I wonder if everyone still remembers. Two years ago, following the trend of "become a security guard, save forty years of detours," Teacher Lian Po, tired of worldly vanity, decided to become a security guard. And he really did—
He went to work as an NPC at the Blackthorn Security Company in the Lord of the Mysteries game and sent us lots of insider information.
Going from scraping together meals to having a steady job, Teacher Lian Po says this bowl of rice tastes great. He receives high-temperature subsidies, overtime pay, housing allowances, and even gets a double-breasted shirt, trench coat, cane, and top hat as part of his uniform. This isn't retirement; it's a vacation.
The only slight trouble is that the security company in this game has too many tasks. From divination to finding lost items, they mediate marital disputes and even engage in interrogation. Main missions include serial killers, large-scale marriage scams, cult worship, neighbors getting set up, gas leaks in slums, and... finding a noble lady's lost pet mouse. How to put it? Written as "Security Guard," read as "Superman." Truly fitting the motto: "I am a security guard, I can do any job, love eating Dixie biscuits, and protect the peace of the area."
Teacher Lian Po at this moment
Fortunately, he didn't have much to do at first—after all, the game was still in development. When he first joined, Tingen City had no houses, only some white boxes sitting on a gray grid floor. But watching Tingen City gradually take shape, Teacher Lian Po admits: this is indeed one of the highest-spec MMOs he has ever seen in terms of visuals. Built with Unreal Engine 5, the lighting and texture detail of this game world slightly exceed his认知 from previous MMO experiences. Past MMOs, for reasons everyone understands, went to extreme lengths to ensure hardware specifications weren't a barrier.
Thus, Teacher Lian Po spends every day examining various details in the game, such as character clothing materials, facial expressions, skin details, sunlight, tree shadows, and even the bricks on the street... From certain angles, he thinks these bricks look quite real. This sounds somewhat amusing, but for an MMO, it's actually quite impressive.
Of course, texture quality is one thing, aesthetics is another. In Teacher Lian Po's career, neither long nor short, many games have consistently tried to ruin incomparable texture quality with atrocious aesthetics.
The setting of Lord of the Mysteries itself is quite appealing in the MMO genre. This is partly due to its meticulously researched Victorian-era atmosphere, and partly due to the mix of steampunk and Cthulhu styles brought about by prevalent mysticism and technological advancement.
The experience brought by this blend of worldviews is unique and complex. One manifestation is that Everythinggj, big or small, feels extremely lifelike. Whether human or divine, most activities revolve around key cities, with all story threads buried within the daily lives of city residents. These details accumulate like waves, gaining tremendous power when the final climax arrives, much like the Great Smog event in the original work.
This is also why Teacher Lian Po initially became interested in this job. In many MMOs, cities are clusters of functional buildings, essentially dispersing UI-manageable tasks into different structures. The people inside are mere appendages to the building's function, while major plots and events often occur far from these functional hubs, taking place in specific or grand-scale scenes. But Lord of the Mysteries is different. The city of Tingen in the game is vibrant; NPCs have their own lifestyles and daily trivialities, and their stories intertwine.
Tying many important plot threads to ordinary people from the start is what makes the original Lord of the Mysteries likable. The game faithfully presents this aspect. The newspaper boy on the street corner, the drunk policeman on the bench, the dispirited worker in the factory... behind each of them lies a thread pointing to the city's core issues and a potentially brewing major event.
For example, early in the game, players (you can call them footmen, adventurers, fellow disciples, etc., but in the NPC industry, calling them players is the safest bet) encounter a scene revolving around an ordinary person buying tickets for a theater festival. Later in this scene, a mirror appears, along with an NPC asking participants for signatures. If you've read the original novel, this should immediately raise alarms in your mind, as both mirrors and names hold significant meaning in mysticism. Spreading these influences widely could lead to unpredictable consequences. Surprisingly, standing outside the enthusiastic crowd buying tickets and watching countless ordinary citizens leave happily with mirrors, Teacher Lian Po, as an NPC, has a more comprehensive perspective than the players and feels deeper, more complex emotions about this dangerous prologue.
Fortunately, this is a game. As a security guard, Teacher Lian Po can do something under fate's arrangement. Among these tasks, perhaps the most important is welcoming the first batch of players, after all, they are the protagonists of this story.
For fans of the original work, entering this world will be a joyful process. For those completely unfamiliar with Lord of the Mysteries, it will also be a fresh experience—
Because, compared to most MMOs, determining players' growth paths through pathways rather than professions, as in the original Lord of the Mysteries, brings a very different feeling.
Following the original setting, player progression in the game is no longer solely based on combat. Sequence advancement relies more on progressing through the Acting Method and collecting potion ingredients for the next stage. The Acting Method requires players to complete specific acting tasks and derive acting principles from them. For example, the principle for "Seers" is relatively simple: after your divination fails, you'll always know that "divination is not omnipotent."
Early tutorials give "Seers" a task to control a small rat for underground exploration, letting players experience what "acting" means. Subsequently, more acting tasks will open up on the map.
Driven by this progression system, late-game players will inevitably form deep connections with those around them and the city itself. You need opportunities to perform roles in front of others and gather intelligence from them.
Additionally, this is a Cthulhu-inspired world. The price of gazing into the abyss is being gazed back by it. Players' Sanity values will occasionally drop due to various events. At such times, they need to seek help from the Requiem Society, the game's TRPG module, to soothe their minds. As connections deepen, the unique second-life immersion of RPGs gradually envelops the players. Teacher Lian Po looks forward to the scene where the fortune teller's tent is surrounded by people waiting for readings.
Of course, if viewed from a purely utilitarian perspective, these paths aren't vastly different from professions. Since it's an MMO with combat systems and multiplayer raids, these classic gameplay elements must remain within the framework. Teacher Lian Po isn't entirely satisfied with this, but he understands it—after all, we can't really let players craft nuclear bombs by hand like in the original novel, right?
However, after secretly observing several different battles, Teacher Lian Po feels that the game's gameplay is quite varied.
First, different combat styles frequently appear as players explore various scenes. Sometimes it's gunfights, other times it's melee combat.
Second, besides the classic MMO combat command of "jumping through 1-2-3-4 gymnastics," the game features action-game-style precise dodging and gun-parry systems. These systems are quite important; the former helps players gain efficiency and improve survival, while the latter can interrupt powerful boss moves. On a side note, it's evident from the original novel that "Cuttlefish That Loves Diving" was heavily influenced by Bloodborne. Now, this influence seems presented intuitively before us: abandoned beings, giant werewolves, and gun-parries knocking enemies down.
In raid instances, the variety of combat styles presents a very different landscape. In the initial dungeons, Lord of the Mysteries employs several mechanics: trivia quizzes, skateboard racing, puzzle-solving, and a mysticism-themed version of Plants vs. Zombies, among others.
Comparatively, however, Teacher Lian Po indeed prefers the city of Tingen itself.
In gaming terms, this is a large sandbox map. In player speak, it's "there's so much to explore." This content significantly enriches the city. Besides regular teleport points and chests, there are numerous building exploration events. For example, you might meet a passerby who says their house is haunted. Upon entering, you discover it was once inhabited by a out-of-control Beyonder, who has turned the entire house into an interesting timed puzzle. Or, when chased by thugs or gang members on the street, players can pick up a "shotgun" in certain areas of the city and blast away the delirious attackers, just like Harlan Superman.
The game provides players with several abilities designed for city exploration, such as Spirit Vision. This helps players discover clues invisible to the naked eye and uncover secrets hidden beneath daily life in Tingen.
Furthermore, daily Tingen itself has a dual-world design. Beneath Tingen exists a shadow world called "Sinful Tingen," where a significant amount of plot events and city exploration tasks are hidden. This includes several important boss battles, such as the werewolf in the south of the city and the Executioner Priest in the cemetery outside the city. These events almost all point to more complex plot developments and factions. Whether sneaking into nightclubs or assassinating politicians, players can discover deeper secrets of Tingen through exploration in "Sinful Tingen."
Of course, some gameplay elements have little to do with the main plot and are purely chaotic fun. For instance, you can drive a vintage car around town, crash into lampposts, knock over trash cans, and send NPCs flying. Basically, whatever you can do in GTA, you can do here. Honestly, you rarely see such reckless scenarios in typical MMOs, as many teams don't have the time to create so many interactions with irrelevant NPCs.
Much of the sense of exploration in Tingen is tied to "Sinful Tingen." The events within "Sinful Tingen" are presented in diverse ways and are not isolated; instead, they are interconnected. Behind several seemingly unrelated gangs lies a massive hidden force, which players must uncover on their own.
This approach to crafting the sense of exploration distinguishes Lord of the Mysteries from many conventional MMOs. Using small exploration events to gradually unravel the game's worldview tests the development team's narrative skills. Consequently, few MMOs attempt this. If cities are viewed merely as functional buildings and plots as separate gameplay modules, the story can develop independently of the map and scenes players see. In such cases, the characters in the story share only superficial similarities with those encountered in daily life, operating under entirely different logic behind the scenes.
But in Lord of the Mysteries, no matter how minor a character is, once their storyline is involved, they truly drive the plot forward and enrich the world's narrative.
Teacher Lian Po has previously played NPC roles in different MMOs, but an experience like Lord of the Mysteries is truly rare.
The internal differences lie not just in the theme—not merely whether those flying in the sky are martial artists, dragon knights, or Beyonders—but more in how thoroughly the game utilizes worldview details and how tightly the gameplay mechanics interlock.
Ultimately, Lord of the Mysteries presents a portrait of society's different classes merging within this city. It has an exquisite appearance, high-definition graphics powered by Unreal Engine 5, and a unique blend of European classical aesthetics and Cthulhu mythos... But what's valuable is how fully the development team leveraged this uniqueness to deliver a world experience and story immersion.
One detail during gameplay left a deep impression on Teacher Lian Po. When reciting the honorific name of The Fool, the developers used a constructed language. Its basis seems to be French, but it is more complex. This language is used to simulate Hermes, the foundation of mysticism in the original setting.
Depicting this language doesn't change the actual gameplay, but it reflects the developers' willingness to undertake tedious tasks to enhance the story's immersion.
This is precious.
Therefore, Teacher Lian Po recommends that those interested in Lord of the Mysteries itself, or players tired of existing MMOs, give Lord of the Mysteries a try. The game has already launched its "Gray Fog Test."
This attempt doesn't cost players anything, after all—
This is just "an attempt."
And this attempt might become a force that changes the world.
