Bonus Short Story

Open World

At the top of the tower, Yogiri and Tomochika were walking one floor down from where they had spent the night. The passageways within the tower formed a complex network inside, making the discovery of the correct path a part of the trial itself. Yogiri just looked like he was picking directions at random. Tomochika didn’t have any particular clues either, so she just kept pace beside him.

After walking for a while, they ended up outside. They had found something like a balcony on the edge of the tower. There was a fence that rose to about waist height, but it didn’t seem sturdy enough to stop them from falling. Tomochika figured it was best to be careful.

“It looks like the canyon goes on forever,” Yogiri remarked, looking out across the reddish-brown landscape that surrounded them.

The canyon stretched almost as far as the eye could see, a somewhat frustrating sight for Tomochika. Even once they managed to get out of the tower, it didn’t seem like reaching the capital would be all that easy.

“Well, at least it looks nice. I feel like I’ve seen a scene like this before...” she replied.

“Is there somewhere like this in Japan?”

“Hmm, maybe it’s something I saw in a game once. Like in one of those open-world games.”

To put it simply, an open-world game was a video game that took place in a huge, wide open territory. Open worlds included a variety of genres, but they all tended towards great amounts of freedom for the player.

“Now that you mention it...well, if this is an open world, then I want to try heading over there,” Yogiri said, pointing to an area beyond the canyon. There was a mountain range there, but he was probably indicating the highest peak.

“I know, right? People always want to go to the highest spot for no particular reason,” Tomochika observed.

Generally, there were no events or items that could be found in places like that. It was strictly for personal satisfaction, but even so, that feeling of wanting to look down on the world from the highest point was something she understood well.

“But...I don’t really feel like climbing a mountain with snow caps in real life, to be honest.” Yogiri continued. The tips of the mountains in the distance were white. No matter how one looked at it, it would be a harsh environment. “Those kinds of open-world games always have something that leaves you unsatisfied, don’t they?”

“You mean like being filled with bugs?”

“Well, you have to expect a certain amount of bugs. There are so many moving parts in games like that, there’s no way even the developers can get a handle on how they all interact.”

“But something like an important character randomly falling to their death and never coming back is kind of inexcusable, don’t you think?”

NPCs in open-world RPGs acted according to a set pattern. These patterns included deciding whether to cooperate or fight with the player, what they did in their daily lives, and so on. Sometimes, though, they’d get attacked by monsters while working on a farm, or they would slip and fall from a cliff while walking home.

“I’m pretty sure most NPCs in modern games, the ones related to the main storyline, are immortal,” Yogiri noted.

“But doesn’t that make the game seem a bit restrictive? Being able to do anything you want is supposed to be the selling point of an open world.”

Being able to make your way through the world in any way you chose was the main goal of such roleplaying games. In fact, many games allowed you to kill the people in town and rob them blind. While that certainly added a degree of freedom for the player compared to previous games, there were still many restrictions in place related to the system or main scenario.

“A simple world simulator would be like that, but if they want to tell a story, then there isn’t much else they can do. Well, if they advance to the point where the story is written automatically, they might be able to remove those kinds of limitations.”

“Right? If they want to try to give even more freedom to the player, development costs will skyrocket.”

Presently, developing an open-world game required a huge amount of resources. Even if one looked at the absolute pinnacle of gaming so far, it was still hard to say it was perfect. In order to make a more complete product, some kind of breakthrough would be needed.

“We kind of strayed off topic,” Yogiri went on, “but my issue wasn’t with the bugs, but with the way time passes. You know how in most open-world games, time passes really quickly, right? In an hour of gameplay, a full day goes by in the game, but why? Night comes so quickly, and so does morning. It feels so hectic.”

“Now that you mention it, I wonder why they do that? It’s not like having the game move in real time would be a problem. Most give you some sort of waiting function to let you skip ahead anyway.”

“Right? You can control the flow of time with the wait function, so there should be no issue with a game running in real time. The size of the world and how it’s depicted is so realistic that time being off makes it feel even stranger!”

“And you can’t just accept that for what it is?”

“If they’re aiming for realism, they should make the passage of time realistic too, right? Also, I don’t like how just touching something makes people think you’re a thief. I wasn’t planning on stealing anything. And the response to bad people is way too quick. No one could tell you were a criminal just by seeing your face.”

“You get pretty excited when talking about games, don’t you?”

Though he lacked any sense of motivation for basically everything else, it seemed like he had some strong opinions when it came to video games.

Are you two still loitering around here? The trial has barely begun, Mokomoko complained, apparently unhappy with how laid back they were acting.

“Yeah, we’re probably the only ones just hanging around like this, aren’t we?”

Most people would have ignored the rest facilities on the ninety-eighth floor. They must have spent the night somewhere, but it was hard to believe that anyone was treating things as leisurely as the two of them.

“It looks like the narrow paths are the wrong ones. If the wider path is the main one, let’s go there first.”

Apparently bored of the view, Yogiri turned back to the corridor they had come from. It had looked before like he was picking directions randomly, but it seemed he was giving it some actual thought.

Once again, Tomochika fell into step beside him.