Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Xiao Daming (hot ash)

I know I can revisit the same place at any time.

Large-scale travel in the science fiction novel if we can't travel at the speed of light, Korean writer Kim Caoye provides a perceptual and reasonable view: for human beings, although space is infinite, it is limited by the speed at which we move. Most areas of the universe are meaningless to human beings. The limit of our life is at an altitude of about 10,000 meters-a position that can be reached by civil airliners.

However, there are a large number of science fiction and movies trying to describe interstellar travel, using imagination to fill the gaps, and in the type of space opera, we can also see the cross-galactic circle of human civilization similar to the Galactic Empire, with a population of trillions of people. pursue a feudal monarchy in a sense and continue the geopolitical game at a light-year distance.

Asimov's "Galactic Empire" series, the core is "the history of Rome in space" anything, once its time and space scale distortion, its own nature will also change. Take interstellar travel, for example, interstellar-scale travel fantasies are often so weird that it's hard to evoke a specific sensory experience-unlike listening to the vibration of the tracks on a sleeping train or seeing a vast field of white clouds through a porthole. unlike on a late-night bus, shaking his tired body back and forth, watching the wet streets twinkle and meander in the corners of his eyes.

The way to show long-distance interstellar travel is usually to create a warped vacuum in front of the spaceship. in the porthole, the crew will see countless colorful lights spinning in the tunnel and retreat into countless bands of light. More scientifically, the crew will be ordered to lie in a freezer, ignorant of the journey, and the story takes place after they wake up. Such interstellar exploration stories often include a boring itinerary and a weird and scary destination.

When it comes to the universe, scale is always a selling point that needs to be emphasized. When developers introduce space-themed games to players, they frequently list terrible orders of magnitude-thousands of planets that can be explored and matched with unique landforms, travel throughout the Milky way, and even try to generate the entire universe on the scale of infinity.

As far as I can remember, the early game of "talking nonsense" was EA's Spore, which was developed by Will Wright, the maker of the Sims, and was once famous. This game has brought me a lot of happiness, and the world and life generated by the law of randomness are full of absurdity and joy, but players will find that as time goes on, the fun in the later stages of the game suddenly declines.

Hey, remember us? As complexity accumulates, designers must look at the universe from the perspective of civilization, not from the perspective of individual flesh and blood, and the early random play becomes inadequate. The illusion of diversity is ripped off, hiding mediocre humans in the 3-headed or 8-legged bodies of these alien life, and a group of highly simplified, high-tech savages, in the later stages of the Spore game. all you do is conquer, transform, and expand your territory.

Let's admit that interstellar wars make people feel empty and empty, reminding us again and again of the meaninglessness of life. We look up at the starry sky and yearn for, not to conquer and kill, but to be captured by an impulse to arrive in a foreign land, to see wonders, to be detached from the world. In other words, an impulse to travel.

It has been decided that when you take a summer trip to Venus, you will always look forward to seeing unique customs and humanities, even if these things are simple in appearance, even if they are just a stone, an old house, a chair, and what is important is the unique history that flows on its surface. the important thing is the special way time carves them. I hate the randomness of the open world, and I hate developers bragging to players that the world they build uses just-in-time generation systems to create huge playable sandtables.

"large scale" means vague promises. The Stars has done well enough to have many elements that delight sci-fi fans-elaborate sci-fi events, a vast universe, different forms of civilization. But at the end of the game, the endless flames of war still exhausted me. In a huge scale and lofty perspective, with the stacking of operational complexity, all behaviors become extremely cumbersome, players no longer have the patience to deal with trivial events, the game tends to be barbaric, and advanced intelligent lives compete with each other like medieval vassals.

Things have gotten out of control at this point. When will we remember that lightness is a virtue? When will we understand that when you carry too much, the journey will become a corvee? When will we experience a truly satisfying interstellar journey?

In May 2019, Mobius Studios released the whimsical sci-fi action adventure game Outer Wilds, which won the Golden Rocker Award for Best Independent Game and the 2020 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA Game Awards) Award for Best Game. Up to now, it is still the best Star Trek game in my heart.

Mobius Studios has completed a pioneering work on the cover of the game, where ancient and future elements are mixed in the Star Pioneer. To describe this initiative, I need to list the following facts.

First of all, the story scale of the game is extremely large, with a trace of speculation and romance of the golden age, it tries to tell the origin and future of the universe. In the background of the story, the interstellar nomads named "Normai" receive a strange signal from the other side of the universe, which is older than the universe itself, and the target of the signal is called the "cosmic eye". The Normai people have experienced hardships in order to reveal the intention of "the Eye of the Universe".

An appearance of the Normai people comes from the artist Lan Jacobson. Secondly, the world scale of the game is moderate, and the activities of players are strictly limited to a fictional solar system, which has a supernova explosion every 22 minutes and is reset. The explorable environment includes five planets, a series of natural moons and the remains of man-made celestial bodies, all carefully designed. Even the landscape with randomness is closely integrated with the setting of the world outlook (macro-quantum effect). As part of the wonders and puzzles, randomness fully serves the needs of the story.

The star map in "Star Pioneer" is the third most exquisite solar system in the history of the game. the scale of the game is very small, and it is played in the first person. In the game, the player plays an astronaut of the Haas, the native race in the solar system, and your mission is to explore the legacy of the extinct Nomai and uncover the secrets of the Eye of the Universe based on the work of the Nomai.

The cosmic eye is a bit like a siren siren, the difference is that it is harmless-it is a wonderful scale nesting, the theme is grand and the vision is narrow, which requires the production team to have a skill of four or two thousand pounds, a sense of extreme ingenuity. I can sum up the above three points in one sentence-in the game, the player is actually playing an explorer at the end of the universe (both spatially and temporally), the last link of a long adventure, and as a Haas, the player will walk on the footprints of his predecessors and make the final leap to the mystery of the origin of the universe and life.

The use of small-scale description to carry large-scale events is reminiscent of cartoons, but in the presentation of the production team, it does no harm to the charm of the universe in the game. The universe is still vast, and this day-to-day journey still has a magnificent epic flavor. Just because of the extreme trickery in the structure of the story, the protagonist is placed in the last chapter of the epic, and players can reach the best part in the process of exploring and inheriting the legacies of their predecessors.

Whether it is the story itself or the visual experience, you can feel this strange space nesting with the scale of time, you can visually clearly feel that different levels of things are closely connected, and the difference in scale is reduced just right. A very intuitive way to understand this is to open the game and experience the first thing in the game-"wake up".

The story of "Star Frontier" begins when you take a deep breath and wake up to find yourself sitting by a warm bonfire. You are gazing at the sky along the wooden tower, a giant emerald green planet high overhead, a string of mysterious electric sparks shining and disappearing near it, as a foreground, you can see the quiet starry sky behind you. Large and small stars dotted with it. At the same time, you can clearly feel the cicadas around you, the wind in the woods, the flames of bonfires swaying gently, the warm yellow lights leaking from the windows of the wooden house in the deep valley, your breath is gradually stable, and you pick up a branch and bake a bunch of marshmallows comfortably.

Look at the stars blowing, roasting bonfires and eating candy, and you will notice the oddities of the scene-bonfires, wooden houses and woods, these elements exude the nostalgia of the pioneer era, and a rocket launch tower is in the center of your field of vision. but it's entirely made of wood, like a ramshackle observatory-characters in the game will laugh at themselves that it can be burned down at any time. The spaceship on the launch pad is made of wood and a small amount of metal ore, but it is the most "science fiction" thing you can find locally.

My Precious! Small-scale things are close at hand, while huge celestial bodies hang overhead, within reach, moving like living creatures. When you point the signal mirror at them, you can hear other explorers playing banjo, harmonica, flute and other instruments on the stars, as if they were living next door to your house instead of on another celestial body. All this suggests to you that the structure of space and time in the game is more compact than the universe in reality.

As the title "Outer Wilds" implies, the interstellar space in the game has a wild atmosphere, it is primitive and vibrant, but far away is not out of reach. What is needed in such interstellar space is not the industrial revolution, but the romantic spirit of craftsmen and explorers. Like the travel of that era, you will go through bumps and adventures alone.

I will never forget the experience of my first trip to Star Pioneer 3 years ago. It was a hot summer night, and I became a young Haas, a humanoid with four eyes, blue skin and a gentle and witty character. These creatures are pitifully ugly and look harmless-I wandered around the city and saw the only thing with a bit of edges and corners was a logging axe (the only one in the village).

This Peach Blossom Garden will remain beautiful for the next 22 minutes. According to the story, in the distant past, my ancestors were amphibians in a pool of puddles on the wood furnace planet, and the Normai came to this solar system to try to uncover the secrets of the cosmic eye. In order to complete this great project, they need to mine a lot of ore on the wood furnace star.

Compared with you, they are like gods, but when they lift a stone, find that pool of puddles, and find your ancestors swimming gently in it, they do not say, "I come, I see, I conquer", nor do they say "destroy you, it has nothing to do with you".

They just gently put down the stones and warned each other to reduce mining as much as possible, believing: "in many years, they will develop their civilization, and they will explore the whole universe and see the scenery we have seen." they will need these precious minerals, and then maybe they will join us. "

We have grown up and begun to follow in your footsteps in the Star Frontier, this gentle brush strokes can be seen everywhere, no war, no conflict, no violence. The theme of the game is exploration and discovery, and it also focuses on this. You will fly the ship yourself and watch the sun, moon and stars spin outside the porthole, and you will skim the surface of the planet, pass through the meteor shower, dive into the vast deep sea, and capture quantum satellites. Everything is WYSIWYG, there is no high-level complex operation, no noisy fire. You will embark on a veritable journey and satisfy your curiosity.

I will never forget that one of my most impressive adventures when I broke through the atmosphere of a deep giant was walking on the rickety hanging rocks beneath the surface of the broken stars and watching the planet gradually engulfed by its own core. Right under my feet, a black hole is constantly expanding, like an insatiable beast, biting the flesh of the planet into its mouth and staring at me covetously like a huge eyeball.

I had to tread on thin ice in the suspended city; I had to pay attention to the firmness of the landing point when I started the jet backpack jump; I had to walk slowly under the protection of gravity crystals. Across the extremely low glaciers hanging upside down-the black hole is like a black sun hanging overhead. But all of a sudden, I missed, the gravity turned upside down, the sky turned back to the dark earth, I fell in despair and swung my limbs in vain, but nothing could protect me. Gravity tied me like a rope, and as I got closer and closer to the black hole, everything in front of me was stretched and sunken, and finally it was myself-I was swallowed whole, you were squashed, you lost everything, and the game will end in the white noise of death.

Every Star Pioneer player has experienced the despair of stepping on a black hole, etc. I was frightened and opened my eyes, but I saw a bright, warm light squeezed behind me. I had been swallowed by the black hole, but it had not been crushed. It turned out that it was a tunnel, and there was another hole at the end of the tunnel, which was a bright "white hole". I thought I was dead, but the White Cave Station is not far away. With a little push with a jet backpack, we went back to where there was oxygen and gravity. A message from tens of thousands of years ago told me: "are you scared? don't be discouraged. I know you might fall into a black hole, so we built a white hole station and used transition technology to help you return."

The trip is full of thrilling and insurmountable difficulties, sometimes almost frustrating, but players always get answers and encouragement. When you are in a desperate situation, someone will pat you on the shoulder and tell you not to be afraid. "We will help you return."

There are exceptions-𩽾𩾌 fish will mend the knife when you are in a corner, very unfriendly whenever I feel lonely in the game, I can always be comforted in the next moment, always return safely from danger, or face the challenge with knowledge.

"return" is a key word in the story of "interstellar pioneer". "return" is not the end of the journey, but a continuation. Every 22 minutes, the universe will be destroyed, but the player will return to the starting point with memory and continue your adventure. "return" is the emotional theme of the story-your roots always call you, and when you are lost and lost, facing your deepest desires will lead you back to the path you value, your heart's hometown is not behind you, its lights are flashing in front of you.

The Nomai people, who travel through the starry sky like nomads, one day received a signal that, according to measurements, the object of the signal-known as the Eye of the Universe-was older than the universe itself. What does that mean? They decided to follow the signal, they decided to find it, because the core driving force of the race was never-ending curiosity.

In the arduous pursuit of the cosmic eye, they lost their spaceship, lost their friends, and lost contact with their relatives, such as a lonely boat, stranded in the small solar system.

The experience of the Normai people is presented in the game through archaeology. They have two choices. One is to build a new ship, give up the plan, run away, and try to forget everything. The other option is to stay in the solar system, accept the fate that the spaceship has been destroyed and the people cannot be reunited, and start from scratch, multiply generation after generation, build generation after generation, until their offspring return to the sky until they find the answer.

In the story, until the end of the total extinction of the race, until the death of all the elders who first arrived in the solar system, the descendants of the Nomai people remained unshaken and carried out the plan until the last minute. Their failure lies in not living to see the truth. But what does it matter? Tens of thousands of years later, amphibians swimming in small puddles have evolved and have the wisdom to build spaceships out of wood, minerals and slimy tree sap.

You, the cutest astronaut in the universe! here you come, and all the minerals they leave for you have played a role. You get on the ship, come to the end of their failure, the engine ignites, you go straight into the starry sky, "return" a buried past. During this journey, you learn about their love, their fear, their persistence, their humor, the way they flirt with each other, their inquiring words about the starry sky, and their crazy great plans. Now, everything is on your shoulders, will you continue? Why not? Can you find something more romantic to do? Is there anything more vast than the view seen when standing on the shoulders of giants?

I know I will continue that plan, I must get the answer again, I must wake up under that beautiful starry sky, sit by the bonfire and burn my marshmallows. I had to go to the deep giant, break through its gaseous film, pass through planetary tornadoes, and land on an isolated island, watching another explorer, Gabriel, lying in a hammock, playing his flute leisurely in the rough seas. He was carelessly thrown into a vacuum by the tornado and continued to play music in weightlessness, as if the whole planet was just a swing under his ass.

Gabriel! Stop blowing! The tornado is coming again! Soul resonance have you ever tried to go back to your hometown? When you go back to the place where you lived when you were a child, everything that seemed huge when you were a child will suddenly become extremely small. It was only when I returned to the interstellar frontier a few years later that I realized how accessible this miniature solar system was, and in half a minute, I could launch a ship from Jupiter to anywhere-Deep Giant, Hourglass Twin, broken Star, Black Spine. However, when I first came to this place three years ago, I was shocked by its grandeur.

You will see the turbid sky supported by tornadoes, and you will see the binary star system transferring planetary matter back and forth like an hourglass. In the black thorn star, you will find that each different-dimensional seed is small on the outside and large in the inside, and you will enter another space when you enter it. You will even find the seed Noumenon inside the seed and enter the infinitely nested heterogeneous space. Can you imagine the consternation when you first saw all this? When a supernova explodes in front of your eyes, the blue fire evaporates everything, you will hear the heartbeat and you will forget to breathe.

The stars are winking at you in the "interstellar frontier" world, the universe does not want to scare you, and the stars mean no harm. And when you are familiar with every corner of them, it does not mean that you will feel bored, you still feel shocked, but some things are different. This difference happens in your own heart, and you are reminded that at that moment, you have gained courage, you have been so curious, you have become full, you have become magnificent, and the revisit is just a reminder of all that and find strength. You think of Chamberlain's poems--

Only yesterday, I thought I was just a fragment, trembling without rhythm in the firmament of life. And now I know that I am the sky, and all life is a fragment that rotates rhythmically in me.

Last year I worked in City B, writing a world view for a sci-fi mobile game. The story took place in the distant future, and until then, there was no end to the struggle between humans and aliens. Planet after planet has been destroyed, but women are still sexy, that's what I wrote; I wrote that detonating a star is only a tiny step in strategy, and the entire galaxy has been blown into hollows. everywhere is the wreckage of scantily clad women and stars-deadly, empty black holes.

Searching for pictures of beautiful girls on the Internet used to be part of my job. During the year when I wrote about the world view for mobile games, I grew tired of video games. Constantly exposed to soft porn and trying to rationalize violence with stories, I was physically and mentally exhausted. I realized that I was no longer the young player full of hormones. As a player, I was beginning to grow old and frustrated, and needed comfort rather than confrontation. When I was writing about my worldview, I began to hate games and the science fiction I loved. After leaving that game company, I had a comfortable release after I finished my sentence.

Returning to the interstellar frontier is a form of self-healing. As a divine civilization with the ability of long-distance interstellar transition and the ability to trace back time and space, the Normai people have hardly developed any weapons. The Haas, who inherited their spiritual heritage, had nothing to call weapons except axes for cutting down trees. I admit that this is a kind of idealism, but is it not a darker, biased idealism that believes that violence can create a great interstellar civilization?

Maybe the game is the game, the game is used for entertainment, but the game can also be an important life experience. When I was surfing the Internet, looking for everything related to the Star Pioneer. I found a very moving article on the game website Gameluster. The protagonist of the article, Clare FitzPatrick, was diagnosed with cancer in 2021 and fell into the lowest point of his life. After six months of bone-burning chemotherapy, he gradually began to return to a normal life.

This article on the theme of "Star Frontier" brought me a profound comfort as part of his psychological healing, he began to play "Star Frontier", whether it was his torture in reality or his setbacks in the game. it's a precious experience-yes, the game is difficult, and I've heard a lot of players give up the experience because of confusion and frustration.

Every time he opens his eyes by the campfire, he reminds Clare of his illness and that he is stuck in a nightmare that is hard to wake up. Faced with some puzzles, he had to ask for help online in order to get the answer. Just like he had to ask his relatives and friends for help in order to get through that difficult time, and gradually ushered in the clouds to clear up, willows and flowers bright. He wrote:

"my illness was relieved by the love of my friends and the concern of my family. The support of the Haas and the will of the Nomai helped me find the Eye of the Universe. I can stand here because there are so many people who can't survive. I think about them every day. Every day, when I see the scar on my stomach, when I have pain in my hands and legs due to permanent arthritis caused by chemotherapy. I always remember the progress in medical innovation, the progress in treatment, and many people did not live to witness it, but they are all part of this process.

"as the staff list began to scroll, the piano faded out and the cello began to buzz. I remembered that. I thought of all this and began to cry. We could learn a lot from the little Haas astronaut at the end of the universe, who was burdened with knowledge and overcame every obstacle again and again. Towards the path opened up by the Normai people to the eyes of the universe with their lives. The past, the present and the future are integrated and intimate at this moment. "

I also remember the urge to cry, and how I reluctantly stared at the list of performers scrolling, how I looped through the original music in the game on my phone, and liked every comment under the music. I can't wait to cross the screen to hug them. I dare not expect this experience to happen every day. I do not expect that when I open my eyes, there is always a bright starry sky above my head. But knowing that I have had such an experience, knowing that I can revisit the same place at any time, knowing that all corners of the world, all kinds of people, cry at different times and in the same situation, brings me a profound comfort. I can still feel it, and I can be touched again and again.

You will witness one of the most amazing endings in the history of video games. When I woke up countless times by a bonfire on Jupiter, I saw an invisible, huge bond. It connects me, the Haas, the Normai, the universe, the development team, and other players, and this bond redefines me, heals my own wounds, and like the quantum satellite inside, when you stare and finally see it, don't look away, just keep looking at it, grab it, remember it, lest it disappear. Because time will go by, you will get lost on the road sooner or later, the original bond may really disappear, and then you may have to "wake up" again.

Don't forget the same wonderful DLC-- Eye Echo

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