“Hello there,” said a sexy voice. I almost jumped out of my skin. There was the woman from the trailer. The pixelated woman that I was in love with. Same condescending smile, same assault rifle, same knee high boots.
Silence. Was I supposed to respond? “Hello?” I said.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Um….”
“Welcome, Um, to WARFARE: ONLINE!”
OK that was not exactly my intention but I was willing to live with my choice for the time being.
“During this game, you will be cooperating with your fellow soldiers to defeat a heinous enemy: the evil Spittins. We have been oppressed by the Spittins for too long but, this time, humanity is going to strike back. Go forth, Um--soldier of humanity--and bring justice to this world!”
The sexy commander disappeared to be replaced by the most lifelike environment I had ever seen in a video game.
I was in some kind of jungle environment, and it was gorgeous. I was surrounded by tall trees everywhere I looked. There was no horizon. It was also extremely hot. It felt like it was 90 degrees, and that was a weird addition to put into a video game, even though it was interesting. Within a minute I was already sweating bullets.
There were buildings to my front and sides which I assumed was some kind of base for our operations. I saw people moving around and they didn’t look pixelated or artificial in any way. In fact, nothing looked artificial. A bird landed on the building in front of me, hopping and twitching just like a normal bird. The amount of lengths that these developers went to to create an environment like this was insane.
The first thing I did was look at my hands, which were covered by black gloves. ‘Ok, I guess that’s normal,’ I thought. I turned around to look behind me and there were my fellow testers. The weird thing was, they didn’t look like video game player characters at all. In fact, with the exception of the fact that they were all wearing body armor and gear, they looked exactly the same. The two humongous twins were there with their green and purple hair. The tiny girl was there, still wearing her glasses. Red Bull kid was there, bags still under his eyes.
“This is crazy,” I said, trying to break the silence.
“Bizarre,” Redbull kid agreed.
“I mean how much work and money do you have to put into a video game environment to make it look like this?” I asked.
“Impossible,” said the girl. She was looking at me like I was missing something obvious, but was waiting for me to figure it out.
“Impossible?” I asked.
“Do you really think this is a video game?” she asked.
The twins remained silent but were listening with rapt attention to our conversation. Red Bull kid stared at her.
“What are you trying to say?” asked Red Bull kid.
“I’m saying that no amount of money, time, or effort, could possibly exist to make something like this so realistic. Watch this:”
That tiny girl, who must have been two heads shorter than me, pulled back her arm, and punched me square in the stomach.
I doubled over, gasping for breath, the pain in my abdomen causing me to fall down and curl up in a fetal position.
“Is that real enough for you?” asked the girl before she turned her back on us.
The other players were murmuring amongst themselves by the time I recovered enough to stand on my own. A Virtual Reality game where being punched made you feel real pain? Who would program something like that? Was it even possible?
“SOLDIERS OF HUMANITY!”
A crazy loud voice suddenly came from behind us. It was a gigantic man in the same body armor we had with a huge curly mustache. He reminded me of the wrestler, Sergeant Slaughter.
“ARE YOU READY TO KILL FOR HUMANITY, SCUMBAGS?!”
“Yes,” the girl said.
Following suit, we all said “yes.”
“THEN FOLLOW ME!”
The twins went first, then redbull kid, then me, and the girl with the glasses took up the rear. Nobody spoke. Sergeant Slaughter seemed relatively happy to be marching around through the jungle, but I didn’t. I kept getting bitten by bugs and I can’t say it was either fun or pleasent.
I turned to the girl behind me. She had a sullen expression on her face, but she seemed to know the most about this game. “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked.
“Nobody,” she said.
“Like. . .that’s your real name?”
“It’s enough.”
“I couldn’t help thinking you seem to know more about this game then the rest of us,”
“Well spotted,” she said, never seeming to look at me.
“What kind of game is this anyway? You punch me, I feel real pain. I feel the bugs biting on me. It’s hot as hell. What is this?”
“There’s no point in telling you,” she said. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Neither of us spoke after that. ‘She’s crazy,’ I thought, feeling uneasiness mixed with anger. ‘How did she get to be a beta tester?’
Looking around though, it was very difficult to believe that we were in a game. I touched my face and felt skin, but no goggles. The other testers I was with didn’t seem particularly perturbed by the ultra realistic graphics though. The twins looked completely in their element; just a pair of ultra alert, commando-wannabe try-hards. Red Bull kid looked exhausted, but that seemed to be his normal expression.
“HALT!”
The beefy commander stopped us with a quick raise of his hand. His moustache was twitching as if it sensed danger. Looking at him, he didn’t seem like a particularly out-of-the-ordinary NPC. In fact, for games like this, he was pretty much standard. He was guiding us through the mission, or whatever this was, he was over-acting just like most NPCs tended to do, and he was completely pointless for anything other than to guide us and teach us how to play the game. He didn’t really seem keen on giving instructions though.
“The Spittins are just beyond this ridge,” said the NPC in dramatically low voice. “Your goal is simple: destroy every last one! In order to fire, simply point your weapon at your intended target and pull the trigger. But be careful! Friendly fire is always on.”
‘That’s comforting,’ I thought. I looked at my weapon. I didn’t know much about guns. My parents were from NYC, voted Democrat religiously, and were generally queasy about the idea of using guns. But first-person shooter games had given me all the knowledge I thought I would ever really need to learn about them,, and this gun appeared like some sort of futuristic assault rifle. The barrel was huge, but it felt very light at the same time. There was a scope which I actually thought was pretty cool. I was a huge fan of sniper battles.
Curious, I leveled the sight to my eyes and looked around. I looked at the NPC first and he just kind of blinked at me. The twins, as usual, were paying no attention to me. Redbull kid looked like he was about to pass out. Finally, I looked at Nobody. At first she ignored me--until she saw what I was doing. Then she screamed and her expression looked like that of a wounded, but cornered tiger.
Before I was even aware of what was happening, Nobody had taken my gun from me and was bashing my head with the butt. I raised my hand in a feeble attempt to make her stop but she wouldn’t stop. When she eventually did, I put my hand to my face and pulled it back. There was blood coming from my nose. This was a game where you could bleed.
“Don’t you ever fucking point that thing at me again or I’ll kill you,” she yelled, looking down at me with a brandished finger. “ Do you understand, idiot? Still think this is a game?”
She threw the weapon on the ground next to me and turned away.
I got up to the ground slowly. My head felt heavy and bruised, feeling embarrassed. Redbull kid walked over to me when Nobody was out of earshot. “Damn dude, that was pretty wild,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied, touching my nose and retracting again to look at the blood.
“I’ll tell you something though: with a game this realistic, they’re going to be rolling in cash when this thing launches.”
“Yeah,” I said without enthusiasm. For a game I had been so excited about, this was starting to turn into a miserable experience.
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