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It’s done. It’s really done.

After the "champagne bombardment" of domestic media a few days ago, I think it's time to buy "Black Myth: Wukong》are now playing it.

The game also directly became the number one trending search on Weibo today.

But there may still be some friends who are holding on to their coins and waiting. After all, on the other hand, the 54 media included in the overseas MC gave the game an average score of 82 points, mentioning issues such as combat perspective, exploration rhythm, map recognition, performance optimization, and localization.

Of course, I can also pick on some details and point out some design flaws, but I don't think it's necessary. Because the overall look and feel of "Black Myth: Wukong" is good enough for people to ignore these details. And the game will have a first-day patch, and some technical problems should be significantly improved.

And I don't want to say the same old things to cool down the market and lower players' expectations. Because the real good things are like this, no matter how high or low your expectations are, good things are good things.

For most people who haven't played the official version, I think Black Myth: Wukong can only exceed expectations. This is because the game science is so good at hiding things. To put it bluntly, you can even think that they have been "pretending to be grandsons" before.

The things shown in those trailers and trial levels are either the novice level "Black Wind Mountain" or the hidden map "Purple Cloud Mountain". A few boss battles have fooled everyone - is this the game's best feature?

But who could have known that the truly amazing content of this game had not been leaked at all.

Pansi Cave, Huanghua Temple, Huoyan Mountain, impressive boss battle performances, a large area for exploration with the Somersault Cloud, magic weapons... the scale of this game is much bigger and better than it looks.

So don't worry that this article will make you lose too much surprise. Don't worry, the material I released is just the tip of the iceberg of the game.

Even some heavy content that can completely change the look and feel of the game has been placed by the team in hidden maps that require a lot of prerequisites to enter. This confidence in the volume of game content is so much that it makes me feel a bit extravagant, like walking in brocade clothes at night.

Some people may think that I am exaggerating a bit, but I believe that once you play this game yourself, it will be hard to believe that it was made by a team of 100 people who have only made two mobile games, one online game, and have no experience in stand-alone game projects.

Not to mention, this project was born in the Chinese game market, which is absolutely centered on commercial mobile games: long cycles, high risks, low return ceilings, talent gaps, lack of project accumulation, unclear market demand... In the face of so many debuffs, "Black Myth: Wukong" actually jumped out of the stone and achieved things that many industries have never done.

In the past, there were three long-standing design problems in the domestic game industry: levels, narrative, and sound, because mobile game projects did not really need these things, or the cost-effectiveness of these things was too low.

Of course, in recent years, many mobile phone projects have made some efforts and breakthroughs in these aspects, but due to the constraints of mobile usage scenarios and the free in-app purchase business model, it is difficult to let go and achieve the ultimate.

Either the game is too small, the overall level structure cannot be developed, and the game ends before it even begins; or the game takes the general user market into consideration, lowers the threshold to the lowest level, and the levels are bland and just a formality. The narrative performance has improved a lot, but under the influence of long-term operation and commercialization, the story is inevitably fragmented and can only serve the characters.

Although domestic stand-alone games do not have these restrictions, due to project resources, R&D experience and other reasons, some of the final products still follow the maze ideas of the turn-based RPG of the "Three Swords Era", while others try to use 2D horizontal version of the Metroidvania, which is difficult to meet everyone's modern imagination of domestic 3D action adventure games. There is no need to mention the performance and sound effects, just a rough idea is enough, and I dare not expect too much.

Black Myth: Wukong has achieved all of the things that others have not achieved.

Let’s talk about levels first. Black Myth: Wukong is the first domestic game that has truly mastered the concept of “3D levels”. The first level is just a tutorial for beginners, the second level initially demonstrates the existence of game levels, and by the third and fourth levels, the scale and complexity of exploration have made a qualitative leap.

It is no exaggeration to say that after completing the third level, my view and evaluation of this game completely changed.

How big can it be? Do you remember the white dragon boss in the snow in the previous demonstration? You thought it was the big monster at the end of the level? In fact, it was just the beginning of the entire third level. In terms of the volume of the process, the third level is probably several times larger than "Black Wind Mountain". Every time I play a section, I will sigh: I haven't finished it yet?

Due to the large size of the map, the game also provides players with a more convenient exploration ability - transforming into a fox, moving at high speed without consuming stamina, and avoiding many monsters. This transformation is different from the previous golden cicada. Players can use props to transform anytime and anywhere, and realize the experience of parkour, opening treasure chests, and continuing parkour to explore the map.

Of course, this ability also has limitations and can only be used in the third level, just like the jeep in "Uncharted 4".

How complex can the level structure be? Indeed, in terms of narrow and cramped spaces, winding paths, and various hidden passages, the game is still not as good as the Souls series or 3D Metroid, but the fun of exploration is already quite good. Take Pansi Cave as an example. The level structure here highlights a layered structure that requires players to explore from top to bottom.

There are endless forks in the road, which tests the player's ability to read and remember maps. If you are not careful, you will miss many of them. You may remember the location of one or two forks, but after you have taken two or three turns, you may forget where the original fork was.

As for narrative performance, it is the absolute majority of the game content and its essence. In order to keep the biggest surprise for everyone, I will not show too much material here, but only put a case as a reference.

There are many performances like this in the game, and this is not the upper limit of the grand performance scenes. For example, the famous line "Since you have seen the future, why not worship it" comes from a very impressive and memorable boss battle.

The most important battle performance in the whole game is the hidden level of the Four Heavenly Kings. Whether you have seen this performance or not will directly affect your evaluation of the performance standards of the game.

No matter how much praise I give, it will be pale. I can only say that the performance is so powerful that it can compete with "Final Fantasy 16" and "God of War: Ragnarok" which are known for their high-standard performances.

Coupled with the unique tone brought by the game's full interpretation of Chinese traditional culture, I dare say that this scene has the scenes that most Chinese players dream of.

The game's use of music and sound effects is also mature and doesn't seem like the team's first release. The sound effects of various hits, collisions, and ground walking are well done, and the background music is either heavy or long, all integrated into the narrative and scenes. The "Rebirth Mantra", which was previously popular because of the Tang Dynasty electronic music and cyber chanting, comes from a boss battle. When the music sounded, it really gave me goosebumps.

You can listen to music while playing games

After putting all the above together, we got a game with quite large content and volume: when I didn't get stuck for too long and almost only did the main story, the final clearance time was 35 hours. The game also has multiple playthrough elements, and the second playthrough gives new spells and unlocks a new development system.

To use the words of comedy performance, "Black Myth: Wukong" is always "doubling". When you think that a certain part of the content has exceeded your expectations, they immediately serve up something even more beyond your expectations in the next scene. My emotions and surprises are always one after another until the very end.

The influence of Black Myth: Wukong is obvious to all. It was already a phenomenal product before it was released. Because I participated in several trial games and wrote several articles, I was approached by several securities companies a while ago, all of which wanted to do paid consulting on Black Myth: Wukong.

They have many questions, but it all comes down to how much money can 3A stand-alone games make? What are the related companies? Which stocks have opportunities in the future? For example, after the game topped the Steam global pre-sale in June this year, Zhejiang Edition Media was associated with it because it helped the game get the version number, and its stock price rose a lot.

After the first exposure of "Black Myth: Wukong", more domestic 3D action-adventure games emerged: "Ming Late: Feather of Yuanxu", "Shadow Blade: Zero", "Ape Sword: Awakening of the White Ape", "Codename: Jinyiwei", "Daba: Land of Water Mark"... Many people told me that the popularity of "Black Myth: Wukong" gave them confidence in the market.

And after the game goes on sale today, its impact on the Chinese gaming industry will be further amplified.

Because from the quality of the product itself to the enthusiasm of the player market, there is no need to worry too much about its commercial performance. The return on investment is a foregone conclusion, the only difference is whether it is a small success or a big success. I personally estimate that 5 million copies are not difficult to sell, and the long-term sales target should be 10 million copies. The fact that domestic teams can make money by making 3A stand-alone games will soon be confirmed.

This means that the investment scale of stand-alone buyout projects has the opportunity to increase. In the past, it was already difficult for the domestic game market to get millions of dollars in investment, whether it was an independent or small- and medium-sized buyout game, not to mention large projects that required tens of millions of dollars. But after the huge success of Black Myth: Wukong, everyone always wants to know where the next one will be.

For peers working on similar projects, "Black Myth: Wukong" can be regarded as a model, providing many specific reference cases, from difficulty design to development ratio, to ease of use of functions, narrative rhythm, and so on.

Unlimited free return to city

In addition to the design ideas of the product itself, there are also a series of market issues such as how to promote it? How to avoid risks? What kind of public opinion will appear? What should the unit price of domestic 3A games be? Game Science has also stepped into a series of pits for everyone.

At the same time, the game also allows the upstream and downstream industries to obtain a group of talents with real experience in domestic 3A projects, such as dubbing, motion capture, directing, level, etc. As more and more similar projects are launched, the industry accumulation will naturally rise and gradually mature.

But it is worth noting that as the first 3A game in China, Black Myth: Wukong may have set a high starting point. From now on, players may use it as a new standard for judging - a team of 100 people, 6 years of development, and a price of 268 yuan, which corresponds to something of such a scale.

After the domestic 3A games have been truly developed from scratch, both the sentiment of the players and the market sentiment will be consumed. It will be much more difficult for latecomers to achieve the same level of market performance in the same track. Because you have to make the product meet or even exceed the expectations of users based on "Black Myth: Wukong".

Will the big companies set up stand-alone projects? It's hard, but not impossible. Although I can't speculate whether the motivation of the big companies to make stand-alone games is because of "Black Myth: Wukong", according to Grape Jun, there are indeed several big companies that are already working on large-scale commercial stand-alone projects.

For example, it has been reported before that Lingxi President Zhou Bingshu is leading a team to develop a stand-alone project based on the Three Kingdoms theme, Gongzhangjun is working on a stand-alone Xianxia ARPG at NetEase Leihuo, and the new work of the Ratetu team may also be a stand-alone project.

In fact, those terminal projects that are not stand-alone games that are bought out are increasingly emphasizing the single-player experience. Apart from free in-app purchases and long-term operations, they are almost stand-alone games that require an internet connection.

For example, there isZeldaThe series' main planner Kentaro Tominaga participated in the new work "Infinite Nikki" by Paper Games, and "The Pascal's Wager" producer Yang Yang is currently working on "The Contract of Everything". Even Tencent's "Delta Operation》, a device that is said to be as large as "call of Duty》series of single-player campaigns.

It may sound a bit cruel, but even if Black Myth: Wukong really sold 10 million copies, its revenue would still be far from the huge and continuous returns brought by the hit mobile game.

Of course, popular mobile games are a minority among the minority, but it is undeniable that "Black Myth: Wukong" has indeed reaped the benefits of being the "first 3A crab", gaining unprecedented attention in the market and even becoming a hope - everyone, or most people, hope that this project will succeed.

Players are eagerly waiting, media KOLs are competing to report on it, and even official agencies such as the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and Xinhua News Agency are doing their best.

There are also brands such as Luckin Coffee, Didi, JD.com, Lenovo, Hisense, etc. lining up to cooperate. No domestic game has ever enjoyed such treatment before.

Even God has to advertise the game.

In addition to the spontaneous promotion of the game by various people, more practical help is also not lacking. For example, EIPC and NVIDIA's strong support: NVIDIA's panoramic ray tracing, DLSS 3.5, Unreal Engine 5's Nanite virtual geometry technology, Lumen's real-time lighting, virtual height field mesh(Detailed terrain and dynamic snow)...... Chinese single-player games have never fought such a rich battle. Game producer Feng Ji himself said that "Black Myth: Wukong" has reaped the benefits of technology.

Of course, in business, many of the above are also commercial cooperation. But based on the mentality of "hoping this project can succeed", even if the price is the same, the quality of service and the degree of care received by "Black Myth: Wukong" are higher.

For example, art outsourcing. Yang Qi once introduced their outsourcing costs: the price of making a flower pot or a rockery is more than a real Podocarpus; making a large building costs hundreds of thousands, which is almost enough to build a building in a town. But behind the high cost is their demand for details, "Once we asked an outsourcer to carve a window, and they said they didn't want to do such a simple thing for us. As a result, when we sent it to them, we found a picture of the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea on the window."

Judging from the results, the game's art assets are indeed top-notch. With the same project cost of hundreds of millions, it is difficult to see so many extremely detailed objects, buildings, mountain vegetation... even wine bottles(Blood Bottle)The appearance of the monster will change with each upgrade, which is unimaginable in a game that also uses the blood bottle setting.

On the other hand, Black Myth: Wukong had to bear greater risks before it could succeed: the first two years were spent on making demos, and in the four years after the first exposure, except for a few media KOLs and users who went to the site to try it out, the game had not been tested on a large scale, nor was there any so-called data support. All the market's expectations came from the retelling of the film and media KOLs; product development came from the team's own understanding of stand-alone games.

Not to mention the technical or design difficulties of the game itself. The game science team really performed exceptionally well on this product. Other projects with the same investment scale and team size may not be able to achieve the level of "Black Myth: Wukong" currently presented.

Equally difficult to change are the right to speak and cultural barriers. Regardless of whether you think that overseas media such as IGN and GS are fake media, and whether you think that TGA is a fake award, everyone still secretly hopes that "Black Myth: Wukong" can get high scores from the old console media and win the TGA annual award at the end of the year.

Because North America, Europe, and Japan are still the absolute core of the global console market, the Chinese market size is almost invisible in the overall market. Compared with the global promotion of Japanese pop culture, such as ninjas and samurai, there are still too few Chinese traditional cultures that have truly gone abroad as entertainment products.

But it is also for this reason that if domestic single-console games want to succeed, they still have to face the global market. Otherwise, relying solely on the domestic market, most games will still find it difficult to make money, except for a few products like "Black Myth: Wukong" that have the right time, place, and people.

In other words, the so-called domestic 3A, even after the success of "Black Myth: Wukong", is still a job with high risks and great difficulty, but the rewards are not enough to match it.

Black Myth: Wukong is certainly good, but its threshold is higher than any previous mobile game. Pricing, difficulty, game scenes, and even the plot all have cultural barriers. The Chinese game market is indeed huge, but the pressure of real life is also not small. Black Myth: Wukong is a luxury game in a sense.

This does not only refer to the price of 268 yuan. In fact, the real threshold of single-console games, especially those that are called "awesome" by everyone, lies in the energy and time invested. This time does not refer to how much time you have for pure entertainment, but the time you can concentrate on completing a challenge under certain pressure.

For practitioners, the project "Black Myth: Wukong" also seems quite luxurious.

No need to worry about commercialization, no need to worry about new user retention, no need to consider social interaction and long-term operations, you can completely let go to perform the plot, polish the level structure, design the boss battle, and use sufficient resources and time to make the game you really like and really want to make. This is what many practitioners dream of.

For most people who work honestly in mobile game companies, it takes a lot of courage to quit their jobs and start their own business to work on stand-alone projects. In today's environment, I hear more real stories of people who choose to leave the game industry completely.

The pursuit of dreams is, after all, a privilege that only a few people have. Not necessarily those who have the resources and abilities, but also those who have the courage and perseverance.

At the end of the game, Game Science did not manage by industry, dividing everyone by position and rank, but by the time they joined the project. From the first 13 people in 2018 to the final team of more than 100 people, no one knows how much they have paid in this six-year journey to the west.

Game Science wrote a letter to players in the physical version of the game. Yang Qi wrote:

It may not be difficult to describe something, but it is really not easy to make the listener believe it.

It was not until the end of the project that I realized that it takes many years of practice to be able to speak eloquently.

The stories of gods, demons and monsters are always new, and the absurd and strange stories have traces to follow.

Fortunately, one day I was blessed with gold, and I should thank my old friend for responding to my request.

The way forward for cultivation is far more treacherous than the way back.

I hope that the next time we meet, you and I will be as new as when we first met.

Now looking back at the first article written by Grape Jun 4 years agoBlack Myth: Wukong ReportAt that time, players and game developers cheered on WeChat Moments, Zhihu, Bilibili, Weibo, etc. Because for game developers, our dreams seemed to be finally realized by others.

My thoughts after playing Black Myth: Wukong: A small hole has been opened in the sky of the Chinese gaming industry.

Now, I can finally say with certainty that our dream has truly been realized. It is not an unattainable dream, nor is it a false pie in the sky.

It's like a small hole in the airtight sky. You can certainly say that nothing has changed, you are still you, he is still him, and there will be no magical reversal in everyone's life. But you can also think that change has happened.

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