Proteus II
By: Parnell Piano
Tags: Gaming, Short Fiction, Fiction Writing, Fiction, Short Story

Photo by Lorenzo Herrera

Finally, here we go.

Ben looked down at a worn-out piece of paper. There was a glow in his eye that resembled the sun coming out of an August mist that blanketed the suburbs in the morning.

That fragile paper in his hand was a CD Key — an alphanumeric code that would serve as the redemption to his glory days of gaming. Specifically, it was the key to redownload the game that had started it all for him, Proteus II.

See, nowadays most games will publish onto a client or site that will distribute the game on the Developer’s behalf. Going through a larger platform like this makes it easy to record purchases as publishers will have user logs and digital registrations to ensure that someone who bought the game does, in fact, own it.

Back in the day though, before games were registered to a cloud system and most games required a local download of the game files, games used physical CD Keys to ensure that a person downloading the game did own it. You’d purchase the game, it would come in a disk, and once you popped that disk into your computer you’d be prompted for a CD Key. Upon inputting the unique key, you’d be able to download the game to your computer.

All that being said, Ben was able to find a key for one of his favorite games of all time, Proteus II. It was actually the game that got him into gaming in the first place, a hack-and-slash adventure. You’d fight your way through beasts through various zones such as forests, dungeons, and deserts to obtain the best loot available and forge your way to the top of the leaderboards to become the Ultimate Slayer of Proteus.

Proteus II was roughly fourteen years old. While it was the second installment of the game, there were four more versions of the game available. There was Proteus III, Proteus IV, Proteus V, and Proteus V: The Ultimate Expansion.

The concept of each of the games was the same, hack and slash your way through enemies. But each release boasted a new storyline, updated graphics, new loot, and more characters. In Proteus II you only had a choice of the Warrior, Sorceress, Hunter, or Assassin. In the third installment, you were given the choice of a male or female version of all four of these characters, and they introduced the Druid and Necromancer. In the fourth installment, they changed the storyline and items, but the playable characters remained the same. Ben didn’t ever play Proteus IV, but he heard it was pretty good.

The fifth installment, which came out last year, was one of the biggest game releases of the decade. The team had done a lot of work on the game which included a graphics overhaul, advanced loot systems, branching storylines, and even two more new playable characters — the Shapeshifter and Paladin.

The new changes to the game were great. There were changes in Proteus V that lifetime fans weren’t too fond of. The first was that the game could only be played online.

“To ensure the integrity of the game, and in order to make necessary changes quickly and effectively so that our players can continue to enjoy Proteus V — the game will only be available for online play,” was the general message that the team had given before it was released.

This didn’t bother Ben too much when he was playing Proteus II he mostly played online anyway.

Another change that the community was not very happy about was the addition of real-money purchases in the game. Initially, the game was designed so that players could buy higher tier items from each other via real-money in the game. After some severe backlash prior to the game’s release, the Developers scrapped this feature. What they did keep though, was the ability to buy skins in the game. They stated that the purchase of high tier items could take away from the playability, but as purchases for cosmetics did not detract from the actual play — they would be keeping the function in.

The skins basically allowed you to change how your base character looked. They had skins for the characters themselves, like one that made them look like a robot or even undead. They also had skins that changed what your armor looked like.

Ben wasn’t fond of the skins, but he didn’t mind as they didn’t change how the game was played. He liked how some of them looked so when he bought the game, he purchased a cosmetic bundle that included one for every character as well as several weapons and armor skins.

He decided afterward that he wouldn’t purchase any of the other skins — unless of course, one caught his eye. The game was already $59.99 plus tax. For the bundle, he paid an extra $14.99… plus tax. He figured the extra would help the Developers that he had backed for so long.

Then the expansion came out — Proteus V: The Ultimate Expansion. It was released three months after Proteus V and included new items, two new maps, and a brand new playable character. The gaming community was unhappy about the expansion’s release. They thought that it was a money-grab from the studio and that they could have released it with the base game.

Ben didn’t care all too much. He was excited about the expansion. He went ahead and bought it for $29.99.

By the time the expansion had come out Ben had already completed Proteus V’s main storyline, but he was still looking for better items. He finished the expansion rather quickly and after a while going through the same dungeons simply to get better loot was getting a bit repetitive. He played the game more casually and didn’t care much for the Ultimate Slayer title.

There were quite a few posts online about how Proteus II was making a resurgence. The community was going back to the game as it was one of the premier games of its time. A lot of people grew up on it. A few of Ben’s friends said they were going to go back to it. Ben’s older brother, Jacob, even sparked interest in hopping back on. This is what convinced Ben to go and find his old CD Key.

It would be like the good ole’ days.

Ben thought back on the times when he and Jacob would take turns playing on the family computer. Each of them would have an hour. It didn’t matter who was playing though. Even when it was Jacob’s turn, Ben would sit and watch in awe as his brother roamed the Proteus World and fought his way through new and mysterious dungeons. They would cheer each time one of them obtained new loot. They would go out and buy various guides and booklets which showed you tips on how to advance in the game.

On the weekends, Ben and Jacob would bike to the local internet cafe and use their weekly allowance to play together. Their friends would come as well, and all of them would join the same game. They would spend countless hours playing the game. Ben used to draw each of the characters. Jacob had his drawing hung up in his room for years. It was probably still laying around their parents’ house somewhere.

Ben put the Proteus II disk in the CD drive.

He saw the familiar installer pop up. It asked him for the CD Key. Ben looked down at the piece of paper he had and typed the twenty-five character alphanumeric code.

Success! Installing Proteus II now…

Ben was pretty excited. It wasn’t a massive game, so the download wouldn’t take too long. He went to the kitchen to grab a drink while he waited. When he got back to the computer he was met with a popup above the installer. He noticed that the progress bar hadn’t moved.

Halt. Internal System Error

It was followed by a string of numbers. Ben was a bit confused. He started the download again… and a few minutes later was met with the same error message.

Ben took a swig of his chocolate milk and jumped online to see what the issue was. Surely, if he was seeing the error on his device, someone else would have gotten the same error.

And there it was — pages of forums filled with the same question, “I’ve received an error trying to download Proteus II. What do I do?”

The top result was a forum post with the question on it, followed by a response that looked to be a resolution with steps on how to fix the issue. It had about forty thumbs-ups on it, so Ben figured it was the fix. While he wasn’t the most tech-savvy person, the steps seemed simple enough. He just had to run a few basic commands on his device and then download a couple of files. The issue was that when the game was made, it was made to run on the computers of the time. It wasn’t built to run on the most recent devices.

Ben struggled a bit with getting the installation running. The thread that he was originally looking at was written to help people install and run the game on a specific operating system, he had a different type of computer with a different operating system, so he had to look at a couple of other threads to finally get the correct commands and files together. After two hours of tinkering, he finally got the game installed and running.

Ben finally pressed Play!

The game loaded, and he was on the main menu. His fingers were shaking from excitement. Ben went through the character creation process rather quickly as he wanted to play the game. He chose the online mode as he wanted to play with his brother later. Jacob said he’d be home later that day. Ben was planning on giving him a call so he could help him through the installation process. When he got to character selection that was easy enough. Warrior. Ben always played the Warrior and Jacob played the Hunter, the two went well together. Character name, easy as well. Ben always used the same character name, Benyrael.

He loaded into the first starting zone as a Level 1 Warrior. Ben had to squint at first when the game finished loading. Were the graphics always this bad, or did he remember it differently from when he was a kid? He took his character over to The Shepherd, which was the main narrator of the game who would give you your quests. He could barely read the dialogue. How were these graphics so bad?

Ben shook it off. Going through the storyline and killing monsters would be fun. It was starting to come back to him. There were skeletons right outside of the starting zone that he had to kill. He went and found the first group of them. Benyrael charged forward to the first skeleton and swung his longsword… and it was fairly underwhelming. The combat system definitely did not age well. The animations felt slow, old really. The game seemed to be going at a snail’s pace to Ben.

They definitely refined the combat system in the new ones.

Ben spent about an hour killing skeletons and got a bit tired of it. He was still squinting because of the graphics quality. His character had only progressed seven levels. The max level cap was 80. The game was really more about the end-game, he thought. He decided to leave his current game and see if any higher level characters were hosting power leveling games. Power leveling was when a stronger player helped you through the game so that you could play the end-game content more and play for the best loot.

There was one person hosting a power leveling game. Ben joined, and he and the other player were the only two in the game. It was a Level 67 Sorceress. The Sorceress typed in the chat.

Follow!

Ben followed the character out of the town, but they were heading into the PVP zone. This was the player versus player area where instead of completing the storyline, players dueled each other. Ben thought this was odd as you shouldn’t have to come to this area for power leveling, but followed anyway. As soon as they entered the PVP zone, the other character turned around towards Ben’s character and fired a lightning-bolt which hit Benyrael directly.

Critical Hit popped up on Ben’s screen, and not even a second later his entire screen turned grey and another message appeared.

You have been killed.

Ben was stunned. The other player killed him. He typed in the game chat.

What the hell was that?

The other player responded straight away.

Sorry man just respawn.

Ben wasn’t happy about it. Each time you’re killed a chunk of your gold gets taken away. He didn’t have much as he hadn’t been playing for long, but you need the gold later down the line for items. Ben respawned, and his character came back to life where he had been laying dead previously. As soon as he did he saw a fireball shoot across the screen.

You have been killed.

Another message appeared in the chat.

Haha loser.

You have been booted from this game.

Ben looked at his monitor blankly. He was back at the main menu. His dead Level 7 Warrior seemed to be looking back at him, frowning. Was he frowning? Ben couldn’t tell, the graphics were terrible.

Just then he got a chat message from Jacob.

Hey man, home now. Let’s jump on Proteus II?

Ben responded.

Nah, let’s play the new expansion. Heard they’re going to release new skins next week. Might look into getting them.

Jacob got back to him a couple of minutes later.

Yeah, I already pre-ordered them. Maybe let’s try Proteus II later this week? I’ll try to install it tonight.

Ben didn’t have the stomach to tell Jacob that it wasn’t the game that they remembered from their childhood. Or maybe it was, but things just looked better when you were a kid.