Chapter 1

Late at night, Qiao Liang sat in front of his computer, staring at the credits for *Fantasy Battle Remastered* on the screen. He suddenly had a strong urge for a cigarette.

Of course, he didn't actually smoke, but he felt that lighting one up and contemplating life in a haze of smoke would suit his current mood.

After staying up all night to beat the story mode of *Fantasy Battle Remastered* and watch all the CG cutscenes, Qiao Liang's mind was now blank, filled with nothing but countless question marks.

"Could it be that I'm not playing this game right?"

"Is this really *Fantasy Battle Remastered*? Or is it just some roadside workshop trying to rip people off with a fake?"

"Even a fan-made demo is better than this!"

Qiao Liang felt deeply confused.

It shouldn't be this bad!

It was unbelievably awful!

Forcing himself to play the game from start to finish, Qiao Liang identified at least three or four points that he absolutely couldn't accept.

First of all, the released product was seriously inconsistent with the previous advertising.

Although the manufacturer hadn't made any explicit promises, they had repeatedly hinted that all the cutscenes in the campaign would be remade, including the art assets and real-time rendered cutscenes.

They had even mentioned that there would be some minor adjustments to the plot to accommodate the changes in the *Fantasy World* lore over the years.

However, after the finished product was released, none of these promised changes had been made!

The vast majority of the cutscenes in the game hadn't been remade; they had only had their resolution increased and some lighting effects added. Although they looked much better than the old cutscenes, they still looked like they were from a different era compared to current games.

Only the two most classic and popular cutscenes had been truly remade, but what Qiao Liang couldn't accept at all was that the ending cutscene, which he had been looking forward to, was also terribly done!

When Qiao Liang first saw this cutscene, his initial impression was actually not bad.

After watching all the blurry cutscenes before, his eyes had developed a high tolerance for poor graphics. He noticed that this final animation was obviously different from the original, and many details had been improved.

This cutscene looked like it was made with real-time rendering. Although the action was smooth and the cinematography was decent, it was obviously lacking in detail.

Qiao Liang thought that using real-time rendering for such an important final CG was a bit perfunctory, but it was still decent and barely acceptable. But halfway through, he realized something was wrong. This wasn't real-time rendering at all; it was a proper CG animation!

This was incredibly frustrating!

If they had used real-time rendering to achieve this effect, one could argue that the manufacturer had the ability but lacked the commitment. But the fact that a proper CG animation looked like it was made with real-time rendering meant that they had neither the ability nor the commitment!

If it were any other company, it wouldn't be a big deal, but the reason why *Fantasy Battle* and the *Star Sea* series were so famous was precisely because their CG was so exquisite; some would even say ahead of its time.

How could such a company produce CG like this? It was a joke!

Moreover, the game was poorly optimized, with countless inexplicable problems. Although it wasn't unplayable, it was a fatal blow to the player's gaming experience.

*Fantasy Battle Remastered* didn't replace the game engine as many players had hoped. Instead, they made repairs on the original engine. Even playing with a high-end computer, there were occasional stutters. Other issues, such as black screens when loading campaign maps and inexplicably returning to the level selection screen after loading, were extremely annoying.

Even more absurd was the bug where the Chinese subtitles would have overlapping characters, completely ruining the player's gaming experience in a hilarious way.

In short, Qiao Liang's expectations were completely dashed. *Fantasy Battle Remastered* was a piece of shit, utter garbage with absolutely no redeeming qualities!

Qiao Liang had been in a very good mood today. He had just finished watching the *Mission and Choice* movie and happily opened *Fantasy Battle Remastered* wanting to continue enjoying himself, like someone who had just finished a big meal but wasn't full yet and wanted to have some dessert. But unexpectedly, he accidentally took a big bite of shit!

This disgusting feeling caused severe mental damage that would last for a long time.

Qiao Liang opened his fan group and the forums to see what other people's reactions were.

Previously, Qiao Liang had deliberately avoided paying attention to information about *Mission and Choice* and *Fantasy Battle Remastered* because he was afraid of spoilers, which would affect his first impression of the game.

Now that he had already played it, he didn't have to worry about spoilers.

As expected, players online were also going crazy with criticism!

That morning, everyone's discussions had been focused on *Mission and Choice*; domestic players were all elated.

This was because it was an unexpected surprise. Although many people had speculated that Tengda would release a *Mission and Choice* game, no one had expected it to be so soon, and of such high quality!

Taking advantage of the release of *Mission and Choice*, many players, like Qiao Liang, had unlimited expectations for the upcoming *Fantasy Battle Remastered*. Many RTS game players felt that they would have double the joy today.

But *Fantasy Battle Remastered* hit them over the head, knocking them unconscious.

Domestic players were cursing and screaming. Angry players were looking for various refund options, yelling about being deceived.

The points that players were complaining about were similar to what Qiao Liang had seen, namely that the actual quality of the remastered version was too far from the promotional videos, and that the numerous small bugs seriously affected the gaming experience, and so on.

Foreign netizens were even more intense than domestic netizens.

Some netizens had posted the scores from foreign game websites. Only a few hours after its release, the score of *Fantasy Battle Remastered* was plummeting wildly. The score out of 10 had already dropped to 2.7 and seemed to be continuing to fall!

Faced with the accusations from foreign players, the official response was: "According to the feedback from the player community, everyone wants us to maintain the original flavor of the original game, and it doesn't need to be changed at all. Therefore, we have decided to withdraw the original plan to redo the cutscenes and corresponding animations, retain the spirit of *Fantasy Battle*, and allow players to relive those unforgettable moments."

This official response obviously intensified the conflict.

The players were already holding back a stomach full of fire, having spent the money for a AAA title and bought such a pile of garbage. Now the officials were even shifting the blame to them?

What did they mean by "everyone wants to maintain the original flavor"? Who exactly was this "everyone" they were referring to?

And what was the deal with "letting players relive those unforgettable moments"? If they wanted to relive those moments, wouldn't it be better to just play the original version?

The game was obviously made this way because there wasn't enough time or budget, and there was absolutely no sincerity. But they found such a refreshingly unique reason. Did they really think of the players as idiots?

For the players, this was completely a case of commercial fraud, and of course it was intolerable!

Many players blamed the outsourcing company that the officials had hired, feeling that the game being made like this was completely the fault of the outsourcing company. But soon, some players discovered that the outsourcing company was only responsible for some of the game models, and that these models were actually the relatively outstanding parts of the entire game...

Just when Qiao Liang thought that this was the end of it, he saw an even more shocking post.

Some foreign media had noticed that, compared to the original version, the end-user license agreement for the remastered *Fantasy Battle* had been modified. Custom maps created by players using the map editor were owned by the development company. Player-made maps were also the property of the development company, including not only the various art elements in the map, but also the gameplay and all content!

This news was like adding fuel to the fire, making the players even more angry!

As everyone knew, the reason why *Fantasy Battle* had maintained a good level of vitality was partly because the e-sports events were doing well, and partly because of the large amount of community-made content. The various RPG maps made by players themselves could be said to be enduring.

But after this agreement was changed, it meant that players would no longer be able to retain ownership of their designed maps. If a map became popular, players wouldn't be able to retain their research and development results and would have to hand them over.

In fact, a similar agreement had already existed when *Star Sea* was released two years ago, but because the *Star Sea* map editor didn't produce many excellent works, this agreement didn't cause much of a stir at that time.

But *Fantasy Battle Remastered* releasing news about modifying the user agreement at this juncture was simply giving ammunition to critics!

On foreign websites, many players had gone to various game websites to give *Fantasy Battle Remastered* low scores. There were even many players calling for giving the original lowest-scoring game on the website a score of 10 to raise it up, ensuring that *Fantasy Battle Remastered*'s score would become the lowest on the entire site!

In short, *Fantasy Battle Remastered* was originally highly anticipated and destined to be a masterpiece before its release, but after its release, it directly ushered in a reputation disaster. Scores plummeted, criticism was rampant, and players who had pre-ordered were all requesting refunds. Players who hadn't bought it naturally wouldn't actively eat this shit.

No one had ever imagined that this once-divine work would fail in its later years, with both its reputation and sales exploding!

After surfing the internet for a while, Qiao Liang couldn't help but feel a lot of emotions.

"I didn't expect *Fantasy Battle Remastered* to end up like this?"

"If I had told someone ten days ago that *Fantasy Battle Remastered* would be like this, everyone would have thought I was crazy."

"Especially compared to *Mission and Choice*, the difference is even greater!"

"The original national game shame has been remade into a true AAA masterpiece, while the original classic game has been remade into a pile of shit..."

"This is too topical! I have content for the new video!"

Qiao Liang suddenly realized that although *Fantasy Battle Remastered* was bad, although it had fed him a mouthful of shit, it had also provided him with perfect material!

*Mission and Choice* needed to become a legendary work, but it couldn't rely on itself alone. It also needed the contrast from its peers.

What could be more exciting than stepping on the former divine work *Fantasy Battle* to ascend to the altar?

Qiao Liang suddenly felt inspired and immediately started writing the script for his new video!