"You bought SGI??"
Vivian stared at Jim, whom Ethan had brought back, along with the handful of key engineers following behind him. Her mind was full of question marks; she had assumed Ethan was simply planning to poach a few senior engineers from SGI.
"Strictly speaking, I bought a stake in it." Ethan corrected her.
By injecting more than ten million dollars into SGI before it had even entered its period of rapid business growth, Ethan had become the company's largest shareholder.
"SGI will retain its existing business as a wholly owned subsidiary operating independently. Jim will remain both CEO and CTO."
SGI needed enormous research funding and advanced technology to maintain its industry-leading graphics performance. GAMENOVA, meanwhile, needed a large number of chip designers and graphics engineers. The overlap between their businesses was simply too great, so there was no reason not to form this strategic partnership.
"So, NovaWonder was designed inside this office?"
Jim glanced around the small studio; he was every bit as shocked as Vivian. The place was unbelievably humble. While they were talking, Sam arrived at MicroNova with Carmack.
"Perfect timing, John. We've got a new project."
Ethan's eyes lit up. He immediately pulled Carmack over and turned towards Vivian and the others.
"Project codename: Open Graphics Library."
"Or simply, OpenGL."
Acquiring SGI had earned him far more than he had expected. Not only were several of the future founders of 3dfx, the graphics card giant of the 3D gaming era, currently working at SGI. Even OpenGL itself, one of the most important graphics APIs in gaming history, would originally be developed by SGI in the 1990s.
"I've already briefed Carmack on the relevant details. Vivian, coordinate with everyone. Oh, and don't forget, we also need to finalize the VGA display standard."
Ethan gave Carmack a gentle push toward the graphics department.
"I'm lending Carmack to your graphics team for a few days. As for me, I'm going to recruit a couple more talented people."
"Th-There's more?"
Vivian was completely overwhelmed by the rapid succession of developments. That day, a headhunting firm successfully poached an obscure engineer named Curtis Priem from Sun Microsystems, while a Canadian recruitment agency brought over two of Kwok's former colleagues. On that very same day, Ethan visited Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area.
School of Engineering.
Jim led Ethan through the hallways. For Jim, returning to Stanford was simply a nostalgic trip, as before founding Silicon Graphics, he had served as an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering here.
"This is a really wonderful place." Jim nodded in greeting to several students who recognized him before saying to Ethan, "The original core engineers of SGI were some of my finest students."
Seeing Ethan choose Stanford as the place to recruit new talent filled Jim with a sense of pride. He had originally assumed Ethan would return to his own alma mater, USC, to search for candidates.
Ethan merely smiled without saying anything. His eyes continuously scanned the students walking through the halls and those working inside the labs.
Eventually, his footsteps stopped in front of an unremarkable lab. Inside, a young man sat at a workbench, his eyes fixed intently on a circuit board densely packed with electronic components. His silver-rimmed glasses and the elegant watch on his left wrist gave him a distinctly scholarly look.
His name was Jensen Huang, a master's student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.
"This kid's pretty good."
"He's Jensen, isn't he?"
Jim nodded in recognition. "I remember him. He worked at AMD for about a year."
Jim was once again impressed by Ethan's eye for talent. His gaze settled on Jensen Huang. After graduating, the young man had worked for only a year before deciding to return to Stanford for graduate studies.
When Jim had previously been looking for promising talent for SGI, Jensen had repeatedly caught his attention because of his exceptional aptitude for graphics processors.
"Write him a recommendation letter."
"Hmm... and go buy him a leather jacket."
"I think it'd suit him."
"A leather jacket?"
Jim felt as though he simply couldn't keep up with Ethan's train of thought. The conversation had suddenly veered off in the most unexpected direction.
"Winters in the Bay Area are pretty cold, so just buy it."
Ethan chuckled without offering any further explanation. It was a shame Lisa Su was only seventeen years old. Otherwise, he could have completed the whole collection in one go.
With the hardware problems finally resolved, Ethan could officially begin development on Fire Emblem.
Staring at the monitor before him, he considered how to write the game's story. Looking across the entire Fire Emblem series, it didn't really have one continuous grand narrative, and each installment felt almost entirely independent of the others.
The original Fire Emblem, limited by the capabilities of the Famicom, couldn't really be praised for having an especially spectacular story or particularly stylish presentation. It was simply a very classic, very orthodox tale of revenge.
The protagonist, Marth, was the prince of Altea. After Altea fell and his father was killed, Marth escaped to Talys under the protection of loyal knights.
During his journey, Marth met new companions one after another, liberated cities and kingdoms, and gradually matured through those experiences. Finally, after gathering everyone's strength and obtaining the legendary Hero's Relic, the Sword of Light, Falchion, he defeated the Shadow Dragon.
Even by the standards of the 1980s, it was an extremely conventional storyline. Yet that very formula became one of the defining characteristics of the Fire Emblem series.
A story driven by the constant introduction of new companions, or, more precisely, new playable characters.
Every character who appeared in the story was directly reflected on the tactical battlefield. Even a simple farmer who spoke with the player might become a decisive piece capable of changing the course of the battle once combat began.
"Sam, send this draft over to Satoshi's team."
Writing this kind of script was something Satoshi and his group were much better at. Ethan only needed to establish the overall direction, as for the personal stories of the dozens of companions, it was better to leave those to the professionals.
"So many characters?"
Sam gave the outline a quick glance and was startled by the long list under the character section. There were fifty-two characters marked as playable.
"Weren't we making an RPG?"
"With this many characters, can we really develop them all properly?"
The scope of a game was limited. The more characters there were, the less narrative attention each one would receive. For an RPG, the proper approach was usually to create a handful of unforgettable characters. Having many characters without sufficient depth could easily become style over substance.
It reminded him of Atari's old philosophy of overwhelming quantity over quality.
"The story is only one part of character development."
Ethan didn't dismiss Sam's concerns. In fact, the problem Sam pointed out had always been one of the Fire Emblem series' recurring weaknesses.
Storytelling had never been the franchise's greatest strength. Fortunately, Fire Emblem wasn't an anime nor was it a novel. It was a game and it was incredibly fun.
"We're going to develop our characters through the gameplay itself."