Late at night, Qiao Liang sat in front of his computer, staring at the credits of “Fantasy War Remake” displayed on his screen, suddenly feeling the urge to have a cigarette.

Of course, he didn’t smoke, but he felt that lighting a cigarette and contemplating life amidst swirling smoke would suit his current mood.

After grinding through the entire story mode of “Fantasy War Remake” and watching all the CGI scenes, Qiao Liang’s mind was now completely blank, filled only with countless question marks.

“Could it be that I’m approaching this game all wrong?”

“Is this really ‘Fantasy War Remake’? Is it not some knockoff made by a roadside workshop to ride on the name?”

“Even player-made demos are better than this!”

Qiao Liang felt deeply confused.

It shouldn’t be at this level!

It was incomprehensibly terrible!

Holding his nose and playing through the game from beginning to end, Qiao Liang had found at least three or four points that he simply couldn’t accept.

First was that the released product severely differed from the previous promotional materials.

Although the developers hadn’t promised explicitly, they had implied many times that all campaign cutscenes would be remade, including the game’s art assets and real-time rendered scenes.

They had even mentioned that there would be minor adjustments to the storyline to adapt to the changes in the “Fantasy World” universe over the years.

However, after the final product was released, none of these promised changes had been implemented!

The vast majority of cutscenes in the game hadn’t been remade; they merely had increased resolution and some added lighting effects. Although they looked much better than the old version’s cutscenes, compared to current games, they still looked like graphics from a different era.

Only the two most classic and popular cutscenes had actually been remade, but what Qiao Liang found completely unacceptable was that the ending cutscene he had been eagerly anticipating turned out to be terribly done!

When he first saw this cutscene, Qiao Liang’s initial impression wasn’t too bad.

After all, having watched those blurry cutscenes earlier, Qiao Liang’s eyes had developed a high tolerance for poor graphics. He noticed that this final sequence was clearly different from the original and many details had been improved.

This cutscene appeared to be made with real-time rendering. Though the movements were fluid and the camera work was decent, it was obviously lacking in detail.

Qiao Liang initially thought that using real-time rendering for such an important CGI sequence seemed a bit lazy, but it was still acceptable. However, halfway through, he realized something was wrong—this wasn’t real-time rendering at all, but a proper pre-rendered CGI sequence!

This was truly devastating!

If they had achieved this level of quality with real-time rendering, one could say the developers had the ability but lacked attitude. But now, a proper CGI sequence produced results that looked like real-time rendering, wouldn’t that mean they had neither ability nor attitude?

If it were any other developer, it might have been somewhat excusable, but the critical reason why the “Fantasy War” and “Star Sea” series of games were so famous was precisely because their CGI was exceptionally beautiful, even ahead of their time.

For such a studio to produce this kind of CGI—wasn’t that a joke?

Moreover, the game was poorly optimized, with countless inexplicable minor issues. Although not completely unplayable, the blow to players’ morale was fatal.

“Fantasy War Remake” hadn’t changed game engines as many players had expected, but instead had been patched based on the original engine. Even playing on today’s high-end computers occasionally resulted in stuttering. Other issues such as black screens when loading campaign maps or randomly returning to the level selection interface after loading were all extremely frustrating.

Even more ridiculous was a bug where Chinese subtitles would overlap, completely ruining the player experience in an absurdly comical way.

In short, Qiao Liang’s expectations had been completely dashed. “Fantasy War Remake” was a pile of garbage, absolutely worthless trash with no redeeming qualities whatsoever!

Qiao Liang had been in a great mood today, having just watched the “Mission and Choice” movie and happily opening “Fantasy War Remake” to continue enjoying himself. It was like someone who had just finished a feast but wasn’t quite full yet and wanted some dessert, only to accidentally take a big mouthful of excrement!

This disgusting feeling caused severe psychological damage that would linger for a long time.

Qiao Liang opened his fan groups and forums to see how others were reacting.

Previously, Qiao Liang had deliberately avoided information about “Mission and Choice” and “Fantasy War Remake,” mainly to avoid spoilers that might affect his first impression of the games.

Now that he had played them both, he didn’t need to worry about spoilers anymore.

Sure enough, players online were also furious!

Earlier this morning, everyone’s discussions had focused on “Mission and Choice,” with domestic players all celebrating.

It had been an unexpected surprise—although many people had speculated that Tenda would release a “Mission and Choice” game, no one expected it to come so quickly and with such high quality!

Riding on the release of “Mission and Choice,” many players, like Qiao Liang, had infinite expectations for the upcoming “Fantasy War Remake.” Many RTS game fans thought they would get double happiness today.

But “Fantasy War Remake” had hit them over the head, completely stunning them.

Domestic players were cursing in unison, with angry players searching for refund options, shouting that they had been scammed.

The points players complained about were similar to what Qiao Liang had seen: the actual quality of the remake differed too much from the promotional videos, and numerous small bugs severely affected the gaming experience.

Foreign netizens were even more outraged than domestic ones.

Someone had posted ratings from foreign gaming sites. Just hours after release, “Fantasy War Remake’s” score was plummeting drastically. On a scale of 10, it had already dropped to 2.7 and seemed to be continuously falling!

Faced with questioning from international players, the officials responded: “Based on feedback from our player community, everyone wants us to maintain the authentic flavor of the original game, which should not be broken at all. Therefore, we decided to withdraw our original plan to remake cutscenes and corresponding animations, preserving the spirit of ‘Fantasy War’ and allowing players to relive those unforgettable moments.”

This official response clearly intensified the conflict.

Players were already filled with anger, having paid AAA game prices for such garbage, and now the officials were shifting the blame onto them?

What did they mean by “everyone wants to maintain authenticity”? Who exactly was this “everyone” they referred to?

And what was this nonsense about “allowing players to relive unforgettable moments”? If they wanted to relive those moments, couldn’t they just play the original version?

The game’s poor quality clearly resulted from insufficient development time and budget, with absolutely no sincerity. Yet they came up with such a refreshingly detached excuse, truly treating players like idiots!

For the players, this was nothing short of commercial fraud—absolutely intolerable!

Many players shifted blame to the outsourcing company hired by the officials, believing that the game’s condition was entirely the outsourcing company’s fault. But soon, players discovered that the outsourcing company was only responsible for a portion of the game models, and these models were actually among the better parts of the entire game…

Just when Qiao Liang thought it couldn’t get worse, he saw an even more astonishing post.

Foreign media had noticed that compared to the original, the End User Agreement of the remade “Fantasy War” had been modified. Custom maps created by players using the map editor now belonged to the development company. Player-made maps were now the property of the development company, including not only the various art elements in the maps but also the gameplay and all other content!

This news was like pouring oil on fire, making players even more furious!

As everyone knew, the reason “Fantasy War” had maintained its vitality was partly due to decent esports events, but also because of the large amount of community-created content. The various RPG maps made by players had remained popular throughout the years.

But with this agreement changed, it meant players could no longer retain ownership of their designed maps. If a map became popular, players couldn’t retain their development achievements and had to hand them over.

Similar agreements had actually existed when “Star Sea” was released a couple of years ago, but because “Star Sea’s” map editor hadn’t produced many outstanding works, this agreement hadn’t caused much of a stir at that time.

For “Fantasy War Remake” to modify user terms at this critical juncture was simply supplying ammunition to critics!

Internationally, many players were flooding various gaming sites to give “Fantasy War Remake” low scores. Some were even calling for people to give 10 points to games that were previously rated the lowest on websites, elevating the current last-place holder to ensure that “Fantasy War Remake” would become the lowest-rated game on the entire site!

In short, “Fantasy War Remake” had been highly anticipated before its release, predicted to be a masterpiece, but after release, it met with a reputation Waterloo. Ratings plummeted, criticism was rampant, pre-order players were all requesting refunds, and those who hadn’t bought it certainly wouldn’t voluntarily taste this garbage.

No one expected that this once-legendary masterpiece would end up like this, with both reputation and sales in catastrophic failure!

After surfing the internet for a while, Qiao Liang couldn’t help but feel deeply emotional.

“Who would have thought that ‘Fantasy War Remake’ would turn out like this?”

“If I had told someone ten days ago that ‘Fantasy War Remake’ would be like this, they would have thought I was crazy.”

“Especially compared to ‘Mission and Choice,’ the gap is even bigger!”

“The original ‘national gaming disgrace’ was remade into a true AAA masterpiece, while the original classic game was remade into a pile of trash…”

“This is so topical! I’ve got content for my new video!”

Qiao Liang suddenly realized that although “Fantasy War Remake” was terrible and had fed him a mouthful of excrement, it had also provided him with perfect material!

For “Mission and Choice” to become a legendary masterpiece, it wasn’t enough on its own—it needed the contrast of its peers.

What could be more exciting than stepping on the former masterpiece “Fantasy War” to ascend to godhood?

Qiao Liang suddenly felt inspiration strike and immediately began writing the script for his next video!