Sea Fortress is essentially still an online game, where players spend over 90% of their time in PvP battles. In comparison, its story mode feels more like a side dish, with small bits of narrative updated periodically to entertain players who are hooked on shooting, while also serving as advertising for newly released epic weapons.
The story mode button has a special highlight effect to indicate new story updates.
Qiao Laoshi entered story mode and couldn’t help but pause in surprise.
Because this updated story mode wasn’t crammed together with previous entries, but was given a completely new entrance, with full prestige.
This struck Qiao Laoshi as somewhat odd. If his estimate was correct and the new story mode only had two to three hours of gameplay, there would be no need for a separate entrance—it would be a waste.
Could this story mode actually be important? That doesn’t make sense, does it?
With some confusion, Qiao Laoshi began experiencing the new story mode.
…
The screen went pitch black, and first an emotionless electronic voice sounded beside his ear: “AS-371-45 squad, mission objective: infiltrate the hive, locate the Queen’s position, execute decapitation operation.”
A deep male voice answered in a calm tone: “Copy that.”
A game screen appeared, still in first-person view, with a special round platform directly ahead. On it sat a removed “Skylark III Combat Suit,” with a stylized “義” character on the right shoulder.
The first-person game protagonist paused for a moment before pressing the button beside the platform.
The platform rotated, turning the Skylark suit’s back toward the protagonist’s view, with the rear micro-glider and jet exhausts clearly visible.
With a “click,” the back of the combat suit split open. The protagonist stepped inside, and a series of mechanical sounds rang out as the entire suit seemed to envelop him seamlessly.
Various pale blue, technologically advanced UI elements appeared on the first-person screen, displaying different battlefield information. Even the minimap was redesigned with a more high-tech aesthetic.
The sound of jet exhausts came from beside his ear, and the first-person view lifted off, moments later landing steadily inside an aircraft cabin.
At this point, the player officially took control and could freely move and rotate the camera.
Qiao Laoshi was slightly surprised, as this was worlds apart from what he’d expected.
The original Sea Fortress story mode had been in full English with Chinese subtitles, but this time it was switched to Chinese voice acting.
That emotionless electronic voice sounded like an AI style, but the timbre was somewhat particular—he felt like he’d heard it somewhere before.
Qiao Laoshi thought carefully and realized it sounded just like the OTTO phone’s newly updated voice assistant.
The dialogue also left Qiao Laoshi confused.
The original Sea Fortress story was about biological viruses and fighting zombies, but now the dialogue included phrases like “hive” and “Queen.”
The first-person UI layout had also changed, immediately evoking science fiction themes.
Most outrageous was this combat suit.
Qiao Laoshi gave it a quick glance and spotted a miniature fusion reactor, massive railrifle, and gravity devices on the feet. This thing clearly wasn’t from the same timeline as Sea Fortress’s original story.
This simple opening made Qiao Laoshi realize that this DLC’s story should have absolutely nothing to do with Sea Fortress’s narrative—this was a science fiction story.
Qiao Laoshi turned the camera view and saw four other squad members wearing Skylark suits with slightly different paint schemes.
About to begin their mission, the four team members reacted differently—some cracking jokes to lighten the mood, others remaining silent with occasional chuckles of acknowledgment.
Despite being entirely in Chinese, subtitles were still present, even showing their names: Xu Kaile, Meng Yu, Zhao Yongxiu, Wu Shaojun.
With distinct personalities and different combat suit schemes, Qiao Laoshi quickly got a rough sense of them all.
After brief preparations, the four team members stood at the cabin exit, leaving a space for the protagonist Qin Yi.
Qiao Laoshi moved Qin Yi over, and the hatch door instantly opened. All squad members in Skylark suits rapidly plunged downward!
Qiao Laoshi judged they must be jumping from some large aircraft.
Below was crimson terrain.
In the sky, countless aircraft and grotesque insects engaged in fierce combat. Even on the ground, dense swarms of bugs could be seen continuously assaulting human defense lines like tides, with smoke and flames everywhere reminding Qiao Laoshi this was a brutally unimaginable alien battlefield.
During rapid descent, all squad members maintained formation, diving headfirst into their target—a pitch-black cavern on the surface.
This brief few-second sequence was a real-time rendered cutscene—not expensive to produce but effective enough, clearly informing players of their current predicament.
After dropping into the dark cavern, Qiao Laoshi regained control of the protagonist, and the story sequence officially began.
No tutorial was needed since movement, shooting, weapon switching—all controls were identical to Sea Fortress’s basic controls.
Larvae and worker bees emerged from deep within the cavern, quickly annihilated under powerful firepower.
Only after hands-on play did Qiao Laoshi discover a shocking fact: Isn’t this basically cheating?!
Lightly pressing the left mouse button, the massive gun barrel immediately erupted with flames. This power, this magnitude—the firepower was at least several times stronger than Sea Fortress’s regular guns.
Not just firepower—magazine capacity, reload speed, recoil, everything was on a completely different level!
Though Qiao Laoshi didn’t frequently play Sea Fortress, he knew basic FPS recoil control. But he discovered it was completely unnecessary—the recoil was practically negligible, almost point-and-shoot accurate!
This recoil-free feature seemed to have a cooldown though, requiring recovery after extended use.
While Sea Fortress already reduced recoil slightly compared to other FPS games for difficulty balance, it was nowhere near this outrageous.
And there was more.
In Sea Fortress normal mode, spacebar jumps. In this mode, tapping spacebar jumps much higher than normal; holding spacebar makes the rear exhausts propel you up, allowing short-range gliding with directional keys.
Footsteps had gravity devices, allowing wall-running, with no fall damage from heights.
Special functions included “Tactical Camouflage”—activating it rendered you semi-transparent. Though movement slowed, insects wouldn’t notice you.
Most outrageous, the helmet integrated infrared detection, terrain navigation, and ballistics calculation. Terrain navigation provided a 3D minimap, while ballistics showed bullet trajectories, essential when the recoil-free function wasn’t active, guiding players on recoil control.
This ballistics feature even had an enhanced mode—when activated, it briefly auto-locked onto enemies for player targeting, requiring only trigger pulling.
The detection function was equally absurd—simply put, it detected insect locations.
What’s this called? Wallhacks don’t count as cheating?
This wasn’t just wallhacking—it was combining flight, wallhacks, recoil-free shooting, invisibility, aimbot, and various other cheat functions into a super-hack!
With these specs in regular Sea Fortress mode, single-handedly wiping entire cities wouldn’t just be talk.
This power upgrade greatly enhanced satisfaction, maximizing the thrill of shooting.
As the story progressed, all four squad members had their dialogue, with AI AEEIS continuously issuing commands.
Qiao Laoshi was completely immersed in the joy of bug-blasting, completely losing track of time.
But as the story advanced, things gradually went wrong.
Insects multiplied, combat intensified, team members began questioning, discovering shattered Skylark suit fragments in caverns. Squad members sacrificed themselves one by one during the mission…
Qiao Laoshi unknowingly became addicted to playing.
The entire story’s design was clearly somewhat devious: starting players with easy kills before increasingly difficult challenges and tense narrative made it impossible to stop.
Team sacrifices and mounting mysteries drove players to desperately reach the ending.
Finally, Qiao Laoshi encountered the Queen. After a cutscene, the screen shook, the cavern ceiling collapsed, human reinforcements arrived…
But the protagonist’s eyelids seemed heavy, blinking several times before completely closing. The DLC story ended abruptly.
Qiao Laoshi was dumbfounded.
“Huh? That’s it?”
“Damn, this isn’t a Sea Fortress DLC story at all—it’s clearly an epic trailer for Mr. Pei’s new game!”
Only after finishing the entire DLC did Qiao Laoshi realize he’d been played.
Checking the time—it was already 7 PM!
The doorbell rang—Slackin’ delivery arrived with his scheduled dinner.
Qiao Laoshi opened the door and received his meal, only then realizing he’d been playing for hours.
After finishing lunch, he’d spent two hours on Return to Shore’s reincarnation mode before starting Sea Fortress’s new story. Apparently, it took at least five hours to complete.
Qiao Laoshi was speechless: “So much for ‘just a regular DLC’! I thought at most it would be a 2-hour story, but it’s directly five hours!”
“This could nearly pass for a new game!”
“Such massive capacity and exquisite production for a free DLC, just bundled with one epic weapon—Mr. Pei is incredible…”
“Wait, didn’t I forget something?”
Qiao Laoshi scratched his head puzzled, then checked the time, suddenly realizing: “Ah, I missed the GPL match! Damn!”