Sitting in front of the computer, Zack was also looking forward to the unlocking of the "Warcraft" demo experience.
"Hey, why did Nebula Games make an RTS game this time?" Hannah, sitting next to Zack, was scrolling through information on her phone and chatting with Joy.
Hannah and Joy didn't really like RTS games.
They had played them, but couldn't get the hang of them.
Because they felt the controls were too complicated.
At most, they would play against computer-controlled opponents.
"I feel like this 'Warcraft' game might be different," Zack said.
He himself played RTS games occasionally, but he wasn't very good, just average.
He was the type who would quietly build up an army, then select them all with the mouse and send them to attack the enemy base.
One wave to decide the victory. If all his troops died, then you won.
If his troops didn't all die, then sorry, your base was gone.
"That's right, the multiplayer battles in 'Warcraft' are hard to say, but I feel like the single-player mode should be pretty good," Ben and Wells said in the voice chat channel.
"What kind of story can an RTS have? The single-player story of that 'Human War' game almost put me to sleep," Hannah said.
She had also tried some RTS games before, thinking that if she couldn't beat other players, and she was tired of playing against easy computers, she would play the single-player story.
But it was really bad. To put it simply:
It was just, the enemies are attacking, we have to do this and that.
We defeated the enemies and achieved victory, but then new enemies attacked again.
It almost put her to sleep.
"You can't compare other companies to Lucas. I still believe in him, even though he always does some weird stuff," Zack said, having a lot of confidence in "Warcraft."
Especially that CG animation, which really shocked Zack.
He had never seen any game company invest so much in an RTS before.
And the short, one-minute CG video of "Warcraft" at the time also made Zack very interested.
Because he felt that this "Warcraft" was different from ordinary RTS games, which just made the so-called single-player story into a tutorial level.
He felt that "Warcraft" might actually have a complete single-player story.
Thinking back to Lucas mentioning the revolution of the 'RTS genre' and the 'development cost of 700 million,'
Zack also had a bold guess, which was that "Warcraft" might put a lot of effort into the story.
Like most players, he felt that Lucas, entering the RTS field for the first time, might not be very good at balancing things in the multiplayer mode.
But the single-player story was different.
That tested level design, and Lucas's level design... just think about "Dark Souls" and "It Takes Two," is there any doubt?
So he felt that "Warcraft" was very likely to focus on the single-player story.
He had a lot of confidence in the games produced by Nebula Games.
He even secretly bought a collector's edition of "Warcraft" with his own secret stash of money!
Of course, she definitely couldn't know about this, or else he might have to wash all the clothes in the future.
Because the key point wasn't that he bought the collector's edition of "Warcraft," the key point was that he had a secret stash of money.
"Alright, alright, you play first and I'll watch. If it's fun, I'll try it myself later. Anyway, the game isn't going anywhere," Hannah said to Zack.
"It's time! Zack, I'm turning off my mic!" Ben's excited voice came from the voice chat channel.
"O.K.!" Zack replied and immediately clicked on the "Warcraft" icon.
Entering the game, the Nebula Games logo flashed by.
First and foremost was a CG animation.
It was the CG promotional animation that Lucas had released on his official blog before.
Zack had watched it more than once, but this time he still didn't choose to skip it.
The content of the CG was relatively easy to understand.
It meant that humans and orcs were not friends, but enemy factions, but suddenly an evil enemy fell from the sky, forcing the orcs and humans to unite.
Soon the CG animation ended, and a UI interface of the game appeared.
The background was a scene similar to an iceberg, which should be a scene in the game.
And leaving aside the exit game and settings options,
Zack observed that there were three different options in the game.
Story Campaign, LAN Local Battle, and Online Battle.
However, both Online Battle and LAN were grayed out, obviously not supported in the demo experience version.
But this made Zack even more excited, because from the content of this demo, Lucas wanted players to experience the single-player story, which was exactly what he had guessed!
"Let's see how this single-player story is!" With an excited mood, Zack opened the Story Campaign button with anticipation.
The Story Campaign was no different from other games. You could choose the difficulty before entering.
Easy, Normal, and Hard.
In this area, Zack thought about it seriously and chose the easiest difficulty.
"You're so embarrassing," Hannah next to him couldn't help but say speechlessly.
Easy is easy, but why did you move your mouse back and forth between Hard and Normal for three or four seconds, and then not choose either of them?
"Ahem... this is Boss Lucas's game after all. Think about 'Dark Souls' and 'Monster Hunter: World.' I'm just preparing in advance," Zack awkwardly coughed and explained.
After selecting the difficulty, what appeared in Zack's current screen was a 'Chapter 1.' Obviously, this single-player story was a linear game, and needed to be played one chapter at a time.
After opening Chapter 1, Zack was shocked.
Because there were too many levels in this Chapter 1!
He counted slightly, and there were a full twelve small chapters!
But only the first one was lit up, showing the name of the level: 'Thrall's Vision - Seeking the Prophet' (The original prologue and Chapter 1 are merged)
The rest were still gray, and the level names couldn't be seen.
"I just don't know how long each level will be," Zack was even more excited.
He directly opened the first prologue level.
The screen gradually went dark, and a voice-over sounded.
'The sands of time have run out, son of Durotan.'
'The horns of war echo in the wind, the shadows of the past poison the land, and the flames of war once again scorch the world.'
'Leading an army to stain the battlefield with blood, mortals blindly rush to their own doom, not knowing that the burning shadows are about to devour everything.'
'You must gather the tribe and lead them to find their destiny!'
On the battlefield, human armies and orc armies were fighting, and then, like the opening cutscene, countless fireballs burning with green flames fell from the sky.
The next moment, the camera switched to a high ground, and an orc who had just woken up from a nightmare in the barracks looked dazed and uncertain.
This CG was equivalent to a completion of the content in the previous promotional CG, but it also caused Zack a lot of doubts and curiosity.
Humans and orcs were fighting, what exactly was that fire person who fell from the sky?
What were the burning shadows?
And who was that mysterious wizard at the end?
Controlling the orc named Thrall who woke up from the nightmare, Zack was full of curiosity.
But despite his curiosity, he quickly focused his attention back on the game.
The character named Thrall advanced under the guidance of the prophet.
This was basically a game operation guide.
But what surprised him most was the quality of the whole game.
Zooming in, he could even clearly see the exquisite model of the characters in the game.
Including the water on the ground, and the textures of the grass, were quite exquisite.
Was this really an RTS game?
The quality was too high!
He hadn't played the content of the game yet.
But just the model and graphics in "Warcraft," coupled with the previous CG, had already amazed Zack.
It could only be said that the performance of "Warcraft" in front of him completely exceeded his expectations.
Compared with the CG animation, there was indeed a big gap.
But compared with other RTS games, not to mention the content, at least the appearance was already much better!
(End of this chapter)
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