Chapter 117
The process of creating a virtual-reality game is complicated.
Ever since full-dive capsules appeared, it has been impossible even to make a similar copy without pouring in vast amounts of capital.
In particular, what raised the barriers to entry for game companies was none other than the existence of ‘royalties.’
‘Open-World Royalties’ and ‘ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) Royalties’ required such enormous investments that, unless management was certain of a game’s commercial viability before its release, shareholders would not even let them touch those royalties recklessly.
The open-world developer transfers singularities observed in the real world to a database center, then repeatedly expands and recreates the space.
It then generates an open world that reflects the same physical laws, assigns each world a seed, and sells it to a game company.
As the area of an open world grows, the royalties that must be paid skyrocket, so Waresoft, the creator of World of Arseria, had made what could truly be called a save-the-nation decision to rescue its dying company.
The royalties for ASI were relatively smaller than those for open worlds, but the labor costs required to handle them were far from negligible.
Even if the character modeling and design were handled by existing departments, a character’s narrative, behavioral principles, standards for judgment, and potential couldn’t be created merely by entering numbers into blank fields. The structure wasn’t that simple.
When WOA succeeded commercially and Waresoft announced that it would add a difficulty level called ‘Nightmare’ to ease the players’ story fatigue, it was only natural for people to look on with concern.
The development project had ended, and the ASI experts had just left en masse for other companies. The question was whether the remaining staff could bring the story to its ending without a single conflict.
Yet Waresoft seemed to succeed spectacularly, even adding bold storylines that had once been counted among its strengths and using them to supplement the background explanations that had previously been lacking.
Of course, the reason WOA achieved such great commercial success was not its story mode, but the introduction of 6v6 matches and the popularity of esports. Still, there was no denying that its excellent setting and characters had contributed as well.
In particular, WOA VIP user ‘NyangsterCall’ was one of those who had been captivated by Adela’s charm, despite her never appearing in the main story.
He attended WOA’s fifth-anniversary event and asked this question.
“Was there a reason Adela absolutely had to die in Act 1?”
NyangsterCall was fascinated by Adela’s appearance and personality. He couldn’t understand why they had eliminated her so early in the story when they could have made her a character who could be taken all the way to the final boss, like Giselle or Luna, in the main story.
While everyone else was raising their tiers in ranked play, he desperately uncovered every hidden gimmick at Nightmare 1/1/1 difficulty.
He was the one who discovered that the Observatory boss could actually be skipped, as well as the fact that key equipment could be farmed by returning to the Academy after the boss fight.
Yet no matter what he tried, saving Adela was impossible.
So perhaps, deep down, he had been hoping.
Perhaps there might still be a hidden route to save Adela that even he hadn’t discovered yet.
“Ah... There are some slightly complicated circumstances surrounding that...”
One of the developers took the microphone.
“Actually, if you’ve played Nightmare yourself, what I’m about to say probably won’t sound very credible. Even so, to explain it, Adela was planned as a sort of tutorial NPC for users taking on this difficulty.”
The venue stirred.
After all, rather than helping, she engaged in all sorts of trolling antics and made the game’s difficulty even higher.
“In fact, with Adela’s help, you probably could have cleared the game up through the Observatory boss without too much difficulty. If she died easily from the beginning, players would have less room to adapt to Nightmare, so we needed to lower the early entry barrier to Nightmare in this way.”
Up to this point, his explanation was reasonable.
In fact, many users learned the true ‘combat’ system, something they couldn’t experience in the main game, by watching Adela defeat the Observatory boss.
“I suppose I need to bring up the question I answered earlier this morning again. Since some of you may not have heard it, I’ll briefly explain why we forcibly introduced a ‘penalty’ element only in Nightmare. As I said, our company’s lack of ability was certainly part of the reason, but due to the technical nature of open worlds, we can’t contain a large number of ASIs.”
WOA, in particular, had a considerable number of ASIs in its world, unlike other games. He added that, since it was set in an academy, there were more than a hundred ASIs capable of extremely high-level thought alone.
“As we forcibly increased the number, a problem arose. In Nightmare difficulty, repeated world resets caused gradual modifications to the module that controlled the AI’s autonomy.”
“Then the reason it feels like the difficulty keeps rising little by little is...?”
“Yes, presumably because of the increased autonomy. We still haven’t accurately identified whether it was a mistake by our in-house developers or a fundamental compatibility issue with open worlds, but regardless, cases began to occur in which bosses became excessively stronger than their initially set difficulty. To prevent that, we introduced the penalty element, troublesome though it was.”
We designed it so that players would begrudgingly return to just before entering Nightmare, repair the module, and proceed through the story from the beginning.
“Then why not design it that way from the start?”
“Ah, you mean make it a roguelike game with no save points at all? We did consider that... But it was also a direction far too different from Waresoft’s basic creed. And with only one chance in an already difficult battle against Mephisto, I think it would have been even more grueling for our users. Haha.”
That was why we wanted to encourage players to clear it in one attempt whenever possible, while still giving them one or two chances.
“There’s still one thing I don’t understand. What did any of that have to do with Adela?”
“Adela was an NPC particularly strongly affected by the autonomy-control module.”
“Huh?”
Tap tap.
The man, who had been answering each question with utmost sincerity, passed the microphone he was holding to the woman beside him when she gestured to him.
After confirming that the translation magic was functioning properly, she opened her long-sealed lips.
“Let me add an explanation. Adela’s initial stats were so low that she was usually eliminated in Act 1, so we didn’t pay much attention to her. But when we ran simulations, we found that if she survived to Act 2, she displayed exceptionally strong combat ability afterward, which damaged the overall game balance.”
“No, then according to what you said, you could simply adjust the ASI’s... what was it... potential value, right? Instead of adjusting the story.”
“I’m sorry to say this in a place like this, but the ASIs we had contracted came with restrictions.”
“Restrictions?”
“Then put it simply.”
The woman fell silent for a moment. She thought hard about something, then brought the microphone back to her mouth.
“To create an Adela who had to handle every weapon proficiently, we had no choice but to use the same ASI applied to Mephisto, the final boss with the highest potential stat.”
* * *
[Video Share - ‘NyangsterCall’ shared 100,000!]
“So Adela’s AI is identical to Mephistopheles’ AI.”
-Whoa, what a twist ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ
-So after all that, she was the mastermind all along?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This is seriously creepyㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This wasn’t even on TreeWiki—what is this?
-How can she come back to life when she dies in Act 1?
-Chilling...
-Legendaryㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-I thought she was Rock Lee, but she was Naruto!
-Seriously, that was a twist worthy of The Sixth Sense.
-This is truly legeno.
“Not AI, but ASI? Either way, I don’t know much about the ASI mentioned in the video, but in the end, the development department collapsed, so they couldn’t create a new ASI and recycled the existing one. Did I understand that correctly?”
[‘NyangsterCall’ donated 5,000 won!]
-Yes, exactly ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
The company couldn’t keep Adela alive until the end. But since the setting already established that the demon’s descent required a body, and the two characters used the same ASI, meaning there wasn’t much to change, they decided to write Adela out of the story by making her Mephisto’s sacrifice.
-Why is NyangsterCall so handsome, though?
-His proportions are model-tier too, damnㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-No way! He has to be a fat, shut-in NEET like us!
-Is this the average WOA Gallery user...?
-He’s handsome.
-He’s ridiculously handsome.
-With a face like that, he’s wasting his lifeㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ If he’s going to waste it, he should give it to me.
-ㄴLet’s reconsider who’s really wasting their life.
-(Manager 3) Mentioning private citizens is grounds for a ban.
I couldn’t help looking sadly at Adela, who was fast asleep in bed, oblivious to the world.
-But what happens now? Won’t your account get permanently banned?
-Why would it?
-Wasn’t she a character who was supposed to die no matter what?
-Protect Adela!
-Protect her!
-Protect her at all costs!
She even smacked her lips in her sleep, as though she were dreaming. Could she be eating a Churu in her dream?
The AI was far too realistic to dismiss her as merely a fictional character.
Even if all the memories of her past were false, the memories we had built together up to now were all real.
There were still many unanswered questions.
Even after hearing Waresoft’s development secrets from a viewer, I still couldn’t explain why all my memories from every episode had suddenly returned.
Was it merely a bug, or was even this something the developers had intended?
Information was pouring in like a flood, yet I felt the incident was only sinking deeper into a labyrinth.
Grrr-
Thinking so hard for the first time in a while had made me hungry.
There were still carrots I’d stocked in the item shop, so I bit into one with a crunch, but virtual reality was still virtual reality, and my appetite remained unsatisfied.
[Broadcast Time – 7:39:18]
[Viewers – 21907]
‘Had I really been at it that long?’
By the time I left the capsule, the sun would already be starting to set.
I should probably pause the game and grab a quick meal. That way, it would be less likely to upset my stomach when I gulped down all my potions at once.
“Mnyaa... nyaang... I don’t wike carwots...”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-So adorableㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Master NyangsterCall... I think I finally understand how you feel...
-Bring more carrots! No, bring them all!
-I could die happy nowㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-ㄴYou’ve reached nirvanaㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Her makeup’s all rubbed off, so why does she look even prettier...
-That’s what love is.
Meanwhile, perhaps she had forgotten to disable synchronized taste, because Adela was frowning deeply and acting petulant.
“But it’s tasty, though. Carrots.”
Crunch-