I am a fan of the original. Frankly, I had no expectations for this drama at the beginning, but I was pleasantly surprised and moved by it! I should warn that I praise it for being "faithful to the original", which means that its lengthy buildup will make it difficult for new viewers to get into the swing of things, and I recommend defining it as a suspense drama, which will save a lot of meaningless expectations like "quickly confronting the aliens" and instead This will save a lot of meaningless expectations of "quickly confronting the aliens", and instead immerse yourself in the shock of the plot deduction.
I highly recommend everyone who is bored to stick around until Episode 22+, because the next layer is the blossoming of the layers of padding - BOOOOM!
I think it's very important to respect the original character background setting, because only the story that unfolds in a reasonable context is make sense - that's why I don't see the Netflix version and the Tencent version moving in the end.
It respects the historical backstory and provides an honest restoration of the details of the crazy era - although we never see the parts that were cut for some political clearance reasons, which leads to non-original readers who may not understand certain character attitude shifts as well as they could. (-0.5)
It optimizes the narrative pacing of the original by making some of the characters more three-dimensional and by adding some original characters to guide the viewer through the details of the different groups (such as the internal conflicts of the ETO and the death of Yang Dong). However, in order to expand the story to 30 episodes, individual places in the early stages seem slightly long-winded. (-0.25)
Its music is impressive, with several original tracks that fit the atmosphere of the original book very well. What doesn't match the music is the sound design, which I think is quite a bit out of date or not at the right volume. (-0.25)
The gameplay portion of the game unfolds amazingly, with the kind of unnatural NPC dialogue and activity that fits the original setting very well, and the technical equipment and overall visuals make perfect sense for the setting era (2007), and the combination with traditional Chinese culture is extremely impressive.
All the minor flaws disappeared after I watched the last 8 episodes, and I could only exclaim that it was destined to be a landmark work of science fiction! Finally we see something that is not an individualistic narrative in a huge context, but a community of destiny.
It is also a rich reflection on human nature. Calamities befall because of humanity, but the world is also unique because of humanity. It invokes and parodies a great number of facts and phenomena, prompting us to think more dialectically about the real world.
