If the other game companies in the industry ever learned what Ethan Reed had been suffering over for the last three days, they would probably curse him to his face without hesitation.
While they were staying up late, copying Northstar Games piece by piece, wearing themselves out trying to catch up, Ethan was sitting in his office with a completely different kind of pain.
He was not worried about how to save a dying project.
He was not worried about budget cuts.
He was not even wondering how to make a profitable game.
No. Ethan was losing sleep because he could not decide which masterpiece to make next.
If the rest of the industry heard that, they would absolutely explode.
They would probably point at him and shout, "What kind of humblebrag is this? Is that even a real problem?"
And from a normal person's point of view, that reaction would be fair.
Over the past two years, the gaming market had started to recover because of Northstar Games. More players were willing to pay for legitimate single-player games now. More people believed that a good game was worth buying. More companies saw the market and jumped in, hoping to grab a share.
On the surface, everything looked healthy.
But the truth was brutal.
Yes, the cake had gotten bigger.
The problem was that aside from Northstar Games, almost nobody else could actually sit at the table.
Other companies released flashy trailers, dramatic promotions, and overconfident slogans. Before launch, they acted as if they had already won Game of the Year. Their marketing practically screamed it.
Then players bought the games, installed them, played for a while, and immediately went online to vent.
"What is this garbage?"
"You call this a game?"
"Did the developers even play this before release?"
"The 3D models look like they're from some outdated era."
"You can't even customize the face in a single-player game? Seriously?"
Some players were so disgusted they mocked those studios by saying even low-end models from shady little websites looked better than the so-called premium characters in those titles.
So yes, the market had grown.
Yes, more players were spending money.
But that money still kept flowing toward the same company again and again.
Why would anyone pay high prices for mediocre products when Northstar Games kept releasing polished, exciting, addictive games one after another? Players only had so much time. They only had so much money. If Northstar already filled both, then bad games did not even deserve a second look.
Still, one group did benefit from Northstar's rise.
Independent developers.
Especially the ones making small but creative niche titles.
Because Northstar had changed player habits. It had trained the audience to value originality, quality, and honest effort. That gave smaller studios a chance to breathe.
So Ethan understood that he had helped create hope in the industry.
But that did not make his own problem any less real.
He was not bragging.
He was honestly troubled.
For three full days, he had been trapped in the same cycle. Sit down. Think. Compare. Reject one option. Regret it. Go back. Start over. A few strands of his black hair had already fallen in the battle. A few more had simply been crushed flat during sleep.
Either way, it was obvious this decision was not easy.
Because the choices in front of him were too cruel.
He had two legends in his hands.
As an adult, Ethan often liked to joke that whenever life gave him a choice, he wanted all of them. Why pick one when you could take everything?
But this time, that mindset was useless.
Because the two games in front of him were not ordinary projects.
They were The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
And trying to release both together was not ambition.
That was asking to die.
The reason this was so painful was simple. These two games belonged to the same series, but they were not lazy copies of one another. That was one of Nintendo's greatest strengths. Their sequels were not empty cash grabs made to squeeze fans dry. They reimagined systems. They changed how players approached the world. They respected the original, but they did not chain themselves to it.
With many other companies, a sequel was just the first game wearing new clothes. The maps changed, the bosses changed, the puzzles changed a little, but the overall feeling stayed the same.
Not Zelda.
Even without talking about story, anyone who had played both games knew the truth.
If Tears of the Kingdom used a different art style and somebody showed it to you without the title, you might not even call it a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild. The puzzle-solving methods were different. The systems were different. The flow of gameplay felt different.
That was what made Ethan suffer so much.
Both were brilliant.
Both were market-shaking.
Both had the power to crush expectations and rewrite standards.
For a brief moment, Ethan even considered doing something insane—combining the strengths of both games into one giant release.
But the moment that thought settled in his mind, he threw it away.
The workload would be monstrous. The technical burden would be absurd. The hardware demands would rise beyond imagination. And more importantly, Ethan wanted this project to seriously push Northstar into the console market.
That mattered.
Up until now, Northstar Games had not truly stepped into that battlefield in a meaningful way. Some of their games worked perfectly well on consoles, but most domestic players still experienced them on PC. That was not enough.
This next game had to be the one that announced Northstar's real arrival.
It had to be a project that told the entire market Northstar was no longer just a powerful studio. It was a studio ready to challenge the future.
So after thinking it through again and again, Ethan finally made his choice.
He chose Breath of the Wild.
Not because Tears of the Kingdom was weak. Far from it.
But as a sequel, Tears of the Kingdom carried a few natural disadvantages. Its Ultrahand system was incredible. For creative players, it opened endless possibilities. But for a huge part of the audience, those possibilities stayed mostly theoretical. They admired the system more than they actually used it to its full potential.
And then there was the map.
Even with the new layers and added areas, a lot of the world still felt familiar to players who had already spent hundreds of hours in Breath of the Wild. For some, that familiarity was comforting. For others, it reduced the sense of discovery.
That mattered more than people liked to admit.
Breath of the Wild, as a first release, had a cleaner impact. Freedom. Curiosity. Exploration. Wonder. It gave players a world that felt alive and invited them to get lost in it.
If Northstar wanted to release one first and save the sequel for later, Breath of the Wild was clearly the right choice.
That was not arrogance.
That was respect for the order things should happen.
Of course, Ethan was not delusional enough to believe he could "teach Nintendo how to make games." He understood exactly what Nintendo meant to the gaming world.
They were not just a famous company.
They were one of the foundations of the industry itself.
For decades, developers around the world had learned from them, whether they admitted it or not. In Ethan's eyes, and in the eyes of countless players, Nintendo was one of those rare names that stood above trends and kept writing the rulebook everyone else studied.
So Ethan had no intention of trying to outsmart them in their own territory.
He would preserve the heart of the game. He would respect the core design. He would improve details where he could, smooth out rough edges where possible, and adapt things carefully to fit Northstar's strengths.
But the soul of the experience?
That deserved reverence.
By the time Ethan finished organizing and integrating the framework for the game, nearly three hours had passed. When he finally stood up and stretched, Vivian Frost had already returned.
She had left the company two hours earlier with a few junior employees to go catch Pokémon. That was very much her style. Vivian had a strange gift for looking like she was doing absolutely nothing while somehow still carrying the aura of a legendary boss.
Rachel Quinn had not gone with them.
In fact, Rachel was probably one of the few core people in Northstar who truly never rested.
Daniel worked hard too. Sometimes he led teams abroad, handled partnerships, and worked until he looked half-dead. But after a big project cycle ended, he could disappear for a month or two and recover properly.
Rachel was different.
Animation work never really stopped. The moment one task ended, another came in. Something always needed editing, polishing, rendering, or preparing.
If they ranked people by working hours, Rachel would definitely be near the top.
Vivian looked up when Ethan rose and asked, "Finished?"
"Finished, miss," Ethan said, rolling his eyes.
Then he paused in his own thoughts.
He used to think a boss who did not interfere and only paid on time was the best kind of boss imaginable.
So why was he suddenly judging Vivian for wandering around all day?
That annoyed him more than he expected.
Maybe somewhere along the way, he had changed.
Vivian did not care either way. She simply adjusted her skirt, sat down in Ethan's chair like it belonged to her by birthright, and said, "Let me see."
"You look first. I'm going to find Daniel and talk to him about the new project."
"Okay."
Ethan left the office and headed into the hallway.
He already knew where Daniel would be.
If Daniel was not in the office, then there was a very high chance he was standing near the coffee machine, snacking and drinking like a man completely at peace with life.
And of course, that was exactly where Ethan found him.
"Chief," Daniel greeted the moment he saw him.
Ethan pulled out a disposable cup, skipped the coffee entirely, and filled it with orange juice instead. After taking a long drink, he leaned against the counter and asked, "The new game proposal is done. How are things on your side?"
Daniel's eyes lit up at once.
"Almost fully polished. I can split off part of the team and start on the new project. The rest of Pokémon GO can be handled by the remaining staff."
"I'll send it to your email later."
Daniel nodded, then asked, "What kind of game are we making this time?"
Ethan answered simply. "3D. Action. Open world. Fantasy. Adventure. Role-playing."
Daniel blinked.
"Wait, Chief, haven't we already done something similar before?"
"We have," Ethan said calmly. "Cyberpunk 2077 had open-world exploration, action, adventure, and role-playing. So what?"
Daniel scratched his head. "I thought we had this unspoken rule of not repeating the same type of game."
Ethan frowned. "Who made that rule?"
"It wasn't the boss," Daniel said quickly. "It's just what everyone started believing."
That answer made Ethan pause.
And the more he thought about it, the more he realized it sounded ridiculous—and also weirdly true.
Northstar had touched so many genres and succeeded in so many of them that players and employees had slowly built myths around the company. One of those myths was that Northstar would never make the same type of game twice.
But Ethan himself had never deliberately planned that.
He picked games more on instinct than strategy. Whatever felt exciting. Whatever suited the moment. Whatever he thought would be fun to make and even more fun to play.
That was how it had always been.
A little messy?
Sure.
But game development was not some perfectly straight road.
Daniel stared at him for a second, then said, "So you really just make whatever comes to mind?"
Ethan shoved him lightly in the shoulder. "Forget that part. Just get ready. This may also be open world, but it's nothing like 2077. The old methods won't work. This game is going to tell every developer in the world what an open world is supposed to be."
Daniel grinned.
"Got it. I'll start preparing the team."
Then he walked off, leaving Ethan alone in the beverage area.
Ethan watched him go and suddenly thought of Daniel, Rachel, Vivian, and everyone else in this company.
Inside Northstar, they looked disciplined.
They looked professional.
They looked obedient.
But Ethan knew the truth.
That was only because Northstar had the right environment, and because he was here holding the line.
If the company ever broke apart, and all these people were scattered across the domestic gaming industry…
Ethan almost laughed just imagining the damage.
These people were not sheep.
These people were wolves.
Put them under a manager who could not code, and they would tear him apart with their eyes before lunch.
Put them under a team leader who gave orders without understanding the work, and they would ignore him and do the job themselves.
Force them into overtime without pay, and they would quit so fast the company would not even have time to beg.
Refuse to listen when they warned you about a problem, then come crying later for them to fix it, and they would probably curse you first and help second.
Northstar was peaceful now because the right people were here.
Because Ethan was here.
Because Vivian, despite her lazy image, could still hold the company together with sheer nerve.
Because the culture here had raised these young developers in a place where they were trusted, trained, and allowed to grow instead of being crushed.
A new recruit in Daniel's department, still a college senior, had arrived at Northstar nervous as a quail. In the beginning, he was so scared he could sit in front of the code all day without daring to press a key.
Two months later?
Now that same kid dared to touch the department's core systems.
That was what Northstar's culture could do.
These young people had not walked into a company that treated them like disposable labor.
They had walked from one ivory tower into another.
A better one.
And that was why Ethan's final thought, standing there with orange juice in hand, felt so clear.
What Northstar Games had built was not just a company.
It was a den full of wolves.
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