At the beginning of the millennium, there were many excellent game works in the field of games. Although their production team and the company have long disappeared in the torrent of history, they still leave a deep impression on many players.
During this time, the popular "Only Wolf" is a game set in the "ninja" theme of the Japanese Warring States period, but recently on the social platform whether it shows the "martial arts culture" of the question of controversy, some players are lamenting that "the Japanese can actually make such a game that fits our martial arts culture". It is not uncommon for foreigners to make games that reflect the Chinese cultural background, such as BioWare's "Emerald Empire", Suzuki's "Shenmue" series, the glorious "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series, and UnitedFront/Square Enix's "Bloody Rogue", which are all representatives.
The Japanese can make games that show Chinese culture,
So Chinese have you ever tried to present Japanese culture in the game?
The answer is yes.
That's the Legend of Tianhe.
The first acquaintance with "The Legend of Tianhe" originated from a misunderstanding.
I still remember that after completing the "Legend of the Paladin Sword 4" that year, I saw that the things after a hundred years were human, and I couldn't help but feel sad in my heart.
Liu Mengli gazed at the picture of the blind Cloud Heavenly River, forever frozen in her heart.
The eldest cousin who borrowed the egg king to play the immortal sword could not see the eyes, so he installed a new game of "good health" for the egg king.
Egg Egg Jun looked at the title of the game and said silently.
"Legend of The Celestial River?" How is this so familiar? Is it related to Yuntianhe? Is there a new story? ”
The cousin laughed and said perfunctorily, "You will know when you play." ”
Egg Egg Jun opened the game with great anticipation.
In fact, the "Legend of Tianhe" produced by Xinrui Lion has nothing to do with the "Legend of the Paladin 4" produced by Daewoo Information. It is only because the name of the male protagonist of "Paladin 4" "Yun Tianhe" has caused many players who are new to domestic stand-alone to misunderstand the name of "Legend of Tianhe" and mistakenly think that this is a fan game.
"Minority" in domestic games
"Legend of Tianhe" is an RPG developed and produced by Xinruishi Multimedia, the game story is based on the historical background of "Anshi Chaos", telling the story of Yang Bei and Yang Sui, two teenagers located in the water town of Jiangnan, who were involved in chaotic disputes by saving Zhang Cai, a disciple who was hunted down and killed by the "Medicine King Sun Simiao", and along the way, they met the "poisonous person" Wan'er, the beautiful and kind Lizi, who was pregnant with the world, and the eldest grandson of the rich family Qianjin Shen Mengxuan and the eldest grandson of the only son of the family, and embarked on the road to find the Tianhe together.
In the same period, many domestic RPGs will more or less borrow some Japanese RPGs in game design, and few domestic games take the initiative to contact Japanese customs and customs and make them into the game. "Legend of Tianhe" is one of the "minorities". Although the game began in the Jiangnan water town of the Middle and Tang Dynasties, it cleverly arranged a very important part of the passages on the Japan (Fuso) at that time.
In the Fuso map, there are not only small fishing villages such as Igi Village, but also large cities like Heisei Kyo, as well as historical places of interest in Japan such as the Naragawa Giant Buddha. The game puts a lot of effort into detail restoration, and with a rather traditional Japanese-style background music, it shows the Japan of the Nara era. It is worth mentioning that Heisei Kyo is a city built with reference to the Tang capital Chang'an, its layout refers to the "City Square" specification setting, the central part has a width of 85 meters suzaku Road, the urban area is divided into two capitals on the left and right, and the two places involved in the game, Heisei Kyo and Chang'an, can be seen that the two places are mutually responsible.
One of the most important characters in the game, Reiko Kato, is a woman from Fuso. She is the thousand gold of the Kato family, which is separated from the famous Fujiwara clan in Japan. The weapon that Reiko was holding, "Kikubun Ichiji", is named after the Japanese sword "Kikubun Ichiji Norisō" forged by Emperor Toba during the later Kamakura period during the Later Toba Emperor Shangzong period, which was commissioned by Emperor Toba, a swordsman of the Nichiren Kuniichi school. This knife has also appeared in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam and Ranger Sword Heart. Later in the game, Reiko Kato also visited the Tang Dynasty as an "envoy to the Tang Dynasty".
The production team also closely integrated with the historical legends of the time and developed some brain-opening linkage settings.
The shrine where the male protagonist Yang Bietsu lives temporarily in Japan is the famous Suwa Shrine (in the game, the shrine is visited), and the shrine enshrined in the shrine is also suitable for the protagonist's experience of being shipwrecked; Fuso's side plot also adds a story about the yin and yang master Boya (Genboya), with the interpretation of yin and yang to complete the discussion of the "desire" proposition in the game, but in fact, the "Tales of the Past and Present" does not record that Genboya is a yin-yang master, and his relationship with the yin-yang master Abe Harumaki is because of the dream pillow tapir." Yin Yang Division" series of novels.
It has been said that Yang Guifei did not die during the Anshi Rebellion, but was arranged by Tang Xuanzong to flee, and finally fled to Japan. The game borrowed this phrase and made a stunningly bold adaptation. At the recommendation of the noble Tachibana Kazuki (Tachibana Ukyo), Yang Bie and Reiko met Yang Taizhen (Yuhuan), a famous concubine who had fled to Japan. It turns out that Yang Taizhenzuka of Ma Songyi is a fake, she is actually Dongdu Fuso (Japanese) and renamed Hui Ye.
The production team did not explicitly state whether this "Hui Ye" and Hui Ye Ji in "Taketori Monogatari" were the same person, but they hinted at the relationship between the two through the task arrangement: Yang Bei and Li Zi were entrusted by Yang Taizhen to take five drugs, namely Jin Zhi Yu Ye, Wei Mu, Fire Fox, Water Spirit, wind dance grass, and when obtaining the "Golden Branch Jade Leaf", the prompt was "Penglai Branch". "Penglai Branch", or "Penglai Yuzhi", comes from the "Five Problems of Hui Ye Hime" in the "Taketori Monogatari Monogatari".
Although there is still a gap between Fuso and the historical facts in the game, the emergence and adaptation of many Japanese folk elements also reflect the efforts and attempts made by the production team in terms of evidence. They did not reduce "Fuso (Japan)" to a gimmicky concept, nor did they radicalize japan at that time with stereotypes, but spread out the historical elements as blandly as possible, quietly depicting the encounters of the characters, so that their experiences and history collided with each other, producing a different dramatic effect.
The "Little Heretic" of Traditional Stories
The production team was thorough in the examination evidence, which also affected the game's story style.
Different from the pursuit of narrative grandeur or emotional delicacy in traditional domestic games, the story of "Legend of Tianhe" is relatively "small" and many - a group of people looking for Tianhe in the chaotic world to seek a way to realize their wishes, there is no homeland righteousness, no sea oath mountain alliance, ordinary and ordinary, and even a little immoral. However, when the god of the river made their dreams come true that day, things took a sharp turn for the worse. Good wishes bloom with the glory of sin.
The end of the whole story can be described as "a place of chicken feathers".
This kind of setting of "dream fulfillment but unexpected changes", especially the practice of placing the realization of wishes on mysterious forces, has a lot of color from western magic novels about themes such as "the devil's deal". Works based on this setting include Pushkin's The Fisherman and the Goldfish and Goethe's Faust, the popular TV series Pawnshop Number Eight, and even in the SCP Foundation, there are similar creations (SCP-738, with the Magic Strategy).
There are natural differences, the disaster in "The Fisherman and the Goldfish" comes from the fisherman's wife's unrestricted wish for goldfish, while Faust in "Faust" is a bet with Mephistopheles to experience the taste of the world, and "Pawnshop No. 8" strictly follows the law of "whatever need is needed, it can be fulfilled, but it must pay an equal price", accompanied by a terrible soul that degrades the human soul. In general, these stories are all attempts to trade with supernatural forces and have disastrous consequences when fulfilling wishes.
The Legend of Tianhe retains its own insights in this regard. In his setting, he does not simply criticize the "god of heaven and river", but describes it as a faithful executor of wishes. Among them, the root cause of the disaster is the desire of human beings to make wishes. From this point of view, "The Legend of Tianhe" dissolves the contradiction within the structure, and the whole story is a tragedy without villains, and some are just impermanent in life.
The protagonist in The Legend of The River of Heaven encounters, as Al of Fullmetal Alchemist puts it: "People need to pay the same price for what they get, which is the principle of equal exchange." At that time we believed that this was the truth of the world, but the real world was not perfect, there was no principle that could explain everything, and the same was true of the principle of equal exchange." Many years later, the main planner of "The Legend of Tianhe", "Nose Yang", reappeared in Tieba and conveyed a similar meaning.
This conveys a faint layer of "impermanent mourning and impermanent beauty", making the traditional proposition add a layer of "Japanese material mourning" to the meaning. Such an idea is rarely used in domestic games, because both ancient Chinese novels and stories, as well as Western medieval knight legends, tell the story of the impact of individual efforts on the course of history.
There is no shortage of praise for friendship and love between friends in the game, but there is always an unspeakable sadness. You can feel it, just a fleeting beauty.
Coincidentally, the background of the era of "The Legend of Tianhe" is only a dozen years away from the Heian Dynasty, which is abused by Japanese literature . Yasunari Kawabata once said, "The 'material mourning' of the Heian Dynasty is the source of Japanese beauty." "The combination of the two in temperament is exactly where the ingenuity of the producer lies."
Dreaming of where the river of heaven is now
In "The Legend of Tianhe", there is a very interesting scene - the kennel.
Players can encounter people who have crossed over from past dynasties in it, such as The Emperor of Zhou You, zulu ban of the ancient engineer, Dongfang Shuo, who often accompanied Emperor Wu of Han, xin shuyi, the patriotic poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, etc., who had made a wish to the god of tianhe and hoped that they could come to the most prosperous dynasty in history.
They did come to the peak of the ancient Chinese dynasty- the Kaiyuan Dynasty. Ironically, they have to live in a "kennel" and can't go out.
What is even more ironic is that they not only witnessed the prosperity of Kaiyuan's prosperity, but also witnessed its end- the Anshi Rebellion.
Life is like a drama, I'm afraid that the production staff of "The Legend of Tianhe" did not expect that they also suffered a similar fate like the characters in it.
Only this time, they got nothing and lost everything.
At the end of 2003, the new Ruishi Multimedia, which had developed famous domestic stand-alone games such as "Anti-Three Kingdoms", "Legend of Tianhe", "Farewell to the King", "Tibet Town Magic Song" and so on, became increasingly embarrassed, and Chairman Cai Chengrui withdrew funds without the knowledge of the company's employees, resulting in the paralysis of the company's development plan, and had to announce dissolution, and the production team members ran to things.
To be fair, the sales of the single-player games under the new Ruishi are indeed not excellent, and the profit situation is even more worrying in the era when online games began to impact the single-player. The company's product lines developed at the same time are numerous and complex, and several complete stand-alone business lines and an online game development project in the stillbirth before the closure were maintained. In the case of uncertain prospects, the withdrawal of the investee is also the result of commercial considerations.
However, there is no longer a "Legend of Tianhe" in the world.
Even in such an embarrassing situation, the stand-alone game developed by New Ruishi is still exploring the future of domestic stand-alone.
Where did the makers who developed "Legend of Tianhe" go?
Although the new Ruishi has ceased to exist for more than a decade, its employees still contribute to the game industry.
Nose Yang, the main curator of "The Legend of Tianhe". After the dissolution of The New Ruishi, he joined Shanghai SoftStar, participated in the production of "The Legend of paladin 3" as a planner, and then joined Tencent to become the producer of the online game "QQ Fantasy", and later left Tencent to develop mobile games with other themes.
Sun Fang (Overlord Rabbit), the original painting supervisor of "The Legend of Tianhe". Famous illustrators, "Sword Net 3" and "Bad People Painting Jianghu" and many other functional fan-based creators, for many domestic games have carried out fan-made painting creations, the painting style is very impactful, has a large number of fans, and is still active on Weibo and P stations.
Wu Shihua (Cat Fu), screenwriter of "The Legend of Tianhe". He has been engaged in the writing of online novels, and has authored two representative works, "Hua Night Walk" and "Chenghuan". Later, he joined the Hangzhou Electric Soul Network, and then was responsible for the development and production of the "Three Kingdoms of Dreams" mobile game "Dream Love Three Kingdoms", and is currently the assistant general manager of Electric Soul.
The "big failure" of that year has passed, and now there are still many former New Ruishi employees active in the field of domestic games, working hard to realize their original love for games. For more than ten years after the dissolution of Xinruishi, rumors of the sequel to "Legend of Tianhe" circulated among the player community, and the main planner Yang also expressed his thoughts on "Legend of Tianhe 2" in 2005 in The Tieba of "Legend of Tianhe". However, nearly fifteen years have passed since the publication of this post. The former members of the production team of "Legend of Tianhe" have long been in important positions, and the dream of a sequel has become more and more a luxury.
The legend that disappeared on the Heavenly River
When we reopened The Legend of Tianhe, we could still feel the production team's love for the game through the very rough picture that now seems very rough. Although the classic can no longer be reproduced, "The Legend of Tianhe" will become an indispensable stroke in the history of domestic stand-alone games with its own unique style, and since then, it is rare to see the meticulous portrayal of foreign cultures by domestic stand-alone machines, and more concentrated on the love-hate love and hatred in traditional mythological stories.
"Everyone has a Heavenly River in their heart, what is your Heavenly River?"
"The Heavenly River in my heart is a legend."