Subaru set the plastic bag down on his table as he pressed a button on a hardware. His computer hummed as the screen's flash brightened up his gloomy room. He had gone to the convenience store earlier to buy a cup of noodles and some corn potato chips.
Tomorrow was saturday and he had nothing better to do. Tired as he already was, he elected to have a few more minutes of gaming time to himself before doing his usual radio calisthenics routine to sleep.
Stretching himself with a sigh, he sat down on his chair and grabbed a few potato chips from the plastic bag, eating them as he waited for his computer to boot up.
"Man, I wonder what to play today..." he contemplated, staring at his screen, "Fallout again? Hmm... nah..."
He mentally went over his Steam library's contents, still not quite sure of what game to play.
"...maybe I'll see if I can get a new game in. Can't get too repetitive after all." he concluded, 'Heh. Repetitive... like I am one to say.'
The screen then showed his usual background, gaining his attention. His PC had finally booted up.
"Hoho! Well then, let's- huh?" as he moved his cursor to the top of the Steam icon, he noticed another strange program beside it.
"Re:One?" he furrowed his brows, "I don't remember putting this here. What's this?" he hovered his cursor above the program in question, right clicking it and checking its properties out of curiosity.
"Shortcut, opens with Re:One Launcher, I see. I see. Okay."
He dismissed the properties tab and hovered his cursor over the program again, "Hmm. Pretty weird. Let's hope this isn't a virus."
Steeling himself, he double-clicked the application, the screen going black for a few moments as the program initiated.
The young man watched as several logos animatedly appeared on the screen, along with the studio that created the software.
"Witch Studios? Never heard of them before."
After the logo vanished, the screen slowly brightened up, displaying the title and the menu of the program.
Re:One
NEW GAME
LOAD GAME
OPTIONS
CREDITS
QUIT GAME
Version 18/21
FPS: 121
"A game, then. Nice. Still doesn't answer how this got here, though." Subaru said,
The background screen was dynamic, but blurred and never changed, showing from the perspective of cobbled ground, what looked like to be a town and several grassy hills in the distance. The menu had no opening theme or anything of the sort, only the distinct noises of carriage passing closely to the sides and background conversations.
"I guess atleast this looks interesting, looks like a fantasy medieval RPG game of the sort." he noted to himself, "Huh. Well, time to see what it's all about, then."
Wasting no further time on the menu screen, he clicked the 'new game' option.
TRANSPORTING...
He tilted his head in mild confusion for a moment at the strange term in the place of the usual 'loading...' but didn't stress himself over it.
"What game even has a loading screen these days?" he hummed, "I think this one might be old. It didn't even let me select a difficulty, too..."
He waited for several minutes before his game loaded. His screen blackened and slowly lit up with a small white dot crosshair, displaying his health at one-hundred percent on the lower left side of his screen with a semi-transparent hud outlined in orange.
"So it's First perso-" he widened his eyes as he visibly recoiled, "Whoa! Holy crap!" he nearly shouted, his previous bored tone now suddenly cheery in awe, "Look at those graphics!"
| WASD to move. |
| Use mouse to look around. |
Subaru was already moving before the small tutorial pop-ups even appeared. His eyes shone as he moved his character down a street full of NPC's, looking to every direction of the game in awe.
"The textures, shadows, lighting, animation, the creatures! It all looks so real!" he took a moment to check his FPS and was astonished, "So many of these NPCs are loaded here, in one place, yet the game is still running clean at 120 FPS?! How the hell..."
SHIFT to run.
SPACE to jump.
CTRL to crouch.
"Wow!" he paid no mind to the other pop-ups as he began sprinting and jumping from one place to another. Completely absorbed by the new graphical experience, Subaru didn't even notice some of the NPC's looking at his character like he was crazy. Some even stepped away, totally weirded out by the eccentric, silent man running and jumping everywhere with an expressionless face.
Subaru, still enjoying his game, pointed his view down, "I can even see... my legs?" he frowned in confusion upon seeing that his character wore the exact same pants and shoes as he was wearing.
"What...?" he maneuvered his mouse left and right, attempting to take a good look at his character's legs before he lightly rubbed his eyes, trying to see if his eyes weren't playing tricks with him.
"Maybe I'm just too tired..." he said to himself before pointing his mouse upwards, "Right. That might be it."
He decided to stop admiring the game's visuals, taking a good look at the town his character was in, instead.
"So this game definitely has to be RPG-themed, seeing as I'm in some medieval town and there are demihumans around. But what am I supposed to do?"
| Press TAB to check current objectives. |
"Oh. Convenient."
Subaru pressed the TAB button on his keyboard, and it opened a window that listed his current objectives. So far, there was only one:
| - YOU ARE LOST, GATHER INFORMATION |
"Guess this game's straight to the point then, I like that, but how am I exactly supposed to gather information...?"
"And why am I lost in the first place? Did I accidentally skip over an important cutscene?"
He scratched his head, trying to remember. But he was very sure that he didn't and shrugged, "Well even so, the game still should have some kind of tutorial level to guide you somewhere. No way to know what you have to do without that."
He hovered his crosshair over a demihuman NPC that was walking by and a pop-up showed,
| Press '/' to type and ENTER to send message. You can freely communicate with individuals around you for any desired purpose. |
Subaru took a moment to process the pop-up tutorial, "So this is multiplayer? No... the NPC's animations are far too realistic, so that means..." he slowly smiled in realization.
"Oh what? Now that's a damned cool mechanic! Let's test it!"
He moved his character up to what looked like a dogman sitting on a bench, looking to the side.
Stopping his character right infront of the dogman, who warily turned to look at him, he tapped the aforementioned key to talk.
'hi where am i', he then pressed Enter.
"hi where am i" To Subaru's small dissapointment, his character was voiceless. He only knew that he 'spoke' when he noticed the message appear on the right side of his screen as if on a multiplayer game.
The dogman looked at his character perplexed. Meanwhile Subaru couldn't help but be utterly amazed at the sheer detail of the facial animations, gestures and cloth physics.
Looking Subaru's character up and down, the dogman's expression went from confused to annoyed.
"You an outsider, ain'tcha? Never seen those clothes o'yours around before."
"Not only this game is visually amazing in all aspects but the NPC's ACTUALLY respond to what say, realistically too?! This is too unbelievable!" Excited at the game's dialogue, Subaru responded to the NPC.
"yes im a outsider"
The dogman in the screen snorted, looking like he was disgusted.
"Thought so. You're in the Capital of Lugunica, pal. Now get outta here, eh?" the dogman waved him off with an irritated frown.
Subaru couldn't help but raise a brow at the dogman's hostility, but nevertheless continued.
"ok thanks"
The dogman looked off to the side again, evidently having enough of his character's presence.
Subaru, still on a joyful spirit, decided to poke more fun at the game and moved his character elsewhere, bunny hopping right between several baffled humans and demihumans alike.
"Has that man gone mad?"
"...why is he jumping like that?"
Subaru chuckled at the NPC's responses to his character as he moved right, entering a secluded alleyway.
An exclamation mark icon popped up on the left side of the screen, with Subaru looking at it curiously.
Press N to view your notes.
Pressing N, on his keyboard Subaru saw his character bringing out a black notebook from somewhere and opening it, revealing what was written inside.
| Just where the hell am I? What is this place? I don't know how I ended here, but atleast some... half dog half man - dogman? - told me the name of the country, I think? Lugunica. I'm apparently in the capital.
I can't read anything in this place and I'm honestly finding myself overwhelmed. It has dragons moving carriages, some people that look like animals of all types, dog, bull, lizard, everything! I don't know where I am, but I need to find a way back home. |
"Hoho! The plot thickens... This is an isekai-like game where our protagonist is in another world, has super-realistic graphics and the most awesome chat mechanics? How did I never hear of this game before?! It's damned awesome as hell!"
Subaru noticed a map icon pop up.
New Objective!
The young-man excitedly pressed TAB, and there was the new objective:
| - GET BACK HOME |