Chapter 137
Chapter 137
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 137
Chapter Title: Weapon Design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
It began with the sound of a cello.
The deep tones of the string instrument created an eerie atmosphere, and in that moment, the screen changed.
[Aaaahhh!!!]
In the heart of a city lined with buildings of every conceivable style, their eras blurred together, a murder had occurred. A man watching from a rain-slicked alley was illuminated.
He was the protagonist of Hellic 4.
The background music grew heavier.
The camera closed in on his face.
The magnified view filled with the man's iris, until his black pupil engulfed the screen.
Just then,
[I'm engraving myself onto you.]
A woman's voice spoke as the music momentarily turned serene, and a series of scenes flashed by like a flashback.
They were moments of the man and woman meeting and falling in love.
After they all passed, the scene returned to the present.
The man began to walk.
The music was an orchestral piece that heightened the sense of crisis.
The rapidly changing scenes showed the boss monsters from the early chapters. As they turned to black and white, the sound of scribbling accompanied fragmented profiling data displayed on the screen.
A series of grand and grotesque scenes.
After they passed, the final ten seconds of the video began.
*Click, clack.*
The sound of a bullet being loaded could be heard.
A monstrosity with the body of a praying mantis made of bone and the head of a human flew toward the protagonist.
The protagonist aimed his revolver at the mantis.
*Bang—!*
With the sound, the screen went dark, and the title appeared.
[Hellic 4 : The man is]
And so the cinematic ended.
The video, exactly 3 minutes and 41 seconds long, was a grand compilation of scenes without any additional explanation or information.
Naturally, one couldn't understand the game through this alone.
But, despite that, the users were ecstatic.
『WaitingForHellic4: Holy fucking shit lololol. What is up with that boss and map design? It’s insane lololol』
『BloodlordOfBangbae: It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming!!!! That thing is coming!!!』
『PoppyLetsGoForAWalk: Is the protagonist a detective?
Seeing the revolver and the part at the end where he's writing in a notebook about the enemy, he seems to be a detective.
Feels like a revenge story about catching a killer in hell, right?
Since there was that sweet scene with some woman, like a flashback.
Maybe the story is about him willingly going to hell to find the culprit who killed her?
OneStepKing: Even game characters are dating now.
└ FailedTheExam: You have a girlfriend in a game lol
└ FutureIsntBright: lol birds of a feather flock together
Mister45: He went to hell because he got married. He's recalling a moment of regret, not a fond memory.
└ JaeheeWantsToQuit: Mister, you broke character.』
That's how the game industry is.
Few people expected a cinematic to reveal in-game information or mechanics in the first place.
The very purpose of a cinematic is to promote the game.
In other words, since it’s all about presentation, what users want and what's important to them is ‘how much this game piques their interest.’
From that perspective, the cinematic for Hellic 4 performed its role brilliantly.
To put it another way, the concept was tantalizing.
What had always come to mind when people thought of Rewind?
A narrative where all in-game settings and system elements were meticulously interwoven into one grand storyline.
That was evident right from the cinematic.
Even without any explanation, users could tell this was a ‘hell for murderers.’
The revolver and the note-taking showed that the protagonist was a detective who had lost someone he loved, and by extension, that the enemies were murderers who had fallen into hell.
The bizarre map design with blurred eras, the visuals of the bosses, the protagonist's strong characterization, and the intuitive structure that hinted at romance and revenge.
Just from the cinematic, it was clear that this was ‘a game worthy of Rewind.’
At times like these, certain names were always brought up.
『WaitingForHellic4: I feel this every time, but Rewind's art is seriously amazing.
I wonder how much they grind their employees.
A friend in the industry said it's a quality you can't achieve without crunch…
Anon: They don’t.
└ BloodlordOfBangbae: You an employee?
└ Anon: ur mom
OneStepKing: Isn't the sound awesome too? Heard the composer is younger than me.
└ FutureIsntBright: So what have you been doing all this time?
└ OneStepKing: ...』
At the cinematic level, the only things one could judge were the art and sound.
And Rewind's art and sound had never once disappointed its users.
The general consensus: whatever it was, something worthy of Rewind was coming.
Then one day, as posts analyzing the cinematic frame-by-frame were popping up, Rewind released a single piece of information.
[This title is a Soulslite.]
It was news that would send their hype into overdrive.
* * *
There’s a thing called blind marketing.
It’s a marketing strategy that piques the interest of the customer base with limited elements by concealing information… but going into detail would be a long-winded explanation, so to put it simply, that was the marketing concept for Hellic 4.
The idea was to pack intriguing elements into limited information to increase mentions of the game and generate word-of-mouth buzz.
Of course, there were a few prerequisites.
First, people had to be looking for the video. Blind marketing or not, if no one even knew what the video meant, no one would be interested.
The second prerequisite was an extension of that.
Blind marketing through a cinematic ultimately relies on someone watching the video, analyzing it, and explaining it in gaming terms to build anticipation.
In other words, the existence of a core user base for the IP is crucial.
Rewind now solved those issues with its sheer weight class.
Through the reputation and user base the Hellic series had built up, the title ‘Hellic 4’ itself was made to have an impact.
And this was the result.
“There are quite a few articles in the webzines.”
Articles related to the cinematic were published in various domestic and international gaming magazines.
It was a good sign.
It meant that even after bringing back an IP that had been dormant for so long, there were still this many people looking forward to it.
What was surprising, though, was that the domestic media viewed this cinematic very favorably.
It was probably the effect of Neosoft's CEO, Park Yeong-jun, consistently running his media plays since Identity's GOTY win.
It wasn't dramatic.
The media had simply become a little more friendly toward games than in the future I knew.
That alone was having a sufficient effect, so either way, it was a good thing for me.
With everything flowing in a positive direction, all I had to focus on was completing the game to meet expectations.
We were about a third of the way through the chapters. The art team was hard at work on map and monster design, and the programming team, as always, was burning the midnight oil on the architecture.
And the planning team, long-awaited, was currently pouring their efforts into none other than ‘weapons.’
Not the revolver for executions, but weapons for general use.
“Let’s just remove the jackknife. There are too many alternatives for a blade build. More importantly, it doesn't fit the detective identity.”
“Are we going to limit weapon types to one-handed? I think it would be good to have two-handed weapons as well. For advanced players. What if we give them a penalty, like reduced execution damage, in exchange for more damage and impact?”
The gist of Hellic 4 was to deconstruct the difficulty of a Soulslike with the mechanics of execution and profiling.
As such, various balancing adjustments related to executions were necessary.
The weapons had to allow for free variation without compromising the identity of the execution skill.
Returning to the basics, the weapon routes were divided into blades, bludgeons, and knuckles.
We did include mechanical melee armaments as an extra route, but since those were closer to novelty weapons, they had their own separate gimmicks and balance.
The meeting was bound to be long.
Because opinions within the planning team were divided.
“No matter how ‘lite’ we aim for, the essence is still Soulslike. We can't ignore the catharsis that comes from control.”
“But we can’t pursue that to the extreme. Aren’t we making a ‘lite’ game? All weapons besides the execution revolver are melee. The moment a certain level of control becomes necessary, the difficulty will skyrocket beyond what a casual user can handle.”
“We can balance that with the boss’s health! We have profiling, after all.”
Developers are, in the end, users too.
As users, the planning team members were divided into Soulslike purists and casual-ists, constantly arguing about balancing.
In truth, a compromise was quite close.
“Let’s go with a weapon enhancement system. It doesn't compromise the Soulslike identity, and in terms of level design, it’s a pretty plausible reward to find at a dead end.”
We could roughly set the max enhancement level to 5 and then balance it through QA later.
Given the combat nature of the Hellic series, where weapons need to be evolved, an enhancement system wasn't strictly necessary, but it could make the game feel lighter in terms of difficulty.
The situation was more or less settled.
And at this point, I brought up a topic whose concept needed to be solidified.
“Let's move on to the extra builds.”
This was a system we were trying for the first time in Hellic 4.
A build that involved creating ‘boss weapons’ from materials farmed from boss monsters.
These were semi-novelty weapons, not tied to any specific build progression and focused purely on special playstyles.
“First up is Rick Artmann. The concept is based on blood-related effects…”
The gimmicks for the extra builds had to be fun.
That’s because these weapons were made for users who had completely mastered the game's systems.
Efficiency in terms of performance was not a consideration.
They could be inefficient.
They could also have effects so absurd that they made you go, ‘What is this!’
I had given them these conditions and asked them to come up with ideas a week ago.
And today was the moment of truth.
For me, it was an experience that reminded me of a forgotten fact.
‘…Right, that’s how it was.’
Every developer was a user.
They were people who became developers to implement the ‘fun gimmicks’ they wanted as users.
They basically bet their lives on game development.
In other words, the species known as game planners included quite a few twisted individuals.
“How about a weapon that shoots out a tongue like a frog? Not a real tongue, of course, but one made of blood. We could concept it as a mid-range weapon and add a life-steal effect on hit…”
“Isn’t Rick Artmann in the form of a praying mantis? So I was thinking of something that grows hind legs…”
“A sword made of blood in the crotch…”
“Wings. A double jump with insect wings…”
A few unbelievable opinions were rejected, and a poll was opened within the planning team.
And so, the first extra weapon was decided.
For Chapter 1, the weapon made from the Vampire Priest's serum would be Mr. Kang Ho-su's idea: the ‘Red Tongue.’
It was a weapon like a mosquito's proboscis that, when equipped, made the user's lips turn bright red and thick.
Before the next weapon concept meeting, I spoke to Ji-seok.
“Ji-seok, still, the crotch sword is a bit…”
“...Isn't it fun?”
*Does he really think so?*
“No, it is not fun.”
Ji-seok was a chief-level planner who had joined along with Ho-su after the planning team was founded.
I had known him for so long, yet for a moment, I felt a sense of fear.