“Greetings, adventurers!” the Elf said as he turned to face them. Sang couldn’t help but shiver as she looked at the life-like being in front of her. He was a wizened-looking creature with deep wrinkles on his face. She could almost have been convinced that he was an actual person, provided he hadn’t had that yellow glow on his face.
“Skip!” Van shouted.
“Do you have to skip all of the dialogue?” Sang demanded.
“Yeah, because it’s faster,” Van replied with a smug little grin.
“Shut it; I want to hear the dialogue,” Sang said.
“And so that is why I am hiring you adventurers! If you have the guts, you can help protect my shipment of spices, pearls, and precious cargo from the evils of the Ocean Dwelling Cult, terrible beings that worship what is Down Below. They climb aboard the ships and slit the throats of good—”
“Skip!”
“Enough! I was interested in that! It could have been important intel!” Sang snapped.
“Intel? It’s all backstory meant to give the first part of the game a little bit of flavor. There aren’t any Ocean Dwelling Cults anyway; it’s just a dumb thing they put in the game but never followed up on.”
The Elf nodded and stroked his beard as if Van hadn’t disagreed with his introduction. “So what do you say? Join me and provide protection as we head to the New World?”
“I accept your quest!” Sang replied. The Elf stared at her blankly.
“You’ve got to press ‘accept quest,’” Van replied as he pointed at the words that were floating above the Elf’s head.
“Oh, uh, I thought they could interact with us,” Sang replied sheepishly as she clicked Accept Quest.
“Yeah, there are some advanced AI models out there that can interact with us, and there are a lot of players who are out there that we’ll interact with, but the reality is that most of the minor NPCs don’t have the capacity to think or act.”
“Oh... good to know. Let’s—” Her words were interrupted as everything around her went completely dark. The words TWO MONTHS LATER hung above her head in big white letters. Before she could even react, she felt the sharp stinging smell of salt water and she was standing on the deck of a massive ship as it cruised through the ocean.
“Man, I hate this part,” Van said as he leaned over the deck of the ship casually.
“What? Where are we? Did we just teleport?” Sang asked, glancing around in a panic.
“Yeah, the game runs in real time for the most part, except for the travel systems that are put in place. So, like, it’ll say ‘two months later’ to skip what would be an actual two-month journey, since this ocean is that big,” Van said as he pointed at the massive landmass they were heading toward.
“I see,” Sang said as she glanced around the ship. The sky was so blue it almost hurt her eyes. The rocking of the boat was also impossible not to notice. For all intents and purposes, she really felt like she was on a ship. “So, now what?”
“Now we train!” Van said as he heroically pulled out his bagpipes with a wry grin on his face.
Van’s boots clunked down the stairs as he headed down to the lower deck of the ship. They needed to go through the training obstacles in order to be able to advance to the main quest. He examined his stats as he walked.
“Just great,” he muttered as he looked at his terrible character build. The fact that he was a bard wasn’t the worst part of the situation—it was the fact that his bard wasn’t optimized at all. It served him right, for trying to pull one over on Sang, but now he was really starting to regret his life decisions. Why had he done something so stupid? It was impossible to get angry at her, because in reality, it was entirely his own fault, and he was too busy kicking himself to get upset at her anyway.
“Interesting place,” Sang said as she glanced around the lower deck. There were about twenty doors, all laid out in a big, circular manner. The wooden frames had words emblazoned atop each one. The words said things like “Axes”, “Bows”, “Leaping”, etc.
“This is the training room. Here, you can actually raise your skill levels up a bit so that you’re somewhat ready to rock when you reach the mainland,” Van explained as he glanced toward a few rooms in particular.
“When we go into the first room, a timer begins and we’ve got to pass all of the skills that we can before the timer goes off. This is a limited event, so the better you are at the challenges, the more skills that you can improve.”
“Understood,” Sang said. She pointed at one of the rooms. “Shall I take the map reading room?”
“No, you’re a ranger! You’ve got a bow and stuff!”
“But maps are important,” Sang replied.
Van shook his head. She was such a noob, it was almost like a horror story for him to have to deal with guiding her at this point. “Look, this is a video game, okay? You’ve got to think like a gamer when it comes to this stuff.”
“Okay, whatever. So, oh my, I have self-esteem issues and no job! Whatever shall I do?” she taunted.
“Really? Talk about an unfair stereotype! Look, just take the Acrobatics, Archery, and Dueling classes, okay? You’ll probably have enough time for those three.”
She shrugged. “Fine.” And without another word, she strolled to the room that read “Archery” and tapped on it, vanishing in the next moment.
“TIMER ACTIVATED!” called a voice from above. Van looked up to see a massive timer begin. They had 20 minutes.
Van didn’t particularly need to take any classes since, after all, he was a professional… but still, he didn’t particularly know how to use a bard effectively. Maybe he could try some of the weirder classes. He glanced over at the Vaudeville Performance door. With a shrug, he walked up to it, and clicked on and entered in.
“Greetings!” cried a loud jester as he leapt out in front of Van, who had been transported to some kind of room that he could only describe as a circus designed by M.C. Escher.
“Sup?” Van asked.
“You must learn the five techniques of Vaudeville before you advance! Improv, Buffoonery, Riddle Telling, Juggling, and Voice Throwing! Ready? Go!” the jester said as he threw several balls at Van’s head.
Van ducked and dodged as the jester character began chucking tons of different balls, pins, and flaming swords at him.
“You must juggle to survive! Comedy is life for the bard!” the jester cried as he hopped left and then right.
“Ah!” Van yelled out as he caught one of the pins and tried to juggle it. He could see his Juggling skill in the corner glowing red, meaning that he didn’t have sufficient skill levels to juggle.
“Time’s up! Improv or die!” the jester called out as the ground beneath Van suddenly began to open up. He could see lava beneath the floor. Who was in charge of designing this mini-game?
“Improv! Quickly, tell a joke!” the jester demanded of him as he floated in the air. Many of the different assets and trinkets that were lying around—such as a cart, a wagon, and some kind of a red ball—were rolling towards the massive hole in the ground.
“Uh, okay, so... um, there’s this, uh, dragon who’s... um…” Van glanced at his Improv skill and saw that it too was insufficient for him. Why hadn’t he put points into this at all? He paused. Why did that skill even exist? This was terrible!
Archery passed! Came a private message to Van. It was Sang. He grimaced—it was certainly way more fun trying to learn how to fight and duel than having to deal with this insane mini-game that looked like it had come from a game developer’s deep-seated fear of clowns.
“No time for improv!” the jester said as the timer continued to run. “Tell me a riddle! Riddle!”