but unimaginably fresh here. Thanks to that, Ras was able to enrich the game’s content without much difficulty.
After that, he began creating endings. Even though it was a sandbox game, having goals still motivated players, so he made events that granted illustrations and simple rewards without actually ending the game.
First, using the maritime king Beolbeok as inspiration, he created a Kingdom of the Sea event. If the player accumulated enough fame and turned every island in the archipelago that Beolbeok had historically used as his stronghold into allies, the event would trigger.
There was also an ending where achieving extremely high fame granted the title Ruler of the Seas, another ending for allying with a certain number of ports, one obtained after destroying over fifty fleets, another earned simply by amassing enormous wealth, and many more.
Naturally, multiple endings could also be unlocked simultaneously.
Garazt, who started work a week later, participated in this process as well. His coding ability was better than expected, and he was fairly intelligent, so he could at least handle adding events into the already completed framework.
He found the game itself very interesting, but because it was fairly complex, he withheld judgment for the time being.
Ah, this is comfortable.
Ras had not handed him any major responsibilities, but aside from graphics, Ras had been handling everything himself, so simply having another person take over even part of the workload felt wonderful. More than anything, he liked the feeling of sharing responsibility. Of course, as the company president, Ras was ultimately responsible for everything about the game, but emotionally, it still felt different.
After another month of work, the game was finally nearing completion.
It might have seemed like too much time spent polishing things after everything had already been created, but some of it was due to coordinating with the new hire and dealing with trial and error. Additionally, compared to Land of Adventure, this game was far more complex, which created significant problems with resource optimization and bugs that were not easy to solve.
And it still was not truly finished. They still had to play through the game, balance the difficulty, fix bugs, and correct awkward sections.
“You need to think from the player’s perspective, so enjoying it isn’t a bad thing, but don’t forget this is still work.”
“Yes! Bugs and weird parts, right?”
When Ras told him to play the game, Garazt seemed overly excited, so Ras lightly reminded him. Fortunately, he did not seem easily discouraged.
“Right. And this is only a prototype, so don’t be too disappointed if it isn’t fun. Difficulty balancing is a delicate thing.”
“Yes...”
Only then did Garazt seem to remember that this was not the finished product. Some of his excitement cooled, though his anticipation remained. Ever since learning what kind of game this was, he had been in a constant state of amazement.
From his perspective, unlike what Ras had said during the interview, this was something even closer to virtual reality. A world with no fixed story at all, where people could simply enjoy themselves however they wanted—it felt like the very type of game he himself had dreamed of making ever since discovering Land of Adventure.
Perhaps because of that, he quickly became immersed in the game, and every piece of content inside it was unbelievably fun and fascinating. It became hard to think of this as work at all.
Of course, that was only figuratively speaking. In fact, because he wanted to contribute to the game, he never forgot to stay focused while searching for problems.
The truth was, Garazt had never cared much about history, and ships were the same. If they were space battleships flying through the cosmos, that would be different, but sailing ships made from primitive wood and moved only by cloth sails catching the wind had always seemed like symbols of a backward age.
Yet after entering this game and personally commanding his own ship, that perception completely changed.
[You can determine wind direction through the movement of the clouds. Avoid headwinds when steering the ship.]
The moment he left the port and entered the open sea, the vast ocean spreading before him briefly overwhelmed him. Following the system tutorial event, he slowly maneuvered the ship while checking the wind direction.
He had to locate his destination using only rough directions and estimated distance. Since he was inexperienced with games like this, he became somewhat lost, and as food supplies rapidly dwindled while poor winds and currents slowed the voyage, warning messages began appearing.
[Food supplies are running out. If food disappears completely, the sailors will begin starving to death. If the crew falls below the minimum operating requirement, the ship will no longer be movable, so resupply food at a port before that happens.]
Then where the hell is that port?!
The situation made him extremely anxious and frustrated. Desperately, he manipulated the ship while searching the coastline. Then, just as the food finally ran out and the sailors’ morale began plummeting, he spotted a port at the edge of the screen.
A port!
It had been dangerously close, but somehow he managed to reach the harbor and let out a deep sigh of relief.
At the same time, Garazt truly realized that this sailing ship was both a fortress protecting him upon the sea and the source of the limited freedom he possessed upon it.
The ocean, far more hostile than he expected, reminded him of the vast and overwhelming universe he had once loved.