Single Player Only

Chapter 6: The Proper Gestures when talking with an NPC.

The moment he walked out of the door, once again, Yue Qiang found himself shocked by the level of photorealism in this game.

Yue Qiang felt as if he was under an illusion. It was as if he had actually been transported into the world of Ancient China.

As a hardcore single player gamer, besides loving the hell out of gaming itself, Yue Qiang was also deeply interested in the physics engines, graphic details, game balances, random algorithms, etc in the games he played. This was because these elements also showed the developers' level of dedication. In other words, if a game's details were extremely refined as a whole, then how bad could the game possibly be?

Tilting his perspective upwards, he could see an endless expanse of a blue sky along with waves of white clouds. Returning to the normal view, he could see the trees and grass swaying with the wind. A few NPCs were busy with their work in the village. For example, the farmer NPC was threshing the wheat; the NPC who stored ice was busy checking his account book; and the blacksmith on the other side of the house was still striking iron with great concentration. He did not know how to describe the entire scene. If he had to use professional terminology, then he could say very confidently that within visible range, he could not find a trace of any 'textures' at all.

A game where you could not even find a single trace of 'game textures' was shocking and strange because it meant an unbelievable large amount of processing power and game storage volume.

Yue Qiang could remember clearly that in the ancient first person shooter game CS, when a character died, there would be a scene of the character swiveling on its feet and falling. He could still remember that when the character dies sometimes he could even see the pixels on the ceiling textures.

Except that now, he could not even see a trace of the game's 'textures', much less the pixels. He even controlled his character to purposefully crouch with the button 'X' and carefully examined the floor, but, he had to admit that even at this short range the ground's soil effect was incredibly realistic. He could even see an ant hill not too far away; there were even ants moving the body of dead insects on the side. This... Are these kind of effects even possible to make with just textures?

Suppressing the shock in his heart, Yue Qiang began to weave his game plan. It was obvious now that this game in many ways had exceeded the specs of current available technology. However, in the end, this was just a game and judging from the current situation, it was impossible that this could be an online game.

There was a 90 percent chance that this was a single player game, and if it was, then there would be patterns that he could follow.

The game was made with an antique style, so it meant that this was a domestic single player game, and a domestic single player game would definitely not exclude this key fact – plot progression through interaction with NPCs.

The fact that domestic single player games heavily revolved around plot was practically a public axiom. Although there were countless things about this game that were outright bizarre, the fundamental direction of the game should remain unchanged.

Yue Qiang continued to ponder but his eyes were darting about and processing the environment around him. As he glanced again towards the blacksmith opposite the house, he thought to himself, Alright, you will be the one. Let's try talking to him and see if I can get any interesting information.

Tapping away at the arrow keys, he moved his character towards the blacksmith's side. As their distance closed he had a deep sense of exactly how brawny the man was. His arms were both taut and powerful; about the size of his own character's thighs. The bronze color of his skin gave off a strong and healthy feel.