Arriving back at our camp, Miguel and I discussed how we had both hit Level 10 when cutting our branches at the willow tree. Not only was it normally a number of note in gaming, but the status bar had shone more brightly when it happened. The game was implying that this milestone meant something.
Instead of sitting down again, Bairn made his way to the Skeel Bowl, which stood at eye level for him. He motioned for us to join him.
Looking down, we saw the same crystal-clear waters of that morning, unsullied by our washing.
Bairn was consulting his boot paper again, this time reading aloud – and enunciating – to make sure he got it just right:
“Your lives are your own, as long as you have them. To delay that end, you must build your path in the heavens – giving rise to your abilities and actions in this world. A decision made cannot be undone, so swim in these waters as long as you must, lest you drown in your mistakes once you surface.”
With that, Bairn returned the parchment to his boot and walked back toward town.
“I’ll be havin’ me lunch now,” he said, his now-normal voice trailing behind him.
Left alone with the dwarf’s vague and ominous guidance, Miguel and I eyed each other cautiously.
“You heard the man,” I said. “Go swimming. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Eat shit,” Miguel said flatly. “We need a plan. We’re obviously about to start spending our skill points.”
“Skeels,” I corrected him.
“Yeah, I can’t believe we missed that,” he said with embarrassment. “But this is a cool way to level up.”
“For sure,” I agreed. “I’m definitely more nervous than I normally would be. That could be the ultra-realism or the actual threat of death, but at least some of it is great game making. Bairn’s little poem kind of scared the shit out of me – which is why I think you should go first.”
“Fine,” he agreed. “But we need to decide our build-out. We’re a party of two, which makes it hard. Plus, we don’t know what we’re gonna have to do. It’s not like we’ve seen a trailer for this.”
“Well, that’s not quite true,” I corrected. “You had the flyover when I was unconscious, right?”
His eyes brightened with recognition as if the memory had slipped away. It had been a long thirty-six hours.
In this world.
“Right,” he said excitedly, the memory rushing back. “There’s the center of civilization at the middle. Didn’t see much of that, but it was a city. Or cities. Whatever it was, we can assume it will be a lot of dialogue, politics, factions, lock-picking, stealth missions – the usual.”
“Yeah, but all far away, right?” I confirmed. “At Level 10, I just don’t want to die. I’d go all Health if it let me.”
“Maybe,” Miguel said. “You could go tank, I could go archer, but doesn’t this place seem like it’s going to be a lot more than fighting?”
“Probably,” I nodded. “But we’ll never get to it if we get killed by the giants, wolves, and demons you saw, or the crazy list of creatures Bairn mentioned.”
We always did this. Games forced focus or balance; all of one attribute or a little of everything. There wasn’t a right choice, which was cool, but it did make every choice challenging. The one thing we always had on our side is that we could build our characters so that they complemented each other.
However, that demanded compromise, which was not always easy with our friendship dynamic. Two decades of pretty even amounts of cooperation and competition meant we never knew which one was going to win out at any given moment.
The stakes had also never been so high.
“Okay,” I said softly. “What do you think? What’s the initial approach?”
He was skeptical. I was rarely this nice.
“Seriously,” I assured him. “You’ve seen more of this world than I have. What do your instincts tell you?”
He glanced away, cycling through those initial images.
“Well,” he started, “my first thoughts are that the designers made it pretty clear that this world is a steady move toward advanced civilization. Even in the city, the center was gold and monuments and high-society, but it gave way to stone, then wood, then thatch and eventually chaos. So, yeah, your survival focus makes sense.”
He was agreeing with me. He couldn’t be done.
“But…” he continued.
That was more like it.
“The swamps and bogs looked like more than simple death traps. I think we’ll need cunning. I imagine we’ll be fighting a wolf one minute and solving a hag’s riddle the next.”
He made sense. We had already seen that in small degrees with the viper. Killing it wasn’t enough. We had to find a cure. And this game seemed…sick. Not evil, but ill – as if we may need to survive long enough to heal something that was spreading like a cancer, whether that was put in the game or had infected it since.
“Let’s go 80/20,” he said finally. “Focus on strength, health, and immediate dangers, but start laying the groundwork for a more advanced approach.”
“Cool,” I agreed.
We both looked at the basin.
“Same time?” Miguel asked.
“I doubt it,” I said sadly, pointing at the single X in front of the Skeel Bowl. “Despite the mentions of heaven, which I think was metaphorical, the phrases ‘swim in these waters’ and ‘once you surface’ make me think we’re literally going to be immersed in a sea of sorts. And we’ll be there alone. I doubt we’ll be able to talk."
“Good point,” he acknowledged. “Okay. Then without knowing our options, we’ll have to wing it. You build out 80/20 as a knight, and I’ll adapt as a rogue once you tell me what my options are.”
Ah, compromise.
“And magic?” I asked, tacitly agreeing to go first.
“We do know a certain battle mage,” he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I’m pretty sure she hates us,” I assured him. “We’re on our own.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Yeah, probably,” he agreed. “Whatever you want then. Your fireball…existed against the Hell Panther. Develop it if you want.”
I couldn’t decide that now. I’d have to see what my options were. While there were some industry standards, every game did skill building a little differently, and this would inevitably be magnified by the fact that this game was a combination of survival and RPG, plus whatever else this way-ahead-of-its-time company had decided to blend in. These were uncharted waters, but I was ready to dive in.
Relying on gaming experience and movies, I stood on the X in the stone, tapped my willow branch on the waters like a pensieve, and waited. But not for long.
The water began to light up with what at first looked like stars, but then quickly morphed into the roots of the willow tree, before finally swirling into a frenzied funnel of water. It instantly pulled me in and under, taking me to the depths of a dark and boundless ocean.
When I opened my eyes, I realized I was holding my breath, but something told me it wasn’t necessary. As I began to breathe normally – a substance that was neither water nor air – constellations of light appeared before me. The brightest was familiar, with the stars coalescing to form the words Health, Stamina, and Magicka, each followed by the number 1. In the top right corner was my 10 in bold and a 7 in italics.
Inadvertently waving my hands to swim in an ocean that was not an ocean, the constellation swirled down a tier, like a slot machine in unison, this time with images: sword, bow, and staff. While the number 10 was still in bold off to the right, the italicized number had shifted to 3.
When I touched each image, multiple words and numbers appeared as before, apparently subcategories within each class. Now understanding the mechanic, I rolled the light to the final tier, which had more than a dozen images, but my omni-present 10 was now greyed out – clearly unusable here.
While the visuals and experience were extraordinary, the choices were relatively mundane. I was a bit surprised given the complexity of the game, but it was also early in the point-allotment process. I also assumed the designers wanted to minimize time in anything that was not the world itself, so they made this an accessible and familiar process.
With that familiarity in mind, as well as my pre-planning with Miguel, I scrolled back to the top tier to build out my Health. Survival was priority number one. With seven points to distribute, I tapped Health five times and Stamina twice, watching the numbers tick up in the category and disappear in the corner. I could now withstand a few swipes from claws or blades, as well as swing my sword more than twice before resting.
It was a start.
Next, I scrolled down to the role images, instantly choosing the sword to fulfill my needs as a knight. With only three points to spend, I studied my options closely. Here, the game did offer more nuanced approaches.
In addition to classic options such as Strength, Heavy Armor, and One-Handed, there were Valor, Judgement, and Inspiration to name a few. While the latter sounded fascinating, and I was quite curious how those skills would manifest in performance and interaction, my clear priorities were doing damage (Strength), minimizing damage taken (Heavy Armor), and using the sword I had been given and the upgrades I could expect (One-Handed as opposed to Two-Handed).
However, with only three points to spend, and no current armor or weapon choice, I spent all three points on Strength, ensuring I could do optimal damage with whatever I was wielding. I could augment my other abilities as I began to accumulate items and knowledge.
With my points gone, I explored the Archer options so Miguel and I could discuss his choices as we had planned.
Within the bow image I found a similar balance of classics and innovations. Agility, Accuracy, and Stealth were listed first, but then came Empathy, Deception, and Deflection. In all my years of gaming, I had never seen any of the latter options, and I wasn’t even sure what they meant in the context of a video game. Or life for that matter.
Still, I had enough information for Miguel and enough advancement for myself. However, without an "Exit" button to press, I was left flailing around and spinning through menus until, finally, a completely unplanned self-soothing action of placing my hand over my heart sent me swirling out of the ocean and back into our camp.
When I arrived, I was standing on the X with my hand still on my chest, and I felt it swell with my newfound power. My chest temporarily expanded to let the sensation of fortitude fill a space that had unknowingly been occupied only by fear and anxiety. My arms tingled with strength, literally growing beneath my gaze, now looking like I had done more than three pull-ups in the last four years.
I wasn’t jacked by any means, but I was slightly less spaghetti-like than before.
Miguel apparently noticed as well.
“You look…” he searched for the word… “different.”
"Good" was too much to hope for from him. But when you had been on the bottom for so long, different could only mean better.
“Thanks,” I responded. “I feel…amazing. It’s crazy. Without even seeing my Health bar, I just know I’m considerably less killable. And…”
I paused to look at my arms.
“I might even be able to do some damage,” I finished.
“Let’s find out,” he responded.
Then he punched me in the chest.
My Health bar flashed, and it was more than double its previous size. And not only did the strike take a much smaller chunk from the red meter, but it actually hurt considerably less. Great haptic feedback.
“Let’s test strength,” I said, “pulling back my fist.”
“Bro!” Miguel said, holding up his arms in defense. “I haven’t leveled up yet. I mean, you still look like a little bitch to me, but you might actually be able to do some damage now.”
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll try it out when you get back.”
“Speaking of,” I continued, “I checked out your options. You’ll have ten points like me. You can spend seven on the main attributes and three on secondary. I did five on Health, two on Stamina, and left Magicka for later.”
Miguel nodded his approval.
“I assume you’ll do something similar,” I continued, “but your Archer/Rogue options will be different. The obvious choices are Agility, Accuracy, and Stealth, but there were also some cool options like Empathy, Deception, and Deflection. I don’t know what those mean, but it’s interesting.”
He nodded, contemplating.
“Those are cool,” he agreed. “It’s Empathy not Sympathy, so I’m guessing I’ll be able to intuit people’s feelings – maybe animals too? That would be awesome. I’m guessing not everything here will be out to kill us, and it would help to know which is which.”
“For sure,” I said. “Plus, as a rogue, you add in Deception, and maybe you’ll be talking your way around issues instead of just fighting.”
I thought for a moment.
“Or maybe it works the other way too,” I continued. “You’ll know if someone is trying to deceive us, which would be super helpful.”
“Less talky, more shooty,” he said, hopingly. “If deflection is just avoiding unpleasant conversations and not literally parrying projectiles, I’m going to be pissed.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” I laughed. “But probably later. I assume you’ll start with Accuracy and Agility. And ignore Stealth.”
“Yup!” he said, excitedly. “Dodge, roll, shoot in face.”
I would say he was the worst rogue ever, except that he was pretty good at shooting things in the face.
With the plan decided, I moved away to allow Miguel to take my place next to the basin. Curious what the external view would be, I was surprised to see that it was identical: Miguel touched the water with his willow branch, and he soon swirled and disappeared into the waters.
The time passed slowly, giving me time to consider that it was interesting that strengthening one player put the others at risk. Even with my newfound power and the relative safety of our camp, I felt noticeably vulnerable alone in this world for the first time.
All of its unfamiliarity, which was mystical and magical that morning, was unsettling and unpleasant when facing it by myself. That was partly the ongoing strangeness of literally being in a video game, with real-life stakes and consequences. However, I also had to admit that there was inevitably a component of classic co-dependency – another mainstay of our friendship, from my end at least. If we survived this ordeal, that was probably something I should look into.
After what seemed like much longer than it probably was, Miguel swirled out of the basin and stood smiling on the X – hand on heart – a detail I had forgotten to mention to him.
“Damn, I love that place!” he yelled. “How did you not mention that it was goddamn magical? What a brilliant setup for something as boring as adding skill points. The environment, the navigation, the foreshadowing of choice. Great, great UI.”
Miguel loved menus for games, apps, anything. User Interface was an obsession of his almost on par with beautiful women and expensive condos.
“My bad,” I admitted. “It was definitely incredible.”
I waited.
“So what did you choose?” I asked finally.
“Oh,” he said, shaking out of his reverie. “Four on Health, three on Stamina – fight or flight depending on the situation. Then all three on Accuracy. I doubt we will have tons of arrows, or lots of time to shoot them, so I’d like to hit what I’m aiming for,” he explained.
Perfect. It’s exactly what I would have picked for him. Of course, if I told him that, he would have chosen something else. Not out of spite, but out of instinct. Which maybe was spite.
Regardless, we had finally leveled up. He too looked stronger, more vibrant. There were the same slight changes to his chest and arms, but he also just stood a little straighter and glowed with confidence. With our points spent, camp built, crafting started, and first in-game friend made, we were feeling like we might get through this after all.