You may have heard of "The Legend of the Living Heroes", a domestic martial arts game with extremely ugly protagonists.
Since its release in June this year, the review of "The Legend of the Heroes" has been surrounded by controversy - you can see both fierce criticism and even abuse from players, as well as some people praising it as "the most textual domestic martial arts game in the past decade".
As a martial arts-themed RPG game, the copywriting skills of "The Legend of the Living Heroes" are amazing. It's a pity that the rest of the rest of the game is of varying standards, and with the high difficulty in the early days of release, extremely inhumane design, and mishandled plots, the gameplay experience in the first phase is really not ideal.
Although the game's reputation has improved with subsequent updates, the core problem of the game has not been cured - the debut state of "The Legend of the Heroes" lacks a lot of expandable content, and the personal plot lines of many playable characters have not been implemented. In particular, the production capacity that has not had any substantive content updates for several months has disappointed many players.
The bad reviews in recent months have basically come down to "updates are too slow"
On November 25th, "The Legend of the Living Heroes", which has not been updated for a long time, finally brought players some updates worth looking forward to, including new plots, new branches, and new music...... and a new official Korean version of the pledge.
At this time, there is no specific date for the update of these items mentioned above
Standing on the cusp of such a storm, the original Bird Bear (the production team of "The Legend of the Living Heroes") is still under great pressure, saying that it wants to promote the production of the Korean version, which naturally caused criticism. Some players who can't understand why they want to make a Korean version continue to torture the original bird bear's ambition to open up the Korean market in the forum.
However, the popularity of "The Legend of the Living Heroes" in South Korea may have exceeded the expectations of many Chinese players. Just when domestic players are still urging the original bird bear to update the plot quickly, players in South Korea have already gnawed on the stiff machine flip and began to make everyone's eyes black......
Doujin two creations from Korean players
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It's hard to say when "The Legend of the Living Heroes" became popular in South Korea. Judging from some information left by the Korean game media a few months ago, "The Legend of the Living Heroes" climbed to the 5th place in the Korean Steam list in the second week of August this year, and its performance was very impressive.
In fact, during the period when "The Legend of the Living Heroes" was just released, a small number of players in South Korea noticed this work with a unique temperament. At the beginning of August, several Korean players who used love to generate electricity borrowed the unpacking plug-in released by Chinese players to complete the Korean AI machine translation version of "The Legend of the Living Heroes", which made the "Legend of the Living Heroes" with zero publicity in South Korea begin to be promoted and spread in the player community in South Korea.
You can even find Korean players who have come over to thank the creators of the unpacked add-on on Tieba
Of course, AI translation cannot restore the original charm of the game text, and mistranslation and omission are even more common. However, Korean players still generally believe that even a blunt machine translation cannot hide the strength of copywriting. Despite the game's many flaws, the vivid and delicate text can still transcend language barriers and reawaken Korean players' infinite longing for martial arts culture.
Korean players who turned on the machine and played "The Legend of the Heroes" gave a 98% positive rating
After solving the most troublesome language barrier, the popularity of "The Legend of the Living Heroes" in South Korea has also continued to move in the direction of natural progress. The word of mouth of the players, combined with the excellent live broadcast effect of the program, has made "The Legend of the Living Heroes" sell well in South Korea, second only to the Chinese market.
In Pixiv, the paintings with Korean labels are almost a quarter of the total number of paintings in "The Legend of the Heroes". Of course, the Korean label does not necessarily mean that this is a Korean work, but the activity of Korean players in the second creation community of "The Legend of the Heroes" can be seen from this.
In a sense, "The Legend of the Heroes" is a game that is highly adapted to the Korean market. The protagonist of this work, Zhao Huo, was born extremely ugly, his father and mother don't love him, the head doesn't care, and a wild dog on the side of the road sees him and wants to chase and bite, which can be described as being blinded everywhere, and he tastes bitter humiliation.
This is the number one killer of the Great Song Dynasty, do you dare to look at him for ten seconds
In South Korea, where problems such as appearance discrimination and appearance anxiety are frequent, there are obviously not a few players who substitute themselves into Zhao Huo. In addition to praising the immersion of the game, a considerable number of players in the Steam comment section will add "I really didn't substitute because I am ugly", and you can even find Korean streamers who made Zhao Huo into a Live2D image for live broadcasts.
Because Zhao Huo is so ugly, the initial promotion of "The Legend of Living Heroes" in South Korea actually encountered some additional resistance. DC Inside, a large forum in South Korea, deleted the profile pictures and pictures uploaded by some users on the grounds that it was "easy to cause discomfort", but later as the number of fans of the game increased, DC Inside finally chose to compromise, and a number of "Legend of the Heroes" memes began to spread on this forum.
As for the plot thunder points exposed in the early days of the release of "The Legend of the Living Heroes", netizens who have tasted Korean R18 adult comics should have experienced it, and Korean netizens are very tolerant in this regard. The first version of "The Legend of the Living Heroes" caused a storm of bad reviews due to the NTR plot, which seems to be not worth mentioning in the eyes of Korean players, and may even be "almost hard".
In Namuwiki, the largest folk encyclopedia website in South Korea, enthusiastic Korean players specially opened the entry for R18 MOD for "The Legend of the Living Heroes". In addition to some "regular" mods, Korean players have also made localized modifications and adjustments to the sex mods produced by some Chinese players, catering to the audience with a cute art style, and the changes are quite good.
Now on station B, "South Korea" and "The Legend of the Living Heroes" are typed into the input box together, and most of the feedback given by the search engine is keywords such as "against the sky" and "Minotaur", as if "The Legend of the Living Heroes" was transformed by Korean players to be dyed with a touch of "green".
But this stereotype is actually not fair.
"The Legend of the Living Heroes" is a work that mixes a touch of humor in seriousness, and occasionally carries some seriousness in the tricks. Coupled with the intricate relationship between the characters in the game and the background of the love between the children of the rivers and lakes, the MOD and second creation of Korean players can be regarded as following the original book and conforming to the tone of the work.
The reason why "The Legend of the Living Heroes" can be popularized in South Korea can be summarized as the excellent quality of the game itself, the help of a little luck component, and the high acceptance of martial arts culture by Korean netizens. The martial arts feelings that have gradually faded in the Internet era can still be found in foreign countries - South Korea's enthusiasm for martial arts culture should not be underestimated.
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Since Jin Yong's novels were introduced to South Korea in 1972, martial arts culture has also had a history of glorious development in this land.
According to the special feature written for Mr. Kim Yong by Park Jae-woo, a professor of the Department of Chinese at the University of Foreign Chinese in South Korea, the late 80s and 90s of the last century were the period when Kim Yong's novels were popular in South Korea. Based on this argument, Professor Park Jae-woo gave four arguments, which are:
- First, the Korean martial arts writer Kim Kwang-ju's rewritten version of Taiwanese martial arts novels became popular in 1961, and a large number of Korean martial arts writers created and published, forming a martial arts craze in South Korea;
- Second, Hong Kong kung fu films flowed into South Korea in the last century and were very popular. The film "Undefeated in the East" (the original "Smiling Proud Jianghu"), adapted from Jin Yong's original work, became a sensation after its release in South Korea, further intensifying the wide dissemination of Jin Yong's martial arts novels in South Korea;
- Third, South Korea's Koryowon Publishing House translated and published the "Condor Trilogy" in the name of the "Hero's Gate" trilogy, and vigorously promoted it in influential newspapers and media such as South Korea's "JoongAng Ilbo" and "Korean National News" for a long time.
- Fourth, the dictatorship and corruption of the South Korean government at that time were deeply hated by young students, and the heroic righteousness and chivalrous spirit in Jin Yong's novels were very attractive to them (of course, there were some escapist connotations).
Growing up in such a background of the times, it is inevitable that you will have feelings for the happy and vengeful martial arts world. In fact, you can indeed find Korean players who are still reminiscing about Jin Yong's novels on the Steam review page of "The Legend of the Heroes".
In the context of Korean netizens, Korean martial arts novels have roughly gone through four stages of development. The first two stages are due to the long time, but when the time enters the 21st century, Korean martial arts works begin to move towards fantasy and fantasy novels, which are somewhat like the concept of "different worlds" in Japanese anime, and the storyline pays more attention to "light" and "fun".
By the time of the full-scale rise of online novels, Korean martial arts novels gradually transformed into works oriented by "refreshing feeling" (사이다). Strive for efficient conflict resolution, delete the long and boring bridges, the themes are richer, the choices are more diverse, and the taste of traditional martial arts has been diluted a lot.
Cyberpunk style of "Modern Martial Arts" (현대무림견문록)
In 2021, South Korean internet giant Kakao acquired Wuxiaworld, a well-known domestic platform for martial arts novels, for $30 million. The re-creation of martial arts culture in South Korea is indeed very popular with European and American netizens, coupled with the good overseas influence of Korean comics (만화, Manhwa), Korean martial arts (무림, Murim), Korean rivers and lakes (강호, Gangho) and other concepts are becoming more and more popular.
At this point, Korean martial arts culture has developed, and "pure martial arts" has long ceased to be the mainstream. In such an environment, works that focus on traditional martial arts are even more precious. So we can see that in recent years, Korean netizens who have a soft spot for the golden age of martial arts novels have begun to actively search for all kinds of traditional martial arts works.
Kim Jae-hee, the director of the popular online game "Black Desert", mentioned that he is a loyal fan of Jin Yong's martial arts dramas
As a popular indie game category in China, martial arts games often find it difficult for production teams with limited funds to take care of the vast overseas market. The language issue is bound to be a difficult hurdle to bypass, but in the mod community of some popular martial arts games, Korean translation mods provided by enthusiastic Korean players are often not absent.
"The Legend of the Heroes of Heluo" folk Korean mod
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Back to "The Legend of the Living Heroes" itself. As a well-written martial arts game, "The Legend of Living Heroes" has a unique understanding of the story system of "martial arts-based and chivalry-centric". In the words of Korean gamers themselves: "The Legend of Living Heroes is not a modern mash-up of martial arts with a strong modern flavor advocated by millennials and Gen Z, but an orthodox martial arts work close to tradition."
Martial arts lovers in China must not be difficult to understand the affirmation and feelings behind such words - they recall not only the glorious era of martial arts works, but also the yearning for a spirit of the times based on them.
In this context, it is understandable that the production team of "The Legend of the Living Heroes" has worked hard to respond to the voices of Korean players. Today, a professional Korean localization team is working hard to produce a new version of the story. The Korean player's power generation with love has finally successfully turned positive, which should be called a happy ending for all.
Of course, judging from the current degree of completion of "The Legend of the Living Heroes", I believe that the problem in front of the original bird bear, in addition to the LQA work of Korean localization, there is still a lot of content that needs to be added to be polished. Anyway, I still hope that they can fulfill the promise they made as soon as possible, make up for the regrets left by the game, and get rid of the name of half-finished products as soon as possible.