Chapter 1 《Sea Fortress》's Essence

《Sea Fortress》 is still essentially an online game. Players spend more than 90% of their time in matches. Compared to that, its story mode is more like an added bonus, with a small piece of the story updated every once in a while to give the players who are addicted to shooting some fun, and also to promote the new epic weapons.

There's a special highlighting effect on the story mode button to indicate that a new story has been updated.

Qiao Liang entered the story mode and couldn't help but be taken aback.

Because this updated story mode wasn't crammed together with the previous entries, but given a completely new entry, its prominence was immediately maxed out.

This made Qiao Liang feel a little strange. If he estimated correctly, the new story mode would only have two or three hours of gameplay, so there was no need to create a new entry at all; it was a waste.

Could this story mode be important? That didn't seem right.

With some confusion, Qiao Liang began to experience the new story mode.

...

The screen was pitch black, and first, an emotionless electronic voice rang in his ears: "As-371-45 squad, mission objective: infiltrate the bug hive, search for the location of the Zerg Queen, and execute a decapitation strike."

A low, male voice replied in a calm tone, "Roger."

The game screen appeared, still in first-person view. Directly in front of the field of view was a special round platform, on which was a set of "Skylark III Combat Suit" that had been taken off. On the right shoulder was a seal script character "義" (yi).

The game protagonist in the first-person perspective paused slightly before pressing the button next to the round platform.

The round platform rotated, with the back of the Skylark combat suit facing the protagonist's view. The small glider wings and jet ports on the back were clearly visible.

With a "click," the back of the combat suit split open, and the protagonist stepped inside. A series of mechanical sounds rang out, as if the entire combat suit was seamlessly wrapping around him.

Various light blue, high-tech UIs appeared on the first-person view, prompting various battlefield information. Even the mini-map had been changed to a more high-tech package.

The sound of jet ports ejecting gas rang in his ears, and the first-person view floated up, landing steadily in the cockpit after a moment.

Then, the player officially took control and could freely move and rotate the view.

Qiao Liang was slightly surprised, because this was completely different from what he had expected.

The original story of 《Sea Fortress》 was all in English with Chinese subtitles, but this time it had been changed to Chinese dubbing.

The emotionless electronic voice sounded like an artificial intelligence style, but the tone was a bit special, as if he had heard it somewhere before.

Qiao Liang recalled carefully, and then remembered that the newly updated voice assistant of Otto's mobile phone seemed to have this flavor.

The dialogue also made Qiao Liang feel a little confused.

The original 《Sea Fortress》 story was about a biochemical virus and fighting zombies, but now the dialogue had more words like "bug hive" and "Zerg Queen."

The UI layout of the first-person view had also been changed, immediately reminding people of science fiction themes.

The most outrageous thing was this combat suit.

Qiao Liang took a quick glance and saw a miniature fusion reactor, a huge magnetic railgun, gravity devices on the feet, etc. on this high-tech combat suit. This thing was clearly not on the same timeline as the original 《Sea Fortress》 story.

This simple opening made Qiao Liang realize that the story of this DLC should be completely unrelated to the story of 《Sea Fortress》. This was a science fiction story.

Qiao Liang turned his view and saw four other team members around him who were also wearing Skylark combat suits, but with slightly different paint jobs.

The four team members had different reactions as they were about to begin their mission. Some were joking and livening up the atmosphere, while others were silent and just echoed with a smile.

Although it was all Chinese dubbing, there were still subtitles, and their names were marked on the subtitles: Xu Kaile, Meng Yu, Zhao Yongxiu, and Wu Shaojun.

The four people had different personalities, matched with different combat suit paint jobs, and Qiao Liang quickly recognized them roughly.

After a brief preparation, the four team members stood together at the exit of the cabin, leaving a position for the protagonist, Qin Yi.

Qiao Liang controlled Qin Yi to walk over, and then the hatch opened instantly, and all the team members in their Skylark combat suits quickly fell downwards!

Qiao Liang judged that they should have jumped from a large aircraft.

Below was a crimson earth.

In the sky, countless aircraft and hideous Zerg were engaged in fierce battles. On the ground, dense swarms of bugs could also be seen vaguely, constantly impacting human defenses like a tide. The ubiquitous smoke and fire reminded Qiao Liang that this was an alien battlefield with an unimaginable degree of cruelty.

During the rapid descent, all the squad members maintained their formation and plunged headfirst into the target location – a dark cave on the ground.

This few-second-long shot was a cutscene made with real-time rendering. It wasn't expensive, but the effect was good and clearly informed the player of the current situation.

After falling into the dark cave, Qiao Liang regained control of the protagonist, and the story flow officially began.

There was no need for a newbie guide, because the operations such as moving, shooting, and switching weapons were exactly the same as the basic operations of 《Sea Fortress》.

Some larvae and worker bees gushed out from the depths of the cave, but they were quickly annihilated in front of the powerful firepower.

After really getting started, Qiao Liang discovered a very shocking fact: I'm afraid I'm cheating!

Gently pressing the left mouse button, the huge muzzle immediately spewed out flames. This momentum, this formation, the firepower was at least several times stronger than the original 《Sea Fortress》's guns.

Not only the firepower, but also the number of bullets in the magazine, the speed of changing magazines, the recoil, etc., were completely different concepts!

Although Qiao Liang didn't play 《Sea Fortress》 very often, he still knew the most basic gun control of FPS games, but he found that there was no need to control the gun at all. The recoil of this thing was negligible, and it could almost be regarded as hitting wherever you aimed!

It's just that this recoil-free function seemed to have a cooldown time, and it had to be restored after using it for a while.

Originally, compared to other FPS games, 《Sea Fortress》 had slightly weakened the recoil for the sake of game difficulty, but it was definitely not to such an outrageous extent.

Not only that, but there were even more outrageous things.

In 《Sea Fortress》's regular mode, pressing the space bar was to jump, but in this mode, tapping the space bar was to jump, and the jump height was much higher than that of ordinary people. Holding down the space bar, the jet ports on the back would spew out gas to lift people up, and they could also make short glides with the direction keys.

The feet had gravity devices, which could slide on walls, and falling from a high place would not cause any damage.

In the special functions, there was a "tactical camouflage" function. After turning it on, it would become semi-transparent. Although the movement speed would become slower, it would not attract the attention of the Zerg.

Even more outrageous was that the helmet also integrated infrared detection, terrain navigation, ballistic calculation, and other functions. Terrain navigation was a three-dimensional mini-map, and ballistic calculation would prompt the bullet trajectory. It would play a major role when the recoil-free function failed and could guide the player to control the gun.

Even this ballistic calculation function had an enhanced mode. After turning it on, it would automatically lock on to the enemy's aim in a short time, and the player only needed to pull the trigger mindlessly.

The detection function was also outrageous. Simply put, it could detect the location of the Zerg.

What is this called? A little transparency doesn't count as cheating?

But this wasn't just transparency. It was clearly a super cheat that integrated a series of cheat functions such as flying, transparency, recoil-free, stealth, and auto-aim!

If this setting were to be applied to the regular mode of 《Sea Fortress》, then one person destroying a city would definitely not be just casual talk.

This kind of combat power upgrade made Qiao Liang feel refreshed and maximized the pleasure of shooting.

As the plot progressed, the four team members all had their own lines, and the artificial intelligence Aeeis was constantly issuing instructions.

Qiao Liang was completely immersed in the joy of fighting the Zerg and completely forgot the time.

But as the plot progressed, the situation gradually became wrong.

There were more and more Zerg, the battles became more and more difficult, the team members began to raise questions, fragments of Skylark combat suits were found in the cave, and the team members were sacrificing one by one in the process of carrying out the mission…

Qiao Liang unknowingly got carried away.

The design of the entire story process was obviously a bit insidious: at the beginning, it made the player addicted to mowing grass, but the deeper they went, the higher the difficulty and the more tense the plot became, making the player unable to stop.

The sacrifices of the team members and the mysteries made players eager to play to the final ending.

Finally, Qiao Liang saw the Zerg Queen. After the cutscene, the entire screen shook, the top of the cave collapsed, and human reinforcements arrived…

However, the protagonist's eyelids seemed to become heavy. After blinking a few times, they closed completely, and the story of the DLC ended abruptly.

Qiao Liang was a little dazed.

"Ah? Is it over?"

"Damn, this isn't the DLC story of 《Sea Fortress》. This is clearly a large trailer for President Pei's new game!"

After finishing the entire DLC story process, Qiao Liang realized that he had been tricked.

Looking at the time again, it was already 7:00 PM!

The doorbell rang outside. It was the Mo Yu delivery person delivering dinner on time.

Qiao Liang opened the door and took the dinner, and then realized that he had been playing for several hours.

After eating lunch, he first spent two hours playing the reincarnation mode of 《Islands of Salvation》, and then started playing the new story of 《Sea Fortress》. Now it seemed that he had played for at least five hours to complete it.

Qiao Liang was a little speechless: "It was said that it was just an ordinary DLC? I thought it would be a maximum of 2 hours of story, but it was actually five hours!"

"This is almost the same as a new game!"

"Such a large-capacity, well-made DLC is actually free, and it only comes with an epic weapon. President Pei is awesome…"

"Huh, that's not right. Did I forget something?"

Qiao Liang scratched his head in confusion, and then looked at the time, and suddenly realized: "Ah, I missed the GPGL competition! Damn it!"