This Is Not a Bug but a Game Feature-Chapter 266 - 179: Is the Studio’s Feng Shui Bad?

All along, various literary and entertainment works have loved to label the protagonist with the "tragically beautiful and strong" tag, deepening the empathy of readers and viewers.

Chen Ba had no bias against this.

Because this is an objective fact, the more unsatisfactory the life of protagonists in games, anime, and movies, the more it touches people’s hearts.

As long as you observe carefully, it’s not hard to notice a very strange point.

That is, in various film and television dramas, the protagonist is either orphaned or from a single-parent family. If luck is on their side, both parents are present, and there are grandparents too, but these families often quarrel and are not happy or harmonious at all.

Isn’t that strange?

Not to say that there are no such examples in reality. Surely there are, but no matter how outrageous film, anime, and games are, they can’t outdo reality in absurdity.

But one thing worth noting is that such cases in reality are "rare" exceptions.

Yet in various TV dramas and movies, it has become the standard that every protagonist’s family must have issues and conflicts...

"Dramatic treatment!"

Chen Ba, to make up for the gaps in his knowledge, had read quite a few books on screenwriting and enrolled in many professional courses during this time.

So he had some insights on creating the "tragically beautiful and strong" protagonist.

First, an imperfect family.

This is a prerequisite: as a protagonist, one cannot have a perfect, happy family, considering this is a game, having both parents deceased works just fine.

Besides the imperfect family, they must carry a deep-seated grudge as the source of the protagonist’s motivation in the early phase. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Here, Chen Ba created a Demon King-level fierce beast as a boss.

"In the story, the protagonist Chen Yun’s parents perished at the hands of this fierce beast Boss, so Chen Yun is determined to improve his strength, just to avenge his parents."

This fierce beast Boss is an important early boss in the game, and only by defeating it can the plot move forward to the next Chapter and enter a new act.

"And the next phase?"

Lu asked with curiosity.

The first phase is for avenging his parents, but after achieving this great revenge, how will protagonist Chen Yun’s second phase of the story unfold?

"After defeating this fierce beast Boss, within the game, Chen Yun has already become one of the top martial artists in Jiangning Base City."

"For a strong person of this level, randomly assigning an enemy to him isn’t realistic or logical..."

Chen Ba, at this point, introduced a new plotline, which entailed switching maps.

Jiangning Base City was still too small.

The protagonist needs a motivation, which means he must head to broader horizons, leaving this base city to go to Beijing Base City.

"Switching maps requires a reason; the previously set-up protagonist’s sister can be utilized for this."

"Sister Chen Jia suddenly falls ill, with no one in Jiangning Base City able to save her. The protagonist learns that Beijing Base City has better medical conditions and many human strongmen, so he takes his sister to Beijing for treatment."

Chen Ba, in just a few words, provided the reason for protagonist Chen Yun to switch maps.

This reason is very sufficient and entirely reasonable.

In the grand background of Ten Thousand Races evolving and the revival of Spiritual Qi, setting a condition where a "strongest" is needed to cure a special disease isn’t something outlandish.

In any case, this translates to: the sickness needs the strongest to intervene to cure, and no such strong men exist in Jiangning Base City...

"Upon reaching the new map, meeting the strongest and convincing him to treat the sister is surely no simple task."

Chen Ba continued: "This leads to a series of side quests, with the main task of the second phase summarizing into five words: cure the sister!"

Avenge the parents, cure the sister!

Upon completing the main and side quests of these two phases, the protagonist Chen Yun’s strength can be considered a pillar for humanity.

Then the main quest of the third phase is very apparent—it’s when the human race faces an existential crisis, and the protagonist, as a key figure, resolutely takes up the heavy responsibility, propelling a series of major events, safeguarding the precarious human race.

"After the ethnic extinction crisis passes, the protagonist has more or less become a leading human figure, moving into the fourth-stage main storyline..."

Chen Ba intends to create a hero figure.

Maybe he’s not that perfect or that dashing, but he has a certain amount of personal charm about him.

To put it poetically, describing the game protagonist Chen Yun might be akin to "the world kissed him with pain, yet he sang in return."

He experienced hardships from a young age, faced all sorts of tribulations, and was no genius, encountering numerous dangers, often teetering on the edge of death, which could be described as licking blood off a knife.

But he loves life, cherishes everything and everyone around him, and is willing to sacrifice himself for the vague "human righteousness."

Such a man can be deemed a hero.

As a AAA role-playing game, following the industry-standard, Chen Ba believes this storyline is quite rich.

"Based on difficulty and collection degree, the time required to complete the game is at least starting from 20 hours..."

The 20 hours Chen Ba mentioned refers to easy difficulty, with approximately 50% achievement and catalog collection progress, focusing solely on the storyline without doing anything else.

Moreover, this is under the premise of using a strategy guide.

Without a guide, a normal player playing on easy difficulty, achieving 80% achievement catalog collection and completion to clear the game, would still require around 40-50 hours.