Chapter 133
Chapter 133
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 133
Chapter Title: The Pit (1)
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It was the day the wicked schemes of the heretical faction, who sought to unify the central plains, crumbled before the Imperial Palace's wrath.
Spectators roared at the earth-shattering power displayed by the two villains, while the combatants themselves shed tears of blood as they conceded defeat.
“Jelen Copson wins!”
“Damn it all!!!”
“Hey, sorry about that.”
It was a moment of mixed emotions.
[―Shouldn't these guys just go pro?
―LMAO, is Jelen insane? He saw an angle for a counter when his nose could've been broken.
―Wow, that was so close. If Nishimura had been a little calmer at the end, he would've won.]
The live sparring stream had 41,000 viewers.
No one could have imagined that a sparring match starting at 2 PM on a weekday would draw such a massive response.
One could say it was proof of how many people were slacking off at work in this country… but few would pay that any mind.
The important thing was that the special sparring event between game developers had drawn a much larger audience than Rewind had anticipated.
“That’s the end of the match.”
Watching a fight is always entertaining, and betting on one is even better.
The fierce battle between employees fighting over incentives drew a massive response, and it had a significant effect.
[―So who are those guys anyway?]
It was about name recognition.
To those with little interest in games, or those who only knew of Cheon Yeon-ho from Rewind, these two were complete strangers.
Many people had tuned into today's stream out of curiosity, drawn in by the title ‘Sparring for Incentives’ and its tens of thousands of viewers.
To such people, the names of these two were firmly imprinted.
Perhaps, as names even more shocking than Yeon-ho's.
* * *
Global sales in the first month of release: 3.3 million copies.
Demon's Relic had successfully established itself.
In truth, it wasn't a dramatic number compared to its impact.
It couldn't be helped.
“The customer pool is limited, after all.”
Subculture games are, by nature, a genre that forgoes mainstream gamers.
So the number of potential customers was bound to be smaller.
The point to focus on was that ‘despite that,’ it still sold 3.3 million copies.
It was a number that could be said to have definitively captured the entire player base of subculture games.
Of course, it didn't pull in every single user.
The power of groundwork, perhaps.
The existing user base that enjoys subculture games, combined with the potential customers created through the IP business, resulted in those sales figures.
Anyway, that's how it wrapped up.
Now, it was time to look ahead.
“Good work, everyone. Team 2 will take a break for a while.”
Demon's Relic 2 was practically a confirmed project.
But as with any group, after a major success, a cooling-off period is necessary.
I would give Team 2 a break and only ask for minimal support from them.
Outsiders might call Rewind a sweatshop or whatever, but I'm the kind of person who takes care of these things.
‘It's always easy to criticize.’
Explaining yourself is always the hard part.
I won't be discouraged.
I'll just prove through my actions that I'm the president of a company that treats its employees right.
“Have a team dinner on the company card today. I'll approve paid leave, so starting tomorrow, everyone except for a skeleton crew can take a two-week break.”
“M-Mr. President…!”
“The staff will be thrilled!”
“It's nothing.”
It's only natural for a president to do so.
‘Ah.’
Come to think of it, I forgot to mention this.
“You can take your time preparing for the next project. In the meantime, any available staff should come over to provide additional support for Team 1's work. Hellic 4 is proving to be more resource-intensive than I thought.”
“Eh?”
“Now, off you go.”
Seeing the staff so pleased made me happy too.
A clean wrap-up. I sent the Team 2 directors on their way and sat down.
‘Now…’
It's time to review my own progress.
* * *
In game development, half a year was enough time to accomplish a great deal.
Of course, that's assuming the project doesn't get canned midway or bogged down by other external factors.
Under those conditions, Hellic 4 was a ship sailing smoothly without hitting any major waves.
Having established a solid concept from the planning stage and sequentially accomplished game rule setting > control and combat implementation > level design and modeling implementation, it was no exaggeration to say this was the smoothest project yet.
It was a clear sign that Rewind's overall development capabilities had noticeably improved.
The routine of long development cycles followed by rest periods had become ingrained in the staff.
This was the result, you could say.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
On the screen, a game with rough, unrefined textures was running smoothly.
I was checking the protagonist's execution mechanic.
It was a motion completed through the fighting spirit of our own Kim Bae-seok (the one with the herniated disc), despite his injury.
“Nice.”
“Right? It fits this map's concept well, don't you think?”
Han Seo-rim, who had been filled with a baseless confidence lately, said with a smile.
The results, at least, were worth acknowledging.
The boss of Chapter 4 is a Fishman.
Not a real fishman, but the final form of a man who had lost his sanity after staying in the Hell of Slaughter for too long, a man who kept wandering to the outskirts of town until he lost his ego and became a monster.
It was five meters tall.
A monster characterized by its six-legged crawling posture, the barnacles and scales sprouting from its skin, and the fin growing along its spine. The three-shot execution was a motion where one shot was fired into the fishman's eye, followed by a running tumble and a shot into the base of its fin, and finally, one last shot hammered into its brainstem.
It was Mr. Kim Bae-seok's idea.
―Fish usually swim by moving their spine and the muscles around it in a linear fashion, right? So to hit a weak spot, you have to aim for the center of its physical movement!
The most important thing in an execution is the angle.
And Han Seo-rim had captured that angle perfectly.
Zooming in on the approaching back, zooming out during the high jump, then focusing on the man's line of sight, followed by the fountain of blood from the bullet lodged in the fin and the splatter of red and white fluid as the brainstem was destroyed—the direction was flawless.
Was that all?
“I didn't expect you to use this method here.”
“Ah, the optical illusion? It's a seaside cave. I figured there'd be barnacles and puddles, and it suddenly struck me as a good idea.”
There were several devices that properly showed off the characteristics of the seaside cave map.
Things like the barnacles on the walls or the puddles glowing with a faint blue-green light. As the camera angle changed during the execution motion, they would blend with the splattering blood to create a unique image.
The reflected blue-green light from the water, the red of the blood, and the grayish-white of the barnacles all mixed with the flying chunks of flesh. It was as if it were depicting a school of fish dying in the sea, rendered in black and white monotone.
The return for a successful hit… it was a device that maximized the feeling of pleasure.
After all, wasn't the execution the core element that made this game feel 'light' rather than a soulslike?
If the visual pleasure from the execution could be magnified like this, then in that moment, the game's genre would feel like a slasher.
This is good enough.
“Chapter 4 is good enough. Let's move on to the map texturing.”
The implemented game's map textures were still incomplete, giving it a rather jarring, old-fashioned graphical feel.
If we could just take care of that, this optical illusion would be even more impressive.
I reviewed the overall chapter plan.
Chapter 4, the map is a seaside fishing village.
The clues the man collects here were mostly mysteries akin to maritime ghost stories.
For example, things like scales embedded in human corpses or nets woven from intestines.
These were devices that revealed the murder methods, the signatures, that the Chapter 4 boss, the fishman, had committed in his past life and continued here.
‘The boss's fatal flaw is…’
Fire.
I hadn't seen the scene myself.
All the information I knew from the Hell of Slaughter came from the profiling the man had compiled.
[Record #3, does not go near fire. Murder route is on the outskirts of the village where the water rises at high tide.]
This fatal flaw would be designed into the game in the form of preparing a special tool.
The development direction had already been communicated.
‘I'll leave the details to Mr. Ho-su and the art team…’
Just as I was about to organize the plan for the next chapter.
“Mr. Yeon-ho! Mr. Yeon-ho!”
I heard the desperate voice of Mr. Kim Bae-seok.
Lifting my head, I saw Yang Gil-sang holding Mr. Kim Bae-seok back, trying to stop him.
I tilted my head in confusion.
“What's wrong?”
When I asked, Mr. Kim Bae-seok spoke with a look of despair on his face for some reason.
“I was told to sit out the next motion capture session! What is the meaning of this!!!”
So it was about that.
“...You need to manage your disc problem, don't you?”
“I'm fine! No, even if I'm not, please let me do the next one!”
Thud!
Mr. Kim Bae-seok fell to his knees.
A hint of madness could be seen in his bloodshot eyes.
I couldn't for the life of me understand why he was going this far.
“Why on earth…”
But the answer, as always, took a simpler form than I'd imagined.
“The next boss is the Werewolf Jedi! How can I possibly sit this one out!!!”
Thump, my body froze.
Overwhelmed by the furious aura of Mr. Kim Bae-seok, I could only move my lips silently as he grabbed my hand.
“It's only right that I do the next one, isn't it?”
His voice was suppressed, like the cry of a beast.
His back brace blurred my vision.
But I just couldn't bring myself to refuse.
Because I had seen just how obsessed he was with the Werewolf Jedi (tentative name).
―Mr. Yeon-ho, about the Werewolf Jedi.
―Mr. Yeon-ho, wouldn't it be cool if the claw beam sabers left afterimages? You know, an all-weather weapon that inflicts deep internal injuries even if you're just grazed by the afterimage…!
―Mr. Yeon-ho! The Werewol—
―Claw beam sabers…!
A thought crossed my mind.
‘What on earth is a Werewolf Jedi?’
What could it be to get Mr. Kim Bae-seok this excited?
I had no way of knowing.
But it was painfully clear that this was a name that resonated deep in the heart of the super-passionate Mr. Kim Bae-seok, so in the end, my answer was yes.
“...But I'm going to have more stuntmen and paramedics on site than usual. Absolutely no overdoing it.”
“Aah! Of course!”
A smile blossomed on Mr. Kim Bae-seok's face.
Through the now-relieved Mr. Kim Bae-seok, I was able to understand the full story.
“Whew! What a relief. I bragged so much to my son that I was doing this. It would've been so embarrassing if I couldn't!”
…Right. It seems the culprit was the burden of being the head of the household.
* * *
While the detailed work on Chapter 4 was in full swing, it was time to flesh out the plan for Chapter 5.
This chapter was particularly more important than the others.
‘It's a turning point in the story.’
Until now, Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 had simply showcased the protagonist's profiling ability, his combat prowess, and the memories gained through the fatal flaws he obtained as rewards.
Players who made it that far would have nothing more than questions about why this man fell into hell and who the woman was.
This was the chapter that would give those questions concrete form.
‘The map…’
I would have to give more specific instructions than ever before to clearly reveal what I had seen.
I was organizing these thoughts one by one.
Ding!
An email arrived.
I checked it, and sure enough, it was from a name I'd been wondering why I hadn't heard from.
[Ayado Goro]
The first winter since development began was approaching.
Which meant,
‘It's time for a production announcement.’
It was new title announcement season.