Wren Lux previously had absolutely no concept of game development, or more accurately, she had some ideas, but they were mostly based on hearsay.
Because of this, she often only had a hazy understanding of it all.
She had always been incredibly curious about the testing phase that occurred after a game was developed.
But she had never been exposed to it…
She could only rely on her imagination to guess their workflow.
Until this moment.
Now that she was testing the ‘game’ herself, it finally felt real.
So…
this was how it worked.
Although strictly speaking, Wren Lux’s current inspection process was different from traditional game development, the goal was the same: to confirm that the game’s functions, experience, and quality met the standard.
After all, no one wanted a game to launch with bugs that ruined the experience.
Wren Lux also had no idea what issues her instance might have once it was actually deployed.
Feeling a bit anxious, she pushed forward the plot as Ethan, the core of the interaction, testing the core mechanics, quests, combat, and items while also exploring every nook and cranny of the map.
The map was fine.
She didn’t know if the Visual Imagery construction feature was just that powerful, or if Visual Imagery truly was her ultimate cheat ability.
Regardless.
Wren Lux simply couldn’t find a single thing that needed modifying.
But the dynamic elements—the core mechanics, quests, combat, and items—were a different story.
Because the environment was static and she had Visual Imagery, Wren Lux only needed to recall the specific scenes.
The dynamic parts of the instance, however, were troublesome.
This required explaining the instance construction process.
Once the entire environment was built, the constructor needed to translate the core mechanics, quests, combat, items, and instance flow into text, creating something similar to a design document.
After submitting this design document to the system, the system would directly generate the entire game flow based on the environment and the planned content.
But this was where the problem lay.
Although Wren Lux’s initial design document wasn’t terribly written—she did have the completed game as a reference, after all—she had indeed overlooked quite a few details.
This resulted in various issues popping up constantly when running through the system-generated instance flow.
Fixing issues in this area wasn’t like fixing the environment.
She couldn’t just rely on her thoughts.
Although the Visual Imagery feature could assist, modifying the flow involved a bunch of subsystems.
Wren Lux had no choice but to run through the flow while checking tutorials, simultaneously using Visual Imagery to help with the edits.
The process was quite maddening.
The experience was a lot like when AI was first introduced to the public.
You would clearly ask it to go east, but the AI would insist on going west.
You would try to reason with it, and it would seem to understand, but then you’d look…
and great, it went straight north.
At the same time, Wren Lux finally understood why late-stage game testers were so prone to mental breakdowns when encountering bugs.
Who wouldn’t break down over this!
“No, where’s the videotape?
Play the tape!
This is supposed to guide the player!
Why is it gone!” “The corpse is supposed to float up!
Not grab people’s legs underwater!
Stop adding extra drama!
Let go!” “Wait!
Where are my bolt cutters?” “Mia…
thank goodness, Mia’s head isn’t pointy.” “…” Wren Lux was in a frantic scramble, muttering to herself while constantly hitting pause to patch up the issues she encountered while advancing the flow.
Eventually, the flow reached the part Wren Lux was most worried about.
As Ethan rescued his wife, Mia, the instance gained an interactive character.
When players entered the instance and said weird things, how would the NPC respond?
Just as Wren Lux looked at the unconscious Mia lying before her and felt this wave of concern, a prompt appeared.
[Interactive target detected.] [NPCs will provide dynamic feedback based on player reactions.] [Constructors can preset a portion of fixed dialogue and actions.] [The system will automatically generate responses based on the background story, instance flow, emotional nodes, the character’s experiences within the instance, and personality traits provided by the constructor.] [WARNING: NPC personality will depend on the text provided by the constructor.] “I see…
this is indeed better than preset dialogue.” Wren Lux looked at the pop-up notifications with a thoughtful expression.
“But is this system reliable?” She couldn’t be blamed for thinking this way.
Even though the game flow she submitted—her design document—had its fair share of issues.
She hadn’t even thought about adding extra drama yet…
but the flow generated by this broken system had already taken the liberty of doing so.
For example, in the flooded passage, it would have been fine if the corpse just floated up to give Ethan a jump scare.
But the system just had to make the corpse grab Ethan’s leg.
And when it actually should have added something—like just now, when Mia was locked in the cell and Ethan was supposed to find bolt cutters to snap the chain and quickly reunite with her—Wren Lux had forgotten about it, and the system completely failed to generate them.
What was the plan here?
When the time came, was the player roleplaying as Ethan supposed to rub the iron chains apart with their bare hands?
Or were they supposed to figure out their own way to get Mia out?
Was it unreasonable to have bolt cutters right next to a cell?
Was this a way to increase the difficulty?
Wren Lux even suspected that the system might be doing it on purpose…
This AI system probably thought it made the experience more immersive!
Under these circumstances, having the system generate dynamic NPC feedback based on player reactions—would that really not cause problems?
Wren Lux was highly concerned.
But after thinking about it carefully for a good while, she couldn’t come up with a better solution, so she could only suppress her worries for now and continue pushing the flow forward.
She controlled Ethan to shake the sleeping Mia awake, then began setting the preset fixed dialogue.
It was the exact dialogue from the original game.
Acting like a bystander, she systematically let the husband and wife converse, then had Mia lead Ethan away.
Wren Lux also perfectly replicated the details of their interaction according to the original game’s performance.
Then came the moment Mia suddenly went insane, pinning Ethan down and driving a knife straight through his left hand.
This was an inevitable event that would definitely trigger.
Which meant…
once players reached this node, they were guaranteed to suffer physical pain.
Just watching from the sidelines made Wren Lux wince in pain.
‘Players are going to go through hell.’ Wren Lux sighed, and finding no issues, she continued moving forward.
Perhaps her bad luck had finally run out…
The subsequent combat phase encountered no issues, and the performance was absolutely perfect.
Mia fell, then suddenly stood back up, using her immense strength to throw Ethan into the room.
Ethan picked up the hand axe and began dodging Mia’s attacks while hacking back at her.
The classic display of ‘domestic harmony’.
Once Ethan buried the axe into Mia’s neck, she finally went down.
Ethan thought it was over and finally managed to get the fuse…
but Mia came back to life.
She was tender and affectionate at first, then suddenly pulled out a screwdriver, pinned Ethan’s left hand to the wall, grabbed a chainsaw, and charged at him.
She sawed Ethan’s left hand right off.
This was also an inevitable event.
And that wasn’t all.
Next, up in the attic, Ethan and Mia had another massive battle.
After a fight full of twists and turns, Ethan finally won, but immediately after, the father-in-law appeared.
Wren Lux advanced the flow to the point where Ethan finally managed to knock Mia down.
Then the father-in-law suddenly showed up and, like Superman, knocked Ethan out with a single punch.
Seeing this scene, that same thought popped into Wren Lux’s mind again…
‘Players are going to go through hell.’ She had to admit.
The tension in the first chapter of Resident Evil 7 was truly intense.
And at this very moment.
Wren Lux was merely sighing in admiration…
She still hadn’t realized the severity of the problem.