When Sasha woke up he cracked his neck and stretched, looking around his little room. “Well shit, first time all week I woke up without the helmet on.” He muttered to himself. “Right, right, game thing.” With a sigh he picked up his phone and started to flick through all his notifications.
There wasn’t much, just a few notifications from his retro messaging software, and a few youtube videos. For the next hour or two he ended up watching those videos, even though a part of him really wanted to put on his helmet and try out the new thing. He just couldn’t get himself up and ready. Not yet.
Finally, Sasha got up when he had to pee. He climbed up to his feet and began to stretch a little, then went to the bathroom. By the time he got back he’d moved enough to feel alright and sat right back down on his bed. This time, however, he didn’t sit down until he grabbed his helmet from where it’d been siting on his desk, and put it on. He ignored the warped spot on the desk under where the helmet had been.
With the helmet on, Sasha closed his eyes and was soon once more in his Virtual Space. Virtual Spaces these days were expensive things you could customize with items from the web, but he’d gotten his a few years back and never updated. Sure, he didn’t have all the features, but his space was completely customized with exactly what he wanted. The wooden desk in the middle of the room, the walls covered in books, it was all perfect to him.
Sitting at his desk, Sasha decided he didn’t really have time to play around. He picked up the cartridge, and then placed it on the universal port in the middle of his desk. Usually, it was taken up with Forestry Online, which made the port look like a forest fire map. Plastikos’ port looked like an arcade machine. It did look weird on top of his desk, but whatever. Sasha sighed, and decided it was best to activate recording now.
“Computer. Initiate OBS, VR version 3.1.2” He said. Sure, he didn’t stream, but recording his game was something he could often use for his posts. Pairing a post with a video was a great way to show things off, especially showing how to do a glitch or where to find a piece of lore. The corner of his vision added a small red dot, indicating it was recording.
With a sigh, Sasha clicked on the start game button, and the world began to fade. Slowly, he was drawn into a dark void. “Well, I hope this isn’t a hoax… But if it is, somehow tricking the helmet to recognize this as an independent game instead of just activating Skyrim VR 20th Anniversary Full Sensory Remastered would be impressive.” Of course, he didn’t need to say the whole name, but the words had a fun mouthfeel and he just liked pissing off the fanboys who said Skyrim could never be as good in VR as it was in flatland.
Detecting Equipment…
Insufficient Hardware…
Low-Graphics Mode Activated…
Low Graphics Mode OVERRIDE…
Tertiary Hardware Activated…
FDA Approval Signature Verified…
Please enjoy the game.
Stolen novel; please report.
Well, that was a lot of things. “The representative did say that this was going to utilize that extra ram expander thing people found years ago. I’m not sure how, but it’s going to be mind blowing.” Sasha said out loud to his watchers, as well as to himself. “I mean, I hope not literally, but I guess you’ll see by the time this comes out. If my exploded head is all over the news and Reddit, uh, well I loved you guys. Also, sorry for the gore, lol.”
The world was a void, and he really felt like nothingness. He sighed as he waited, this was not great but it was at least something. Finally, he found himself in front of something. There was a planet, and stars started to appear in the void. Finally there were things to see, things to hear, as the Plastikos logo slowly appeared with the same loud sound as the old THX logo.
“Welcome to Plastikos!” A voice said, practically filling his ears even though they were ringing. “This is a world of your creation, a world filled with infinite possibilities. Anything you can think of you can do, eventually at least. All you have to do is try.” Well, that was simple enough.
“Character creation will begin in five seconds. Please be ready.” Sasha sighed, muttering to himself about this. But eventually he popped into existence somewhere else with a slight level of disorientation. “Welcome.” Said the voice, and there was a woman standing there. She was tall, blond, and looked like something from a harem novel. Sasha had to use all his willpower to stop his eyes mid-way through examining her curves, knowing that the viewers at home would catch him looking.
“Uh, right. Character creation.” Sasha said, uncertainly. “How does this work?” He looked around the new place he was in. It was a room, small and plain white. There was a floor length mirror in front of him, and beside it what looked like an old fashioned computer console from over a hundred years ago. All covered in switches and buttons, rather than digital screens.
“Yes, right.” She said, a glint in her eye. It was clear she also caught him looking. “Plastikos is an adaptive game, which means at character creation your options will be somewhat limited. Only once you are experiencing the game will infinite possibilities be achievable.” She grinned. “Yes, yes, everyone makes that joke. I decided to nip it in the bud this time.” Sasha nodded, that was probably right, and he’d been about to grumble himself.
“Okay, so, what are the options?” He asked, unsure.
“Simple, there are only about half a dozen options, and from there we will figure out where best to start your experience.” She gestured at the weird mechanical console. “Name, Race, Sex, Class, Trait, Background, Attributes.”
“And, what, you think it’s best done in that order?” Sasha asked, looking at where she gestured. She wasn’t even gesturing in the order they were on the weird machine, it seemed nearly random.”
“Not at all. You can pick what you want in any order you want. In fact, many choose to have their name try to fit their race and sex, some even ask me for advice. I’ll be honest, I’m glad when they do, some of these names people have…” She frowned. “Lets just say this is not the kind of game you want to go running around in as xXXcockslayerXXx or whatever.”
“Did someone really choose that? Isn’t this game meant to be immersive.”
“Look, sometimes trolls get popular. We had to give them a fair shot too.” She said, somewhat defensively. “Anyway, just know that some combinations will be incompatible. No race and class are incompatible, though a few will be looked on poorly, but race will exclude a lot of backgrounds, traits, and sometimes even sex.”
“You have mono-sex races in this game?” Sasha asked, a little bit intrigued. “Like… ants or something?”
“Yes, and no. We do have a couple monosex races, though only a couple you can actually play from the get go. For example, changelings are all Nullo, but can take on any sex while transformed. Ant-folk, Myrmidons, are actually tri-sexed. Which includes Males, Females, and Nullo. The final have female attributes, and are workers.” She didn’t seem to need to breathe to talk, it was pretty easy for her to just say whatever she needed to say.
“Okay, I think I understand.” Sasha said with a smile. “Let's get started.”