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Developers Game Science has given us fans a full 13 minutes of pre-alpha gameplay trailer filled some some exciting combat scenes as well as stunning visuals on Black Myth: Wukong.
While the gameplay trailer was amazing to see, it’s also filled with tons of references from the original Journey to the West novel.
– Journey to the West Summary –
Journey to the West (西遊記) is a Chinese novel written by author Wu Cheng’en and was published in the 16th Century during the Ming Dynasty.
The novel focuses on the adventure of main character Sun Wukong and his mischievous acts of going to Heaven and causing trouble made Buddha punish him by trapping him in a mountain for 500 years. He was released after he promised to help a Buddhist monk go from China to India to obtain Buddhist holy scriptures. On their journey, they face many obstacles and have many adventures.
– Trailer Breakdown –
During the first scene of the trailer, we hear a man talk about 3 different various of the story of Wukong, the first variation mentioned that Wukong successfully helped Tang Seng fetch the Buddhist scriptures and had become the “Victorious Fighting Buddha” and from there he stayed in Lingshan.
The other variation stated that Wukong wasn’t granted Buddhahood and that the real Wukong died during the journey to the West.
The last version said that there was no such journey to the West and that he’s just a mere storyteller’s fictional monkey.
We then get a look at the person who was talking in the beginning and it seemed like he had the characteristics of a monkey and said that the story he’s going to tell is entirely different from the 3 variations that was mentioned. Could this person be Wukong telling his story on the journey to the West? Only time can tell.
Our first look at the gameplay is greeted by a Golden Cicada flying around the forest listening in to the other demon entities in the forest. This Cicada form is actually one of Wukong’s transformation abilities. In the novels, Wukong had the ability of transformations, taking up many different forms in causing mischief. This showcase could hint a possibility of this transformation skill playing a huge part into the gameplay.
After flying around for a few seconds, we are then brought into the actual combat mechanics of the game. From what we can tell, the combat is very reminiscent of the From Software’s gameplay judging from the UI, as well as some of actions Wukong could do such as Dodge Rolling and Parrying.
The game showcased one of Wukong’s ability that looks like a paralysis skill which freezes the enemy’s movement.
Aside from throwing his staff like a boomerang, Wukong also has the ability to defect enemy projectiles with his staff. All of these abilities seem to have their own individual cooldowns so that players can’t spam them.
During this forced encounter fight with this demon, the game showed us some of Wukong’s other skills which include a protective circle which could block enemy attacks as well as being able to use his staff to jump himself up into the air to dodge attacks. The game also showed us that some of the objects on the map can be broken.
After the fiery battle with the encounter, it seemed that once you defeat the “mini-bosses” (what I assumed the forced encounter to be) Wukong is able to pick up their weapons/artifact which played a part later in the gameplay trailer.
After escaping from the multiple enemies with Wukong’s transformation skill, Wukong is then greeted by what seems to be an Earth God (土地公) that is helping him with his adventure.
After some talking, fast-forward to a battle with multiple enemies, Wukong showed yet another ability which allows him to turn into a bigger version of himself which could be a reference to the legend where he could transform into a giant and scarier version of himself.
After that the game then introduce to us what seemed to be a boss type enemy.
Halfway through the fight, fans would be delighted to see one of Wukong’s signature skill where he takes a few strands of his hair and blows it to make multiple copies of himself which is also a reference to Wukong’s legend.
In this scene, the game shows us that Wukong is able to transform himself to the “mini boss” that Wukong defeated previously and also inherited his moveset. This is also a reference to Wukong’s legend where he is able to take the form of others to trick people, but it seems like in this game it treats this ability more into a gameplay mechanic. where Wukong get’s to use the abilities of the enemies he defeated.
When Wukong is about to land the final blow onto the boss, the player is stopped by the actual Wukong who wields the real staff that Wukong has which is the rúyì jīngū bàng (如意金箍棒). This is quite the plot twist as we’re lead to believe that we’re Wukong up till now.
After this encounter, the game then shows us various of different scenes in the game.
This scene where Wukong is grasping his head in pain could be a reference to the Legend where he was forced to wear a circlet that would cause him extreme headaches which was granted by Guan Yin to control Wukong so that he won’t cause any misdeeds.
This scene shows that Wukong is facing off against what seems to be this game’s version Lei Shen which is the God of Thunder. The original Lei Shen actually has wings and has more of a form of between a humanoid with bird-like features.
Although this isn’t confirmed yet, this scene shows Wukong about to face off against the Four Heavenly Kings (四大天王) which are the four Buddhist Gods and each of them wields a different kind of weapon.
In the legend, Wukong actually invades the heavens, basically beating every god single-handedly. Also, the game didn’t really show off just how strong the Ruyi Jingu Bang (monkey staff) is and we can only get to see how it can change size as big as sweeping everyone around him. We are still not sure if this part is a flashback or what so only time can tell.
Also, at the very end of the trailer, the music that was played was from the extremely famous 1986 CCTV’s Journey to the West drama series! How nostalgic!
These are pretty much all of the breakdown that could be made in this trailer video. Hopefully they’ll announce a release date for this game soon!
