Text: Yan Jinyan

In June this year, foreigners held a summer game festival. Chinese players saw it, full of enthusiasm and raised their eyebrows.

Why? Because at the press conference, the two domestic stand-alone machines of "Black Myth: Wukong" and "Shadow Blade Zero" swiped a wave of presence, especially the latter became the main axis of the night.

But in fact, standing on the world stage at the same time, there is another domestic work "The End of the Ming Dynasty: The Feather of the Abyss" (later known as "The End of the Ming Dynasty") - it appeared on the Xbox press conference every few days, and the look and feel is not inferior to the overseas works on the same stage.

Some players will be surprised and wonder where this is a master who suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

And familiar players may be more in a trance, "Isn't this the plagiarized game that was sprayed into a sieve three years ago?" ”

01

Rewind the clock to 2021.

At that time, similar domestic masterpieces were either exposed not long or questioned, and some earlier works were slow to move. In general, the surprise of the national list is far less than today's.

At that time, as a media, I was looking forward to it after I knew about "The End of the Ming Dynasty" in advance. I really want to see what kind of soul like the domestic team can make.

But when it released the first version of PV, everyone had mixed feelings.

As the first exposure, it directly brought out an 18-minute demonstration of the actual machine, and the concept of the brain is not neat, which is very real. But if you look closely at the content, it is really a little unbearable: like, too similar.

Action design of characters and monsters, animations of lighting bonfires, interface UI...... It's simply printed in the same mold as Hidetaka Miyazaki.

As a result, doubts came like a tsunami, not only in China, but even overseas players also expressed "lawyer's letter warning" after seeing it.

As you can imagine, the game was quickly labeled negatively and sentenced to death early.

At that time, Xia Siyuan, the producer of "The End of the Ming Dynasty", also stood up and explained, saying that they were completely from the perspective of research and development, first doing technology selection and verification, thinking about whether it could be achieved and to what extent.

To put it simply, if they want to make an open world with as high a degree of freedom as possible, they may make a "Zelda" first; If they're going to do a narrative game that emphasizes performance, they might try to recreate The Last of Us. In short, you have to try whether you can build a basic program framework, and whether your ability is enough to support the implementation of your ideas.

The emergence of "Late Ming Dynasty" is, on the one hand, that they hope to make some games that they will find fun as players, and on the other hand, they hope to do more traditional cultural expressions in the context of the late Ming Dynasty. However, in order to express these things, a foundation is needed, that is, the actual machine demonstration at that time was completely an internal demo for technical verification.

Of course, you say that they are angrily reprimanded by the players, are they wronged?

Absolutely not wronged, who let them use the technical demo used internally directly to the outside. Players are not stupid, since you put it up, you have the right to judge, after all, maybe they just want to go the black and red route? No matter what happens, if you make a mistake, you will be beaten.

Xia Siyuan recalled it to me, and admitted that it was indeed that he had not done a good job, and there was nothing to wash. "We didn't intend to create such feedback, we just wanted to make a technical demo, and we all know the points of criticism from players, and we also attach great importance to these criticisms, which shows that we still need to improve in many aspects, so we have been improving in the past two years."

But did this hit them? Of course there is, but not devastating.

He said that because the team only had a few people at the beginning, everyone knew the roots, and the core team was all people who had experienced ups and downs in the industry, and everyone actually had their own clear goals.

"Although most of the reviews on the Internet were negative at the time, we received a lot of feedback and suggestions from players after that. We have been concentrating on improving the game for the past two years, and now there are a large number of players not only in China, but also overseas who are paying attention to the product and putting forward ideas. As a result, this is positive for game development. ”

02

Three years ago, it wasn't all bad.

After seeing the technical demo, many people in the industry recognized their capabilities. Soon, they not only recruited people, but also signed the product to 505 Release, and the number of team members gradually increased to more than 100 in three years, close to 200.

Xia Siyuan said that at that time, they didn't have much time to react to public opinion, but rushed to the next battlefield non-stop - after the technical framework was verified, it was time to make a design that they thought was fun.

What makes a fun design? Xia Siyuan is a veteran of action games, and in his opinion, no matter what kind of combat system it is, it must have enough depth.

Reflected in "The End of the Ming Dynasty", the first is the playability of a single weapon.

Currently, there are 5 sets of weapon mods in the game, such as spears, dual knives, axes, etc. Each set of mods contains several different weapons.

In the case of spears, some can stab forward continuously, some can produce an area explosion at close range, and some can shoot continuously like Gatling. Some of them are integrated with special mechanisms, such as being able to poison monsters and instantly detonate poisonous wounds; Or, as in classic martial arts, when the Grand Slalom skill is unleashed, the spear will be extended, and the hit enemy will turn their back to the player, thus connecting the executions with a single shot.

In addition to a single weapon, "Late Ming Dynasty" made a set of shared resource systems, combining the main and secondary weapons together.

In the recent PV, many people should have seen that the character's left hand will emit different colors of light, which corresponds to feather resources - if you want to put skills, you also need to consume feathers.

Different weapons have a unique way of accumulating feathers: a powerful axe, with a final blow to jump and split, will accumulate feathers at once; The spear can be used to enter the invincibility judgment when charging, and if it blocks the attack, it will accumulate feathers and jump to attack.

Feathers aren't just skill consumables, you can also consume feathers to quickly switch weapons and use skills seamlessly. For example, you can charge with a spear and jump into the air, then switch axes to jump and slash, and then quickly switch back to spears when you hit the ground to explode in the radius of the first hit.

In other words, the feather system is equivalent to unifying the resource bars of all weapons. If you put it in "Monster Hunter", it's like you use a sword to open the blade, and then switch to the big sword, you can directly resplit without charging.

At the same time, different weapon skills need to consume different feathers. The maximum number of feathers is 5, and you can combine 3+2, 4+1 or 111111 gua sha pedicure combos. As you can imagine, the more weapons and skills you have, the more fun it will be to build and derive combos from this set of gameplay.

Xia Siyuan said that in essence, they are also playing with wheelchairs, but not numerical wheelchairs, but mechanics. It requires players to form their own wheelchair by adding points and collocation.

It is also the combat performance presented by this PV that directly makes "The End of the Ming Dynasty" different from three years ago.

If the double knife block is successful, it will deduct blood and accumulate feathers,

But there are also vampiric skills

There are many more places where the game becomes distinct.

According to Xia Siyuan, although the game as a whole is still the kind of "Black Souls 3", emphasizing the framework process of level exploration, in terms of narrative, the main line guidance will be more direct.

The plot will also revolve around the historical events of Zhang Xianzhong's death in 1647 at the end of the Ming Dynasty, focusing on Sichuan.

With the excavation of the archaeological relics of "Jiangkou Shenyin" in recent years, many Chinese people have been familiar with the story since childhood, and they are also moving from historical legends to reality. That's why the team wanted to use this as a backdrop for the game. And because the team is located in Chengdu, it is more convenient for them to do offline scene scanning and restore the texture of traditional Chinese culture.

In terms of the core of the narrative, Xia Siyuan said that the game will tell a story about letting go of obsessions. They hope to express in the game the texture and atmosphere of old-school Hong Kong martial arts movies such as Hu Jinquan and others; In the story, they tell their understanding and reflection on human nature, family, and rivers and lakes in traditional martial arts movies.

Xia Siyuan said that judging from the feedback from players in recent years and market trends, everyone still hopes to see creative works and some new ideas.

In order to do this, they have never spoken out in the past three years, and their focus is entirely on how to make a good product.

03

After the release of the latest promotional video for "The End of the Ming Dynasty", the attitude of players has changed significantly.

Everyone thinks that this game is not a rebirth, but it can be regarded as a makeover.

Someone congratulated them: "Bear the burden of humiliation and turn the tables against the wind." ”

Frankly, that's how I feel, too.

A while ago, when I saw the rumors of the dissolution of another action national single "The Wind Rises in Luoyang", I chatted with my colleagues, and I don't know if "The End of the Ming Dynasty" is long gone. But unexpectedly, they held back for three years. came back again, and it was actually at the Xbox press conference.

Of course, this is not to say that "The End of the Ming Dynasty" is so good now, after all, the dishes have not yet been served, and the game still has to be played before it can be truly evaluated. In fact, Xia Siyuan has always emphasized that he doesn't want to make the game very high, but wants to leave it to the players to judge in the end.

At the same time, he also felt that it was really not easy to do the national single, and everyone could only grope from scratch. "If I can, I hope there will be more benchmark domestic games, so that the market will be better."

Three years have passed, and I think Xia Siyuan has now reached a certain self-consistency and relief.

When the game appeared on the Xbox press conference, he was watching it with a few buddies.

He said, "No matter what kind of blow you have suffered, as long as you decide to do it, then you will do it to the end." In this life, it is good to be able to do one or two things well. ”

This article is from Xinzhi self-media and does not represent the views and positions of Business Xinzhi.If there is any suspicion of infringement, please contact the administrator of the Business News Platform.Contact: system@shangyexinzhi.com