In this alternate version of my story, our main character "old man", or named Chef, is a "Fishcake": a member of the fish society that provides all the basic/lowly service, or we could consider them as "artificial lives" or "flesh golems 血肉傀儡" in fish term. A fishcake is made of spare parts of fish people, therefore they are usually avoided and looked down by most of the fishman citizens, even respected less than the common "walkers". 

Chef runs a sushi "takeout" business. A business that helps the client "take out" the assigned target (usually fishman), and serves seafood dishes with the target as main ingredient. 

Although the "primal one" (the first tiktaalik that walks on the land) who overrules this world claims that the society functions perfectly, it actually relies on businesses like Chef's takeout service to do all the dirty jobs to keep different schools (factions) of fish in check. Takeout orders are usually made through the internet, then the food will be delivered to the person (or the client will stop by the store and dine in, if I would have the time and effort to visualize all these) 

And yes, secretly fish don't always give a muck about ethics or morals of feasting on a fellow sentient fishman. This is sort of like the worldbuilding in Beastar, that many carnivore fish people do secretly enjoy a good set of seafood cuisines. 

大鱼吃小鱼，书本上密密麻麻全都写着：吃鱼！

I believe it's necessary to give the player a more well thought story on "how do I respawn" in this game, rather than just popping the player out of nowhere after every death. 

Therefore, here's the idea: the old man's whole body buildup is not actually of human flesh, but a of a twisted attempt to reconstruct humanoid soldier off of tissues of the fish people. 

Every time the player respawns from "his" base, the player's body is actually reconstructed from the default material "bland fish sauce", which allows the player to be put into action again no matter what. 

However, this bland version of "him" lacks of anything special, no upgrades, no attachments, no weapons, just a naked (soon clothed) guy with a kitchen knife (it never runs out because it's sponsored by a mysterious organization, so is the outfit of our guy). 

So what could the player do if they don't want to respawn empty handed? The answer is that they can find some ways to craft weapons and upgrade body with materials. That leads to some questions:

• • how do you get materials in the first place?

    • they are the bits and pieces you get from defeating fish enemies, so go ham! go Rip and Tear on those fishy boys with various weapons and you shall be rewarded handsomely!

  • how can you bring them back to your hideout? 

    • end-level free shipping: by the end of every stage/major boss, a mysterious mailbox would appear, and you will have a chance to mail a portion of your earnings back to your hideout! 

    • mid-level charged shipping: in between levels, there will be rooms that you go into which allows you to mail back items for a price, either pay with in-game currency, or you could bribe them with specially requested cuisines

    • dip-out aka 梭哈: for some maps there would be some harbors that would let the player choose to exit out the mission, which will result in the mission's failure but can be a safe choice for the player to back out of the mission with all the materials carried back to the hideout (weapons too)

      • in higher difficulties, there may be limit on the items that can be carried back, here is how I imagine it: IT'S A TRAP! The harbor is actually a giant blender that instantly kills the player but it collects random items that the player currently carries and mail them back to the hideout. 

        • This could be humanized/upgraded by the player (once the player has defeated this level), and a new quest will pop up in the hideout which would allow the player to replace the trap harbor with a legit harbor, letting full loot to be carried back to base if the player dip-out from the mission!

    • what can you do with these materials:

      • revive with style: some materials can be ground into powders that may be used to make the player's new body bigger, better, faster, stronger (higher health, higher melee damage, faster movement, better weapon handle, burn resistance, freeze resistance, etc... consider the traditional talent 加点 system)

      • gear up: of course materials can be used to upgrade and craft your weapon

        • in earlier stages, before the player meets the weaponsmith, weapons remain very primitive:

          • small weapon (like kitchen knife) would start with 1 slot as default (slot will be talked about later), primitive upgrades don't upgrade the slots, but can enhance the weapon damage 

          • large weapon (like pizza cutter) would start with 2 slots as default, primitive upgrades don't upgrade the slots, but can enhance the weapon damage 

        • later when player meets and complete a mission for weaponsmith （or some other ways), weapons will be able to be buffed to more slots and more raw stats

  • what would you run into in a mission?

    • enemies

    • a boss

    • one or two trap/legit harbor(s)

    • free/charged mailing station 

    • food delivery capsule: take order-> place food that match the order (or not) -> get rewarded with items (rarity based on how much the order match):

      • consumables: one-time-use items, often jars or other stuff that you can throw at your enemy, for example:

        • salt bottle: when thrown, apply salty to a large area of enemy, and reduce their moisture

        • chili oil bottle: when thrown, apply spicy status to a large area of enemy

        • gas tank: when thrown, add temperature to all units in an area, and leaves a heating zone for a duration

        • freeze pack: when thrown, reduce temperature to all units in an area, and leaves a cooling zone for a duration 

      • armory and shenanigans: items that will be automatically attached to the player when picked up, it's like items in RoR, provide stats to the player, for example:

        • it can be vanilla.... Fisherman's Boots: make you run faster

        • it can be gimmicky.... Guy Fieri's Sunglasses: enhance your the status you get from spicy food, enhance the power of all spicy attachments

      • attachments: these usually provide effects when they are attached to a weapon, some attachments are consumable, every registered hit (on the enemy) would consume the attachment, for example:

        • chili oil bottle: applies "spicy" status to all enemies damaged by the weapon

        • ghost pepper chili oil bottle: applies "spicy" status to all enemies damaged by the weapon, also making them explode after death

        • salt bottle: applies "salty" status to all enemies damaged by the weapon

And some of the attachments aren't consumable. for example:

• scorch gun: apply a "heat" hitbox on your weapon, making you heat up every enemy hit by the weapon

• 大列巴 russian bread: "wait you can attach this to your weapon??" alter your weapon damage type to bash, when the weapon already has bash damage, provide extra status to the bash weapon (yes you can attach two slabs of russian bread to a weapon)