"Black Myth: Wukong" may be just the beginning of a "domestic masterpiece", and the game industry is brewing a storm - if you go to the 2024 Beijing Nuclear Fusion Exhibition, which has just ended, you may have the same feeling as Gyro-kun.

Entering the venue from the main entrance, you can see the booths of large games under development such as "Shadow Blade: Zero", "Contract of Everything", and "Limit Solving Machine", and from the opening of the museum in the morning to four or five o'clock in the afternoon, the trial team is almost always full of eager players.

Gyro was fortunate enough to participate in the trial of "Contract of Everything", a game developed by TipsWorks, a subsidiary of Papergames, which attracted a lot of attention when the PV was first revealed in May this year.

And if you want to sum up the game's demo experience in the most straightforward terms, it is "a single-player masterpiece is strong enough" - from Unreal Engine 5's construction of magnificent fantasy art scenes, to the grand world view setting of the transformation of the inner world, to the unique squad team combat method, all of them are impressive.

In Gyro's view, the verification of "Black Myth: Wukong" on the domestic single-player experience game market has put the entire industry at a turning point of subtle structural changes, and "The Contract of Everything" may play a unique role in this storm of change.

"Escape" from the soul like

If you know a little about Pascal's Pact, you will know that TipsWorks is not a team that just wants to make a "soul-like" product, whether it is the squad design in the previous game or the introduction of the sanity bar, you can see that the team wants to reflect their own thinking in the game.

However, compared to its predecessor, "A Contract of Everything" takes a significantly bigger step - although in the process of exploration, you will still get a taste of "souls" in the campfire points that can be restored, the fragmented narrative with a few words, and the monster design with a hint of Cthulhu, but in terms of combat experience, the game has largely torn off the label of "soul like".

One of the most obvious points is that the game's light and heavy hits, dodges, blocks, penetration, combat skills and explosive skills and other elements ensure the richness and fun of the action during the battle, but "suffering" will not become the core feeling of playing the game.

Compared with "Soul Travel", the characters in the control of "The Contract of Everything" rarely feel that there are long movements that shake back and forth, and the release of heavy attacks, combat skills and role switching and other operations are relatively smooth, and you can instantly complete the recovery of blood by drinking medicine during battle. In the game action with the boss, the game also deliberately lowered the requirements for the accuracy of the player's movements, such as long-pressing to block can block most attacks for a long time before the energy bar is exhausted, and the timing of perfect dodge and killing moves is also relatively relaxed.

While greatly reducing the "taste of tormented souls" in battle, "The Pact of Everything" also continues the core of "Pascal's Contract", allowing players to focus on rich character personal mechanics and squad strategies. Each character can extend the diverse combat experience with their unique light and heavy combos, derived combat skills, "rage burst" skills, and Dolm's support moves. For example, the melee attacking swordsman Geza can derive a variety of combat skill combos with burning effects, while the ranged archer Sampong can perform ice attribute effects.

After communicating with the battle planner of "Contract of Everything", Gyro learned that an important quality that the game hopes to show in battle is the "sense of interaction" between the player and the boss, and this interaction is closely related to the uniqueness of each character. For example, using a bow character can interrupt a specific boss skill, and using a shield character can reflect some long-range throwing skills, so that even the same boss can play a completely different action experience from different characters' perspectives, increasing the value of repeated gameplay in the game.

Despite all that has been said, whether or not the personal experience is "soul-like" may not be that important. Just like before the official release of "Black Myth: Wukong", community players also had disputes over "whether it is a Soul Like or God of War Like", but in the end, more voices thought it was a unique combat experience. At this point, I am also optimistic that "Contract of Everything" will allow more players to feel its unique tonality after the beta is opened in the future.

Create a fantasy stage that can "embrace all kinds of imagination".

Outside of combat, The Contract of Everything presents a beautiful picture of a world that blends Eastern mystery and Western fantasy, especially with the blessing of UE5, with the help of the concept of a permanent world and the island world (which may be simply understood as "the world inside the surface"), the game does manage to blend a lot of imaginative wonders with realistic scenes. When the PV was first exposed, it was the unique art atmosphere of the game that fascinated people.

TipsWorks game screenwriter explained to Gyro that the world that "Contract of Everything" hopes to create is not a simple Western fantasy or Chinese style, but a fantasy style that can fully accommodate the team's imagination and freedom, so there will be both Gesa who seems to come out of a martial arts novel, and a "shield brother" who seems to run out of the DND world, but no matter what kind of character it is, They are all designed to serve the world view of the game.

Because of this, the characters, monsters, and backgrounds of objects in this world are all rich in settings - and players of "Pascal's Contract" will also notice familiar concepts such as "Colossus" - according to the team's plan, players will experience a clear narrative adventure story in the main story, and at the same time, they can also feel the reality of the world and the team's creative attitude in the rich map exploration, scene construction and fragmented text content.

It's also worth mentioning that the game's voice acting is impressive, and it seems to deliberately reduce the sense of drama and stage, and pursue a more rustic, plain and life-like tone.

To tell a large and complex story that integrates multiple elements, the cost of time and manpower can be imagined, and it must be difficult to ensure the continuity of the characters and the integrity of the story. For a game that focuses on the long term, the challenge is even higher.

The writers of "The Contract of Everything" told Gyro that the game hopes to convey a message: "Our world, all kinds of things, are not separate, but interrelated." "If you want to convey this idea to players, showing a reasonable and credible world is an indispensable premise, and it is interesting to see how TipsWorks will create its ideal game world in the future.

Standing at the crossroads of the times

At present, "The Contract of Everything" has built a charming enough story stage and a set of basic gameplay frameworks that can be extended horizontally and very richly, but in the first demo, there are indeed some possibilities for improvement and tuning.

For example, the current version of the character does not have jumping movements, and the production team is obviously still considering the impact of this, and specifically asked questions in the demo feedback questionnaire. As far as the personal trial situation is concerned, because it focuses on advancing the main plot, there is no notice of more map depth design in the trial chapter of the game, so it has little impact on the experience of running the map. However, in the battle session, there are many opponents who have attack moves such as smashing and jumping, which naturally makes people want to avoid damage by jumping.

In addition, Gyro also learned that unlike the logic of "Pascal Contract" first on the mobile terminal and then multi-platform porting, the current development of "Everything Contract" is completely based on console and PC platforms, and it needs to take into account the comprehensive game experience of players on multiple platforms in terms of image quality and operation comfort, which is also a big challenge.

However, there is one fact that makes me optimistic: the technical power of Paperfold should not be underestimated. At this month's Unreal Engine Technology Sharing Conference (Unreal Fest Shanghai 2024), Papergames VP shared the technical experience of its other large-scale cross-platform game, Infinite Warmth, including how to draw large terrain more efficiently on mobile devices, how to preserve the image quality of buildings and natural scenery at a distance, and even how to achieve near-PC lighting and shadow effects on low-performance devices.

When the PV was first revealed in May this year, the official account of "Contract of Everything" said that "this is a huge project, and we have been preparing for it for five years". In fact, it is precisely because of the actual demo and trial that "Contract of Everything" shows the game temperament of a stand-alone masterpiece, which makes many people more concerned about how the team will balance the relationship between game experience, cross-platform development and operation mode.

In the direction of future development and polishing, Gyro understands that "volume" may be a "general outline" of the game, for example, in terms of combat, the game will continue to strengthen the polishing of performance performance and interactive details, and continue to optimize the picture and dubbing until it is satisfied. And "new" may be a "general summary" of the team's adventurous spirit, and the producer promised not to do character extraction or numerical sales in the live interview, but to tell the story in a form similar to "drama broadcast".

It has only been a little more than a month since the release of "Black Myth: Wukong", and we have seen the desire for high-quality games in the domestic market today, and we have also seen that players have put forward more and higher requirements for developers in the "post-black myth era". Because of this, standing at the crossroads of this era, choice and strength will be greater than everything, and we will wait and see where "The Contract of Everything" will go.

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