Top game producer

Inside the meeting room, Wang Jian was explaining the game "Undertale" to his team.

The plot is simple: long ago, there were two races on Blue Star, humans and monsters. Humans and monsters fought, and eventually, humans won and occupied the surface, while the monsters were banished to the underground. The protagonist is a human child who accidentally falls into the underground and embarks on an adventure to return to the surface.

The story of the game is ordinary, but it has a subversive creation: when facing monsters, you can choose to attack or befriend them. Even avoiding combat and not killing any monsters allows you to complete the game, or rather, that is the true way to complete the game.

The planners opened their mouths wide, utterly shocked.

"Amazing! It can actually be done this way!"

"Boss, this idea is invincible!"

"Seeing monsters and immediately fighting them has become a fixed mindset. I really didn't think that you could befriend monsters in a game! Have you guys seen this kind of operation in other games?"

"No!"

"Wow, befriending monsters seems very interesting!"

"But thinking about it carefully, if you can complete the game without any difficulty, wouldn't the game's process be shortened a lot? Wouldn't this reduce the game's playability?"

"Yeah, without combat, wouldn't there be nothing to play?"

After listening to Wang Jian's words, the planners felt that this innovation was interesting, but also had some doubts.

Wang Jian smiled slightly: "In 'Undertale,' encountering monsters will bring up a battle interface, conducted in a turn-based manner. Attacking is the most brute-force solution. Corresponding to combat is 'Mercy.'"

"Mercy?" The planners thoughtfully savored the word, seemingly generating some strange insights.

Wang Jian nodded: "That's right. Every monster has flesh and blood, their own dreams and thoughts. They also don't want to fight the protagonist. To achieve mercy towards a monster, the conditions are much more troublesome. You need to first understand the monster's personality and preferences through actions, and then fulfill their wishes.

For example, Lesser Dog just wants to play with the player. The player needs to avoid Lesser Dog's attacks while petting it, making it happy, and then you can 'Spare' it."

Wang Jian continued to explain.

In addition to the innovation of being able to befriend monsters, "Undertale" is also a typical Meta-game.

The concept of Meta comes from Meta-fiction. Even if the purpose of a general novel is not to pursue reality, it must still create a sense of realism and verisimilitude in its narrative. That is, it must use various fine threads and realistic, credible details to mobilize the reader's various senses, so that the reader will feel strongly and be immersed in it.

However, meta-fiction goes against this, not only not concealing the fact that "the novel is fictional," but deliberately exposing it through some means. For example, the famous novel "Don Quixote" is considered the ancestor of meta-fiction. The author occasionally enters the novel to comment on the plot.

Another famous meta-fiction, "Sophie's World," unfolds the first half of the story normally from Sophie's perspective, but a shocking twist suddenly appears in the middle. Through the mouth of a philosopher, Sophie realizes that she is just a virtual character in a book. It turns out that this book is a gift from a father to his 15-year-old daughter, Hilde, and Hilde, through Sophie's story, also discovers that she faces the same problem as Sophie. This cannot help but make the reader wonder if they are also a virtual character in some novel.

Meta-fiction is not only a formal innovation, but also a way to visually present complex and profound philosophical propositions, arouse strong resonance from readers, and reveal that its fictionality is only a means, the purpose of which is to explore the relationship between the virtual and the real.

Meta-game is a game that breaks the barrier between the virtual and the real. In fact, Meta elements are used in many games. For example, in popular card mobile games on the market, players can set their favorite characters as the 'mascot'.

When they poke some places they shouldn't, shy mascots will blush and make defensive gestures with their hands, shyly shouting "Ew, stop it!". More fierce mascots may put their hands on their hips and glare at the player through the screen, "Hey, where are you touching! Apologize to me now!"

In most games, Meta elements are only used in this way, as small easter eggs in the game.

After all, game designers painstakingly arrange various gameplay and appropriate narrative methods to allow players to immerse themselves in the game. Too much interaction outside the game will undoubtedly make players feel detached.

It is both a limitation and a protection.

Imagine when players are playing "A Dark Room" and see the following text:

A ragged stranger stumbles in and collapses in the corner.

Hint: Continue to add fire to warm the stranger to trigger the subsequent plot!

Players have already constructed the scene in their minds, imagining the world in which the protagonist is located. Seeing this hint, they will definitely jump out of the game.

Hey, this is just a virtual game!

However, a meta-game is to deliberately expose its virtual attributes, making players feel absurd and detached, and in addition to feeling the fun of the game, generate a deeper reflection on the virtual and the real.

However, because Meta elements are difficult to grasp, although they are used in many games, very few can truly integrate Meta elements into the game content, and excellent Meta games are even rarer.

"Undertale" uses Meta elements extremely cleverly.

In many story-oriented games, there are multiple ending settings. Various options will appear during the game, and different options will affect the direction of the plot, eventually reaching different endings.

If players want to see a good ending, saving before choosing an option is extremely important. This way, even if they choose the wrong option, they can reload and try again.

In "Undertale," although there is a save function, some decisions, once made, may cause irreparable consequences.

When players who are used to saving and loading suddenly find that their foolproof regret medicine has expired, imagine the psychological impact it will cause.

Some characters in the game not only know that the player has the ability to save, but even use the save function to deal with the player.

After the player achieves the perfect ending and completes the game, the game will beg the player not to reset the world, so that the world can truly be at peace. All this is to tell the player - we are not a pile of cold data, we can truly live in your heart.

The planners were completely excited after listening to Wang Jian's explanation!