Soon after the introduction screen disappeared, Edward was redirected to a character creation screen. On the left side were all of the different customization options, but Edward was surprised to find they were very limited. At most, he would only be able to change his hair color, skin color, and the superficial qualities of his character. More advanced aspects like gender, face shape, and body shape weren't included.
On the right side was a perfect replication of Edward's body in the real world. Granted, it was completely nude and expressionless, but Edward was immediately horrified to find the perfect image of himself staring back at him.
'How did this game manage to find my real appearance?' Edward quickly thought to himself. Underneath his avatar were two words: Edward Colt, 'Shit! They know my name, too?'
He looked from his doppelganger avatar, then turned to the customization options. At that moment, he realized the horrible truth. Edward was horrified. If he logged into the game looking like this, his identity wouldn't be kept a secret at all. Not only did his avatar look exactly like him, but he didn't have any choice over his username, either. He was destined to be Edward Colt in the game world, as well.
He was glad they added a few customization options for the avatar, but Edward didn't believe these tiny changes would be enough to throw any identity thieves off his tracks. Edward began to see a future filled with masks before him. If this truth was the same for everybody, Edward fully expected everybody to wear a mask of some kind!
"This is cruel," Edward whispered to himself. He wanted to pull off the headset and never play it again. Edward was enraged, but he quickly calmed down only a moment later. The feeling of realism was too detailed to give up. He grasped his fingers once more as he concentrated on the texture of his skin. Then, with a determined glare in his eyes, he turned back to his avatar and began to make minor adjustments.
Over the next ten minutes, Edward added as many customizations as possible. His real-life appearance was rather forgettable. He had brown eyes, brown hair, and a thin face. His eyebrows were very thick, courtesy of his heritage, but the rest of him didn't pass as memorable. Edward was proud to have a toned body— especially now that his physique would transfer inside the game, but there wasn't even anything he could've changed about it anyway.
In the game world, however, his features were slightly different. His hair was longer, stretching down to his thick eyebrows, and was colored as dark as the midnight sky. The irises of his eyes were dark enough to hide with the pupil, which made Edward's face uncanny and disturbing to some minor degree. It was like his eyes were made of dark marble. He added a scar to his lip— one that was obvious and hard to miss— and a set of dark jeweled earrings.
The differences in his game appearance compared to his natural appearance weren't big, but they were hopefully drastic enough to mislead anybody hoping to learn his true identity. His biggest problem, however, was the username.
'Edward Colt.'
As if changing his appearance would do anything when his real name was in plain sight for everybody to see! Edward wanted to cry as he remembered this dilemma but quickly recovered when he remembered that this was, ultimately, a video game.
'There's no way the devs won't fix this issue,' Edward thought to himself with a nod. He held full confidence that the players would eventually bully the devs into submission, as the internet had done before on several occasions, 'This'll just be another case of that.'
After making sure his character was fully completed, he submitted the design and watched as another screen appeared.
︽
Your character design has been saved under your account!
We wish you luck in the world of Avalon.
18:15:10
︾
'Eighteen hours until the release, I see,' Edward nodded. This would certainly be enough time for his headset to be delivered on time. Luckily, he wouldn't have to go through the character customization again.
As his time hogging the headset was already nearing twenty minutes, Edward decided to log off and let Markus have a go. Opening the main menu was relatively easy, as it appeared with a thought. He didn't even need to move or make any hand signals. Edward assumed this would be embarrassing in public, so he was glad the developers made this move. However, he was sad to learn that the buttons themselves couldn't be activated with a thought.
On the main menu itself, there were a total of three tabs. The very most left tab was dedicated to games, but only Avalon was available at the moment. The center tab was devoted to friends and the messages between them. There was a function to connect the DDS to his phone, so he knew he could communicate with somebody from the real world while in the game and vice versa, though he assumed he would mostly use it to converse with other players. The final tab was the settings tab, where the logout button was located.
With a sigh, he pressed the | Logout | button.
As he opened his eyes, Edward took a moment to blink in rapid succession. He tried his best to adjust to the newfound brightness assaulting his vision, so he quickly brought his hand to his head and lifted the headset from his neck.
"So?" Markus asked from the beanbag chair. Edward stayed silent as he carefully lay the headset on the pillow. Then, with a stern face, turned to Markus. For a moment, he only stared at his friend in silence, which made Markus nervous.
"It was amazing," Edward finally answered, "It's so realistic I confused the game world with reality. When I first logged in, I thought I had somehow died or was abducted. For a moment, I forgot I was gaming. I don't think this is worth twenty thousand. It's worth much more than that."
Markus smiled, clearly excited. However, Edward's expression soon dropped.
"Markus, we're not able to change our avatar's appearance. Not to a large extent, at least. Everybody will share the appearance of their real body. Our usernames will be our legal names," Edward spoke, "It's going to be an identity disaster."
Markus nodded, then quickly stood up, "Don't worry, it won't be that bad. The company that developed the game already fixed that problem."
"What'd they do?" Edward asked, genuinely curious.
"They made it so players won't be able to remember anything specific about strangers while outside of the game. Memories about somebody's appearance or their name will be foggy in the real world and only clear in the game world," Markus explained, "Only by friending other players will that memory filter be cleared. There won't be any identity thieves. Besides, the usernames reflecting our legal names is only a temporary thing. You'll see what I mean when we start playing."