Chapter 469 - 301: Zog’s Official Demonstration
Zog wasn’t about to grind away making a game all by himself.
He’d just whip out a massive design document and shove it onto the Illusionists’ and artists’ task lists.
And since he was the boss, the Illusionists and artists couldn’t fight back. They could only tearfully bring his vision to life.
However, because the design document itself was excellent—a concept already proven in the Earth market—the Illusionists and artists would gradually come to realize its brilliance as they worked on it.
So, what started as tearful labor would turn into them getting a huge kick out of their work.
They might still refuse to admit it was a brilliant game concept, but their bodies had already obediently surrendered!
’Sigh. How lonely.’
Ever since he became the boss, none of the artists or Magic writers dared to get into a flame war with him.
His days as a "gentle and agreeable" planner were gone, never to return.
Zog quickly put together the design document for this anti-war game.
War is an extremely common theme in games. Combat itself is the most mainstream gameplay mechanic, and war is the most common setting for it.
Stories set against the backdrop of war are also easy to write. Once you establish the setting, creating conflict is simple—war itself is the ultimate conflict.
There’s also a rich history of warfare to draw upon for touching personal stories.
Players also love playing the hero on the battlefield.
Who doesn’t want to be a hero? And turbulent times are the perfect stage for heroes to emerge.
For these reasons, most war-themed games are designed to give players a power trip.
When a power trip is the goal, it’s hard to tie it to an anti-war message.
It might even influence a segment of the population who haven’t fully formed their values, causing them to get excited at the mere mention of war and fantasize about being the main character.
The most memorable depiction of war’s cruelty in Zog’s memory came from a famous level in *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare*.
No Russian.
It was a conspiracy to incite a world war.
The villain, an extremist, leads a team into an airport to indiscriminately attack civilians, then frames an undercover agent to ultimately trigger a war between major powers.
That level also made that installment of *Call of Duty* hugely controversial, with accusations that it encouraged players to commit extreme acts of violence.
Zog, however, hadn’t thought that deeply about it when he played it.
He just blasted everything.
He didn’t understand the plot at all and only got it after watching a story analysis video later.
While playing, he just thought it was a little strange that the "enemies" ahead weren’t fighting back.
This kind of content wasn’t suitable for Zog to make right now. For one, its anti-war message wasn’t clear. For another, a large-scale game like that would be too time-consuming and resource-intensive to finish in time for the event.
For Zog, the best choices were 2D-style games that weren’t demanding on art resources and were technically simple to create.
He mulled over two options for a long time.
The first was *Braveheart: World War*, an adventure-puzzle game from Ubisoft.
Ah Yu was actually quite good at making smaller games; it was a mystery why they didn’t dare to get creative with their larger titles.
The game was set during the First World War, but the story didn’t focus on the grand themes of warfare. Instead, it told the story of four ordinary people and a dog, and how the war destroyed their lives.
There was nothing special about the gameplay. It had rather simple puzzle-solving levels, which you could say were just there to complement the story. There were almost no difficult parts to get stuck on; even a slow player could finish it in four or five hours.
The story, which was the "main course," was arguably perfect. When he first beat the game, it took him several days to recover from the emotional impact.
A family that had done nothing wrong was torn to pieces by the currents of the time.
He recalled the ending, where the protagonist, unwilling to see his comrades ordered into another suicidal charge, attacks his superior officer and is ultimately sentenced to death.
You control the character as he walks slowly from his cell to the execution ground. In the background, you hear the protagonist reading his last letter. Then, under the setting sun, the sound of the firing squad rings out.
Honestly, it was emotionally devastating.
And thinking that the Ubisoft capable of creating such a work of art was the same one that made their later games... that was even more devastating.
The other option was *This War of Mine* from the Polish development team, 11-bit.
The country of Poland has produced several bona fide gaming masterpieces.
As for *This War of Mine*, it was also a smaller-scale game.
It was set during the longest siege in modern history: the Siege of Sarajevo.
Perhaps not many people have heard of this war.
Wars big and small are always happening around the world. But if a major power isn’t directly involved, you’d never even hear about them unless you specifically follow that kind of news.
Horrific tragedies unfold in places no one knows.
The siege lasted for nearly four years. Throughout those fourteen hundred-plus days and nights, the civilians could only rely on themselves to survive, as the military showed them no mercy.
The game was adapted from this reality, requiring the player to control several characters with different traits and survive for forty days.
The time was shortened to forty days for the sake of gameplay; if it were historically accurate, it would be far too difficult to complete.
Gameplay-wise, it was a survival game. You had to scavenge for supplies across different maps to cope with cold, hunger, thirst, injuries, sickness, mental breakdowns, and all sorts of other problems.
But the most dangerous thing in the game was other people.
Thieves, bandits, and soldiers who attacked civilians indiscriminately.
But the game’s greatest appeal didn’t just lie in its survival mechanics.
It lay in the choices the player had to make.
Throughout the game, various events would occur: someone might ask for help, another might want to team up for a robbery, you might witness an atrocity, or you might find survivors weaker than you who have supplies.