Jeff had just finished watching the Supernatural tv show. What was it? 15 seasons? It was an intense commitment, not always great, but worth watching, and chock full of very interesting ideas.
One idea that was poorly explored in the show was the Mother of Monsters. She could create new creature types with new abilities. Another was a guy who could summon things into existence while he was dreaming. There were witches and werewolves, demons and angels, ghosts and vampires. It had plenty of fodder to make a compelling story no matter what angle you approached the storyline from...
With the setting for the world taken care of (the AI did a search and ingested all the canonical details of the world as well as doing the equivalent of watching the show by reading the pirated video files on his computer) the next thing was to set up the missions and what it means to progress. A mission commander character will send the main character on missions, and the virtual novel would be investigating what's happening after getting to town, picking who and how to investigate people could be sub-missions with lockpicking, stealth, and intimidation being key factors, picking an ultimate attack strategy based on what was found, and then the actual plan being executed would be the shooter. To drive home the epicness of the game, successful missions will allow the main character to level up like in an RPG, enhancing things like research speed, reaction time, strength, and crafting abilities depending on what was encountered on the mission!
Then Jeff realized... the one truly unexplored aspect of the world was the main characters becoming monsters... It happened, but wasn't explored, everything except boss characters could be a playable race, you just need to earn facing it... the Chronivac already has all the details about those characters. Losing a mission could be the start of an escape mission. Losing the escape mission would be a prestige unlock of a new class. Auto change stats, gain new abilities, fight former friends... It would be fascinating and add replayability.
For the starting character, it would be a slightly more capable and rugged version of himself... knowing how to use and take care of a gun is a good start. Being old enough to get into bars or at least having a fake ID would make investigations easier. The show explained away finances with fake or stolen credit cards, so having an idea of how to fake a credit card would be nice...
Jeff clicked go and waited, and waited... he didn't know why he thought building a highly detailed custom video game would be fast, but he did. He let out a sigh of frustration as he looked at the clock, its nearly bedtime since he can feel himself getting tired, maybe it will be ready to play tomorrow. He heard his mom call from downstairs, he went to the door and opened it "Yeah?" Oh god his voice dropped! He sounded like his dad! So embarrassing!
"You've got a phone call." She said, giving no hint that she noticed his voice misbehaving.
Jeff went over to the wireless landline phone in his room, (he had the ringer muted so that late incoming calls wouldn't disturb him) picked it up, and said, "Hello?" It was then he remembered that his parents were out of town.
A weathered female voice responded, "Jeff, I'm sorry to call you so late but I think I've got a mission. If you can come in tonight, I can brief you and you can head out first thing tomorrow."
Jeff was already in the game...
"Be there soon." Jeff said hanging up and heading to the bathroom. He looked like himself except taller, more muscular, older, and this version of himself kept the beginnings of a beard, too long to be called stubble, not long enough to be called a beard, but trimmed. It was confusing but could be called rugged and Jeff liked it.
Jeff called out to his mom and went to her after she responded, it wasn't his mom. It was just an NPC, but it had family features, probably algorithmically calculated from Jeff's face, only slightly off. "I should be back soon, but don't wait up." Empathy Level 1 flashed as floating text that he stepped through before realizing it was there.
She gave a worried expression... similar to his mom's, but Jeff was already in the garage, shocked to find a motorcycle that he was instinctively heading towards. As he is driving to a location he knows as HuBoO (Hunter Base of Operations) he sees he reached level 1 in Motorcycles and is curious when and how he can unlock skills and what they would be! He eventually reaches the place he needs to be and within 20 minutes he knows where to head tomorrow and what to expect...