120: Chapter 120 Follow-up Plans
Just as Lin Lu, the proud film critic, was being lured into a "pig-butchering scam" by players across the internet...
Inside the boss's office at Chaldea Studio.
Gu Yi was leaning comfortably back in his wide, leather ergonomic chair, holding a freshly brewed cup of goji berry tea. He stared at the translucent system panel that only he could see, his smile nearly reaching his ears.
[Final Singularity: Grand Temple of Time, phased emotional value settlement complete!]
[Total emotional value obtained: 87.5 million points!]
"Good grief, the impact of sacrificing the Doctor was even more explosive than I imagined."
Looking at the long string of zeros on the panel—enough to trigger anyone's trypophobia—Gu Yi couldn't help but smack his lips and let out a satisfied sigh.
Since the grand finale of FGO Part 1, the entire Blue Star gaming circle, anime community, and even major ACG forums had been completely dominated by keywords like "Doctor Roman" and "The Time of Parting has Come."
A player base of tens of millions suffered from collective PTSD, crying into their pillows at night. This spectacle, bordering on a cyber-tragedy, caused Gu Yi's emotional collection system to run at an overloaded capacity.
"With nearly a hundred million emotional value points, my future grand ambitions are finally secured."
Gu Yi sat up straight, a glint of extreme ambition flashing in his eyes.
Before this, although FGO had crushed the Blue Star's reskinned mobile games with its hardcore 3D tower defense mechanics and top-tier storytelling, Gu Yi, as an independent game developer from Earth, knew very well where the ceiling of this model lay.
Compared to the tense and exciting command card combat, the tower defense mode was certainly fun, but if he wanted to host the entire massive Type-Moon universe, a simple tower defense framework was far too thin.
"System, open the High-Tier Mall."
With a slight nudge of Gu Yi's will, the translucent virtual panel instantly refreshed. His gaze swept rapidly across the dazzling light screens, finally locking onto a core technology at the very top that radiated a dark gold glow.
[Product Name: 'akasha' Class Omni-Dimensional Game Base Engine and Super Server Cluster]
[Product Details: Breaks the single-gameplay framework. Supports the construction of a 'Seamless Real Open World' that can accommodate millions of players on the same server without lag or stuttering.]
[Core Parameter 1: Built-in full-category game base code library (supports base code logic and physical calculations for most gameplays such as ACT action, FPS shooting, MOBA competition, Battle Royale, RPG, etc.).]
[Core Parameter 2: Comes with 'Multiverse Networking Technology,' allowing dozens of independent game modules with completely different playstyles to be seamlessly connected to the same game lobby in the form of 'Sub-Worlds.']
[Exchange Price: 50 million emotional value points]
Gu Yi didn't hesitate for a moment and decisively issued the command: "This is the one. Exchange."
[Ding! 50 million emotional value points deducted. Exchange successful. Source code and construction permissions have been sent to the terminal.]
As soon as the words fell, the translucent panel in front of Gu Yi suddenly shattered, turning into billions of brilliant dark-gold data streams!
These data streams were like a galaxy, instantly filling the entire top-floor office. Imaginably massive base algorithms, physical collision engine architectures, and the highest management permissions for the hyper-dimensional servers flooded into Gu Yi's workstation terminal like a tsunami.
Looking at this "Creator's Scepter," which represented the current system's highest technological crystallization, Gu Yi took a deep breath.
This 50 million was absolutely worth it. With this, he was no longer just a simple game developer, but the God of this virtual universe!
His first step was to completely reconstruct the underlying architecture of FGO!
Although the previous FGO already featured highly immersive VR visuals, in non-combat states, players' movement ranges were basically limited to a single-player "My Room" and a few fixed story corridors.
Ultimately, it was still a local area network single-player experience.
But the reconstructed Chaldea would completely break this planar barrier, turning into an ultra-large VR real interactive multiplayer community similar to the "Oasis" in Ready Player One!
"However, if I violently transform Chaldea into the kind of MMO lobby seen everywhere, there will be a fatal setting loophole," Gu Yi rubbed his chin.
In the original setting of FGO, the character the player plays is the "Last Master of Humanity."
If hundreds or thousands of "Last Masters" suddenly popped up in Chaldea queuing for pancakes, the sense of tragic heroism and immersion painstakingly built in Part 1 would collapse instantly.
To perfectly bridge this logic, Gu Yi pulled up the [Multiverse Networking Technology] that came with the new engine, adding a layer of sci-fi packaging to the multiplayer mode that fit the Type-Moon style—[Timeline Intersection and Quantum Overlap].
In the upcoming new official setting, because the Masters had just defeated the Demon God King in the Temple of Time, the massive fluctuations in space-time energy caused a temporary "Quantum Overlap Phenomenon" among the Chaldeas of countless parallel planes.
In other words, every player would still be that lonely and unique savior in their own main storyline. But when they stepped out of their personal rooms and into the public areas of Chaldea, this planar barrier would be assimilated and broken.
In the future, when players logged into the game, they would no longer just stare at the walls of their personal space in solitude.
They could run into real Master players from "other parallel worlds" in the grand corridors of Chaldea, queue up at the cafeteria to buy limited-edition strawberry cakes, or chat and show off their summoned five-star Servants in the Command Room's team-up lobby.
The most insane part of this engine lay in its [Full-Category Integration Capability].
In the future, no matter what new type of Fate series work it was, players would no longer need to download a separate client!
Fate/Extra could be made into a cyberpunk RPG dungeon, Fate/Apocrypha could be a faction-based MOBA, and subsequent Lostbelt chapters could even include RTS or mecha elements...
All game modes could be perfectly integrated into the Chaldea main network, just like plugging in a USB drive!
While physically in Chaldea, players could directly experience brand-new gameplay!
"However, upgrading the engine and developing the Sub-Singularities and Part 2 Lostbelts will take a significant amount of time."
Gu Yi pondered, "Now that the Final Singularity is over, players across the server will inevitably enter a 'dead week' with no new main story to push. During a dead week, combined with the fact they're still mourning the Doctor, it's easy for them to fall into 'gaming impotence' and quit..."
How could he squeeze as much online time as possible out of the players during the dead week while also diverting their sad emotions?
The source of all evil from his previous life's Arknights, which made countless people love and hate it while staying up all night grinding, instantly surfaced in Gu Yi's mind.
Integrated Strategy mode!
"Since it's already a tower defense gameplay, it would be a waste not to copy a Roguelike mode!"
Gu Yi excitedly typed out the proposal for [Chaldea Integrated Strategy] on his memo pad.
Furthermore, to make this mode more immersive, he drew on the packaging ideas of "Phantom & Crimson Solitaire" and "Mizuki & Caerula Arbor" from his previous life, deciding to give this gameplay an independent theme combined with the Type-Moon setting.
For the theme of this first season, Gu Yi decided to hand it over to Chaldea's "Guardian of Dreams" and the Master's eternal psychological support—
[Integrated Strategy: The Count of Monte Cristo and the Abyssal Prison of Malice]!
In this mode, players would be pulled into a subconscious dream labyrinth constructed by the Count. They would no longer use their own trained Servant lineups; instead, they would start with only a few recruitment vouchers and advance through a randomly generated roadmap.
After each combat node, they could randomly recruit different Servants; upon encountering special event nodes, they could obtain "Catalysts" that changed the game mechanics.
Due to the extreme randomness, one might get killed by a mob because they didn't pull a healer in the previous run, while in the next, they might get god-tier collectibles and steamroll the final boss with a full team of five-star Servants.
"With this dopamine-filled and random Roguelike mode, I'll definitely let these Blue Star players in their dead week experience the toxicity of 'just one more run before bed'!"