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GameLook report/”Still feathered in Danqiu Xi, staying in the undead hometown”
From today, perhaps more people will remember this sentence from Qu Yuan’s poem in “The Songs of Chu: Yuan You”, because the content it describes is being interpreted by a game.
On September 17, station B held a “high-energy video game festival”, in addition to the appearance of big celebrities like Hideo Kojima to help out, it also brought many new games. One of the ARPG game “The End of Ming Dynasty: Yuanxu Feather” (hereinafter referred to as “The End of Ming Dynasty”) developed by Lingze Technology has left a deep impression on the players. Up to now, this demonstration video has been played more than 600,000 times on station B.
It is understood that this game was developed by Lingze Technology, a game company located in Chengdu, and the team only had 5 people at the beginning of the game. According to the introduction of the CTO of Lingze Technology on Zhihu, “The End of Ming Dynasty” was developed with Unreal Engine. At present, “The End of Ming Dynasty” has been developed for about one and a half years, but the completion rate is only about 15%. Judging from the information revealed by this real machine demo, what is the game like?
Real machine demonstrationWhat kind of sparks can Guofeng + Cthulhu collide with?
The Songs of Chu are the bottom line, and the national style is the line. “The End of Ming Dynasty” can be said to be a game that does not lack Chinese culture.
Even so, “The End of Ming Dynasty” still brought a little different things on top of it. According to the development team Lingze Technology, “The End of Ming Dynasty” is a soul ARPG with the theme of Cthulhu, the game is based on the real historical sites such as Sanxingdui and Jinsha, combined with the history of “Huayang Guozhi” and “Shu Wang Benji” The mythological allusions are adapted in the style of Cthulhu.
As we all know, the Cthulhu myth is generally an overhead literary system created based on the novels of American writer Philip Lovecraft, so it has a strong western cultural atmosphere, and it has certain differences with Chinese Eastern cultural characteristics.
But it needs to be pointed out that “Chinese Cthulhu” is not a false proposition. In fact, many Chinese writers have written Cthulhu elements in their books. For example, Wang Xiaobo’s “Green Haired Water Monster” uses many Cthulhu elements, and many readers believe that Lu Xun’s “White Light” is full of the taste of Cthulhu literature.
It can be seen that although the Cthulhu culture originated in the West, it is not incapable of integrating with Eastern literature. If handled properly and digging out the core and backbone of Cthulhu, it is also possible to create Cthulhu works with Eastern characteristics.
Refined to the product of “The End of Ming Dynasty”, the development team chose to place the game scene in ancient China, with real history as the background, through the narration of time nodes and stories, and cleverly constructed a Cthulhu Overhead world of elements.
The background of “The End of Ming Dynasty” was set in the last years of the Ming Dynasty in China. In 1644, Chongzhen hanged himself. In the same year, Zhang Xianzhong led his army to invade Sichuan and establish the Daxi regime. So far, Sichuan has ushered in the darkest period in history, and society has suffered severe damage. There is no order in the world.
At the same time, strange things began to occur in some remote areas of Shu. Some people began to grow feathers, and their appearance and behavior gradually deviated from the category of normal people. Players need to collect clues step by step to explore. The truth behind the matter.
According to the official explanation, the background of the world view of “The End of Ming Dynasty” is very sophisticated, because at this point in time, firearms were widely popularized in the Ming Dynasty, and various new technologies were changing rapidly in the “Victorian Era of the East”, so many hot weapons were added to the game.
It can be found that this time node coincides with the collision of Eastern and Western cultures, so some incompatible Cthulhu elements can appear reasonably and form a certain intersection with Eastern culture.
In addition to the plot, in order to create a sense of historical reality, “The End of Ming Dynasty” chose a realistic style, and the scene construction was more to restore the history.
Therefore, it can be found that the scenes and buildings in the game are derived from traditional Chinese culture. For example, courtyards and bamboo forests are all classic oriental elements. The mountains and rivers, pine trees and surrounding fog in the background both highlight the characteristics of the land of Bashu. , Also presents the beauty of oriental artistic conception.
Ambitious but gameplay features still need to be improved
As we all know, there is a person in the game circle who has a soft spot for Cthulhu culture, that is, Hidetaka Miyazaki, who has repeatedly “fallen” to the altar. The soul system gameplay pioneered by Hidetaka Miyazaki has not only stumped a group of players, but also infected a group of gamers.
It is understood that the team has a special liking for soul games, which is one of the reasons for the official establishment of the “Late Ming Dynasty” project. The CTO of Lingze Technology even said on Zhihu that because “Blood Source” has not been released for 2, there is even a little selfishness in this “End of Ming Dynasty”.
In addition to the use of Cthulhu elements in the plot, “The End of Ming Dynasty” also adopted Soul Like as the core gameplay. Therefore, in “The End of Ming Dynasty”, you can clearly see the shadow of many Miyazaki Hidetaka’s works.
In terms of gameplay, “The End of Ming Dynasty” basically uses the standard soul system gameplay framework. For example, at the combat level, the character will have two important parameters, “health bar” and “stamina”, which determine the player’s attack mode. If the blood volume is too low and needs to be recovered in time, if the stamina bar is too low, it is best to do dodge battle first.
At the same time, judging from the current demo content, the game already has a relatively mature equipment system. From the content of the demonstration, although the character can be equipped with two weapons, it seems to be a design of primary and secondary weapons. Players will hold swords in both hands during the battle, which means that the choice of weapons may be the focus of the team in the future. .
In addition, some classic bridges or operations in soul games have also appeared in the game, such as sneak attacks on enemies, etc.
Classic sneak attack
According to the self-report of the CTO of Lingze Technology on Zhihu, the reason why the current “End of Ming” has many shadows of “Blood Source” is because they have completely reproduced the underlying logic of “Blood Source”, including combat. Logic, action system, value, damage, AI, etc. Then, make certain modifications to make it in line with the team’s development intent, and verify whether the development method is reasonable.
Now, these stages have basically been completed, so the next step will be based on the existing content, focusing on sublimation production at the level of gameplay.
Of course, for now, “The End of Ming Dynasty” still has too many traces of “Blood Source”, so many players also think that the gameplay and content shown in “The End of Ming Dynasty” are not sufficient, and there are more Areas that need to be polished, such as the player’s feedback that the walking motion is relatively rigid, the character image is too “clean”, and does not conform to the Cthulhu style.
Of course, there are also players who are more optimistic and believe that imitation is not an insolvable problem. Now the game is a superior work in terms of image quality, culture and expressiveness. It is a product with full potential.
After all, in the eyes of many players, it is too early to make the game public.
There were only 5 people at the beginning of the project, and they wanted to get closer to the players
According to the official statement, the reason why the current game is presented to players is to avoid the situation of working behind closed doors and adjust the content and direction of the game through more player opinions.
It is understood that the initial business direction of Lingze Technology is actually mainly based on VR games, and it has experienced the cold winter of VR games in recent years. In addition, because the members of the company have many years of experience in art outsourcing, the modeling quality and lighting of this game reflect the level of film and television.
It is also at this time point that team members are born to create a small-scale game type that team members love. This game has become the “End of Ming Dynasty” that players see today, and at the beginning of the project, the team was actually only 5 people.
In other words, the team size of “The End of Ming Dynasty” is actually the same as that of an independent game team. Therefore, in the face of a mature gameplay framework such as 3D Soul Like, they chose to start from scratch, first build a solid framework and then polish the core. The gameplay, this may be one of the reasons why Lingze Technology chose to fully reproduce the underlying logic of “Bloodborne” as mentioned above.
Of course, from the demonstration at this stage, we can also see that the official is working hard to create their own characteristics. For example, most of the team members are Sichuan natives. Therefore, many Bashu characteristics have been added to the game scene, such as the Sichuan dialect of NPC. , So many players shine.
It is worth mentioning that “The End of Ming Dynasty” will also plan to launch a mobile game version. After the official announcement of the actual demonstration, this game also appeared on the TapTap platform and came to the top of the appointment list.
As the players said, the core gameplay level of the game at this stage is not sufficient, and the official also admits that the expressions and movements of the characters at this stage are relatively rigid, and the UI has a strong “sense of sight”, which will be developed in the follow-up Gradually perfected.
Perhaps for the “End of Ming Dynasty”, it will take some time, not only to improve the current deficiencies in the game, but also to make the game show better results with the help of more players.
As the official said, “It’s not self-satisfaction to make a game. It is the player who decides whether it is fun or not.” Dare to face difficulties, seek opinions from players and maintain communication, does not prove the determination of the developers to polish the game.
Therefore, GameLook also has reason to believe that with the continuous improvement and enrichment of “The End of Ming Dynasty” in the future, it may become a game full of characteristics and charm.
This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.
