After the tattered cart drew to a halt in a forest clearing, the armored driver let out a small sigh. He stepped down from his seat, but only after he’d taken a good look around did he allow himself to stretch.
The people clambered out of the back one by one. The family of three held on to each other, relief clear on their faces. The religious girl went to speak to the driver, but their voices weren’t audible. The camera panned around the characters slowly before rising back up to the overhead view.
“Guess that’s the opening cutscene done. Now what?”
I swiveled the mouse around the screen. There was no text explaining anything, so that was all I could really do. I tried clicking on the driver.
Gams, 26. A swordsman with countless battle scars on his face and body. Elder brother to the priestess Chem.
“So clicking on them brings up their bios, huh? No surprises there.”
Next, I went for the praying girl.
Chem, 19. A priestess who worships the God of Fate. Gams’s younger sister.
“A swordsman and priestess sibling pair? Interesting…”
Gams had black hair and eyes, while Chem had brown hair and blue eyes. They didn’t look like siblings, but they were both good-looking—and you couldn’t expect a game to bother with family resemblance. Gams had a rugged handsomeness to him, and his frame was muscular yet slender—if not for the scars, I’d think he was some sort of athlete. Chem, on the other hand, was quite prim and proper, which just made her priestess outfit suit her more. Its looseness concealed her figure, but it was still clear she had a bit of shape to her chest.
In my experience, Western games always gave their female characters overly defined facial features, while the men were weirdly buff. In this game, however, the character designs seemed more geared toward a Japanese audience.
“I wonder where this game was made?”
Most sim games came from the West and were translated into Japanese, but I had a feeling this was a Japanese original. From the quality of the cutscenes, it seemed like a game with a decent budget, too. These graphics alone would definitely draw a lot of attention online.
I was curious, but I’d research it later. I still had a few character bios to read, after all. Namely, the family of three.
I started with the dad. He was slim, with dirty-blond hair, drooping eyes, and hollow cheeks—an all-around scrawny guy. Definitely not somebody I’d pick to help me out in a fight.
Rodice, 33. Husband, and father of one daughter. Runs a small general store in the village.
I moved on to his wife. Her copper-colored hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her eyes were big, and her mouth was wide. She was meatier than Rodice, too. Her, I would pick to help me out in a fight.
Lyra, 30. Strong-willed and domineering.
Their daughter had wavy golden hair and large eyes. In other words, she’d inherited her parents’ best features. I clicked on the girl as she scampered around.
Carol, 7. Always smiling but mature for her age.
“These must be the main characters… So I guess they’re the ones I need to direct, huh?”
The problem was, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Sure, the graphics were great, but if I didn’t get a handle on the controls, I’d be stuck staring at the same screen forever.
Didn’t the letter say something about a prophecy? I rummaged through the package, trying to find it again, when suddenly I heard a strange tapping sound. I looked back at the screen to find that my villagers were talking among themselves, their speech written out in text boxes. It seemed that only the cutscenes in this game were voiced.
“I’m sorry… I was supposed to defend everyone, but it was all I could do to save you four…” Gams was bowing apologetically to Rodice and his family.
“It’s a miracle we survived. We should be thanking you!” Rodice bowed his head deeper than Gams, and his wife and daughter followed his lead.
“What was that light just now, Gams?” Carol asked eagerly. “Tell me, Big Brother!”
“Now, now, Carol. Like I’ve told you so many times, Gams is my brother, not yours.” Chem stepped forward to try and dislodge Carol from Gams’s arm, which she was clinging to like glue.
Though there was no indication of her emotion in the text, the tiny graphic displayed above Chem’s head showed she was angry. I zoomed in on her face. Sure enough, while her expression was gentle, she did not look amused. She must’ve been a doting little sister type. Considering the popular archetype plus her beautiful character design, if she wasn’t a main character, I’d eat the game disk.
“Come on, Chem, she’s just a kid.”
“Sorry, Gams.”
“Yeah, I’m just a kid!” Carol glared at the older girl, who glared right back at her.
Gams let out a sigh. It looked like all these characters had their own little personalities and backgrounds.
This game was seeming better and better. The graphics weren’t just gorgeous, the character animations were incredibly varied, too. I could feel myself getting sucked in little by little the longer I watched.
“All right, you two, stop flirting. Tell us about that light,” said Lyra.
“We weren’t… Anyway.” Chem cleared her throat. “That light came out of my holy book.”
She held out her book to show them. Just then, the PC beeped, and some text came up on the screen.
“You are these villagers’ God, the one who must lead their community and help it flourish. You cannot control the characters, but you can write a new prophecy in their holy book once a day. Try writing something now. Anything will do.”
“Wait—there’s no list? I gotta write something myself?”
That was so weird! Was the A.I. in this game really capable of understanding any message I put in? That seemed totally impossible.
Maybe the program just selected keywords from my input to dictate the characters’ behaviors…but even that seemed beyond the capabilities of a normal video game. I’d heard of an A.I. that could think and learn, but it was part of a multimillion-dollar research project. It had nothing to do with video games.
“I’ll just try it out. I can worry about how it works later.”
I typed the longest, wordiest, most godlike sentence I could come up with. Then I sat back and waited to see what would happen.