Episode 10: All Personal

-Script-

" Hello. My name is Asynckronism and this is Many Games, Many Stories. A podcast about my Stories in Gaming.

I've recently had an instance where I got in the middle of a what I think was a personal 1v1. I was goofing around in Hunt: Showdown, farming event points as a solo hunter. when the next match began it wasn't long before gunshots started going off. Some players had engaged in combat! I thought nothing of it and moved around the landmarks gathering clues and event spikes for points.

After 5 minutes I was still hearing gunshots in the same direction, jeez! Maybe more people joined in? I don't know but now I was curious and meandered my way towards north, towards the noise. By the 8th minute of the match I had finally arrived at Lawson Station, where all the gunfire was still emanating from, and got ready to sneak around to see what was happening.

I misstepped though and alerted a wounded horse which began making loud noises! like clockwork the gunfire stopped and Lawson Station became quiet... Besides the horse, which was still going off.

I took another path to venture deeper in and would stop occasionally to listen for any sounds of movement. No noise was heard from anywhere! I was slightly confused, why was it that everybody stopped when I arrived? Was this like some next level trap to trick unsuspecting players like me that wander in hoping to steal a kill? Or did they manage to kill each other before I entered? I had no clue!

Oh, wait. There was the bounty clue, it was making its disturbed noise when other players were nearby though. So somebody was still here! I decided to grab the clue, behind a wooden wall underneath a deck, and get the heck out of the area before more shenanigans could occur.

When the clue was claimed I heard footsteps above me! there was a player. I crept over to the reverse Y staircase outside by the train tracks, climbed halfway up, and aimed my Nagant pistol at an open door leading inside on the 2nd floor deck.

I waited maybe three seconds then decided to shoot a lantern located right next to the door to cause the doorway to catch fire and deter the player from running out. I fired and heard the 'tic' noise of my bullet hitting a target! The enemy player walked out the moment I had fired at the lantern and got in the way of my bullet, tagging him in the arm.

I panicked as I could see the player start to aim in the corner of my screen, I was already starting to look away thinking I had hit the lantern! I swiveled my mouse and began side-stepping when a shot rang out!

I hadn't fired yet, the sound of the shot came from across the station. The player I tagged went down. I sprinted my character down the stairs back near the train tracks and ducked for a moment as another shot pinged off the staircase I was hiding behind.

I was in the open the entire time I was on that staircase. That sniper could've killed me at anytime with an easy headshot but he was waiting... Waiting for his true target to appear. It was so weird realizing there was somebody watching, waiting, not wanting me but wanting the player who he had been fighting with since the match started.

I counted to an odd number before making my move. I ran across the train tracks through the window of a storehouse and out into the woods by jumping over a crumbling wall. The sniper tried to tag me several times but I purposefully made the angles unfavorable for them to get a clear line of sight.

Once I felt I was in the clear I opened up the map and began heading towards an extraction. The bounty hadn't even been killed or banished yet and the rest of the map felt too quiet to feel confident in venturing around.

When a player frags another player it is just another tally on the wall, but when two players have spent several minutes fighting, that is an eternity! Skirmishes get personal and the intent is definitely felt when one is finally defeated.

I think next time I'll just stick to the quiet parts of the map while I am point farming. I'm just glad I successfully extracted. "