During gameplay, while the story wasn’t particularly lengthy, each segment was extremely important.

“Millet Departure” had several different endings.

First, within the imperial city, players could choose to support different princes and provide advice when these princes made decisions.

The choices made by these princes, as well as the protagonist’s advice, directly affected the subsequent storyline.

For example, during the foreign invasion, different princes would make different choices, and the protagonist could participate in the war at different stages.

Going earlier would increase the chances of expelling the invaders and reducing civilian casualties, but might leave no time to resolve internal conflicts in the Central Plains.

If one first resolved internal conflicts in the Central Plains, such as participating in the Buddhist suppression or helping monks escape, the delay might cause changes in the battlefield situation at the border.

Besides this, players would also develop close relationships with the four schools: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Military strategy. Choosing to help them would gain resources and assistance, but would also provoke hostility from opposing forces.

Throughout the game, players had to constantly make choices at key points. It wasn’t just about choosing path A or B, but also about the timing of choices. The various paths were intricately connected—pulling one thread affected everything—and could influence the final ending.

Players would likely find it difficult to fully grasp the game in their first playthrough. The game was designed for multiple playthroughs, allowing players to experience different story endings and specifically cultivate their characters to experience different combat modes.

This narrative structure was fundamentally different from “Turn Back to Shore.”

“Turn Back to Shore” essentially had only one main storyline. Although players could achieve different endings, they generally didn’t need to make many choices. It was more about experiencing the raw emotions the game evoked.

But “Millet Departure” was more like a constantly changing dynamic world, where every choice the player made would affect most regions of the world.

Perhaps the final ending wouldn’t evoke such profound and intense feelings, but players could truly sense how their every move influenced this world, and the final ending was ultimately forged by their series of choices.

…

After grinding for several hours straight, Qiao Liang still couldn’t get enough.

“This game is really fun! It’s very different from ‘Turn Back to Shore’—worth all the time I spent waiting for it.”

“The key is how well the game mechanics blend with the cultural background, creating absolutely no sense of disconnect.”

“Mr. Pei’s decision to invest in this game was truly visionary. After all, the game’s developer was making mobile games at that time—who could have imagined he would create such a high-quality single-player game?”

“What’s crucial is that you can grind in this game. This kind of randomized gameplay is simply irresistible.”

“Nothing more to say—this game is at least 300 hours of content!”

“What? A new episode of ‘Divine Works’?”

“Let’s put that aside for now. I need to take a good rest and savor the joy of gaming again.”

Qiao Liang ignored the audience requests in the comments for a new “Divine Works” analysis of “Millet Departure,” as he inexplicably felt an urge to retire.

The Anti-Tenda Alliance had already collapsed, Tenda Group had achieved a great victory, and Tenda Games was producing too many good games one after another. He even felt like he couldn’t keep up.

Moreover, Qiao Liang felt that as a game review content creator who had released ten episodes of “Divine Works” and profoundly influenced the battle between Tenda Group and the Anti-Tenda Alliance, his career had seemingly reached its peak, with no room for further advancement.

Now, he wanted to be a pure gamer, setting aside those complex analyses and profound connotations, to properly experience the original joy that games brought him.

This was probably a return to simplicity, in a sense.

After concluding his experience with “Millet Departure,” Qiao Liang finally opened GOG, which he hadn’t logged into for some time.

He wanted to see what this game had become after a major update and the successful completion of its merger with ioi.

It must be said that only Mr. Pei would have the imagination and courage to merge the two most successful MOBA games on the market.

Since this news was released, many players had expressed concerns—Qiao Liang included—fearing that such a change might accidentally ruin both games.

But Mr. Pei seemed very determined about the merger and continued to firmly push it forward. Now it was a one-time deal; whether good or bad, there was likely no turning back.

Logging into GOG again, Qiao Liang found the game both familiar and strange.

Familiar because the overall interface style hadn’t changed much. Strange because some small modifications had been made to certain details. These changes were the kind you could adapt to at a glance—some careless people might not even notice them. But they did bring significant changes to the post-revision GOG.

Entering a pleasant matchmaking game, Qiao Liang happily locked in Wind Ink Master, then joyfully ended the game with a 0-11 score.

“There doesn’t seem to be much change.”

“There were three ioi heroes in that match, but somehow I didn’t feel any disconnect at all.”

“It just felt like GOG had released new heroes.”

“The map seems to be a compromise between the two games. GOG’s map used to be smaller, while ioi’s was larger. Now they’ve found a middle ground that actually feels quite appropriate.”

“Some of the map mechanics in the game have subtle changes, but nothing feels out of place.”

“It’s ridiculous that there’s no sense of awkwardness!”

Before entering the game, Qiao Liang had imagined two possible scenarios.

The first was that the game changes wouldn’t be very successful, with obvious signs of patching and disconnection, giving a forced and neither-here-nor-there feeling.

The second was that the game changes would be relatively successful. The sense of disconnection wouldn’t be obvious, but the entire game mechanics would undergo huge changes, becoming a completely new game. Players would have to learn much of the game content from scratch and slowly adapt.

But what he hadn’t anticipated was that neither scenario occurred—the two games had merged perfectly and naturally, as if they were always meant to be this way.

If players who had never played either game were to look at it, they might think that GOG and ioi had been split from this current game.

It was truly amazing!

Thinking carefully, the current situation could be somewhat explained.

Initially, the differences between GOG and ioi were quite distinct, heading in two extreme directions. It was precisely this differentiation that allowed GOG to overtake its competitor through a series of strategies and methods.

But after that, ioi made several adjustments and modifications to the game, constantly moving closer to GOG in its core gameplay. The fact that the FV team could achieve results in ioi’s world championship using GPL tactics and playstyles demonstrated a certain convergence between the two.

As both games continued to develop, this trend only strengthened to provide players with better gaming experiences.

Of course, Finger Company didn’t want to admit this, so they made some changes, deliberately making their visual style and certain details different from GOG.

But such changes were ultimately superficial.

Thus, with the joint efforts of the GOG project team and Finger Company’s design team, along with extensive testing, feedback, and adjustments from professional players, they finally completed the merger of the two games.

After the merger, player experience was of course taken into account, with as few changes as possible made so that players could easily adapt.

Now that it was finally released for ordinary players to experience, it was clear that these changes had met with unanimous satisfaction from professional players to designers.

The feeling was somewhat like when players returned to a game after a year away.

The game’s content had indeed changed significantly, with many new heroes they hadn’t seen before, but after playing a couple of matches, that familiar feeling would gradually emerge, and they would quickly adapt.

Qiao Liang couldn’t help but exclaim: “They actually succeeded in merging the two games! Besides ‘amazing,’ I can’t think of any other words.”

“Moreover, this merger is equivalent to both games undergoing several major version updates and simultaneously adding over a hundred new heroes. This new game content is enough to play for a year without repetition. It feels like I’m back to when I first encountered MOBA games.”

“No wonder Mr. Pei was so determined, even establishing rectification plans for the two major leagues—clearly, he was full of confidence in this merger.”

With the games changing, the corresponding world championships and the entire league system would naturally change as well.

Previously, the FV team had been hesitant about whether to transition from ioi to GOG. Now they didn’t need to worry—everything was being reset.

This year’s competitions would proceed as usual, since these players had been playing the old version for a year, and suddenly making drastic changes would be somewhat unfair to them.

But starting next year, the two leagues would merge into a single league.

Of course, it was hard to say whether GOG teams would have an advantage or ioi teams would have an advantage after the merger. Everyone would have to learn each other’s heroes, learn the modified game mechanics, and entirely new tactics and strategies.

In this process, some players might not adapt, while a batch of new talented players might emerge.

But such changes were precisely the joy of MOBA competitive games.

For GOG players, while competition would certainly be fierce, it also meant the entire league would receive more attention and the game would have more players. The commercial value of these players would also increase.

And they believed they would have an advantage in this competition.

For ioi players, it wasn’t a loss either. After all, the game had been getting worse and worse, even to the point of merging into an Asia server. The value of the league had been continuously declining, and they were facing not just a question of competitiveness, but whether the league could continue and whether they as players still had any commercial value.

Many games had once been extremely popular, but being a professional player was ultimately a career of youth. Once a game declined, these players’ professional careers would be cut short.

Now with the two games merging, although they would face enormous pressure and challenges, at least they would be judged by skill—the strong would stay and the weak would be eliminated—rather than all players, regardless of skill, losing their livelihoods with the decline of the game.

For viewers, this was also a positive development. It meant the entire league would have higher popularity and economic level, delivering more exciting matches and gaining more attention.

In short, it was a difficult choice, accompanied by huge risks.

But the Tenda Games department, under tremendous pressure and misunderstanding, had miraculously succeeded!

And once successful, the previous problems naturally disappeared, leaving only countless benefits!