"I still think I should meet with Locke," I stubbornly stood my ground. Then, a slight smile crept onto my face. I continued, "It's rude to just leave someone waiting like that."
Teddy was silent for several seconds as he processed my words. "Seriously? You say that after having me wait through both your character creation and the tutorial. How shameless."
I rolled my eyes as I snickered. "You know I'm joking, Teddy."
He ignored me. "And Locke is a non-player character; an NPC. They'll literally wait forever. You can talk to her years later in-game time, with end game gear, and she'll still treat you like you just walked out of the hospital."
"Okay, okay. I get it. I'll play with you," I yielded. "Where are you anyways? Aren't squad members supposed to be outlined in green? I don't see you."
Adopting an elderly tone, Teddy proclaimed, "Sometimes, when the answer is not in front of you, it may be behind you."
I turned around and, sure enough, a male avatar with a green outline was standing by the hospital door. Above his floated his name: Lord Explosion_Murder72. Teddy's character had messy blonde hair, but most of it was covered by a smooth, olive green helmet with flanged edges. It reminded me of the helmets soldiers wore in World War II movies. His eyes were covered by what looked like welder's goggles and the lower half of his face was hidden by a red bandanna. He wore a sand-colored tank top with blotchy green-orange camouflage patterns on his trousers. Black, fingerless gloves covered his hands.
On his back was a massive backpack, but even more eye-catching was the rocket launcher strapped to it. Even with my minimal weapons experience, I recognized it as the infamous RPG. In his hands was a large, two-handed weapon. Its center had a revolving chamber like that of a revolver. However, it was massive; way too large for normal bullets. In addition, Teddy's character wore several bandoliers packed with large bullet-shaped objects. I assumed they were ammo for the weapon in his hands. Lastly, was a pistol strapped to his waist. It seemed out of place considering the other two weapons.
"Wow," I mocked. "Please share more of your great wisdom, wise, old man. How long have you been standing there in order to make that entrance?"
"Longer than I'll admit to you," Teddy replied. "Let's get going. We're going to visit the resident gunsmith." He moved down the street and I hurried after him.
We passed by several non-player residents and guards that patrolled the area. Other players also milled about. Some had more unique equipment like Teddy, but most were in the same starting outfit as I was.
"There are so many new players here, huh?" I commented. "Do all new players start here?"
Teddy laughed, "If you think this is crowded, you should have seen this place weeks ago when TerraCon became free-to-play. Player characters have collision geometry, so there were literal impassable crowds. But yes. All players start here in the city of Troy, New York."
"Wait. Troy? That's a real city in New York, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is. The game's map is currently based off of the New England region of the United States. It currently includes the states of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island."
"New York isn't part of the New England region," I piped up.
"Well okay, Ms. Geography," Teddy replied sarcastically while leading me across a street. We were heading into what looked like a university. The buildings were primarily of red bricks. However, unlike my school, these buildings had a dash of modern architecture with their glass windows taking up an entire wall. "The game map is based on the northeast United States."
"Anyways," he continued, "The world isn't exactly 1:1 because it'd be a pain to navigate. Some guy did the math and found that the distances in-game of about half of that in real life. Only famous landmarks are modeled 1:1. Such as this college here."
"Wow," I exclaimed. "That's legitimately impressive."
"Yeah. And the best thing is, they're still adding to it. The devs were teasing an expansion during E3 next year. People are speculating that they'll add some southern states or move north into Canada. Oh, by the way, see that building?"
"Huh?" I was slightly confused. His character was just standing still, yet he spoke as if he was pointing to something. "Which one?"
"That one." As Teddy spoke, a yellow marker in the shape of an inverted teardrop appeared on the front door of one of the red-brick buildings. "The one I just pinged. If for some reason you ever get the urge to finish the tutorial, you'll find Locke in there. That's the command center of the Troy City Watch."
"Pinging? How do you do that?" I asked, completely ignoring his information.
"See how little the tutorials teach you? I'll teach you in a bit. Let's get you some mods for that assault rifle first. We're almost there."
We crossed another street, exiting the campus. In front of us was a shop with a giant red, white, and blue neon sign that read, "Uncle Sam's Guns and Bullets." It even had a neon caricature of the old, bearded man wearing a large top hat that was on old army recruitment posters. A large crowd of players was gathered around the shop, but unlike in real life where customers would browse the store, they stood like statues.
"The way stores work is that you can access the shop once you're standing within a certain range of it," explained Teddy. Sure enough, a few more steps later, a prompt appeared, "Hold F to enter Uncle Sam's Guns and Bullets."
After a second of holding F, a menu appeared on my screen. It was divided in two, with my inventory on the left and Uncle Sam's inventory on the right. There was a vast difference in quantity between the two sides that was almost overwhelming. I just had a rifle, pistol, ammo for both, and a few grenades, while Uncle Sam was stocked with that and more. There were tabs for sniper rifles, launchers, machine pistols, LMGs, and many more.
But before I could get lost in the menu, Teddy spoke up. "Don't worry about the sales tab for now. Go to the modification tab for now. It'll show you the attachments you can buy and attach to your weapons."
"That doesn't help," I said in despair. "Holographic sight, red dot sight, 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, infrared, oh my god, this scrolls down. Why are there so many?"
"Don't worry about all of them for now. Just buy the red dot sight and attach it," Teddy instructed calmly. "The credits from the tutorial should be enough."
"Okay." I followed his instructions, clicking on the red dot sight and clicking the "Buy and Equip" button. There was a sound of cash register being closed an then the sight appeared on the gun model in the menu. "Now what?"
"Just so you know, attaching mods can be done from the inventory menu. You don't have to find a gunsmith to do it," continued Teddy, ignoring me once again. "However, doing it here allows you to see how the mods change the gun. See the stats at the bottom?"
"Yep."
Then Teddy asked, "How many bullets do you have left for the assault rifle?"
"Umm..." I looked for the ammo counter at the bottom right, but it was covered by the shopping menu.
"You can see right under the gun name on your side of the menu," Teddy said as if he anticipated my problem.
"Ah, I have two hundred rounds of, umm, AR Rounds (Standard)," I replied.
"Buy like three hundred more rounds of that and... oh! A couple of smoke grenades. We'll need those. The ammo is under the ammo tab and the smokes are under the grenades tab."
I did what he asked and by the end of my purchase, I was left with 4,000 credits. "That was expensive," I grumbled. "Can you reimburse me?"
"Those were for your use and benefit, silly," he said. "And credits are easy to come by. Trust me, you'll be rolling in credits after a certain point. Just equip the smoke grenades. We're heading out."
As I dragged some of the frag grenades out of my belt to make room for the smoke grenades, I asked, "Where are we going?"
"Out of the city's safe zone. I told you I'd teach you to play. It's time for some live-fire exercises."
I swear I could feel Teddy grinning with glee through the screen.