Fantastical

Fantastical – An interactive multi-function holo fantasy game that U-Play was developing in Fantasy in Death, with a planned release date in time for the 2060 holiday season. The player or players could choose from a menu of settings, levels, story lines, worlds, eras - or they could create their own through the personalize feature. The game would read the player or players’ choices, actions, reactions, movements, and adjust the scenario accordingly. It was nearly impossible to play any scenario through exactly the same way twice. It was always going to give the player a new challenge, a new direction.

According to Var, “the sensory features are off the scale - more real than real, and the operator has the option of adding in more features as they go. There’s reward and punishment.”

Cilla added, “Say you’re a treasure hunter. You’d maybe collect clues or gems, artifacts, whatever, depending on the level and the scene. But you screw up, you get tossed into another challenge, and lose points. Maybe you’re attacked by rival forces, or you fall and break your ankle, or lose your equipment in a raging river. Screw up enough, game over, and you need to start the level again.”

Benny described it as “The program reads you. Your pulse rate, your BP, your body temp. Just like a medi-unit. It tailors the challenges to your specific physicality. It combines the sensation of top-flight VR with the reality-based imagery of high-end holo. Fight the dragon to save the princess? You’ll feel the heat, the weight of the sword. Slay the dragon, and the princess is grateful. You’ll feel that, too. The full experience.”

If the dragon wins, you get a jolt - nothing painful, just a buzz, and the game ends at that point. You can start it up again, from that point or back to the beginning, or change any factors. But the program will also change. It morphs and calculates. The characters in each program are enhanced with the same AI technology used in droids. Friend or foe, they're programmed to want to win as much as the player.

The product could make or break U-Play, since they had a lot invested, in the technology, the programming, the simulations. If it was a hit, they’d be up there with SimUlate, not just the up-and-comer, not just the wonder kids of gaming. They’d be global and seriously ding in off-planet. Bart Minnock was working on making it more user-friendly, with a lower price point.

Roarke summed up the game as “Virtual/holo combo, fantasy role-playing, varied scenarios at player’s choice. Heightened sensory levels, keyed through readouts of the player’s nervous system and brain waves.” His company, SimUlate, had something similar in development, but his people didn’t talk because they were paid well and were afraid of him. Bart was too friendly with his staff, so they didn’t fear him.

Bart was playing the K2BK scenario, where the battered and cynical hero (Bart, in this case) battled the evil forces of the beleaguered kingdom of Juno on the endangered planet of Gort. While Bart played, he became the courageous warrior king, reflected in the mirrored walls of his holo-room as wearing scarred battle gear and boots, and feeling the hilt and the weight of the broadsword. He could smell as well as see the smoke of battle, and the blood already spilled, feel the scars of wounds barely healed from a lifetime of combat. He was Tor, the warrior, the protector and rightly King of Juno. He mounted his warhorse, charged into battle, and heard the cries of friend and foe as swords clashed and fire lances spewed death as his beloved Juno burned and he hacked his way through the lines while blood splattered and sweat streamed down his skin.

At Benny’s suggestion, they’d added an optional love interest, a brave and beautiful warrior courageously defending the castle walls. He could reach her by fighting his way to the front and engaging in the ultimate battle - mano a mano with the evil Lord Manx. Hits lowered the score, and would potentially send one into humiliating retreat or a valiant death. Bart was trying for a new record when he was killed IRL, by beheading.

The disc self-destructed when EDD tried to remove it from the gaming console by bypassing the last fail-safe.

Bart told the Sing boys that this would be the best game ever. “He said you got to be anyone or anything you wanted. Imagine your reality and go beyond.”

Some of the other scenarios available included: Old West, Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe, Quests, Rescues, Gangsters, and Wars. The four scenarios Bart favored were called Quest-1, Usurper, Crusader, and Showdown, with only the first two using swords (the others used more modern weaponry).

The last time Bart played Quest-1, he was on level four. It was a world under the enchantment of a wicked sorceress who had imprisoned the king and his beautiful and tempestuous daughter. It started in a forest glade where silver beams of sunlight stream through tall trees in full leaf. When Eve and Roarke played, Roarke was in a brown tunic, rough trousers, and knee boots. His sword was sheathed at his side, and on his back was a quiver of silver-tipped arrows and a golden bow. He played the apprentice of the wizard the sorceress killed to cast her evil spell. Before the wizard died, he told his apprentice that he must complete seven tasks of valor, collect seven treasures. Only then would he be ready to face the sorceress and free the king and his daughter.

There was a white buck, which was classic quest symbolism, and how the wizard was able to guide Roarke. The sunlight died into dark and storm, with rain pelting down as red as fire, and sizzling like flames on the ground. Eve watched as the yellow eyes that peered out of the torrent became skulking black forms, and as the forms became a pack of huge wolves that circled Roarke. The sword hissed as he pulled it from its sheath and whistled as he swung and struck. He battled fang and claw, spilled blood and shed it, and shot flames from his hand. The next level he was tasked with crossing a chasm to a cave guarded by a dragon.

Eve played another scenario, Usurper. She was the right-wise queen of Juno. When she was only a child, her family was slaughtered by the machinations of her uncle, who desired the throne, and by the hand of his henchman, Lord Manx. Only she survived and was secreted away by loyalists. She’d been at war all her life, trained in that art. She fought to avenge her family, to regain her throne from the man who ordered their deaths, and had for two decades raped the land, oppressed her people. At the level Bart was at, she had taken back the castle, but an uncle, being a coward, of course, escaped. The castle was now under siege, and the man she loved was defending it. To get to him, and bring reinforcements, she must fight her way through and at least meet Manx in battle.

Eve wore light battle armor and sturdy boots, and was astride a horse. There were hills and valleys, forests and streams. The men she led were battle scarred and weary, with some carrying fresh wounds. The going was rough and rocky, and there were storm clouds gathering in the west. The castle bore scars of its own, and people stood on its parapets shooting arrows that flashed and flamed. Others fought viciously with sword and axe on the burned and barren ground around it.

She fought through until she reached Lord Manx, whose armor was black and stained with blood, sitting on a huge black horse with her castle at his back. He told her, “So, we meet at last. A pity for you, our acquaintance will be short.” Eve replied, “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.” He told her, “This day my sword will wear your blood and the blood of your lover.” She replied, “Yawn.” He asked, “You rush death? Then come meet it.” and they fought. She saw that this was the scenario Bart was playing when he was killed because she sustained the same wounds - a wrenched shoulder and an arm wound, not the beheading. As Manx lifted his sword, the dark light of death in his eyes, she ducked and plunged her sword into his horse. It screamed as it stumbled and fell, and she swung out to catch her opponent on his side, at which point Roarke stopped the game because it was past Bart’s time. K2BK = King to Black Knight.

The scenario Cilla was hurt playing was the quest to find the Dragon’s Egg. It took place in a tropical jungle, and she was clad in the thin, buff-colored cotton, the sturdy boots, and the cocky, rolled brimmed hat of a treasure hunter. She loved the game for the puzzle, the strategy, the twists and turns, and the battles with any who opposed her on her search for the Dragon’s Egg. The game began in the ancient village of Mozana, where she hiked through the heat, waded through rivers, and raced to the mouth of a cave as the ground shook with an earthquake. In the first level, she copied down the cave drawings. In the third level, an arrow whizzed by her head as she charged up a steep, muddy path.

She fought Delancy Queeg, who had slit her father’s throat. When Queeg sliced her shoulder with his knife, she felt the tear of flesh rather than the expected jolt, and slipped on the muddy path, tumbling off the cliff with a scream, into the rocks and rushing water below.

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