Black Myth: Wukong shows off a gorgeous in-game cutscene and fresh gameplay footage. Exploration, boss fights, and more are revisited.

Black Myth: Wukong Unveils In-Game Cutscene and New Gameplay Footage

Black Myth: Wukong is an Action RPG that was announced way back in 2020 for both PC and Consoles. The standout feature of the title is definitely its gorgeous visuals that run on Unreal Engine 5. Since the Black Myth: Wukong gameplay impressions last year, there hasn’t been too much news surrounding the budding soulslike.

However, this changed over the weekend. The official Black Myth Youtube Channel released an in-game cutscene that ran for roughly 6 minutes. At the same time, the official Nvidia GeForce channel also released about 8 minutes of gameplay. This featured 4k visuals and ray-tracing and Nvidia’s proprietary DLSS at work.

The Black Myth

Black Myth: Wukong is loosely based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. The 100-chapter tome has boundless amounts of characters, but one of the most famous is Black Myth’s protagonist: Sun Wukong the monkey king. This character is known to be born from a stone that was imbued with the power of the Five Elements. Wukong was thus able to learn various combat techniques, transformations, as well as guile and trickery.

Game Science intends to bring Wukong to life, as well as the rest of the world of the Journey to the West. They want to make people more aware of Eastern Mythology, which has rich accounts of both heroes and villains, and everything in between. Conflicts between good and evil, as well as rebellions against the heavens themselves, are just some of the happenings in this novel.

The 6-minute in-game cutscene was an extended look at some ancient sisters offering up a man to wed their mother. While the sequence is excellently rendered, and well choreographed, facial animations somewhat tend to lean a bit too close into the uncanny valley. It might be deliberate, however, as these entities are no mere sisters living in an ancient temple.

Without spoiling too much of the footage, we do see that the wedding night doesn’t end too well for some of those involved. Just know that the techniques that Game Science used make the entire scene feel like something taken out from a Chinese epic movie.

Journey to the West

Nvidia’s gameplay footage is much more fast-paced than the in-game movie. It starts out with Wukong taking the form of a bee, and taking a nice morning flight through the forest. He comes upon a giant rock creature and combat ensues. Wukong begins thrashing the beast with his usual staff attacks and chugs his usual potions.

The fight is adorned with explosive special effects, such as Wukong summoning illusions to take the attention away from him for even just a moment. Our foe also has some flashy tricks up his robed sleeve, such as using the very earth against the Monkey King. He can create explosions from a central point, throwing up rocks and other debris in random directions.

It’s all visually spectacular, and even more so since the enemy design is so unique. This is refreshing especially because of the lack of Eastern Mythology in these types of games.

One new thing revealed is that Wukong can actually disengage from fights in Black Myth. He does run away from our oversized friend at one point, leaving illusions to take the hits. Wukong then goes on to collect various mushrooms and lights some incense at a Shrine that functions basically as a Site of Grace.

Exploring the Black Myths

To be able to keep track of all the wonderful Easter Mythology is a feature that we don’t really see in Soulslike games. Black Myth will have a handy Bestiary that will contain tons of information on the creatures and characters that we encounter. All the information will also come with beautifully hand-drawn imagery of the beasts we’ve felled.

It also looks like there will be some form of Elden Ring-like exploration. Nooks and crannies with bountiful rewards exist within the world of Black Myth. One example shown in the new gameplay footage was when Wukong dispelled an entire waterfall with a snap of the finger, revealing a hidden passageway with a boss battle within.

Ready to Rumble!

The newly revealed boss battle is against a flying lightning dragon, complete with electrifying charged attacks. Wukong starts the fight out just like most, hitting the foe with his trusty staff and dodging incoming hits. He can also take upon a stone form to negate some of the heavier attacks directed at him, similar to the feature in Mortal Shell. What’s new, however, is that Wukong also unveils one of his new transformations. This thing:

I am honestly confused on what to say about this. The entity is bipedal, with what looks like crystals stuck within a mound of soil. It also has a distinct lack of arms. The game clearly will have some comical moments, as this unexplained transformation is also accompanied by some hilarious music that is totally not appropriate for battle with a dragon.

I digress, as the odd creature is weirdly capable in combat. It is able to smash itself unto the boss multiple times, dealing blunt damage. The transformation concludes when Wukong just decides to lay down on the boss, shattering his new form entirely.

Welcome to the Black Myth Parade

Black Myth: Wukong looks really impressive. We do, however, hope that the game will play just as good as it looks. As entertaining as having one weapon throughout the game, like in Sekiro, we do hope that there will be more variety and tools available to keep combat interesting. Wukong also canonically has around 72 transformation forms, so it would be exciting to see how many Game Science can realistically implement into the game.

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For more news, check out our Weekly RPG News Roundup, Bloodstained Ritual of the Night Adds Journey-Inspired Area, Boss and Item, and Inkbound is a Cooperative Roguelite that Invokes Torchlight Vibes.