Chapter 160
Chapter 160
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 160
Chapter Title: Release – Hellic 4 (3)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Thirty minutes had passed, and Su-jin was still trapped in the viciousness Yeon-ho had designed.
She was already on her seventh try.
By now, Su-jin was starting to get a feel for the solution to this pattern.
That’s right.
Either clear Phase 1 easily with an execution, or endure Phase 1 and then breeze through the curse-inducing patterns of Phase 2.
Players were beginning to instinctively grasp what Yeon-ho had intended from the start.
Su-jin chose to quickly overcome the limited-strike-zone pattern of Phase 1.
The combination of a 3D game with the Soulslike genre inevitably raised the difficulty of targeting specific body parts.
Moreover, given Su-jin’s playstyle, it was far more efficient to strike anywhere without restrictions, making her choice even clearer.
“Hoo…”
Phase 2 was manageable.
While it was twice as difficult as other bosses, it wasn't impossible. She just needed to heighten her focus, dodge, and attack.
So, Phase 1.
*Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!*
A six-shot, full-stack execution.
The scene was more harrowing than any other execution.
Despite being in the middle of a boss fight, the moment evoked a completely different set of emotions.
Given the protagonist's silent nature, *Hellic 4* primarily conveyed emotion through his facial expressions.
Frowns, contortions, or a vacant, unfocused gaze.
The process of executing Olson Rick was done with a ‘blank expression.’
This cold, emotionless face, so dry it seemed frozen, combined with the narrative direction built up in the later chapters to clearly show just how emotionally worn down the man had become.
His movements were restrained.
With martial arts straight out of a movie, he shot the knee, waist, shoulder, neck, under the chin, and between the eyes, in that order. The movements, skillfully avoiding the wife, were faster-paced than previous executions, creating a sense of seamless action.
A little deeper thought would reveal it was the result of ‘repeated practice.’
And so, the end of Phase 1.
After shaving off half the boss's health with the six-shot execution, she finished the rest with defensive play.
‘Phew…’
Su-jin wiped her sweaty palms on Seok-hoon's shoulder as she prepared for Phase 2.
—*Kiaaaak!!!*
*Crack!*
The struggling Olson Rick grabbed his wife, Anna, by the hair and tore her from his body.
His display of rage was detestable.
Based on average playtime, players had spent the last seven hours of the game building up animosity toward Olson Rick, so their negative feelings were bound to reach a breaking point.
Was that all?
Seo-rim, who had pushed the art team to their limits right up to release, had brilliantly added emotional depth to the scene of Anna being torn away.
Where Anna had been detached from Olson Rick's body, a row of shark-like teeth had sprouted, showing that he hadn't been willing to let her go.
Furthermore, a scene was inserted where Olson Rick threw Anna against a wall, her body slumping down, and the protagonist stared at her lifeless form with empty eyes, once again revealing his state of mind.
A battle is a part of the game where immersion is heightened by the narrative, causality, and sense of inevitability leading up to it.
All the elements befitting a final chapter were in place, and as a result, the player could fight with deep emotional immersion.
“Honey! Wreck him!”
With the cry from Seok-hoon (the cheerleader), Phase 2 began.
Su-jin’s mind raced.
‘So…’
There were three key patterns in Phase 2.
First, the grab pattern, where Olson Rick pounced on the man and chewed him up with the shark teeth on his body. The way to avoid it was a triple dodge timed to the rhythm.
Second, the roar pattern. In the close-combat-focused *Hellic 4*, this was the first mid-to-long-range pattern to appear since the Three-legged Octopus. When activated, the black mouths on his body would tear open, spewing red sonic waves in all directions.
Of course, there was a way to counter it: exploit the time lag before each sonic wave was fired.
Finally, the instant-death pattern, ‘Abandoned Child of the Void.’
The entire screen would turn black, and umbilical cords would writhe like snakes from the floor.
Approaching and destroying the three most actively moving cords would end the pattern, and Olson Rick would take damage equal to 30% of his total health.
Of course, being an instant-death pattern, failure meant death.
About five more tries were added to the count.
Su-jin somehow managed to execute all three patterns successfully.
Of course, there were other off-beat minor attack patterns, but with Su-jin's skills, they weren't a major obstacle.
Her innate sense of rhythm, motion detection, and reaction speed.
‘Teeth!’
Dodged the grab.
‘Sonic wave!’
Dodge left and forward, then dodge right and back. For the final three consecutive waves, she dodged toward the incoming wave to get invincibility frames and close the distance.
After dodging the sonic wave pattern,
“Umbilical cords!!!”
Olson Rick’s health was at about 25%. If she succeeded, he would die.
And, Su-jin quickly spun the camera and succeeded in destroying all the umbilical cords.
*Thud!*
And just like that, Olson Rick collapsed.
The message [Kill evil] appeared prominently on the screen.
Seok-hoon, looking even more excited than she was, jumped up and down before pulling Su-jin into a hug.
“You did it!!!”
How he had walked on eggshells every time she died and let out a string of curses she never used in her life!
It wasn't just that Su-jin had cleared the game; the terrifying moments of having to be so cautious were finally over, doubling Seok-hoon’s joy!
Su-jin giggled and patted Seok-hoon's back.
The couple’s gazes were soon fixed on the screen again.
“I think it’s starting.”
“Yeah.”
It was time for the ending.
***
As for the ending cinematic, Yeon-ho hadn't changed much.
The scene he had witnessed in the real Hell, with its profound emotion, already possessed a completeness that needed no further explanation.
In the cinematic, the man caught his breath and looked down at Olson Rick’s corpse.
As expected, there was no emotion in his eyes.
He had already grown numb, and he realized this act held no meaning.
Despair soon led to his conclusion.
Su-jin and Seok-hoon watched as the man, after staring down at Olson Rick for a long time, slowly walked over to Anna, who was slumped in a corner.
Then, they saw him place the revolver in Anna's hand and turn the barrel toward himself.
“Ah…!”
The shock that struck them like a thunderbolt was intentional, planned from the development stage.
It was a consequence of focusing the entire narrative of *Hellic 4* solely on the man’s emotions.
‘Suicide!’
Seok-hoon realized the path the man had walked was one meant to turn him into a mindless monster, just like any other killer in Hell.
There had been many clues.
First, the ‘Ant Tunnel,’ the game’s hub, where an NPC explained the mechanics of the Hell of Slaughter.
Second, the happy pasts of the man seen through the Forbidden Mementos obtained from the various bosses he defeated on his way to Olson Rick.
Third, the stark contrast between that past and the man’s present situation, his emotions, and the emptiness he showed after killing his enemy.
With just the direction and a few clues, the narrative formed a perfectly straight line.
It also made the man’s objective understandable through his situation and expressions alone.
Amidst this, Seok-hoon casually recalled something.
‘The developer interview!’
There was an interview with a modeler from the art team.
“We spent a ton of resources on facial expressions, you know? No, it was because Yeon-ho gave us this insane… I mean, this difficult order to convey the character's personality just through expressions, without any words! Right! A difficult order! It took us almost two months just to implement the facial expressions…”
The art team had supposedly referenced the powerful performances of actors known for their ‘masterful acting’ in numerous classic films to create the man’s expressions.
‘Definitely…’
It was good enough to warrant such a comment.
If he had seen this scene in a movie, he would have thought it was the desperate end of a real person somewhere, not an actor’s performance.
Anyway, regardless of such thoughts, the cinematic continued.
The man, driven mad by guilt, aiming the gun at his own chin, was shown on screen.
It was then.
*Shwaaaa—*
Golden particles of light began to drift.
The screen still only showed the man’s point of view.
The man’s expression changed as a shimmer of light started to fill the screen from the edges.
His gaze turned to Anna’s body.
“—…Ah.”
His first line in the main story, not in a flashback.
It was a dry, hoarse, and weary voice.
“—Aah….”
A sigh scattered with his breath.
Anna’s body, too, was dissolving into particles of light.
The camera zoomed out, capturing more of the space.
The golden light, shining alone in the gruesome, dark space and embracing the man, vaguely took the form of a woman.
As if to comfort him.
“—Anna….”
As the man spoke, the woman-shaped shimmer of light moved away from him and became a golden door.
The man’s expression changed once more.
Seok-hoon and Su-jin could also tell.
That this was his wife’s hand of forgiveness, extended on behalf of a man who could not forgive himself.
A light appeared in the man’s perpetually empty eyes.
He cried and smiled with a hideously contorted face.
The shimmer of light flowed past, brushing against his falling tears.
The completed golden door.
This was something Su-jin didn't know, but Seok-hoon did.
‘Salvation!’
In the *Hellic* series, the golden door was a form of salvation that existed in Hell.
It was created through someone’s sacrifice and, according to some lore-loving players, was a ‘testament to humanity’s love for one another.’
The man took a long breath and muttered.
“—You’re an impossible woman, right to the very end.”
Now, all that was left was to walk through that door.
But, their expectation was wrong.
*Click—*
The man once again aimed the gun at himself.
Not with the despair of before, but with a look of relief.
With the blissful smile of someone who has been saved.
In the blink of an eye, it happened.
*Baaang—!*
The man shot himself.
No blood splattered.
Instead, starting from the gunshot wound, the man shattered like glass and became a shimmer of golden light that enveloped the door.
The faint BGM faded, replaced by a profound silence.
The door, created by the merging of their two lights, shone a little more brilliantly, more elegantly.
Fade to black. The screen grew darker until everything was engulfed in black.
Only the golden door continued to shine.
Then, with a frontal view of the golden door,
[GAME CLEAR]
The end of the game was announced.
The ending credits began to roll.
Su-jin stared blankly at the golden door behind the credits.
A thought occurred to her.
‘So this is what games are like?’
How should she describe it? It truly felt like she had traveled to another world.
So much so that the moment of returning to reality felt alien.
In that moment, Su-jin felt a sense of exhaustion.
A myriad of emotions washed over her.
The first game she had ever tried in her life, one she started not out of interest, but out of frustration.
But the exhilaration she felt upon finishing it, the sense of accomplishment, was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
‘It’s fun.’
That was her simple conclusion.
A thrilling shiver ran down her spine, releasing the tension in her body.
Su-jin sank back into the sofa.
A languid smile played on her lips.
Seok-hoon asked with a beaming face.
“Games are fun, right?”
Su-jin blinked and looked at Seok-hoon.
He might be a handful of a husband, but when he smiled so purely like this, he was truly lovable.
That must be why she couldn't hate him.
Anyway, to answer his question.
“Yeah, it’s fun.”
Su-jin realized there were still many fun things in the world that she didn't know about.
So she asked.
“Are there more like this?”
The couple had gained another hobby they could share.
But there was a sad truth in the process.
“There are, but…”
There was only one controller in the house.
Seok-hoon was sad.
***
To rewind the story a bit.
Before *Hellic 4*'s release, the critic score aggregator known as Metacritic had given the game a score of 96.
The game's direction, mechanics, and optimization contributed to that score, and the excellent story elevated the evaluation even further.
However, users no longer relied on Metacritic.
They had already realized the emptiness of such scores through various experiences.
They had to play it and judge for themselves.
The proof was in the pudding.
That was the general mood among the players.
And so, four days after *Hellic 4* was released.
『ManWhoLostHellic4: OpenCritic 90, for real? lololol』
Studio Rewind had succeeded, proving its worth with a record-breaking score.
And one more thing.
『BloodLordOfBangbae: Looks like James Han found a multiple ending route?』
The multiple endings of *Hellic 4* were beginning to be revealed.