After the camera transition, Ding Xiyao found herself in the entryway of the property.

Before arranging viewings with clients, players as agents could first inspect the house thoroughly to get a clear understanding of it.

At the beginning of the game, there was no time limit for house inspections, and the game provided various prompts to help players unfamiliar with this knowledge understand the advantages and disadvantages of the layout.

As the game progressed, time limits would be imposed on the inspection phase, and prompts would decrease, effectively increasing the difficulty for players.

Players could even choose to challenge themselves by skipping this phase entirely, receiving clients at the property without any prior preparation, relying solely on improvisation.

The higher the difficulty, the more substantial the rewards.

Ding Xiyao had previously worked as a real estate agent and had much more professional knowledge than the average player. However, the game’s content was still relatively unfamiliar to her, so she decided to follow the standard procedure first.

If she could quickly adapt to the gameplay, then she could try increasing the difficulty.

Using the basic movement controls she’d already practiced, Ding Xiyao toured each room.

All she could say was that the situation was even worse than she had imagined.

Previously, she had seen floor plans and photos of these properties on the computer at the agency, but only upon arriving at the actual site did she discover that photos were often “photo-lies” and completely unreliable.

The photos had obviously been taken at noon on a sunny day, with the entire room bathed in warm sunlight. With just a bit of lighting adjustment and finding the right angle, the resulting photos were extremely deceptive.

But now it was overcast outside, the light wasn’t as strong, so the overall impression of the room dropped several notches.

Beyond that, many detailed problems naturally came to light.

For instance, there were nail and double-sided tape marks on the walls, most likely left by the previous tenant; the kitchen stove and cabinets were covered in years of grease; one of the secondary bedrooms had a window that didn’t seem to close properly and would definitely let in drafts, and so on.

These details, which wouldn’t be shown in photos, were all exposed during the on-site viewing process.

However, whether clients could spot these issues varied from person to person.

When Ding Xiyao raised her hand and used the controller to point at certain areas, there was a chance that a prompt icon would appear, at which point she could use a hint to get official guidance.

For instance, in the kitchen, tenants who enjoyed cooking and had high hygiene standards would take issue with the years of accumulated grease, while tenants who never used the kitchen probably wouldn’t even come in for a closer look.

But this feature wasn’t foolproof. Like many detective games or escape room games where players search for clues, if players didn’t realize there might be a problem and didn’t point the controller at the key area, no hint would appear.

Of course, some extreme players could use the controller to point at everything in all rooms, if they didn’t mind the effort.

After detecting these issues, to better facilitate a deal, agents could choose to resolve these problems or ignore them.

The solution was to dip into their own funds, taking out a portion of money to hire cleaners or repair furniture, fundamentally improving the issue.

Choosing to ignore them might result in being exposed by tenants during the viewing, preventing the deal from being closed, or the issues might go unnoticed.

Of course, there were ways to remedy the situation if exposed on the spot—one could try to gloss over the issues or resolve them by lowering the rent.

In this regard, the protagonist in the game had much more authority than real-life agents.

After all, in the game’s setting, the protagonist wasn’t just an employee but simultaneously played the roles of boss and employee, responsible for their own profits and losses.

Ding Xiyao quickly inspected the entire property inside and out, identifying several critical issues.

This was her former profession, after all, so she was completely in her element and didn’t need many system prompts.

She even had some clever ideas.

First, Ding Xiyao turned on all the lights in the rooms, then assessed the brightness.

Then, she looked up and pointed her controller at the living room light bulb.

Sure enough, the light bulb became highlighted and a menu appeared, indicating the bulb could be replaced!

After a quick selection, Ding Xiyao chose a relatively inexpensive but very bright ceiling light, which was easily installed after selection.

It wasn’t just the lights—all furniture and appliances in the room could be replaced. The problem was that sofas, TVs, and wallpaper were all too expensive, and Ding Xiyao didn’t have much money to spare.

This was a small trick Ding Xiyao had learned from her days as an agent: if a room had poor natural lighting, insufficient illumination, or poor ventilation with odors, turn on all the lights before the client arrives and open the windows in advance to air out the space.

This way, tenants would, to some extent, overlook the issues with lighting and ventilation. Even if they noticed later, it would be after signing the contract.

By then, most tenants, despite some dissatisfaction, would have no choice but to make do with the situation since the contract was already signed.

Ding Xiyao wasn’t sure if the game was programmed to be that intelligent, whether increasing the brightness would improve the chances of closing a deal with customers, but it was worth a try.

After all, isn’t the fun of such highly free simulation games about creative tactics and freedom?

In the case of this particular house, since the original lights were quite dim and turning them on didn’t significantly improve the situation, Ding Xiyao paid out of her own pocket to replace the living room light, maximizing the brightness as much as possible.

There wasn’t a great solution for the kitchen problem. Hiring cleaners was unaffordable, but the game also offered a “do it yourself” option.

Using the controller to scrub at the greasy areas simulated personally cleaning them. Although some stubborn stains from years past were difficult to completely remove, the overall appearance was much better than before.

Of course, not all problems could be solved by oneself; some improvements required significant investment.

In this way, Ding Xiyao handled everything she could within her budget, trying to be fully aware of any defects in the rooms.

Next, it was time to invite the clients for viewings.

Although she was already experienced, Ding Xiyao still felt a little nervous while waiting for the clients to arrive.

After all, showing a house to people in a game was a first for her.

Before long, the doorbell rang. The first to arrive was the white-collar worker who had been employed for several years and had a relatively high income.

The order in which these three groups arrived was arranged by Ding Xiyao herself. She chose to have this man come first mainly because she felt he was most likely to agree to the highest price.

As for the other two groups—the couple who had just graduated and the two women who had been working for a little over a year—their financial situations wouldn’t be as good.

Moreover, the young couple placed importance on cooking, and unfortunately, this property had hygiene issues in the kitchen.

All things considered, the white-collar worker with several years of experience had the best financial situation and minimal requirements for the kitchen, making him the most likely to close a deal at a high price.

Of course, precisely because this man had been working for several years, his ability to find flaws might also be strong, and he wouldn’t be easy to fool. This would test Ding Xiyao’s skills.

Using the VR controller to open the door, Ding Xiyao was momentarily stunned.

This guy… looked so real!

This was Ding Xiyao’s first time seeing a person in this game.

Although the Doubt VR headset, like all VR headsets, was limited by technology and currently unable to achieve photorealistic clarity—even exhibiting slight grid effects—there were still noticeable differences in scene and character clarity between different games.

“Real Estate Agent Simulator” had clearly pushed character modeling clarity to its limits within the constraints of current technology.

After entering viewing mode, players would automatically follow the tenant who came to see the house, answering their questions.

The tenant, which was an NPC in the game, moved according to certain patterns, following relatively fixed routes when viewing different rooms.

But which room to see first, which room to see later, what to focus on in each room, what questions to ask, how to respond to the player’s answers… all these depended on the character’s settings, displaying strong randomness.

During this process, players didn’t need to actually speak but used the controller to select options on the screen for introductions and answers.

First came a brief introduction to the basic situation of the house, then the customer would raise questions about some details.

The gameplay at this stage was somewhat similar to a text adventure game.

The dialogue options available to players depended on their prior observations of the room, preparations made in advance, and comprehensive factors such as the player’s level and experience.

At the same time, many subsequent dialogues could only be triggered after selecting the appropriate options in previous dialogues.

What surprised Ding Xiyao was how incredibly lifelike the NPC’s every movement was—natural actions, fluent speech, and very colloquial language.

The voice dialogue between the NPC and player was clearly pre-recorded, as automatically synthesized speech would inevitably have a stiff, patched-together feeling that would be immediately noticeable.

But the NPCs in the game didn’t give that impression at all.

Ding Xiyao was somewhat curious—had this game provided voice acting and motion capture for all NPCs? Wasn’t that extravagant?

Would repetition occur in the future? For example, would the same questions keep coming up?

As she was considering this, she heard the white-collar worker ask, “This room seems to have pretty good lighting, right?”

It wasn’t a direct challenge, sounding more like a casual question.

Three options appeared before Ding Xiyao, representing three different attitudes.

The first was a positive attitude, mindlessly praising everything; the second was a neutral attitude, speaking ambiguously without denying anything; the third was to tell the truth.

Ding Xiyao hesitated.

Obviously, the first attitude would be more conducive to closing the deal, but this guy would definitely discover the problems after moving in.

With the third attitude, her conscience would be clear, but she might lose this client, and to salvage the situation, she would likely need to lower the rent.

Ding Xiyao found it difficult to decide, but seeing that the dialogue progress bar was almost at the end, she reluctantly chose the second attitude.