Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

Chapter Thirty: The Players Are the Protagonists

At this point, it's still a long way from the release of The Wandering Earth.

Lin Li's cutscene, adapted from the space elevator scene in the later film *The Wandering Earth*, successfully silenced Zhou Shenlin's dormitory.

Unlike The Wandering Earth, which focuses on showcasing humanity's technological level.

Aside from the long shots, the rest of the animation in Lin Li's segment is dedicated to promoting the villain.

Unlike many traditional games that create a giant, ugly machine as a boss, he used this animation to let players figure it out for themselves.

How terrifying must the intelligent machines that can build such miraculous structures as space elevators be in terms of combat power?

As the spectacular scenery appeared on screen, background music began to play.

Zhou Shenlin frantically pulled out his earphones from the bedside and plugged them into his phone.

The grand and oppressive music made one's heart tremble. Below the space elevator was a massive mechanical base, where countless intelligent mechanical armies moved about.

Zhou Shenlin stared intently at the screen; now he understood.

Why is it that even with such advanced weaponry, humanity is still at a disadvantage?

The origin of these intelligent machines is just too ridiculous.

Just as Zhou Shenlin was immersed in the spectacular scene, the base's alarm suddenly sounded.

Humanity's air force launched an attack.

Meanwhile, outside the space base, rings of towers were opened, and countless combat androids poured out.

Fighter jets from both sides opened fire in the azure sky, the intense gunfire weaving together to create a beautiful spectacle of sparks. Soon, the scene shifts.

They were transferred to the Earth Federation's temporary front-line base.

On the big screen, the marked blue fighter jets went out one by one.

The game's exciting background music quieted down again.

There wasn't a single line of dialogue throughout, but Zhou Shenlin also fell silent.

Clearly, humanity's first attack failed.

And it failed miserably.

The entire frontline base fell silent.

"You've arrived, our heroic commander. Come in; we need someone like you to break this deadlock."

An elderly voice rang in Zhou Shenlin's ears.

Then a general appears in the character portrait.

A dialog box appears.

Zhou Shenlin was once again moved by the seamless integration between the animation and game systems.

Gently tap the screen with your finger.

The plot begins to unfold.

The plot of this scene is actually not complicated at all.

The Earth Federation commander invited the protagonist to participate in the entire attack plan.

The storyline of the Girls Frontline game is a typical example of a storyline centered on the player.

This kind of plot is written almost entirely around the protagonist.

In its previous life, miHoYo's storyline settings have basically remained the same since Genshin Impact.

If you think about it carefully, you'll find that in both Genshin Impact and Star Railroad, the protagonist's status is very high at the beginning of the game.

Moreover, wherever they go, it becomes central to driving the plot forward.

After advancing the plot, they are often given titles such as hero or savior.

Even when you arrive at a new location, the local NPCs will mention the protagonist's past in the story and show them admiration.

The advantage of this plot progression is that the focus of the story is very clear, allowing players to quickly immerse themselves in the narrative.

Of course, in the later stages...

In order to sell the characters, miHoYo gradually abandoned these settings.

Lin Li felt it was a bit of a pity.

After all, focusing on the main character allows players to have a strong sense of participation as they drive the plot forward.

After all, the game's plot will constantly remind players that the world will collapse and be destroyed if the protagonist is gone, so why don't you step up and save the world?

Is it tacky? Yes, it really is a bit tacky.

It was really exhilarating.

Take this current scene, for example.

If this were written by someone like Yu Zhong, the protagonist might not even appear at all, or if he does, he'd probably just be a minor character.

In this situation, no matter how intense or emotional the subsequent plot becomes, players won't feel it.

It's not just Yu Zhong.

Even the initial draft of the script sent to him by the "Girls' Frontline" writing team had almost the same plot.

Their reasoning was that it would seem abrupt for a player, as the commander of a mobile base vehicle, to intervene in the command of such a massive event.

Lin Li's approach at the time was simple, without much explanation; he simply sent it back to be redone.

"What kind of main plot is it if the main characters aren't even there? It's illogical! If it's illogical, then find a way to make it logical! Otherwise, what's the point of having copywriters like you?"

He was so angry because the copywriting issue was his bottom line.

In the past, besides Girls' Frontline 2, there were actually quite a few other games that had this problem of the plot going astray.

The most outrageous one is a single-player game that many people may not have heard of, called "Jianghu Eleven".

In the game, the protagonist is a complete camera.

You won't participate in any events or interactions throughout the entire process. Even if you do interact with NPCs, it's just because you're asked to run errands.

The game ends with Bao Si in the final scene.

Moreover, even disregarding the market perspective, considering Lin Li himself...

This approach of detaching the plot from the main character is also quite foolish.

The reason why games have protagonists is to allow players to immerse themselves in the story.

If you write a main storyline, but the protagonist is just a minor character, what's the point of drawing people in?

After scolding the copywriter, Lin Li directly intervened in the writing of the plot copy.

With Lin Li's strong intervention.

The direction of the event's storyline has finally been decided.

At the same time, Lin Li also used this incident to set an absolute rule for the game's copywriting.

First, the player must be the absolute protagonist in driving the events forward!

2. When players lack the necessary skills or the plot progression feels forced, please change the settings or create a pre-plot scenario to make it more believable!

3. If all methods fail to make the player the absolute protagonist in advancing the events, please delete that storyline and rewrite it!

This rule was issued.

The entire production team understood Lin Li's requirements.

Understand your own role: you are a game, meant to provide emotional value, not to provide players with answers and explanations.

Only when the above conditions are met can we conduct literary discussions and reach a higher level.

However, the premise of raising the bar is to serve the plot and elevate the plot's quality.

Don't let it become like the sketches on the Spring Festival Gala, where the main and secondary elements are lost and the sketches no longer funny; that would be too ridiculous.

After Lin Li defined the nature of the script, before the final scene of this first act, the scriptwriting team laid a lot of groundwork in order to allow players to participate in the final battle of this event.

Including the establishment of an AI fortress within the Russian map, when the protagonist arrives, all support from the Far East is blocked, and in the end, the protagonist relies on his wits.

The fortress has been breached.

As a result, he received commendation and the trust of the entire Far East support force.

The production team laid a lot of groundwork for this kind of plot in the early stages.

This gradually elevated the players' status.

The protagonist was even given the title of Hero Commander.

This is why, when the player was invited by the Earth Federation governor to serve as an advisor, he felt both a bit abrupt and yet it was perfectly natural.

Chapter Thirty-One Online Systems

"Holy crap, this command system is awesome..."

"Ew!! It really works! Holy crap, it supports online play!!!"

"Quick, quick, Lao Wang, Boss Zhou, quick! What are your IDs? Add them together, add them together, then we can play online!!"

While Zhou Shenlin was still going through the plot, his roommates were already talking about new topics.

"What? There's an online component in the later part of the story?"

Upon hearing the words "online," Zhou Shenlin forgot all about listening to the voice chat and immediately started clicking away.

However, even while clicking, Zhou Shenlin was still quickly going through the plot.

Perhaps this is the last stand of those who prioritize plot over substance.

I only glanced at the plot briefly.

After the protagonist became involved in the attack plan, the final decision was to launch a feint attack from the front.

Then, they bombarded the front lines from high altitude, detonating a massive number of special smoke grenades that could block signals, creating fog on the front lines and interfering with the omnics' systems.

Then there's the plan of having a female doll attack.

After completing the previous storyline and watching a cutscene of about 30 seconds, Zhou Shenlin finally arrived at the online system interface that his roommates had mentioned.

In this online system interface, players can invite friends or choose the automatic team-up mode to form a 4-person team for gameplay.

The gameplay mode is called "Fog Warfare".

Through the plot, Zhou Shenlin has already learned about the current situation.

As humans, they must destroy or occupy the space elevator belonging to the omnics to prevent them from using it to mine space resources and build more omnics.

The first phase of the entire operation was also very successful.

The feint attack worked; the excessive amount of special smoke grenades at the front line were successfully detonated, turning the entire space elevator into a fog.

And now.

The commander needs to lead the androids deep into the fog to launch a full-scale attack.

"Here we come, let's assemble!"

"Holy crap, Lao Zhou, your commander is so ugly. What were you thinking? He's got blond hair."

"You don't know anything, this is the trend."

"Next time I'll have to block your base access. You blond commander, don't even think about getting into my base vehicle!!"

"Hey~~wait a minute, Lao Wang, why did you choose a female commander?!"

"Mind your own business, why are you talking so much?"

As Zhou Shenlin entered the team system, four different commanders appeared on the game interface.

In "Girls' Frontline", the commander's role can be customized.

This is also part of enhancing player immersion, allowing players to customize their character according to their preferences.

There are even special outfits for commanders in the store.