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The chat recovered before Maverick did.
[Speechless]: okay the soundtrack was genuinely incredible
[Blunt]: saying "the soundtrack is really good" after THAT is the understatement of the year
[Hyped]: I am physically vibrating right now, this better deliver
[Narration]: wait wait wait the narration just started — is this actual lore??
[History_Fan]: this feels like they're setting up a whole mythology
That snapped Maverick back into focus. He pulled his attention to the scene unfolding in front of him and made himself actually watch.
The opening cinematic hadn't been what he expected. He'd braced for a flashy trailer — big music, big action, things exploding in slow motion. What he got instead was something quieter and stranger. The camera opened on a close-up of hands — three pairs of them, interlocked — and then a voice spoke.
Or not a voice. Three voices, layered over each other, different pitches and different timbres, but saying the same words in perfect unison:
"We shall eradicate all evil in the world."
It was so confident it was almost uncomfortable. Not a battle cry, not a villain's declaration — something older than either. The kind of oath you made when you genuinely believed it was possible, when the weight of what you were promising hadn't finished landing yet.
Maverick felt something shift in his chest.
The narration followed, formal and measured:
"To achieve the Third Magic and reach the Root, the Makiri, Einzbern, and Tohsaka families initiated this ritual under the witness of the Second Magician, Zelretch. The Holy Grail War: seven Mages, each commanding a Heroic Spirit, fighting to the last. The final victor claims the Holy Grail — an omnipotent relic said to grant any wish without exception."
A beat.
"What you are about to experience is the Fourth Holy Grail War. Whether you will obtain the Holy Grail... that remains to be seen."
And then the canvas opened up.
It wasn't a montage in the conventional sense — it was more like seven quick character sketches, each one loaded with implication. A haggard, worn-down man flanked by three women, each one looking at him with a different kind of devotion. A charismatic figure with easy confidence, a woman at his side glancing sideways at someone else — a quieter man, holding two brushes, who had no idea she was watching. A fractured love triangle sketched in three seconds flat.
Then: an ancient mansion, stone and silence, an elegant man kneeling before someone wearing gold armor that looked like it had been forged for a god.
A church — dimly lit — a lost-looking man surrounded by shadowy figures that trailed black mist like smoke.
The open sky, and a chariot straight out of ancient Greece driven by a man moving at impossible speed, a young passenger beside him who looked—
[Lore_Lawyer]: that is a CHILD in that chariot, sir
[Defending_It]: she's an ancient Greek warrior, relax
[Not_Convinced]: she is approximately twelve years old in appearance and I have concerns
[Reading_The_Room]: the game says all characters are adults, we're fine
And finally: a sewer. A man, beaten badly, pulling himself forward through the dark with pure stubbornness. And last — a man laughing with blood on his hands, wild-eyed and absolutely unrepentant, like he'd gotten exactly what he came for.
Seven scenes. Seven people. Each one carrying a full story's worth of weight in less than thirty seconds of screentime.
Maverick surfaced from it slowly, like coming up from deep water.
The chat had already moved on to full chaos.
[Excited]: SO IT'S A BATTLE ROYALE OKAY I GET IT NOW
[Invested]: I don't care what the gameplay is, this setup has me completely in
[Eyeing_Options]: are those seven characters all selectable?? I want the first one, he's got three women, I'm choosing him
[Complaining]: why are all seven protagonists male? I'm reporting this to HR
[Punched]: WHAT WAS THAT PUNCH, that came out of nowhere
[Worried]: genuinely concerned these are all locked behind microtransactions
[Fearful]: please don't pull a Goose Corporation on us
[Chaos]: shouldn't we be talking about miHoYo right now
[Chaos2]: how dare you, we have a designated chaos zone, stay in your lane
Maverick let the chat run for a moment while he collected himself. The honest answer was that he was shaken — not by anything frightening, but by the quality of it. He'd played a lot of game openings. He'd never had one make him feel like he was actually present in someone else's history.
The VR was doing things he hadn't experienced before.
He'd been playing VR games for three years. He knew what good VR felt like — crisp visuals, decent spatial audio, haptic feedback that approximated touch well enough to suspend disbelief most of the time. What he'd just experienced wasn't that. When the roaring engines of the first scene had fired up, the sound hadn't come from in front of him or behind him — it had come from everywhere, the way real sound does. And the cold wind that had swept through one of the outdoor scenes had raised actual goosebumps on his forearms.
That wasn't supposed to be possible with consumer VR hardware.
He'd think about that later.
The game menu materialized in front of him: three clean options centered in the interface, with two locked icons tucked in the corner.
[Story Mode]
[Solo Mode]
[Multiplayer Mode]
No tutorial prompt. No "New Player? Start here!" button. Just three options, presented to him like the game trusted him to figure it out.
Maverick looked at the options for about two seconds.
Then, without hesitation, he clicked Multiplayer Mode.
[Stunned]: HE SKIPPED THE TUTORIAL
[Expected_This]: honestly did we expect anything else
[Concerned]: his teammates are going to have such a bad time
[Optimistic]: it's fine, how complicated can a VR battle royale be
[Realistic]: this man is going to walk into the most complex game on the platform with zero context and we are going to watch every second of it
[Honest]: I'm not even mad, this is exactly why I watch
"Character unlock system," Maverick read aloud, studying the screen that had populated in front of him. "No direct purchase — looks like I need to run through Story Mode or hit certain conditions in the shop." He scanned the interface. "Locked, locked, locked... okay, so right now I've only got one option anyway."
The seven characters from the opening cinematic were laid out like a roster. Six of them were greyed out, locked behind conditions the game hadn't explained yet. Only the first man was selectable — the worn-down, tired-eyed one with the three women.
Maverick looked at him for a moment.
The character design was nothing flashy. Dark coat, dark hair, bags under his eyes, the specific posture of a man who had been carrying something heavy for so long he'd stopped noticing the weight. Not obviously cool, not obviously powerful. Just someone who looked like he'd been through something and kept going anyway.
Maverick selected him.
[Interested]: okay why does he look like that
[Lore_Crumb]: "that" = exhausted and complicated, which is the correct look for this guy, trust me
[Choosing_Violence]: I wanted the gold armor guy
[Realistic]: the gold armor guy is locked, Maverick is playing what's available
[Accepting_Fate]: honestly the tired one probably has the most interesting story anyway
The selection screen dissolved.
Maverick blinked.
He was standing in snow.
Not "standing in a rendered environment that looked like snow" — standing in snow. The ground yielded slightly under his weight with the specific soft resistance of fresh powder. The wind moved across him from the left, and he could feel it, a real chill that cut through the warmth of wherever his physical body actually was and registered as cold along his arms and the back of his neck.
In the middle distance, through a curtain of falling snow, stood a church. Stone, old, lit from within by something warm.
Maverick didn't move for a moment.
He just stood there, feeling the cold, listening to the wind.
[Watching]: he's not moving
[Understanding]: he's just standing there feeling the snow
[Emotional]: I get it actually
[Also_Not_Moving]: if I were there I would also just stand there
Then Maverick took one step forward with his right foot.
The snow compressed under his boot — the specific dense crunch of someone's full weight on winter ground — and the sensation traveled up through the haptic feedback in a way that was categorically different from anything he'd felt in a game before. It wasn't a simulation of footsteps. It was footsteps.
He stopped again.
[Chat]: MAVERICK
[Chat]: SAY SOMETHING
[Chat]: ARE YOU OKAY
Maverick's voice, when it came, was slightly unsteady with genuine excitement — the kind he couldn't manufacture and didn't try to.
"Chat." He paused. "Bros." Another pause, like he was making sure the words were accurate before he committed to them. "This game is not simple. This feedback — I'm actually feeling the snow compress under my foot. The wind is actually cold." He looked down at the ground, then up at the church in the distance, then back down again. "I've been streaming VR for three years. I have never felt anything like this."
[Converted]: okay I'm downloading this right now
[Already_Downloading]: already downloading, joining you
[Speed]: 200GB in 20 seconds, I'll be in before you reach the church
[Emotional_Damage]: Forest Studio built WHAT with no prior releases??
[Answering]: apparently they built THIS
Maverick started walking toward the church, each step sending that same impossible haptic feedback up through the system, every crunch of snow underfoot a reminder that something genuinely new was happening here.
He'd played the beginning of a lot of games on stream. He'd hyped things that didn't deserve it, undersold things that did, and learned to calibrate his reactions against the reality of whether a game would hold up past the first hour.
This one was different. He could feel it the same way he could feel the cold — not as a thought, but as a physical fact.
Forest Studio. No track record. No marketing budget worth mentioning. Just a golden cup on a black background, a piece of music that had silenced thirty thousand people, and haptic technology that shouldn't have existed in a game that was free to download.
He reached the church steps and paused with his hand on the door.
"Alright," he said quietly. To the chat, to himself, to whoever at Forest Studio might eventually see this clip. "Let's see what's inside."
He pushed the door open and stepped through.
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