Game Theory · Chinese Story｜A Ten-Year Review of "The Legend of Three Kingdoms": Between History and Immortals and Demons

Chen Yishui / Beijing Normal University School of Art and Media Lecturer, Beijing Normal University "Zhongying Young Scholar"

1. The past and present of " Three Kingdoms Heroes"

The first strategy game (Strategy Game) with a relatively mature history as a prototype and a relatively mature type of production is the PC game "Three Kingdoms Heroes" (hereinafter referred to as "Character") launched by Aoting Technology Company in Taiwan, China in 1998. Since then, my country has in a real sense a strategy game with relatively stable technology, a relatively unified visual style, and a clear historical expression.

"Qingying" combines turn-based internal affairs gameplay with real-time visual battles, and is immediately popular with Chinese players, and to a certain extent makes up for the long-standing shortcomings of this type of game. "The Heroes" is not the first real-time strategy game created with the historical masterpiece "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and the biographical history book " Three Kingdoms" as the story background. As early as 1985, Japan's Koei Co., Ltd. developed the first Three Kingdoms game "Three Kingdoms". , the two are often compared. The advent of "Qingying" not only opened the door to the creation of domestic strategy games, but also created an original game brand with the theme of my country's Three Kingdoms, which has continued to innovate after the 21st century. From 1998 to 2021, this series has become a classic of domestic games. Although the later works have also been criticized for their style of painting, internal affairs system and strong immortal color, on the other hand, it also shows that the Three Kingdoms The story is a unique Chinese cultural emotional structure under the interweaving of technology view, game view and history view.

Around the millennium when personal computers became popular and win98- win2000 operating systems dominated, the first three generations of "Qunying" once became the most popular stand-alone game for players with their exquisite visual effects and unique Chinese strategic thinking. game series. However, with the rampant piracy, the decline of production technology, the corporate transformation of the original development company Odin Technology, and the changes in development ideas such as the hybrid design of strategy games and role-playing games,Since the middle and late stages of the game, the game has changed from being based on historical facts to a fairy-magic style. Its aesthetic style, technical parameters, arms and formation settings, and changes in generals’ skills have also evolved across the centuries.

From the first work in 1998 to the official eighth part in 2021, the "Three Kingdoms Heroes" series has gone through 23 years. The change process of its important parameters is shown in the following table:

Table 1. List of important parameters of the "Three Kingdoms Heroes" series from 1998 to 2021 [1].

The first four works of Heroes were developed and produced by Aoting Technology. The company was committed to the development of PC games in the 1990s. Most of the game types it developed were strategy and role-playing games, such as " Fantasy Three Kingdoms"_ Classic domestic games such as span2span, New Peerless Shuangjiao, Fantasy World Records series, etc., once became the backbone of domestic games, and Heroes is an important game IP of the company. In 2004, Aoting Technology merged with Yujun and Yuao into Yujun Aoting Technology , and turned its main energy into the transformation from PC games to online games. Therefore, in 2007, the newly established Yujun Aoting stopped the development of the stand-alone version of the series after the release of "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms VII", and shifted the development focus to " The Legend of the Three Kingdoms online ". It was not until 2021 that Yujun Aoting officially sold "Three Kingdoms Heroes VIII" on STEAM, the world's largest game software distribution platform, and the " Heroes of the Three Kingdoms" series of games ushered in innovation and changes after ten years.

2. Text changes: a cross-century domestic stand-alone game series

From the sale of the first generation of "Quanying" in 1998 to the launch of the eighth generation in 2021, this series of games has a wide range of technical parameters, internal affairs systems and arms settings, strategy map has some changes in the application, military skills and general skills (as shown in Table 1 above).To a certain extent, the game is an inter-era masterpiece that cannot be ignored in the history of the development of domestic PC games.

1. Start-ups are rising: Heroes I-II, where historical logic is better than game mechanics

In 1998, Aoting Technology officially launched Heroes of the Three Kingdoms I.

From the perspective of art form and style, its creative inspiration obviously comes from the console strategy game "Dragon Power" launched by Sega of Japan in 1996. The latter mainly includes the internal affairs interface for players to issue orders, the battle interface for the battle of hundreds of people, The strategy map interface for the army to move in real time between the fortresses, and the strategy game "The Legend of Heroes I", which is also based on military themes, mainly uses these three operation interfaces.

Although the game screen at 640×480 resolution consists of simple avatars, text and numerical values, the easy-to-follow game rules and the battle of hundreds of people on the same screen in strategic games, in the PC era when the operating system was still win95 , still refreshing for players, who feel the unique aesthetic style and gameplay innovation of this type of game for the first time.

As shown in Table 1 above, this game from the end of the 20th century innovatively set up a 3D scroll map with adjustable distance and distance. Compared with the "Three Kingdoms" of the same period in Japan, the former has a certain originality in the design of character functions. feature. Players need to think about the relationship between arms and formations. This highly strategic new setting has established a good reputation for "The Heroes".

But the downside is that the game design team has not fully considered the assignment system of the entire game. For example, the setting of emphasizing military force over text makes civilian officials useless, and the attack power and strategic judgment of computer troops are too weak. In the strategy game genre, the computer's participation did not play a role in the game mechanism, but instead became a kind of obstacle, which was improved to some extent in the sequel "Legend of Heroes II" launched in 1999.

Legend of Heroes II greatly enriches the attributes of game characters such as civil and military officers, arms, etc., enhances the game nature of strategy games, and has obvious changes in the number of people, scenes, and visual settings. Among them, the number of people who can be on the same screen has doubled, and considering the balance of the characters,The skills acquired by generals when leveling up are differentiated, and the newly added military commander skills can also play a special role in the war interface, thus giving players a wider space for exploration.

More importantly, "Unifying the Central Plains" as the game's customs clearance task has greatly aroused players' desire to achieve "grand plans and dominance" in the game "magic circle". Various creative ways to play, and then weave some kind of gamified historical logic.

As a result, Heroes II further improved the type of strategy game play, initially established the game mechanism of the Three Kingdoms history theme, and established China's own strategy game model, which quickly became second only to "StarCraft" and "" at that time. The hit product of Counter Strike . Heroes II is also the most historical and playable work in the series, offering multiple historical narrative possibilities. Therefore, the historical significance of the game far exceeds the mechanism of the game itself, which is also a key factor for the enduring of the game no matter how the quality of the "Chronicles" series declines in the later stages.

2. Breakthrough is the fall: Innovation and "plagiarism" coexist in "The Hero III"

After experiencing the success of the first two "start-up is the rise", Aoting Technology launched the sequel "The Legend of Heroes" in December 2001 III". Compared with the previous two works, the biggest innovation of this work is the subversive change in visual style. There are fundamental breakthroughs in the layout of the big map, the strategic window of hand-to-hand combat , and the art style of character avatars, making it the most special one in the "Chronicles" series.

Figure 1. The internal affairs interface and battle chess interface in Heroes III.

First of all, in terms of game rules, the biggest adjustment of Heroes III is to weaken the RTS (real-time strategy game) feature of this strategy game on the one hand, and strengthen its TBS (turn based strategic game) feature on the other hand. . This is mainly reflected in the turn-based rules in the operation interface of the internal affairs system. The original monarch had only three tokens per month,As shown in Figure 1 above, that is, only three kinds of internal affairs tasks can be performed. With the increase of the number of cities in the later stage, the number of rounds that the player can perform operations, that is, the number of tokens will also increase proportionally, which limits the player's freedom to a certain extent. has been criticized for a long time.

Second, in terms of battle mode, another important innovation in Heroes III is the addition of the battle chess system to the big map setting (as shown in Figure 1 above). However, because the computer-controlled AI troops are too weak, "Qingying III" cannot obtain the strategic significance of the well-designed battle chess layout like "Three Kingdoms 11" in the same period, which makes the former often hinder players due to the settings of the city and the number of days out of the city. Entering the battle mode, there will even be a phenomenon that the chess setting cannot meet the enemy, and the lack of sufficient information will cause the player to fall into a long-term stagnation in the battle mode.

However, the game's innovations in other aspects are still remarkable, such as the addition of generals' nirvana, formation and arms mix, generals duel, self-built generals, competitions, special events and other settings, especially General skills, military master skills and nirvana also add actual combat conditions for natural factors such as weather, time, and geographical environment. Players need to comprehensively consider the strategic significance of the geographical environment before military operations, which enhances the game to a certain extent. Playability.

The biggest change in Legend of Heroes III is the subversive change in the visual art style. This work changes the non-realistic art style of the first two works, and uses realistic techniques to draw the heads of generals. This is a major innovation, but the avatars of its generals have been found by players to be very similar to the actors in the classic Chinese TV series "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", as shown in Figure 2, even the expressions, decorations and even scenes are constantly changing. Hit the face", the degree of similarity has reached the point where it can't be added. It must be said that this is a great regret of the game, and it is a not glorious page in the history of domestic game visual design.

Figure 2. The characters of Heroes III and Romance of the Three Kingdoms "collide with each other". [2]

In fact, not only is the art style similar to that of the TV series, but in terms of strategy game design, although the turn-based and battle mode innovations of Legend of Heroes III have subversive and transformative significance, its TBS battle chess The game design thinking is highly similar to the series of "Yingjie Chuan" series games such as "Three Kingdoms Cao Cao" and "Three Kingdoms Kongming Chuan" by Japan's glorious company.Therefore, the originality of this change is still questioned by the majority of PC strategy game players. As the review of the game yearbook of "Software" magazine commented on this phenomenon: "The Three Kingdoms Heroes series should stick to its own characteristics and style, rather than imitate it."[3] It has to be said that the "Legend of Heroes" series The most disgraceful aspect is that there are obvious imitations or even plagiarism of other cultural and artistic works. This is not only a problem with the game of the "Legend of Heroes III", but exists in the entire game series.

3. Transformation and duplication: "The Hero IV-VII" on the "Way of Immortals and Demons"

Beginning with "The Hero IV", the "Charity Hero" series has been in anti-piracy technology, gameplay, art style, history The expression and other aspects have ushered in major changes, and even opened the precedent for the series to change to the magical style of Xianxia with history as the background. Since then, the series of games has separated itself from the historical dimension, and has positioned itself as "The Legend of Demons", and has continued to strengthen this fantasy feature in the 5th to 7th generations.

First, in terms of anti-piracy technology, the most important technological innovation of "Qunying IV" lies in the complex anti-piracy design, which makes it difficult for even genuine players to enter the game. This change originated in 2002 Daewoo Information , Yujun Aoting and other five companies jointly invested in the establishment of Beijing Universal Star Software Co., Ltd. in the mainland, which is responsible for the distribution of its products in the mainland. In order to cope with the rampant piracy, Universal Star, as the agent publisher in the mainland, has made great changes in the anti-piracy technology of Heroes IV.

In order to prevent anti-piracy, "Qingying IV" uses a disc encryption technology called Starforce, players need to go through "put in the first disc → install the game → put in the second game disc → scratch off the manual to view the sequence. Number → Restart after input" steps to enter the game. However, this anti-copy mechanism is due to a series of technical problems such as capitalization settings, CD/DVD drive limitations, unrecognized occupancy of other software, and system compatibility, resulting in players who have purchased genuine software also suffer from "unable to load" during the game. "Frequent crashes" and even "optical drive damage" and many other problems.What's more deadly is that this complex anti-piracy authentication technology actually only needs to develop a cracked software to solve, and even the game experience of genuine games is not as good as that of pirated games, resulting in disastrous sales.

Second, although the game has system compatibility problems, the gameplay is fundamentally innovative compared to the previous game's chess style. The open map and fairy-magic turn have since established the game style of the series, and in Subsequent generations of works constantly reproduce themselves.

Beginning with Heroes IV, the battle scenes of this series of games are no longer limited to the one-on-one battle setting of generals, but changed to a combination of up to five generals as the level and official position increase. Forming a team, coupled with the combination of military commander skills and military commander skills to achieve the combined effect of military commander battles, this enhances the visual effects and intensity of the game.

Figure 3. The closed roadmap and open big map of Heroes III and Heroes IV.

At the same time, the strategy map has changed from closed to open, and no moving routes are set, which really plays a role in the genre of strategy games. At the same time, the game map has also changed from the previous closed route diagram to an open map based on Chinese geography landform. As shown in Figure 3, the generals controlled by the player gallop in the magnificent mountains and rivers, and can change the destination at will on the way. In previous works, the troops controlled by the player could only move along a specific route.

Due to the setting of the open strategy map, the AI ​​forces that oppose the players are not limited to the warlord forces in the historical background of the Three Kingdoms, but have added elements such as bandits, monsters, ghosts, caves, ancient tombs, immortals and beasts. Players can Explore and upgrade equipment arbitrarily on the strategic map, which increases the playability of the game. The research and development focus of the game works after "Chronicle IV" has also shifted from the historically oriented gameplay to the development of "fairy and demon" elements, embarking on a "fairy and demon road" that is completely different from the historical "Three Kingdoms" series. .

Third, in addition to the turn of the fairy and the devil, the aesthetic style of the "Quanying" series has also undergone tremendous changes since the fourth generation, thus laying the foundation for the visual system of the series. For example, the aesthetic style of the general's avatar has completed the transformation from "3D digital style → hand-painted realistic style → comic exaggerated style".

Figure 4. Comparison of Liu Bei's avatars in Heroes I, II, III, VII.

As shown in Figure 4, taking Liu Bei's character image design changes as an example: Although the avatar design of the generals in "The Heroes I" adopts the more advanced 3D pre-rendering technology at that time, it is quite old-fashioned in terms of visual aesthetics, and even certain To a certain extent, it is caught in the effect of "uncanny valley"; "The Legend of Heroes II" adds a Japanese hand-painted style on the basis of 3D rendering. Although there are obvious changes, the abrupt digital light source and single curved surface imaging cause the characters' expressions to be stiff and unsteady. Lack of temperature, the effect of "uncanny valley" still has a certain remnant; "Qingying III" adopts a new realistic painting style, although it is similar to the actors in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", but it has a set of independent paintings compared with the previous two works. Aesthetic visual system; in "Qunying IV", not only the fineness of the painting has been improved, but also the image design has been separated from the historical reality and has been integrated into the two-dimensional animation style to a large extent, so Liu Bei's avatar is no longer a bundle. The " Emperor Zhaolie of the Han Dynasty Liu Bei" is the image of the ancient civil servant with long beard, but the "two-dimensional youth Liu Bei" who wears a stand-up collar and short-sleeved battle clothes, a band around the forehead, no long beard, and short bangs hairstyle. , which to a certain extent also indicates that the series has since embarked on a "fairy and demon road" that is completely different from the historical narrative.

In 2021, Yujun Aoting released Heroes VIII on the Steam platform, which not only marked the return of this series of games to stand-alone games, but also boldly cancelled all fairy and demon elements, returning to the historical narrative to a certain extent. However, or based on Yujun Aoting's research and development experience in online games and mobile games for more than ten years, Heroes VIII is more like a "semi-finished product" after a mixture of online games and stand-alone games. For example, the gameplay of the internal affairs system mainly relies on time consumption, canceling the specific battle interface of the Thousand-Man Battle, and changing it to a real-time interface of encounter style. The original function of these common online game designs is to attract players to kryptonite, but this game not only abandons its own style characteristics (even if it is criticized by people), but also lacks the necessity of online game-style operation, not only in strategy games There is almost no essential innovation in the gameplay, and even many details seriously violate the historical facts, which affects the player's understanding of the historical plot. This is compared with "Total War: Three Kingdoms", which set the highest number of simultaneous online games on Steam in 2019, and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14", which has sold more than 400,000 worldwide as of February 11, 2021.No matter in terms of technical quality, artistic aesthetics, or market sales, it is an embarrassing and regrettable existence.

In any case, as a well-known domestic strategy game with the theme of the Three Kingdoms, it is not the technical operation and gameplay of this game that pushes it to the status of a classic domestic PC game, but the experience of Chinese players in the history of the Three Kingdoms. emotional structure. In other words, the unique cultural value of the game of the "Qunying" series is that it breaks away from the game mechanism and enters the setting at the level of historical cognition, such as how to play the lineup of the Five Tiger Generals of Shu Han, the four governors of Sun Wu Jiangdong, Cao Wei The best combination of five good generals, or how to change the fate of historical figures in the historical facts of the Three Kingdoms through strategic layout, and then realize the "dream" of rewriting Chinese history for players to help the Han Dynasty or unify the Central Plains. This is largely out of the consideration of technical and artistic dimensions, and intervenes in the unique historical emotional value of cultural dimension .

3. The fading line of history: from the historical fictional rhetoric to the narration of phantasmagoric transformation

As a strategy type game, the "Chronicles" series gives full play to the fictional characteristics of the "historical texts" of the Three Kingdoms. Therefore, we cannot simply discuss from the technical aspects of game design, game type research, etc., but should focus on its historical rhetoric and its cultural functions, and examine the players' historical complex, emotional transmission, cultural imagination and other emotional factors in the development of this series of games. effect.

1. The plot construction process of the game script

As a gradually independent art category, game art has become a unique way of human cultural emotion and historical writing in the 21st century in the way of historical rhetoric. Just as the philosopher of history and intellectual historian Hayden White denies the assumptions of "historical text" and "historical truth", in White's view, "history is only made up by mere chronicles into stories. Partially explanatory; and the story, in turn, is fabricated from the chronicle through the operation of... 'plot construction'."[4] The "history" in the human concept does not exist. It is first of all a language structure, and language is fictional. Therefore, history, like myths, literature and other art forms, is a reflection of certain things that have happened. It is a kind of rhetoric, and what really plays a role is the discourse power behind this rhetorical structure. It is also reflected in the discourse logic of the "Yang Liu and Cao" writing method adopted by Chinese historians for historical and novel texts such as "Three Kingdoms" and "Three Kingdoms". The consensus formed is that the identity of the creator determines the orthodox ideology tendency of the Liu Han regime, and the historical theme game of "Three Kingdoms" also uses the unique rhetoric of game art to carry out "plot construction" in White's sense. ”, players can use the game’s content design for military commanders, military instructors, internal affairs and military to re-create (fictional) historical texts, and practice their own historical emotions and cultural imagination in the process of the game.

However, this kind of The negation of historical objectivity and authenticity and the obsession with the rhetorical features of language structure may lead to a nihilistic tendency, thus dissolving history itself. The works in the middle and later stages of the "Quanying" series, due to their excessive emphasis on the manipulation of fairy and demon elements The development of the effect makes the game plot break away from the historical trend and move towards the fantasy rhetorical style of the fairy and demon theme, which finally makes the game theme from fiction to complete nothingness, and also loses the story core of the historical strategy game type to a certain extent.

So, what is the historical rhetoric of the Three Kingdoms-themed games in the "Qunying" series? Or, how does the historical rhetoric gradually disappear in this series of games? The answer, of course, is the plot design thinking of "magic transformation". Starting from the fourth generation, the series of games has gone from "historical fictional rhetoric" to "magic reformed nihilistic imagination". The eight-generation game scripts of this series are divided as follows:

Table 2. "Quanying I-VIII" ” game plot expansion list[5].

According to the development process of the plot construction in Table 2, from the first generation of Heroes in 1998 to Heroes VII in 2007, based on the original novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the historical facts of the Three Kingdoms The historical script, after the continuous "magic reform"-style plot arrangement, the exit of history has become a certain inevitability, and in the open strategic map of the geocultural imaginary structure of "Hua-Yi Discrimination", along with the elements of Xianxia and demons The growing number of games turned to fantasy-themed strategy games.

2. The core driving force is the fictional rhetoric of history

First of all, "The Heroes I-III" uses The History of the Three Kingdoms as the script prototype. "Continuing" the history of the Three Kingdoms is the most successful and important manifestation of the historical core of this series of games at the beginning of its release. The value of "historical fictional rhetoric" also played a positive role in the first three generations of works.

As shown in Table 2 above, since the third generation began to add the script "The World Returns to Wei", the historical narrative of the Three Kingdoms at the historical level has come to an end, and then the Sima clan replaced it and established Western Jin era, Eight Kings Chaos After Wuhu chaos China period, the fragmentation of the Central Plains to the Southern and Northern Dynasties and other subsequent historical processes. In the script design of the difficult game rewards and hidden plots after clearing the third-generation plot "The World Returns to Wei", players must choose to build their own military as the new monarch to enter the game, and then compete with the powerful Cao Wei forces, and the Eight Kings The Five Husbands during the chaos, and the historical celebrities of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, such as Jia Nanfeng and Fu Jian, will appear one after another. This means that the game has started the "Post-Three Kingdoms Era" according to the original game strategy mode, to some extent. It also reflects the automatic writing function of this game for Chinese history, and to a certain extent satisfies the player's historical complex from the Three Kingdoms to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.

As mentioned above, the first generation of the "Quanying" series has been compared with the game design of "Dragon Power" and the historical theme creativity of "Three Kingdoms" at the beginning of its release, and this work is compared with other works. In comparison, there are also obvious imitation traces, in other words, the series is not very innovative in game form. However, the reason why this series quickly opened up the Chinese PC game market, in addition to the blessing of the local brand identity of domestic games, is more important to use the historical core of this "book/continue to write the history of the Three Kingdoms" as the driving force to attract players to open the game. about the possibility of historical writing.

3. The mixed style of "real-time strategy fairy and devil" and its imaginary

To some extent, this marks the basic establishment of the "magic change" strategy and the style of the later games of the series.

Among the fourth-generation works, the most iconic feature is the addition of "Domination in troubled times". This script is not only completely out of historical facts, but also the monarch and generals are randomly assigned, the lifespan of the characters is not limited by the year of birth and death, and the relationship between the characters is not strong. The consideration of sensitivity, initial arms settings and geographical environment factors are also not directly related. Since the fifth generation, this style of magic reform has been even worse, and even added the "women's hegemony" plot, that is, the monarchs are all set as female generals, which satisfies the player's desire for role-playing female generals, and the time and space clues also From linear parallel to zigzag and staggered... A series of game rules constructed in the previous work, such as the difficulty of recruiting and surrendering and the loyalty of military officers, the real-time strategy of marching and dueling, the relationship between the skills of military generals and the mutual restraint of arms, etc. These military politics based on the historical facts of the Three Kingdoms The historical and cultural cores such as relationship, geopolitical structure and even the philosophical relationship between the five elements in traditional Chinese culture are gradually dissipated with the excessive development of the magic reform plot. In the end, whether it is the demon army led by the ghost king Dong Zhuo in the sixth generation of "Heroes Together", or as shown in Figure 5, the human military generals fight against the monster army, or the overlord in "The Return of the Overlord" in "The Heroes VII" The demon army led by Xiang Yu and the Heavenly Soldiers and Heavenly Generals under the command of Han Gaozu Liu Bang have fundamentally abandoned the historical texts of the Three Kingdoms and reduced to some kind of nihilistic "fighting of famous generals".

Figure 5. The battle scene between a human general and a golden-armored demon dragon in Heroes VII.

Under the script design of "Magic Change", the "Quanying" series not only broke away from the facts, but also evolved in the direction of fairy and magic, and introduced non-human characters and superhuman abilities such as mythical beasts, gods, and zombie corps. To a certain extent, it has completely reduced to a hybrid style game of "real-time strategy fairy".

For example, in the acquisition of special general skills, the later works of the series even set the five mythical beasts in the ancient fairy system - the five elements of fire, the rosary, the five elements of water, the white tiger and the five elements of gold. The green dragon of wood and the yellow unicorn of the five elements belong to the earth, respectively, on the map interface of the game, the orientations on the game's map interface correspond to the Flaming Mountain near Jiaozhi City in the south, Daxue Mountain near the Plain City in the north, Tiger's Den near Jiangzhou City in the west, and Jianye City in the east. The Poisonous Dragon Pond in the middle, and the Beast God Cave in the middle Xiangyang area.When the player has conquered the divine beasts, they can obtain the ability to summon divine beasts to assist in the battle. If the four divine beasts are gathered together, the four generals can release the combined general skills of the "Four Spirits Killing Evil Array", and the unicorn divine beast can also release the "Beast King Breaking Evils". The "super big move" of the "Array", which made the game almost completely transformed from a war strategy game to a role-playing game with a treasure upgrade, thus attracting many bad reviews.

In this sense, with the formation of the mixed style of "real-time strategy fairy and demon" in the middle and late stages of the series of games, the historical fictional rhetorical function established by the first three generations of games has almost been lost, and replaced by a kind of nihilistic rhetoric. Imagination, and a self-contradictory centrifugal force formed between the story background of the historical theme and its cultural structure, resulting in the instability or even imbalance of the game style and positioning.

4. The return of the player's MOD version and the latest official historical rhetoric

No matter in form or content, "Qingying" can not be said to be a very successful game, but it is indeed a domestic real-time strategy PC game. An overlooked classic. Half of its classics lie in the rhetorical strategy on the history of the Three Kingdoms established by "Quanying I-III", although this strategy was greatly damaged in the middle and late stages of the series; the other half is in Jenkins' "Text Poaching". In the sense of ", fans and players develop various game MODs (Modification, also known as game mods) by modifying computer programs.

On the road of magic reform in the middle and late stages of this series of games, players actively created many game mods, and even programmed the Lu Bu 's Bingzhou Feiqi, Gongsun Zan 's White Horse Yicong Such special corps, to a large extent, makes up for the lack of historical rhetoric in the series in the form of "poaching texts", thereby enhancing the playability of the game.

It is worth pondering that the MOD version of the "Extra Elements" will also appear in the official new "Three Kingdoms Heroes VIII" in 2021. Although its gameplay and image design are quite different, there is no documentation to indicate that the MOD version is officially official. However, it can be seen that the official R&D team is consciously making up for the lack of historical rhetoric.Efforts to reverse the magic line of late in the series. It's just the way of hard work, but it returns to the old problem of the series of games since its birth: self-imitation in game design and form, and even back to the "plagiarism" routine.

As mentioned above, "Chronicles VIII" has fundamentally destroyed the form and style of real-time strategy + PC games due to its efforts to please online gamers. "The latest entry in the series, Heroes VIII is not outstanding in terms of art quality and gameplay design. Judging from the sales and evaluation of Steam after its launch, it can only rely on the old players who were active at the turn of the 21st century and their nostalgia for the historical rhetoric of the Three Kingdoms and the remaining original game feelings.

4. Art and Cultural Logic: Geocultural Structure and Cultural Emotional Symptoms in Game Text Type games, the game interface is relatively clear with "Hua-Yi's debate" as a certain stable geographical feature, and to a certain extent presents a very iconic Chinese cultural structure. This also reflects the cultural expression of the series of games with a certain originality. It is a pity that the cultural structure of the game interface only provides a certain artistic form of creativity, and fails to provide a clearer expression of cultural value at the level of cultural emotional logic and its ethical value, and fundamentally hinders the game's performance. The cultural core makes the "Quanying" series finally deviate from Chinese history and cultural sentiment.

1. Map interface design_Chinese geospace in span2span

game art As an audio-visual interactive text, time-based interactive medium, the progress of the game depends on the player's game within the limits of the computer program operations and decisions made [6]. Espen Aarseth borrowed the term "ergodic" from physics terminology to describe some kind of "reading" that players perform through interactive choices in game or cyberspace. for "operations" or "roads" [7].In the "Chronicles" series, the player's "traversal" has an extremely important emotional basis, which was initially determined by a certain historical identity in "Chronicles I-III", and later in "Chronicles IV-VII" It is transformed into the imaginary of traditional Chinese immortals. Both are guided by the game interface based on the terrain of the Three Kingdoms and the distribution map of cities. They have a distinct emotional structure of Chinese culture and their geocultural imagination of "the difference between the Chinese and the barbarians".

As mentioned above, the strategic map of "Qingying I-III" adopts a closed layout, which refers to the actual city distribution in the late Eastern Han Dynasty to locate the city. Players can only move in a point-to-point manner during the game, so closed The strategic map has the meaning of the offensive route. Beginning with Heroes IV, the most important change is the appearance of an open layout in the game, and a lot of geographical elements have been added to the aesthetic vision. There are also places on the way that can trigger unexpected events, such as bandits, fairy demons, caves and tombs. and characters, the player is able to break away from the historical text into unexpected events, thus enhancing the playability of the map interface.

During this game, the game's map interface plays an important role. Whether it is the location of other forces in the script, or unexpected events that are not historical facts, they are presented through the bright color blocks on the radar map, attracting players to "traverse" them and become a series of monster upgrades, supplementary equipment, and adjustment of attack routes. An important element that drives the progress of the game.

Take the trigger point of the open event in the big map of Heroes VII as an example. Over the course of the game, human characters in all incidents appear as armies and appear as large red blocks on the radar map in the upper left corner. Among them, the army of barbarian chieftains will only appear in the southern area, the army of bandit kings will most likely appear in mountainous areas, and the desert thieves will only appear in the desert areas of the Xiliang area, etc. Their appearance locations are based on the real geography of China. structure based.

2. The geo-cultural structure of "Hua Yi Zhan"

On the interface of the open strategy map, treasures, immortals, mounts, mythical beasts and demons frequently appear in the game, so this series of games was later ridiculed by players For "Three Kingdoms Group of Demons". Take the place where the demon characters appear in Heroes VII as an example, as shown in Figure 6: the two-tailed demon beasts appear in the "desert camping" in the western desert of our country, and the green scale water demon lives in the "Cangni" far away from the southeast of the mainland. Reef” (there is also a random water demon in the upper right of Figure 6), the giant snow bear lives in the “floating Iceland” in the north, and the black jade monster python resides in the “black water” in the dazzling area in the south.It can be seen that the west, south, north and east correspond to the geographical environment of deserts, swamps, islands, and snow, respectively. They are not only far away from the Central Plains where Chinese people live, but also "beyond the four seas" in Chinese fairy tale fantasy stories. The entrenched place of the monsters and monsters.

Figure 6 The locations where the twin-tailed monster, the blue-scale water monster, the giant snow bear, and the black jade monster appear in the opening event of Heroes VII.

This way of imagining reflects the cultural and psychological topographic map of the game developers about the "Hua-Yi Discrimination" in ancient China. The so-called "Hua-Yi Distinction" is a cultural perception of the Chinese people's geographic spatial pattern since the pre-Qin period. According to the division method of the pre-Qin geography work "Yugong", Chinese geography is divided into three sets of cultural circles. Centered on the Wangcheng (Ki) where the central dynasty is located, it is divided into internal and external services; The limit of five hundred miles is divided into five different levels, which are called "five clothes"; finally, the places outside the "five clothes" are collectively called "four seas". That is, "the system of the former kings, the state's inner court, the outer state's hou clothing, the hou and Weibin clothing, the Yi and barbarian clothing, the Rong and Di Huang clothing." To interpret the geopolitical legitimacy of the Zhou Dynasty as a central dynasty ruled. This "five clothing system" is essentially the tribute system in ancient China, and culturally, it has formed the structure of "Hua-Yi distinction" in the cultural circle of the Chinese nation. In the open strategy map interface in the middle and late stages of the game "Quanying" series, the open events and their triggering conditions that have been increased from generation to generation are the creative elements of the game content, whether it is the event of the bandit army of human characters, or the geographical space where the monsters survive. They are based on the imagination of barbarians, Rong and Di within the four seas and demons and ghosts outside the four seas, reflecting the cultural imagination of the ancient Chinese geographical structure, and sharing the same cultural psychology with Chinese fantasy genres and Xianxia-themed online film and television dramas. .

Compared with the geocultural structure of the "Hua-Yi Debate", Japan's "Three Kingdoms" series focuses on the excavation of the ethical elements of blood ties in historical materials. For example, in the later works of the series, especially "Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14", the interpersonal relationship network of military commanders' intimacy is specially set up, which reflects the unique understanding of interpersonal ethical relations in Japanese culture, and to some extent, also shows the Asian game culture. A unique kind of emotional cognition. If the PC strategy game "Dragon Rise", which is also based on the theme of ancient Chinese war and developed by the American Snow Mountain Game Company, is included in the comparative field of vision,It is obvious that Westerners' perception of China is fundamentally different from that of countries in Asian cultural circles such as China and Japan.

Figure 7. An introduction to the immortal character "Monkey King (Monkey King)" in the game "Rise of the Dragon".

The American game "Rise of the Dragon" pays more attention to or is curious about the logic of offering sacrifices to gods in traditional Chinese society, and the defense strategies of cities in the Central Plains Dynasty when they face attacks from "city" such as border Mongolia and Xiongnu. There are many phenomena with "cultural discounts": for example, as a god, Sun Wukong has the function of shortening travel and satisfying the entertainment of citizens (as shown in Figure 7, it is obviously influenced by the travel elements in the text of "Journey to the West" and the folk Peking Opera and monkey games) Or use the history of "barbarian invasion" suffered by Western European classical civilization to understand the crisis of the Central Plains dynasty in ancient China, which reflects the way of imagining Chinese history and culture from other cultures, which is full of a certain "Oriental aesthetics" style. of exotic colors.

Going back to the "Chronicles of Heroes" series, the locality of Chinese culture and even the subjectivity of Chinese culture are obvious. It is not like the Japanese real-time strategy game "Three Kingdoms" series that overly magnifies the characteristics of a certain branch of Chinese history and culture. It does not show the "Oriental imagination" of cultural otherness like the American game "Rise of the Dragon", but recreates it based on China's geocultural structure and mythological elements. Although the continuous increase of fairy and demon elements in the later period inevitably makes many game players who are history lovers disgusted, from the perspective of cultural understanding, the "Hua-Yi Dialogue" and its geocultural imagination are still to a large extent. It shows the cultural subjectivity in the form of gameplay.

It is a pity that Yujun Aoting failed to dig and innovate deeply in the strategic map interface, gameplay and its mechanism, whether it was historically oriented or immortal and demonic, and finally slipped to the open event on the map interface. It is an interface exploration game based on the dominant strategy and gameplay, so it only shows the characteristics of Chinese culture in form, but loses the most important historical rhetoric and cultural value connotation of the Three Kingdoms theme game in content.

3. The lack of art under the dominant strategy

From the gameplay point of view, the biggest originality of "Qingying" at the beginning was to create a set of independent points according to the different power values, generals, and skills of the troops in the Three Kingdoms period distribution system,Deepen the development of the most basic rules of real-time strategy games - the rock, scissors, paper (RPS) model. Players need to try to predict the unit configuration used by the opponent, adjust and optimize their own unit combination, according to different arms, formations, Strategists and generals are optimized to fight in formations.

However, relying only on the point distribution system is not enough to support the entire strategic game rules, but needs to be integrated into the supplementary conditions of the game unit's health value, the redistribution of points for logistical supplies, the technology tree for the advanced development of units, and relying on the game script. More complex conditional factors such as character relationships can constitute a complete strategy game. This is the focus of the in-depth research and development of the later works of the "Three Kingdoms" series in terms of the internal affairs system and the interpersonal relationship between military commanders, but it has been ignored by the research and development team of the "Quanying" series.

Heroes IV has established a fantasy style and its game structure. Although many monarchs and scripts have been added to it, only focusing on the point distribution system does not focus on the core mechanism of this strategy game. ——In terms of the control of numerical value and resource flow, the supply system between cities has been greatly simplified in the later version, and even the resource control of the troops' food and grass consumption has been cancelled, which has made the series develop gradually in the later stage. To a large extent, the genre function of strategy games and their appeal to players has been lost, which is also an important reason why later generations of games are considered to be highly homogenized.

Since there are no other rules to restrict players, this point distribution system can easily make the game fall into the typical bug of strategy games - "dominant strategy", that is, a simplistic point distribution can easily create a near-perfect move that is completely superior to other combinations . For example, in Heroes VII, the third-level advanced arm of the cavalry arm, the Sunyi Iron Cavalry, can defeat the enemy even in the face of heavy halberdiers with similar attributes, or a general unit with a force and intelligence of less than 60. , as long as you add special props, precious weapons, and sacred animal mounts, you can also defeat Guan Yu, Dian Wei and other historical famous generals in one move, which destroys the balance of the game.

Under the dominance of the game rules of this dominant strategy, the functional relationship between each game unit as a dependent variable and the natural geographical environment, interpersonal factors, historical background changes and other independent variables in the game rules is increasingly The logical correlation between the historical meaning and cultural emotion given to the player in the actual operation becomes weaker and weaker. When the game is simplified to only use the point distribution system as the only control variable,As a historical theme, the historical and cultural symbols borne by the "Quanying" series of games have also lost their meaning.

In theory, the control variables in game design should be based on the historical, political and cultural elements of the game's historical theme, but in the actual game process, it is simplified to a point distribution system, so famous generals such as Zhao Yun and Zhang He, There is no essential difference between the unit signifiers of military divisions such as Zhuge Liang and Lu Su, and it is difficult to carry the historical meaning of the game. This fundamentally empties the historical core of the game and disintegrates the historical theme of the Three Kingdoms. The most fundamental artistic flaw in the series.

4. The cultural language of the control variable mechanism is unclear

The serious consequence of artistic defects is the failure of the value of the cultural dimension.

First of all, this strategy game that advertises the theme of the Three Kingdoms, not only has the nihilistic tendency mentioned above in the historical view of the Three Kingdoms, but more importantly, in order to satisfy the player's psychology of role-playing the monarch, the game often has some kind of cultural and ethical values. degree of confusion.

For example, in the later stage of the series, the magic-modified script "Dominion in Troubled Times", the system randomly generated a number of historical famous generals as monarch forces, including the famous Shu Han Prime Minister Zhuge Liang. However, no matter in the original novel or in the historical text, Zhuge Liang always has the identity of a minister as a minister, but he appears as a monarch in the game. In the history of the Three Kingdoms, the Shi Changshi, who led Dong Zhuo to join the King of Diligence in Beijing and caused the chaos in the world, actually appeared in the game as a copycat bandit. These unreasonable things also negated the personal aspirations of the famous generals, counselors and warlords of the Three Kingdoms. and its political philosophy.

In the "Three Kingdoms" series produced by Japan's Glorious at the same time, the generals have an essentially similar temperament and an evil relationship. For example, Yang Ren, who died under the sword of Xiahou Yuan, could never surrender to Cao Wei; Zhang Ren, the number one general in Yizhou under Liu Zhang, once planned to kill Liu Bei's military advisor Pang Tong in Luofengpo, and was eventually killed because he vowed not to surrender Liu Bei. Therefore, there will be no plot to defect to the hostile forces. This kind of variable control based on historical facts, to a large extent, helps to convey loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness that are adhered to as traditional Chinese ethical values.And this is the cultural core that the "Chronicles" series of games lack.

Secondly, the simplified design of the control variables of random events in the game and its reward and punishment mechanism also leads to the vagueness of cultural expressions in the game text.

For example, in the course of the game, there will be occasional reset changes in the distribution of internal affairs points in the month of great auspiciousness and the month of great evil, such as special events such as "people offering treasures", "soldier rebellion", "displaced people", "strong men voluntarily enlisting in the army", etc. However, the triggering of these events is not a system reward or punishment caused by the player's play style, but a random event based on the current resource allocation.

In addition, no matter what kind of monarch the player chooses, there will be a fixed number of pirates near the city to harass, especially when confronting the enemy nearby, an extra force will appear to help the enemy, no matter how the player adopts the internal affairs system , can not fundamentally solve these evil forces. Even the game's reward and punishment system tends to allow players to enhance their military power by bribing pirates and other forces in the cottage. This political view is worth scrutinizing. It can be seen that the reward and punishment mechanism of the game has not been endowed with the profound connotation of the political concept of benevolence and tyranny. Many random events and their reward and punishment mechanism have also dispelled the ruling logic of the history of the Three Kingdoms at the narrative level. fail.

In fact, random events and reward and punishment mechanisms can not only enhance the playability of the game, but can also be combined with the narrative content of the game text to present the creator's game cultural concept. This is also a cultural strategy often adopted by indie games. For example, with the emergence of refugee waves in Europe in recent years, many serious games with refugee themes have come out. Among them, a sandbox game "This War of Mine" launched by Polish independent game company 11 bit studios in 2014 is a typical case. The only task in the city ruins with scarce materials and poor living conditions is to survive. The restrictions on customs clearance are very difficult, so if you want to win, you must fall into the torture of ethics and morality. The creative team attempts to use the control variable settings of the game rules to introduce players into the discussion of serious propositions such as war, human nature, violence, and morality.

Back to the literary and artistic creations on the theme of the history of the Three Kingdoms in my country, almost any artistic work created based on this theme - whether it is ancient China's "Three Kingdoms", "Three Kingdoms" or the 1980s Chinese TV series "Three Kingdoms" and the 21st century. "The New Three Kingdoms" - or borrowing from the history of the era, or writing in the style of chapter novels, or using film and television language techniques, or using different artistic techniques such as computer special effects technology,They all try to express different views on history, ethics and morality. In this sense, the main creative team of the "Quanying" series of games obviously lacks the necessary creative ambition, so the random events in the game process have nothing to do with the player's benevolent or tyranny's gameplay and its reward and punishment mechanism, and its cultural expression is even more unclear.

5. Male-dominated gender aesthetic logic

What cannot be ignored is that, like most domestic games, the gender aesthetics of the "Chronicles" series fundamentally reflects the heterosexual male-dominated gender logic , not only ignores the female consciousness to a large extent, but more clearly presents the expression of sexualized aesthetics and objectification of the female body.

Although all the female characters in the "Women's Contest for Hegemony" script, including Gan Ruonan, daughter of Gan Ning, Huang Wudie, daughter of Huang Zhong, Zhang Yingying, Zhang Yanyan, daughter of Zhang Fei, and other fictional characters in the game, the game is not designed to reflect female characters. Narrative dominance, or the representation of female power, in contrast, gendered the appearance of female characters.

As shown in Figure 8, in Heroes VII, the avatars of Sun Ren and Diaochan modified the realistic style of the old version, and instead adopted the Japanese anime style with exposed clothing and sexy body to reflect the female body under the male aesthetic. At the same time, the female arms, as special arms, also reflect the patriarchal aesthetic logic dominated by heterosexual men. For example, the stunt of the female troop dancer is the ability to confuse the opponent's soldiers and make them defect, which undoubtedly strengthens the player's stereotype of real women.

Figure 8. The head portraits of Sun Ren and Diaochan in Heroes VII.

In addition, the lack of female perspectives in this series of games has even reached the point of "ridiculous": in the game, as well as jewels, money, jade and other units as props to increase the loyalty of generals, there are also "beauties". And "beauty" can also increase the loyalty value of female generals. Obviously, the game R&D team has no intention of developing diverse sexual orientations, but shows the sexualization and objectification of the female body completely in accordance with the patriarchal aesthetic logic, which leads to a bug in the sense of gender ethics. In fact, this is similar to the game mechanism of "shuangxiu restoring physical strength" that exists in many contemporary domestic immortal-themed games.It reflects the solidification of the male-dominated gender aesthetic concept in domestic games, as well as the long-term neglect of gender cultural logic in game content.

Conclusion

In any case, after nearly ten years of development, the "Quanying" series of games fell into silence for more than ten years, and finally released the eighth new work in March 2021, which can be called the history of the Three Kingdoms. The strategy game is a classic domestic PC game with the longest development history and the most players, which deserves the attention of gamers and game researchers.

As a strategy game, the most successful idea of ​​this game is to establish the core mechanism of the strategy game, the point distribution system, but unfortunately it only stops at developing the numerical value of the game unit in isolation, and does not flow the resources. Another core mechanic in this strategy game is the development of dynamic relationships. Blindness to the latter reflects the creative team's lack of awareness of the historical depth and cultural breadth of the historical texts of the Three Kingdoms, such as political logic, emotional structure, gender aesthetics, cultural ethics, etc. The confusion of political logic and the masculinity of gender aesthetics eventually led to the cultural aphasia of this game.

Compared with the real-time strategy game "Age of Empires I-II" produced by Microsoft in the same period, this game reflects the distinct thinking of imperial colonialism and It is a world geopolitical concept with the rise of Western modern countries as the grand historical background. In addition, there is also a navigational adventure strategy game "The Age of Navigation I-IV" produced by Japan's Koei Company. The story background of the game takes place in the era of nautical discoveries in the 14th-16th centuries. The progress of the plot of the search for the certificate of hegemony, and the gradual emergence of the cultural attributes and characteristics of the crew recruited by famous ports around the world in the story, presenting a completely different way of imagining the world's political, trade and economic structure from the Western perspective, and even in the enhanced version. The protagonists of America, India and Southeast Asia and their mysterious backgrounds are also added to the work, presenting a "third world" perspective of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial aggression.

It can be seen that the key to strategy games lies in the game development team's historical cognition of time and geopolitical space.As well as the depth of cultural expression of the content narrative, what kind of "nation-state story" is told. In this sense, although it is difficult to say whether The Legend of the Three Kingdoms, which oscillates between history and immortals and demons, clearly tells a "Three Kingdoms historical story". It is hoped that future domestic games can have a clear view of history, and tell the "Chinese story" well through more exquisite art forms.

(Thanks to Xiao Jinfeng, a 2020 graduate student of the Department of Digital Media, School of Art and Media, Beijing Normal University for her efforts in collecting game data and organizing data.)

Note:

[1] Reference data source: Youxia.com special post (Three Kingdoms Heroes I-VII): https://www.ali213.net/zt; STEAM website (Three Kingdoms Heroes VIII area): https://store.steampowered.com/app/875210/8 /. This form is organized by Xiao Jinfeng, a 2020 graduate student of the Department of Digital Media, School of Art and Media, Beijing Normal University.

[2] The picture is quoted from Tencent.com: "Three Kingdoms Heroes 3": The military commander hit the face of a reality star, why didn't you notice it when you played it? . https://new.qq.com/omn/20200422/20200422A0CMX600.html?pc, April 22, 2020.

[3] "2002 Chinese RPG General Review", "Software", 2003.03, p.75.

[4] [US] Hayden White, "Postmodern Historical Narratology", translated by Chen Yongguo and Zhang Wanjuan, Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2003.6: 175

[5] Organized by Xiao Jinfeng, a 2020 graduate student of the Department of Digital Media, School of Media and Communications.

[6] Apperley, Thomas H (1997): 'Genre and Game Studies: Toward a Critical Approach to Video Game Genres'. Simulation & Gaming, Vol. 37 No. 1, March 2006. 8-9.

[ 7] Aarseth, Espen (1997) Cybertext: Perspectiveson Ergodic Literature. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins. 1

[8] Guoyi Wu,Etc. Annotation "Mandarin Annotation", Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1997: 1.

Editor in charge: Zhu Fan

Proofreading: Zhang Yan

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