The official platform’s download speed was very stable, with the progress bar steadily advancing, but it still required some time.
Qiao Liang took a can of soda from the refrigerator and sat in front of his computer, thinking about playing something casual to pass the time, but he couldn’t help checking the update progress bar every few minutes.
“This feeling is like traveling back ten years in time…”
Qiao Liang still remembered when his family had spent a fortune to buy a computer during his elementary school days—a small screen with a big CPU, dial-up internet with speeds less than 100K, a tiny bandwidth that made even loading images on websites slow, and it came with both data and time limits. If you weren’t careful, you’d exceed the time limit.
Back then, Qiao Liang had to be extremely calculative each time he went online. He would search for game walkthroughs and write them down in a small notebook, then use them to beat the levels he was stuck on in single-player games.
Later, when broadband became available and speeds improved, Qiao Liang began downloading games online. With speeds of a few hundred K at that time, downloading games of tens of gigabytes often took several hours or even more than ten hours.
His feelings back then were exactly the same as now—constantly checking the download progress every so often.
The moment the game finished downloading, he would excitedly install it, enter the game, and see the beautiful game CGI… that was truly the most wonderful moment.
Back then, Qiao Liang had to outwit his parents to play on the computer, always on edge, fearing that one careless mistake would result in getting caught and scolded.
But later, he became independent, became a gaming content creator, played all sorts of games, and no one supervised his gaming anymore. Ironically, that excitement was gone.
Often, he would buy a game, leave it aside, and forget to play it, or only play the beginning and never pick it up again.
That feeling of jubilation when a game finished downloading—he hadn’t experienced it for a very, very long time.
But this time, for some reason, he suddenly had that feeling again!
The current moment felt very much like those tense yet anticipatory times when he would secretly get up in the middle of the night to play on the computer in the study without his parents finding out.
Finally, as Qiao Liang eagerly waited, “Mission and Choice” finished updating!
However, Qiao Liang noticed that although the update was complete, downloads were still continuing in the background.
This was because the current tens of gigabytes were just the game’s basic content, including the game itself and the first two or three cinematic sequences.
To ensure the best viewing experience, although the quality of all visuals couldn’t possibly reach the level of a movie theater, they were basically ultra-high-definition Blu-ray quality.
But this also meant that the videos took up a lot of space, almost as much as the game itself.
To prevent players from having to download too much content at once, the development team deliberately split the downloads. The later cinematic content was placed in a background download, allowing players to start the game earlier.
As players progressed through the game, the later cinematic content would be downloaded.
After the update, the “Mission and Choice” icon hadn’t changed at all, nor had the game details page. It still displayed the original, dated, pixel-style promotional images and those awkwardly written promotional lines.
Qiao Liang even suspected that if some players had automatic updates enabled, they might not even notice that “Mission and Choice” had received such a massive update if they didn’t look carefully.
But this only made Qiao Liang more excited about the game!
Qiao Liang calmed his excitement and entered the game.
The original, extremely poor “Mission and Choice” had no opening CGI. After entering the game, it went directly to a very crude title screen with only a few simple options like Start Game, Load Game, and Settings.
After starting the game and entering the first chapter, it only showed a PowerPoint-like image with a few lines of text briefly introducing the story background, and then directly entered the game screen.
Even in that era, this attitude was very perfunctory and absurd. After all, although games of the same period also had a pixelated style, they at least had many CGI scenes at the beginning and throughout the game.
Games like “Fantasy Battle” already had very high CGI standards at that time, creating a breathtaking feeling in that era, even surpassing newer games released several years later.
But the updated “Mission and Choice” was completely different!
After a black screen and a few logos, a pair of tightly closed eyes appeared on the screen.
These eyes were shut tight, but you could see the eyeballs moving rapidly, the brows slightly furrowed, and fine beads of sweat seeping from the forehead, as if experiencing a terrible nightmare.
Qiao Liang was stunned.
“The CGI quality is too high!”
“It’s indistinguishable from a real person!”
Qiao Liang had seen some AAA titles with massive budgets for CGI, where the pores on characters’ faces were clearly visible.
But he had never seen anything this detailed!
Then, in the next second, the camera pulled back, and Qiao Liang saw the person’s entire face.
“…Isn’t this Lu Zhiyao?!”
“This isn’t just realistic—it’s real! This isn’t CGI at all, it’s a movie!”
Watching the hibernation pod automatically open and Lu Zhiyao turn over and sit up, Qiao Liang instantly understood why it looked so real—because it wasn’t CGI!
“So… Mr. Pei put the movie into the game?”
“Doesn’t that mean buying the game is like getting the movie for free?”
“Or buying the movie is like getting the game for free?”
“Hmm… that doesn’t seem quite right.”
“Anyway, that’s not important, but mixing the movie and game together—won’t that cause problems with the pacing of the story?”
Having played many games, Qiao Liang instinctively had concerns when he saw this approach of combining game and movie.
In fact, some foreign companies had previously used live-action filming to create game CGI, but that was quite some time ago.
Moreover, the vast majority of game companies didn’t adopt this method afterward. Since it didn’t become mainstream, that indicated there were issues with this approach.
For instance, game storylines are fragmented, with each chapter’s story potentially divided into dozens of segments that aren’t closely connected, selecting only the most exciting parts of a storyline for CGI.
As for the middle parts, they can be filled in with gameplay content.
But a movie’s plot must be continuous, naturally conflicting with the game’s storytelling approach.
“Maybe they extracted part of the movie’s plot?”
“But that seems wasteful, and I feel like it would be difficult to handle the details.”
“If an ordinary, less meticulous game company did this, it might be acceptable, but Tenda has always been known for perfection in details. Mr. Pei wouldn’t allow such minor flaws.”
“Or is there a better solution?”
The plot was engaging, and Qiao Liang didn’t have much time to think about these miscellaneous thoughts. These ideas just flashed through his mind briefly before being temporarily set aside.
A high-definition esports display with gaming headphones might not be the perfect viewing experience, but it was definitely not bad.
Qiao Liang was quickly completely absorbed by the game’s story.
In other games, CGI generally serves as a complement, usually not very long due to budget constraints, mainly helping players quickly get into the game state.
But this storyline in “Mission and Choice” was clearly very long, not just a small excerpt of the plot, but properly telling a complete story.
After Qin Yi accepted the position of commander, AEEIS introduced him to the various functions of the control panel, including the observation sphere, touch screen, surrounding holograms, and more.
As Qin Yi formally began operating, Qiao Liang’s computer screen seamlessly transitioned to the game interface.
No game title, no story chapter or plot summary—Qiao Liang found himself naturally assuming the role of Qin Yi.
AEEIS’s voice continued, but this time it was instructing the player to perform operations.
AEEIS didn’t directly use terms like “mouse,” “keyboard,” or “controller,” but used vaguer phrases like “rotate the view” or “select units,” to avoid breaking the player’s immersion.
Instead, a simple icon prompt appeared on the screen. For example, when needing to select units with the mouse, a simple mouse shape with an arrow outlined in white would appear on the screen, prompting the player to perform the related action.
The overall UI was almost identical to the UI in the movie, with a very high degree of freedom in perspective. Although it couldn’t compare to the holographic images in the movie, compared to other games locked in a god’s-eye view, the entire screen appeared more magnificent when zoomed in.
The plot of the first level was very simple, merely guiding the player to get used to controlling the game view and watching the simulated images of the united fleet being defeated after encountering the insect race.
After the gameplay ended, it seamlessly transitioned back to the movie content.
The screen previously controlled by the player became movie footage, presenting what had just happened in a more magnificent way.
However, actions during gameplay were more free and took much longer than in the movie, so it didn’t feel like the plot was repeating. Instead, it reinforced the impression of the story in the player’s mind.
Next came the second part of the story and combat, then the third part of the story and combat…
Qiao Liang discovered that “Mission and Choice” seemed to take a different approach from other games.
In other games, the gameplay itself is the main focus, with story cinematics interspersed, serving as embellishments.
In contrast, “Mission and Choice” actually had the movie storyline running throughout, stringing together the entire narrative, while the gameplay segments became the embellishments.
The difference between these two approaches is that the former gives a strong sense of segmentation, with chapters and levels being fairly disconnected, without very natural transitions.
In some games, new levels even require loading and progress bars, which is even less user-friendly.
But “Mission and Choice” made players completely unaware of any disconnection between chapters and levels.
This is similar to the method adopted by many AAA story-driven titles.
The traditional approach is to have loading screens during scene transitions, but these story-driven AAA titles, to make the player’s experience more continuous, would use special treatments during transitions—like tunnel collapses or the protagonist crawling through a narrow cave—loading the content of the next scene during this phase, so loading screens never appear.
“Mission and Choice” clearly took this approach as well, playing movie clips between levels. While players watched the movie, the next level was already loaded.
Through clever arrangement of the story, the transition between movie parts and game parts was perfect, without giving players any sense of abruptness or unnaturalness.
Although he hadn’t yet encountered the actual battle part, just from the opening segment, Qiao Liang already felt that this new “Mission and Choice” was absolutely different from all previous RTS games!