What kind of miracle does ＂Black Myth： Wukong＂ belong to？

A week before the release of "Black Myth: Goku", some spoiler clips have appeared on the Internet one after another, and many people are worried that the leaked information will affect the normal release of the game. Yocar, the founder of Game Science, went out of his way to explain a few words, advising everyone to try not to take the initiative to read the spoilers, because it will not make the game experience better, and try not to spread relevant information, so as not to accidentally hurt others. In the end, Yocar said: "In the end, I am still very confident that no matter how much leaked content you (unintentionally or forced) have seen in advance, this game will still bring you a feeling and enough unique fun that you have never had before. So, don’t worry, no more than chagrin," Black Myth: Goku "is not so fragile."

Black Myth: Goku is indeed not that fragile.

So far, I have played "Black Myth" for 60 hours. In every sense, it has fulfilled its historical mission very well. Since the first glimpse four years ago, this "China’s first AAA game" has been in the spotlight of billions of dollars. After seeing all kinds of high and low opening in the game industry, the final product of "Black Myth" has a solid feeling of being unreal.

But "Black Myth" is not a myth, it may be a miracle, but it is still in line with the natural development of things. There have been too many fantasies about this game in the outside world for four years, and this article tries to give you an intuitive impression of the main aspects of "Black Myth" as much as possible without spoilers.

battle

Battles are not Black Myth’s outstanding advantage.

Since most of the trailer information in "Black Myth" was related to combat, there were countless detailed interpretations on the Internet, and I was afraid to see how delicate the combat system was. It seemed that many people hoped that Youke would build high-rise buildings on the ground without much experience in action game development. After this period of experience, my evaluation of the combat experience is: enough, there are highlights, but it requires some adaptation.

The stick system in the core of the battle in "Black Myth" is deeper than the traditional ARPG soul tour, and the feedback and pleasure of stick reversals and stored thrusts are good, and there is also a certain strategy and operation space.

Very few action games would use a single weapon, but You Ke did not compromise in this regard, insisting on using only sticks, and using three stick positions, supplemented by systems such as avatars, magic spells, and magic weapons, to expand the combat experience horizontally. Thanks to the very rich types of bosses, until the level is cleared, the freshness of combat interaction will always exist.

But in the final analysis, the derivative moves of the three stick poses are not complicated, and they can be seen at a glance. The space for the moves themselves to be excavated is not so large, and the fun of the battle itself is somewhat conservative. It can be seen that "Black Myth" draws on some of the designs of "Niwang 2", and the incarnation system that shines in the final PV is similar to the monster skills of "Niwang 2" (friends who are looking forward to 72 to become big need to control their expectations). Basically, they transform into monsters and put a skill back. Since there is no invincible judgment in this process, the application scope of those monsters that have been out for a long time is greatly limited, which is a pity.

After the overall experience, as long as there are not too many expectations, the combat experience of "Black Myth" can completely meet the needs of the process and is enough.

However, we can’t ignore the gold content of this combat system because of this. "Black Myth" is a game with high dignity value, and it is very difficult to design a stick as the main weapon. Previously, the best in the industry was the "No Thinking Crescent Stick" in "Ninja Gaiden 2", which was later integrated into the Ninja Group’s own "Renwang" series as an action asset.

In other domestic games, if they wanted to solve this problem, they might have copied the ninja dragon’s action module directly. Anyway, everyone had moved it before. But "Black Myth" didn’t learn from it at all, and it completely created an original set of stick action modules from scratch, and it can form a self-consistent with the gameplay mechanism and world view background in the game. This approach deserves a big praise.

So although the completion still needs to be improved, with this set of original action assets, Youke has unlimited possibilities in the future, and the series also has more distinctive signature characteristics. It is not uncommon in this industry to talk about ideals, and there are many compromises for reality. Only like Youke, in a product of this magnitude, stand with dignity and insist on its core design, and finally realize it to make it run smoothly, which is very commendable.

Exploration and Levels

The level exploration experience of "Black Myth" is very special, and it has to be discussed together with the picture.

Although most of the 3A masterpieces pursue the authenticity of the picture, in addition to the authenticity, they will also pursue a style of expression – similar to the movie picture that looks more like a movie than reality. Few games will present a near-line drawing, unadorned reality, and in many cases, the scenes of "Black Myth" give me such a feeling – indiscriminate real portrayal, not biased towards a certain style.

This authenticity also gives "Black Myth" a unique mixed feeling, with both longboard and shortboard. When the main content of the scene is the natural environment, we can see realistic grass, trees, stones, and soil. But no matter how realistic they are, they are just ordinary grass, trees, stones, and soil in reality, and there are not many highlights. At the same time, they also bring in the disorder and chaos of nature.

In the early stages of mountain forests and snow levels, this problem was particularly obvious, which also affected the motivation for exploration. The overall feeling was more realistic than the design was insufficient, and the scene also lacked clear visual and interactive boundaries, which led to the use of a large number of air walls to limit the scope of activities. This aspect is indeed not very modern. The pure natural environment itself is difficult to do a good job in the level scene. How to balance the visual and functional depends more on experience than technology, and the gap in this regard is inevitable.

But on the other hand, when the scene is mostly artificial, this line drawing method brings a unique sense of immersion. Especially when it involves a large number of Buddha statues and temple buildings, with the excellent texture accuracy of Unreal 5, the density of the screen information explodes, and the impact is unmatched by any stylized 3A game.

Due to the fact that "Black Myth" is the background of Journey to the West, it is naturally suitable to put in a large number of ready-made religious facilities with high beauty and solemnity. In addition, Yang Qi’s own monster setting is also a must, and the style is just right. After being portrayed by the real, it is even more powerful, and there is no problem that "the original painting is made into a game but weakens the artistic impact". In this regard, "Black Myth" has a long board and is completely among the international first-line level.

It is worth mentioning that the shortcomings of the natural environment are mainly concentrated in the first two chapters. The scenes in the middle and late stages are obviously improved, the exploration line is clearer, and the visual order is much more orderly.

Based on this picture, "Black Myth" has a very exaggerated level content and scene scale.

Unlike the expected box-style level, each of the six chapters is equivalent to a small open world, which is very large. Most chapters require at least 6 hours to complete the basic content. Moreover, "Black Myth" does not blindly follow the mainstream soul travel design, basically does not have a silly one-way door, and there is no extra loss after death, so the game experience becomes much smoother.

plot

After playing "Black Myth", it is not difficult to understand why the plot has such a high level of secrecy.

In the world view of "Journey to the West" to create a deep second plot is equivalent to playing poker. The audience is clear about the relationship between the characters and the conflict of the story, but whenever they capture a little information, they will expand their imagination and have a preconceived impression of the game. Knowing the name of a monster can make up the plot of a certain level, and the suspense of the game is an overdraft. Since "God of War", You Ke has been good at weaving the story of Journey to the West with both suspense and contrast, and naturally he is the least willing to see this kind of overdraft.

Due to the very strict non-disclosure agreement, I can only say about the plot at present that finishing the game without being spoiled is indeed a kind of enjoyment in the end, and I can really appreciate the power of Youke’s deep cultivation of Westward Journey IP.

In addition, there may be another reason why the confidentiality is so strict, that is, the game has additional Easter egg content in the way of storytelling, and the presentation methods are very different. Some of them are well-crafted, and the narrative itself can be called first-class level – after the game is released, there is a high probability that the player will cut it out and turn it into a popular communication material.

True miracle

It seems that I have said a lot about the shortcomings of "Black Myth". Of course, this has the factor of expectation management, to avoid putting it into the perfect expectation whirlpool. At the same time, as the first domestic 3A, "Black Myth" is indeed not enough in terms of development pipeline or experience accumulation. Two months before the game was launched, Yocar also sent a Moments to laugh at the problems existing in the current development.

But what’s not enough is "Black Myth"? We have seen too many foreign 3A masterpieces fall into the quagmire of projects over the years. Even companies like Naughty Dog, which once gathered first-class talents in the industry, still face dark chaos when the project is carried out to a certain extent.

In fact, the more you understand the disparity in the game industry at home and abroad, the more you will appreciate what a project miracle "Black Myth" is.

"Black Myth" has many aspects that far exceed my expectations.

For example, the amount of content is much larger than expected. It’s not an open world, it’s better than an open world. The development team has grown rapidly, and the quality of the map has obviously improved in the middle. With this content scale, there is still room to cram in a lot of hidden content and branches. I haven’t done much with the branches until now. I even found a terrible fact: Ziyun Mountain in last year’s demo event never appeared in the game flow at all – this entire map is a hidden area.

For example, the types of monsters and bosses are extremely generous, which is staggering. There are 90 kinds of monsters and 81 kinds of bosses. All monsters have a complete and detailed set of action models, including the twitching and struggling animations after falling to the ground. And all bosses have a wide variety of moves and skills that match the characteristics of the characters.

It is no exaggeration to say that some of the unknown small bosses I encountered in "Black Myth" have the richness of their combat modules, which can be used as a formal boss in other action games.

Especially when you think that the new work of "God of War" will also compromise and adopt colorful skin-changing monsters because there are too few types of monsters, it is difficult not to sigh at the luxury of "Black Myth".

Another detail that is easy to overlook is that the sound effects of Dark Myth are particularly mature. The sound effects of various materials colliding are very good, and players who are used to playing foreign 3A masterpieces may not think it is anything. However, the industrial accumulation and experience in sound effects in China is very poor. The first two years of "Shadow Torch City" are very modern in all aspects, but the sound effects are behind the times. And the sound effects of "Dark Myth" are completely inaudible.

More importantly, "Black Myth" kept improving on so many details, but it didn’t bring down the project. What an efficient production capacity and terrible resource utilization.

This is the wonder of project management.

Such success was naturally inseparable from Youke’s own corporate DNA. The founding team had the ability but not arrogance, the aesthetics but not arrogance, the persistence but not paranoia, the ideals but not naivety, the business emphasis but not shortsightedness, so many contradictory characteristics gathered in one company, so that "Black Myth" could go through many difficulties and go public smoothly.

At the same time, "Black Myth" is, to some extent, the crystallization of the collaboration of the national game industry.

It was precisely because of the first trailer released four years ago that "Black Myth" became the "most promising college student in the village", which brought together the ideals and feelings of countless gamers. Youke was able to recruit enough outstanding talents to develop the game together at a suitable cost.

Because "Black Myth" was famous enough, it naturally attracted the full support of the upstream and downstream of the industry, and the most typical example was the optimization level. It was difficult for small and medium-sized developers to do a good job in hardware optimization, and the optimization level of "Black Myth" was the first, even better than many large manufacturers. After opening DLSS + frame generation, it was basically the best smooth picture that mid-range computers could run out of, which greatly reduced the threshold for popularity.

Naturally, this could not be separated from the close cooperation between Youke and NVIDIA and Unreal 5, which provided a lot of technical support. In turn, hardware manufacturers also regarded "Black Myth" as a key technology display, frequently promoting the game to global players on the international stage.

After I finished the third chapter and was blown away by the superb quality of the interscenes, I first got a feel for the atmosphere in which the upstream and downstream of the industry are working together for a single goal – even the animation contractors are doing their best to make this work better, and there is a good chance that "Black Myth" will be popular after it is released.

Vaguely, there seemed to be a kind of beauty that everyone rubbed atomic bombs together back then. No matter how big the yield was, a mushroom cloud was indeed about to explode.