Chapter 648: Game Instruction Manual
This was Old P’s first time visiting Chen Mo’s experience store, and like many other players, he curiously looked around for a bit.
However, he only glanced at the murals and sculptures, since Old P had to hurry over to the VR game experience zone to grab a spot. If he was too late, he wouldn’t get to play.
He went to the front desk, asked the pretty young lady there, swiped his ID card, topped up his account, and headed straight for the VR game experience zone.
Luckily, he arrived early. There were still empty VR game pods in the experience zone. Any later, and the regulars at the store would have filled them all up.
Old P entered the game pod, logging into the game while silently wondering to himself.
“This game requires a hundred players to play, right? But the entire VR experience zone only has eighty game pods. I wonder how they’ll make up for the remaining twenty.”
Obviously, during the trial period for “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds,” almost everyone in the eighty pods would choose to try it out—after all, it was a new game. But what would happen with the missing twenty players was anyone’s guess.
Maybe they’d use AI-controlled bots, or maybe they’d just leave the slots empty. Either way, it probably wouldn’t make much difference.
Before entering the game, a notification popped up on the game pod’s interface: “To ensure your gaming experience, a match of ‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ will start promptly at 10:15. Please prepare yourselves and enter together.”
Players entered the VR pods at different times, so relying on the system’s matchmaking to group them all into the same game would create a time gap. Hence, they simply scheduled a fixed time.
Old P checked the system time. There were still ten minutes left. That was fine—it gave him a chance to enter the game and look over the basic settings.
Soon, the game loaded.
At that moment, Old P found himself amidst the ruins of a building. It looked like a Western-style structure, similar to a church, with a strong sense of age. The walls were covered in mottled stains, and the floor was a mess.
Besides scattered rubble, there were overturned cabinets and benches, along with various guns, grenades, crates, and bullets strewn about.
Then, the game’s background music started playing.
Chen Mo had chosen the old version of the BGM, because of personal preference—he felt it better matched the game’s overall vibe.
The new version of the BGM felt more grand and expansive, while the old version was filled with tension and mystery.
It began with a rapid, intense drumbeat, interspersed with crisp percussive sounds, followed by a low, slightly soothing piano melody. The mix of multiple instruments created a complex feeling—both tragic and thrilling, with a faint sense of fate hanging over it.
Old P couldn’t help but listen for a couple of minutes.
First, he looked down at his hands and body. It was a male character wearing a simple vest and jeans, likely based on the personal information from his Thunder Game Pass.
Then, Old P tried moving around. He could punch, crouch, lie prone, and perform more complex actions like leaning left or right and taking cover behind obstacles.
In front of him was a slightly larger low cabinet, with an instruction manual on top.
It was a small booklet. Old P opened it and found detailed descriptions of the actions players could perform in the game, as well as the specific rules.
Additionally, there was information about various guns in the game, though it wasn’t complete. Only some basic firearms had detailed stats, while more advanced weapons were just vague outlines. It seemed you’d need to obtain them in the game to unlock their full data.
Old P flipped through it briefly. The booklet had a lot of content, but it was all basic knowledge—a beginner’s guide to help players get into the game.
There was too much to read in a short time, so Old P just skimmed it and put it down.
In a corner of the ruins, there was a weapon rack holding a few basic firearms, like the P18C pistol, the Uzi submachine gun, and the AKM automatic rifle.
There weren’t many guns, and the rack had plenty of empty space, suggesting more could be added. But how to obtain them was still unknown—probably by finding them in the game to unlock them.
There was also a simple wardrobe, completely empty.
Next to the wardrobe was a separate area with a small supply crate, faintly glowing to prompt the player to open it.
Old P opened the crate and found a pair of leather boots, which automatically went into the wardrobe.
He walked over to the wardrobe and put the boots on.
Looking down, his character was no longer barefoot but wearing leather boots. This made Old P feel much better—at least the imaginary sensation of stepping on sharp stones was gone.
Next to the wardrobe was a cracked mirror, where he could change his character’s appearance.
There was a face-customization system, and it was very comprehensive. After all, Chen Mo had already created a powerful face-customization system for “Dark Souls,” so he just reused it here.
The system also offered several default identities, with different ethnicities. Old P picked a middle-aged handsome guy of Asian descent and slightly adjusted his facial features.
He could change the gender, but Old P didn’t bother.
This was different from the “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” of Chen Mo’s previous life. In that version, it was on PC with a third-person perspective, so many male players chose to create a pretty girl character, allowing them to stare at the girl’s butt and back throughout the game—a delightful sight.
But the VR platform was different. All players used a first-person perspective, and it was highly immersive, making it feel like you’d soul-transmigrated into the game.
On PC, having a barefoot character wasn’t a problem, but in VR, if your character wasn’t wearing shoes, looking down and seeing your bare feet running over rubble would give you a faint, illusory pain in your soles.
That was probably a kind of phantom pain…
If you changed your gender and then looked down to see two mounds… it could easily lead to a confused sense of gender identity…
Of course, some cross-dressing enthusiasts might enjoy that, but most male players would choose male characters. Since the VR version had stronger immersion, they didn’t want to identify with a female character.
Old P confirmed his player name: Prusley. No issues.
He wandered around the ruins. The ruins had a door, but it was closed. There were windows, with sunlight streaming in through them, but they were boarded up with long wooden planks—he couldn’t jump out.
Peeking through the gaps in the planks, Old P caught a glimpse of the outside. It looked like more ruins, but he couldn’t see clearly.
Genius remembers this site address in one second: