Welcome back to The High Life!

It's been another month of heads-down work, and our team has plenty to show for it.

You'll get a preview of improvements that our game development team has made to Highstreet: Calamity. We want this game to look the best it can, so that your experience will be superb.

Then, read an account from the architect of The Gardens himself, Giles Gilbert Tate. What happened in the lead-up to the vegetation blow-up? It's Giles' word against… everyone else's.

Let's dive in! ⬇️

Creating a VR game is challenging in many ways. Every facet of the player experience is more complex than usual. Every action and reaction, every sound and texture, and anything that comes your way needs to make you feel like you're in a world that has its own sense. In a way, building a VR game is like building a whole new reality.

Our game developers have been on a tear to rework Highstreet: Calamity's UI/UX, so that our first players—and strongest supporters—will get the most immersive and best possible experience.

You already know that the Multitool will be crucial on every adventure, whether you're taking time to read up on your enemies' strengths and weaknesses, or exploring new parts of Solera beyond Highstreet City. Our team has made updates to the Multitool so that its interface looks better, navigation is more intuitive, and it genuinely feels like an extension of your SIMU.

We've applied the same care to Consoles that you'll find in the Lobby when Highstreet: Calamity launches. Cooler-looking menus that give you what you need—that's the name of the game.

Remember how you'll be able to use all sorts of items in the Robotannical Battledome? Whether you're giving your SIMU a boost in health or adrenaline, tossing a Hex-a-lotl to sow chaos and destruction in the arena, or cracking open an elemental shard, that action now has a new visual pop. After all, special moves deserve special attention.

Finally, if you've spent time on Highstreet Campus, you know what it's like to walk up to an NPC and start a conversation—you'll see their dialogue, maybe they'll move around a bit to acknowledge you. But we want the NPCs in Highstreet: Calamity to be more real, more lifelike, more ready to receive you. Prepare for interactions that go well beyond your expectations.

We're excited that you'll get to experience all of this and more very soon!

The Gardens: A Personal Account by Giles Gilbert Tate

[Submitted to the Highstreet City Public Record. Editorial annotations by the Office of the Council of Beaks.]

I was not born into the world I wanted. My family farmed, and they farmed well, and I loved them for it in the way you love something you know you are already leaving. From the time I was old enough to find my own way to a gallery or a theater, I did. I scraped together whatever I could from whatever work I could find, because the arts were not something I was willing to do without. Some called it ambition. Sophia called it restlessness. She was probably right.

I met Sophia at a one-woman show. She was performing ancient Lunarist texts and I was sitting in the fifth row, completely undone by it. I told her afterwards that I could get her work in front of a thousand people.

[Records indicate he had not yet spoken to the Mayor at the time this promise was made.]

The Mayor of Highstreet City believed me, the funding came, and for a brief and glorious window it seemed like everything was going to work. When it did not, I gave her the only thing I could truly afford: a single flower. She told me later it was the only gift she had ever truly wanted from me. We never discussed what that meant. Instead we became florists, kept our heads down, and built something small that was ours. She found peace in that life far sooner than I did.

When the plans for Highstreet City began circulating, I saw something I had been waiting my whole life to build. A botanical garden, yes, but also a theater, a gallery, a champagne bar, a tea house with Sophia's name on it in everything but letters.

[No such dedication exists in any construction documents filed with the city.]

A place where high culture was not something you had to go hungry to afford. I will be honest: my credentials were not entirely what I presented them to be.

[This is the first written acknowledgment of this fact by Mr. Tate.]

I knew how to coax flowers from shards of Green Lunarite. What I was proposing was something on an entirely different scale. But I believed I could learn, and I believed in the vision, and I convinced enough people who mattered to believe alongside me.

What I want to be perfectly clear about is that the decision to allow QuackLabs to operate a portal in the development grounds was not made carelessly or naively. I resisted it. I made my objections known.

[No written record of these objections has been produced despite multiple requests.]

The Gardens were supposed to be a place of culture and quiet and beauty, not an experimental site for interdimensional research. But arts funding in Solera does not grow on trees, and without the additional capital the HS Alliance tied to that arrangement, half of what you see today would never have been built. I traded something to build something, and I believed the terms were manageable. I want the record to show that I believed that.

What happened next is a matter of public record, or so I am told. I have my own account of those days, and I intend to share it in time. What I will say here is that I lost something I cannot name in a language I have yet to find. Sophia deserved better than what I built her. The Gardens deserved better than what they became. Whether I deserved better than what I got is a question I have stopped asking, because I am not sure I would trust my own answer.

[Mr. Tate's account of the events directly preceding and during The Incident has been requested by this office on four separate occasions. It has not been provided.]

That's all for this issue of The High Life.

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