Purchase, payment, download.
“Fantasy War Remake” had two pricing options: the Standard Edition for 168 yuan and the Deluxe Edition for 258 yuan.
For a hardcore gamer like Qiao Liang, he naturally had to buy the Deluxe Edition.
It stung a little, but Qiao Liang felt the money was well spent.
True hardcore gamers could tolerate expensive games as long as they were worth the price.
After starting the download, Qiao Liang checked the game’s size and download time.
“Just over 30 GB? That’s much smaller than ‘Mission and Choice’?”
“Well, ‘Mission and Choice’ forcibly included a Blu-ray movie, which probably takes up a lot of space.”
What Qiao Liang didn’t know was that the initial installation package of “Mission and Choice” didn’t include the entire Blu-ray movie, but only the first few parts.
If Qiao Liang were to check the size of the “Mission and Choice” folder now, he would discover that the game had actually exceeded 100 GB.
Meanwhile, the 30-plus GB of “Fantasy War Remake” still contained the content of the original client.
These details already hinted at some warning signs, but the image of “Fantasy War Remake” in Qiao Liang’s mind was so perfect that he naturally overlooked these “minor issues.”
Although his internet connection was fast, he still had to wait a while.
Qiao Liang opened “Mission and Choice” again, playing while waiting for “Fantasy War Remake” to finish downloading.
Upon re-entering “Mission and Choice,” Qiao Liang discovered that all the other gameplay modes had been unlocked.
When players first started “Mission and Choice,” there was no title screen. They would enter directly into the game’s storyline, and if they quit in the middle, they would continue from where they left off the next time they entered.
Only after completing the entire storyline for the first time would the title screen appear upon subsequent entry.
The title screen had several different options: [Story Mode], [Eternal War], [Online Battle], [Create Mode], as well as [Options] and [Exit Game].
Story Mode allowed players to experience the storyline again, except this time they could jump directly to specific levels.
Eternal War was obviously similar to an endless mode, where players continued to fight against AI-controlled insects, with gradually increasing difficulty.
Online Battle allowed player versus player and player versus AI combat, with freedom to choose the number of players on each side, map size, AI difficulty, and other options, offering a high degree of freedom.
Considering that there was no balance whatsoever between humans and insects in “Mission and Choice,” this online battle mode could only be considered a relatively casual entertainment mode.
What attracted Qiao Liang most was obviously the [Create Mode].
Previously, “Fantasy War” had released an editor with the game, giving birth to many classic RPG maps, with “Divine Awakening” being born from this.
“Mission and Choice’s” Create Mode was essentially the official editor built into the game, with simplified usage and many modular operation methods, allowing ordinary players to create their own maps with minimal exploration.
Of course, creating more complex content still required learning and research.
When entering Create Mode for the first time, there was a pop-up prompt explaining that the copyright of basic content such as art assets belonged to Tenda Games, while the copyright of player-created content such as map mechanics and gameplay belonged to the individual players.
If players discovered that their self-made maps were being infringed upon, they could contact Tenda for rights protection. Tenda would help handle these infringement cases and protect players’ legitimate rights.
Seeing this, Qiao Liang couldn’t help but admire Tenda’s integrity!
The copyright of original gameplay content created by players using the editor should definitely belong to the players themselves, there was no doubt about that.
But for Tenda to add that they would help protect rights if creators’ work was infringed upon was quite heartwarming, showing their care for the players.
Qiao Liang quickly browsed through all these modes without diving deep into any of them. After all, these modes didn’t differ much from the combat content in Story Mode, and Qiao Liang’s mind was completely focused on “Fantasy War Remake” now.
There would be time to slowly experience these modes later.
Of course, Qiao Liang had the highest hopes for “Mission and Choice’s” Create Mode. After some time, there should be many interesting RPG maps appearing.
However, “Fantasy War Remake” would certainly have also remade the editor, and it remained to be seen which one players would choose.
Qiao Liang moved around a bit in “Mission and Choice,” briefly experiencing the other gameplay modes, then eagerly exited.
Because he noticed that “Fantasy War Remake” had finished downloading.
“Alright, alright, let me gather my thoughts. When I seriously play ‘Fantasy War Remake,’ I shouldn’t keep thinking about ‘Mission and Choice.’ That makes me seem like a player who can’t commit.”
As a hardcore player, Qiao Liang approached such games with reverence, and his hand even trembled slightly as he clicked on the game icon.
It felt like the excitement of meeting a goddess he hadn’t seen for many years.
However, when he actually saw the game screen, Qiao Liang was stunned.
“This interface…”
“Uh…”
Qiao Liang was momentarily at a loss for words.
It was indeed a remake—the overall graphics quality was much better than the original game—but far from making Qiao Liang’s eyes light up, it actually left him feeling disappointed.
Because the title interface was merely a slightly refreshed version of the original game’s art assets. You could see the differences in details, but the entire interface layout remained exactly the same!
This UI layout might have been quite advanced ten years ago, but with so many years of game development, the overall UI layouts had become increasingly attractive. Compared to current-era game interfaces, this UI layout felt quite outdated.
“Maybe they wanted to preserve the authentic feel as much as possible. The important thing isn’t the external interface packaging, but the actual content.”
Qiao Liang quickly found a way to comfort himself and clicked the [Campaign] button to begin experiencing the game’s storyline.
Although “Fantasy War” was an RTS game with excellent competitive elements, its competitive nature could only be appreciated by a small elite group of top players. Qiao Liang was not that kind of core RTS player; for him, the storyline was the most essential part of the game.
According to the official announcements, all the CGI and models in this game had been remade. Qiao Liang figured that even if the CGI didn’t reach the level of “Fantasy World,” it should at least reach the level of “Star Sea,” right?
Anyway, with top-tier CGI, all you needed to do was enjoy it.
A yellowish sky, a vast land, a reddish-brown surface covered with weeds—as the camera gradually zoomed in, a deep female voice began narrating.
“The horns of war still echo in the wind, while the shadows of the past have silently arrived…”
Qiao Liang’s expression quickly changed from anticipation to confusion, and then from confusion to bewilderment.
“Is this all there is to the graphics?”
“This resolution… are you sure it’s been remade?”
Qiao Liang even began to doubt his own vision and memory.
He no longer had a clear impression of what the original “Fantasy War” CGI looked like, but his feeling about the current CGI was that it seemed unchanged, yet somehow slightly different.
It was as if they had only slightly improved the quality and resolution of the old CGI.
This CGI didn’t have that pixelated feel and looked clear. But the problem was that the texture details in the CGI were a complete mess—the weeds on the ground looked completely unrealistic, and even the designs of the soldiers hadn’t changed at all!
It had a very dated feel.
“This doesn’t seem right. I understand that making CGI is expensive, but couldn’t they at least make the opening CGI look better?”
“Fine, maybe they spent the money on the more important CGI sequences later on. After all, this game has such a long storyline with so many CGI sequences that they might not have been able to remake them all. Doing it in batches is understandable.”
Qiao Liang could only comfort himself this way.
He clearly remembered that the final storyline of “Fantasy War” was particularly exciting, with a face-off between two highly popular characters. As long as that CGI sequence was remade, it would be fine. It wouldn’t be a big deal if they didn’t remake these minor CGI sequences of lesser characters fighting.
After the CGI, the campaign loading began.
Qiao Liang’s brow furrowed again.
“This interface… was it really remade? I can’t see any difference!”
“No, wait, this progress bar actually looks worse than before.”
“Why aren’t the words ‘Loading’ on the progress bar centered? They’re slightly off to the left? Are they trying to torture people with OCD? Even an intern making a PowerPoint wouldn’t make this kind of mistake, right?”
“Something’s not right. Is this really the officially released version? Are you sure it’s not a half-finished product from the testing phase?”
Even before seeing the actual game screen, Qiao Liang had fallen into deep self-doubt.
Could it be that he had clicked the purchase button incorrectly?
Finally, after a loading bar that seemed to stick for a while, he entered the actual game screen.
However, upon seeing the true game screen, Qiao Liang’s psychological defenses completely collapsed.
“Fraud, this is absolutely fraud!”
“Is this the same game as in the trailer?!”
The official game screen did show some changes compared to the original version, but it still gave the same impression as the CGI and title screen: the graphics quality had indeed improved, but the art assets seemed completely unchanged!
Especially the actual game screen, which left Qiao Liang utterly dumbfounded.
Because earlier, when promoting “Fantasy War Remake,” the officials had released a trailer featuring a very classic campaign scenario from “Fantasy War.”
In that trailer, all character models and scene details were refined to the level of the “Fantasy World” MMORPG. In close-up views, you could even see the character’s hair strands and facial pores, and their lip movements matched the dialogue perfectly.
Although there was still a noticeable gap compared to current plot-driven AAA titles known for their graphics, for an RTS game, it was already quite impressive.
But now Qiao Liang discovered that none of the content demonstrated in the trailer was present at all!
If the original game’s graphics were a 1, and the graphics shown in the trailer were a 10, then the current game graphics were at most a 2.
If one insisted on calling this a remake with improved graphical quality, there wouldn’t be anything technically wrong with that statement, but it was completely different from what players had imagined!