I haven’t felt this excited for so long! I placed an important delivery order last week, now it has finally arrived at my apartment. It looks like an ordinary cardboard box with something like a small fridge inside. Nope! Instead, it is “Divine Mortality”, a recently released Massively Online Adventure Game. At least that’s what the developers call it (MOAG), but pretty much everyone else calls it what it is…a VR MMORPG!

I haven’t been this excited for a video game for at least a decade. Games for me have gotten blander and blander the more I play them. To me, almost every game that gets released nowadays just doesn’t have a soul! They each follow the same formula and contain hardly any creativity with a desire for new mechanics or gameplay opportunities. A week ago, I would have said the same thing about Divine Mortality. I would have complained about yet another “Virtual Reality” MMORPG? There are too many already. They are either glorified interactive movies or just another copied and pasted MMO that can be played on a virtual reality headset. Computer games are still the same, console games are still the same, and virtual games aren’t actually ever going to be taking us into another dimension (probably)…so it’s still just the same.

So, what’s so good about Divine Mortality? I keep asking myself this and I gladly answer it every time because I’m just so excited! Okay sure, this won’t be a massive leap in technology where I can simply put on my VR headset and my mind will instantly get transported into a very realistic virtual world.

Yet, ever since learning about Divine Mortality, I’ve been researching it all day at almost any moment I get the chance to this past week. I looked at every source I could find to learn everything I could about this game. What immediately shocked me about this game and many other people online is that when the game's release was announced, it was only a week before the release date! Unsurprisingly, there isn't much information about this game yet because prior to its release date the game was thought to have been in its early stages of production, so far, we only know certain details, hints, concept art, and other promised features. But nothing more.

The developers of Divine Mortality, really smart looking guys by the way, insistently call their game a "MOAG". They put loose emphasis on the adventure aspects of the game, and purposefully decided to use the shortened term “Massively Online” instead of how this type of genre is usually referred to. A “Massively Multiplayer Online” (MMO) game. What could this possibly mean?

Well, my guess, is that this probably means that these developers have purposefully put in a lot of time and effort in not only expanding the game world but also giving the players a lot of abilities to perform in the game world. In this case, adventure isn’t simply limited by the distance traveled by players, but according to them, it's more like "How/what kinds of actions and reactions are possible to achieve".

To me this sounds like there will be so many options which can perform that are unique to only this game, and no other! But I guess the ultimate reason to why the developers have called it a MOAG is simply because they want to distinctly market/promote their self-proclaimed “grand virtual reality game" as something new and different from all the other MMORPG type games which are currently played consistently. It’s like they answered my prayers I’ve had the past 10 years!

(SKIP AHEAD, if you don’t care about this game’s features, UNTIL YOU SEE A SIMILAR MESSAGE)

I’ve now opened the cardboard box, and with me right now is their console which was made specifically to operate this game. It isn’t necessary to play the game, but it does ensure that I will have the smoothest experience while playing it. I won’t have to worry about whether I have a computer suited good enough to run this game, now the best possible connections to the servers and the highest level of graphics are now guaranteed for my experience!

Okay, yeah, immediately buying their console after I realized I wanted to play this game might have been a little stupid of me. A foolish decision to say the least. Because I’ve invested a lot of money into a product which doesn’t have many reviews out yet, so nobody knows if this game is actually a total lie which I bought into like an idiot. Spending little more than several hundred…. maybe I’ve gotten scammed…However! Are you listening to me brain? Listen to this…

This game has implemented a complex government, economy, artificial intelligence, and even level design mechanics into their world. These are all, according to the developers, highly advanced features. The game is almost a literal fully open world. The “Overworld” as it called, is able to hold at least a hundred thousand players at once without experiencing major issues! Which is pretty incredible compared to other MMOs, but this also shows that the developers are confident that this many people will play their game. There also are of course multiple servers for each Overworld around the real world, so each region will have some amount of stable connectivity.

In the overworld, players are able to create and upgrade communities. These communities can either be a simple party with a few people, a social group, a guild, or even an actual type of government. The government part is questionable, as this game isn’t a fully sandbox world, so it is fair to expect that the “complex government” mechanics are somewhat limited. The world does have a naturally implemented currency system, you know, the standard copper-silver-gold coinage arrangement. But I’ve heard that it is possible to even mint special types of currencies depending on how players go on designing the Overworld. Yet, that’s only a rumor, so it could very well be entirely false. But the reason why a rumor like that came up in the first place is because the world seems to be bendable by player action.

I’ve also seen a video examples of how the AI behaves, they showed two types of AI. One is considered “humanoid”, and another is considered “creature”. Humanoids consist of something like your standard NPC villager; in the video it showed the AI responding to many different actions and dialogue options. While the “creature” AI in the video uses an in-game model of a dog, it probably doesn’t have any dialogue, but they still seem so smart that it feels like I am looking at my old pet dog. I used to often play around with that dog when I was a kid, it would roll around, bark, and even follow a person just like how this Creature AI is doing. All the AI reacts to physics, combat, dialogue, and all sorts of events in its own unique way. The humanoid AI for NPC characters in towns are even all individualized with their own personalities. It’s like the developers decided to implement an entire simulation game inside of their MOAG just for fun!

However, in grander terms the AI isn’t super amazing, so maybe I’m hyping myself up too much. It is still pretty much regular video game AI, so an NPC will operate like how’d you expect an NPC would. It won’t be like I will be seeing a realistic sentient person in front of my eyes in-game. They’ll still remain as pixels on a screen! I did see earlier that some people on the internet were either disappointed that the AI isn’t super realistic, while another group is skeptical whether the AI behaves as promised since it would require a lot of programming or whatever they do to make these types of games. For me, the most important aspect will be player choice and activity, if the AI will be like how it’s promised, then that’ll be more than enough for me.

(FINISH SKIPPING)

Alright I'm done talking to myself! I’ll start to fully unpack and connect everything together.

Aw yeah! Friday night. My apartment is empty, and I cleaned everything up already. The neighbors are quiet, no phone calls or anything else to check. Time to relax and adventure!

Is this console connected to the internet? Check. I’ll just browse the settings before launching the game and then I’ll put on my virtual reality headset. Woah there are so many settings. These developers are no joke. I guess this is what happens when you get a LOT of funding from both the general public and from a few rich patrons! I remember I once glanced at this game a year ago on their website where I could’ve donated money to their project. I didn’t do it, but maybe I should have.

I don’t even know if the marketing for this game was any good. But while Divine Mortality has only just been recently released, the game has experienced a sudden surge of popularity on the internet as soon as the game became open to play. Everyone thought the game would’ve been released sometime next year or the year after that. Yet, the developers (like the insane people they are) released the surprise announcement trailer which was an incredibly epic cinematic a week ago that gave me goosebumps when I first saw it. You don’t see this type of crazy stuff every day, where super expensive and large games get released silently out of no-where like an assassin striking their daggers. Everyone on the internet started to freak out about a game which they didn’t even know existed before. Well, it’s now existing!

Speaking of opening the servers, my game has finished launching and now I’m able to choose a server to play on. Obviously, I’ll pick the closest server to where I am. Holy crap the servers are filling up so rapidly, at this rate, in a minute it’ll fill up...

phew! I’m lucky that I got inside just in time. There are only 10 Divine Mortality servers open right now around the whole world. I don’t know if that is too much or too little, but at least the server sizes seem really large. If each server can handle about 100k active people, then the number of active players this game can handle at once is 1 million! Currently it seems like everyone from each of the 5 continents are active right now, no matter if it’s night or day.

And…here I go! I’ve entered the game and now I am at the character creation! Ah the staple area for any RPG. There are so many nice effects. I can already tell this game is utilizing the amazing power of the most recent VR technology, despite it being quite limited fictionally speaking.

MC: “Haha! I’m so freaking exciting that I just want to let it out and yell! I’m finally playing this game!”

Huh what’s this room? It’s pretty blue and bright. Oh, it seems like I’m just looking at the sky. Let me look down-Woah! I am in the sky! There are so many white clouds around me! Oh! And look I am hovering above some grass. Ah I get it now, I’m on a sky island!

A beautiful and majestic voice appears?

Fate: “Welcome, you are now descending down to mortality. Divine spirit…please head towards the sky fountain to meet me.”

Ah a sudden voice! A female narrator? No… they said I could meet with them, so they must be a character somewhere here on this sky island. Hmm…what if I don’t want to meet you? I wonder what will happen if I hover towards the edge…I think I am a wisp so I should be able to levitate or something.

Fate: “I suggest you stay carefully on the path or else you’ll fall down to earth before properly completing your descent to mortality. You likely do not wish to remain as a wisp forever.”

Ha! Was she programmed to say that or is it because the AI sensed that I might do something stupid? Fine, I won’t go down, but I will first explore this whole place before meeting you damnit! It’s a gamer’s intuition to look out for any treasure or whatever before doing the main quest.

Yup, I can see some land below the horizon if I look out from hovering over this little hill. Either I am somewhere really high up in the mountains or I really am in the sky. I didn’t think the graphics of this game would look so good! I don’t think the textures are photorealistic or anything…but so far this game has its own unique art style. There is a lot of texture variation and small details everywhere, but despite that I can tell what everything is without it being a hinderance and too straining for my eyes. The cloud and sky textures look pretty realistic to me, but the shadows are a bit more cartoonish which I guess looks really good since everything is flowing so smoothly. Even the wind! I guess you wouldn’t see wind textures in real life. There is also some sparkly stuff and I guess magical color lighting from various objects on this island. I guess this is what you would expect from a fantasy game.

Some trees…some more ruined stone structures, a little pond, and a necklace at the bottom…wait a necklace!

Fate: “Ah, I see you have found a goddess’s necklace. A little bit of curiosity does not hurt despite what anyone might tell you divine spirit, please remember this moment.”

Hey, I found a goddess’s necklace! I wonder if this will be commonly known knowledge in the future when people start the game. “First thing you do is go to the pond and take the necklace; you’ll need it at this zone!” Anyways, somehow, I have this necklace floating next to me despite me being…I guess a wispy thing. No arms or legs or any physical presence. I wonder what attributes or ability it has. Whatever, where is this lady at?

I go back on to the easy-to-follow path I was supposed to go on after entering this small beginning area. I see some pillars and a sort of wide ground stage structure surrounded by flowers and more trees. The stage is open but, in the middle, there is a round table and some ancient looking stone seats. And there is of course also-woah…so pretty! Ah I know who she is! The cover art for the game, the goddess called Fate! Ah yes, the staple of an RPG…a pretty angelic character. Her hair color and dress are a mix of black and white. I guess she symbolizes stuff like “darkness” and the “light”. There is definitely story to this game, but I guess the developers purposefully left out a lot of background aspects of stuff about the backstory to this world. It’s probably all vague so that there will be more room for players to roleplay and create their own stories in each server. That’s just what I’ve been thinking about in the back of my mind, but if I’m honest…I’m staring more at Fate’s beauty than paying attention to whatever else is going on. Oh, crap she’s been talking the whole time!

Fate: “-and that is why the greatest God has decided to open this world and see what mortality can accomplish. We gods will no longer hold as much autonomy as before, especially the great God, but a number of lesser gods and goddesses have been allowed to continue influencing parts of this world. You are from far beyond and only the great God knows your past. But that no longer matters in this world because you now have a chance to live another life! But before you venture forth to a brave new world, please show me your design of how you wish to look like.”

Ah so it’s like that! A short intro prologue which smoothly transitions to the actual character design screen! I feel like I’m sitting in front of my computer again when looking at this screen which shows another perspective. Selection for what region, race, gender, body, and stuff like star signs are available to customize, or I could just select presets. Well, I don’t know any RPG true gamer who doesn’t customize their character as much as possible. Should I aim to create my character to be the best for something like close combat fighting, or maybe it doesn’t matter that much, and I can just customize them anyway I want. It doesn’t look like there is anything like classes or skills here, so I guess I’ll see it later in the game. So, let’s see here… I guess I don’t want to create myself, a boring 30-year-old.

Here we go. The final touches. And I am done! Oh, I forgot I need to give myself a name. This is a fantasy world after all, so I guess this time I’ll try to roleplay a bit more so I can immerse myself into it. Argh! I can’t think of anything good! I’ve already spent an hour designing my character…I can’t wait to play the game, but I’m stuck at deciding what my name should be. I’ll give myself five more minutes trying to think of something good! I don’t want to put my real name since that’s lame and using my old usernames is a bit cringy. Oh whatever! I’ll just use what I’ve seen in this starting area. First name “Amulet”, and last name “Pond”. Amulet Pond! So stupid… but I guess it works and anyways a stupid name fits the type of character I created.

My guy is a Dwelf, a mixed race between a dwarf and elf, he most importantly has big puffy-fluffy light pink hair like a scoop of ice cream on an ice cream cone. I gave him a bit of a beard, and while he isn’t necessarily old, he does look pretty old. That’s right. My character is supposed to look like a funny wizard dude! Well, I hope he looks funny and not just stupid. I’ve gotten bored of making cool badass or sexy “normal” looking characters in games, I’ve done that enough in the past. Perhaps with all the experience I have of playing older games and researching this game, I can act like proper role model. A mentor…No, a Sage!

Fate: “Sigh…have you spent enough time goofing around divine spirit? I am sorry to interrupt you, but you have spent almost two hours customizing yourself. Perhaps you are not ready to continue, so I will send you back to the heavens in ten minutes unless you respond.”

Oh, crap almost two hours! I didn’t know the game was timing me! Okay, let me double check… yup I am good to go! My guy looks perfect just like how I imagined, but I wish I could have come up with a better name. Anyways…I’m pressing the completion button! Oh wow, my vision, and my character controls…this movement…it feels so good! The physics in this game is just like it was promised. Can I look at myself in third person again? Yes, I can! But I can’t move my character, yet I can become a wisp again and look at my body from the outside.

I want to test something! Let me approach Fate and go into third person. I should have my microphone connected, let me see, yup it’s connected! Alright, turning on my microphone…and let’s see my character’s model move its mouth and face!

MC: “Test. Test. Test. What the hell Fate! This is a staple part of many RPG games; you should expect that a player might take a long time in character customization! Haha cool…my little guy’s mouth is moving, and his face is even expressing the level of volume whenever I say something. AAAA…eeee….oooOOO”

Hey, that’s odd. Fate’s body is making a new type of animation. Perhaps the AI responds to whenever players use their microphones, like just turn their head and look? No? It’s not turning its head to look, looks like she is just jumped?!

Fate: “Very well, I’ll note that down divine spirit, thank you for the input.”

What!? Did the AI just directly respond to what I just said? Nah…no way, you aren’t tricking me game! Did I get transported to into the game in real life? No…I’ve taken off the headset and I am still in my living room. Plus, that’s probably just wishful thinking.

MC: “D-did you just respond to what I said? Hello?!”

Fate: “Yes, I did divine soul, or should I call you…erm “Amulet Pond””

MC: “Aren’t you an NPC? How are you able to respond?” Damn this technology is too unreal.

Fate: “I do not know what this “NPC” is you speak of Amulet Pond, I am simply myself, the goddess named Fate. Responsible for the fate of the relationship between divinity and mortality! You have been reincarnated as the chosen one to save this world and I am here to guide you!”

Wait a moment… “Hey misses Fate. That’s not the plot of this story! There isn’t supposed to be a chosen one or anything about the world needing to be saved you know? Also, I’m definitely still in my living room.”

Fate: “You are mistaken dear Amulet Pond Your story begins with me showing how you, the divine spirit, possess the ability and opportunity to achieve divinity as a mortal!

I can’t believe what I am hearing…is this really true? Did the developers screw up the plot? I swear the base story isn’t like this…wait even Fate said something different at the beginning before I started the character customization. Either the beginning of the game’s plot is messed up with a contradiction…or there is a bug…or this isn’t actually Fate! That’s right…one of the biggest controversial selling points of this game is the way the developers chose to introduce a uniquely designed content into their game. While there are still gamemasters making sure there aren’t any cheaters or account problems with players…there is also another group of gamemasters who actually are in charge of controlling gods and making changes in the game world real time. They basically get paid to roleplay! This is probably one of my most favorite promised features in this game…the lesser gods who roam around in the game world are actually controlled by acting gamemasters! They are community members who actively participate in the gameplay of the world. But…I don’t think Fate is supposed to be one, right? Fate is not even a lesser god but one of the higher god’s who just mostly appear in lore. She is literally the character who is supposed to greet every single person who begins the game, so there couldn’t possibly be a person controlling every single Fate on the server. Especially when the game just recently released with an influx of players!

MC: “Umm, I don’t want to sound rude, but excellent goddess…you definitely aren’t actually the goddess. Can I talk to the person controlling Fate in the background?”