Monkey King rules? You better believe it

China’s newly released video game is a massive global hit and industry game changer.

SOMETHING huge exploded on Aug 20, 2024, in China, and it has sent shockwaves around the world. But unless you are a player, you might not have felt the impact because the explosion occurred in the video gaming world.

This is the release of the role-playing game called Black Myth Wukong (BMW).

I happened to know about it because I stumbled upon an early teaser trailer in 2020 and had kept it on my watch list. It was released four years later and became an instant global sensation.

In just three days, the game sold 10 million copies, raking in US$600mil (RM2.6bil) for Game Science, the company that created it, making it one of the fastest-selling video games of all time.

Despite attempts by some so-called gaming journalists to criticise the game as lacking in diversity and the developers as sexist, the overwhelming majority of people who actually played it have hailed it as a true masterpiece.

What makes it so momentous is that BMW is what is known as an AAA (pronounced as triple A) production by a small indie outfit in China.

The criteria for such a classification are many: The game must be technically complex with cutting-edge graphics, high interactive gameplay mechanics, top-quality video and music, long development time, big budgets and big teams.

BMW ticked all the boxes except for the last two because Game Science worked with a comparatively tiny budget and team. More on that later.

As for criticisms that it lacked diversity and that one of the company founders had made crudely sexist remarks, these have been like water off a duck’s back because most gamers have found them irrelevant.

For Chinese people everywhere, Wukong is immediately familiar because that is the name of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, a much loved figure from Chinese folklore dating back hundreds of years, and a key character in the well-known 16th century fantasy tale, Journey to the West, that millions of people in Asia grew up with.

BMW is a single player game, and in this rendition of the legend, the gamer does not play as Sun Wukong himself, but a character called the Destined One who is chosen to fulfil a prophecy.

The game starts off with a cutscene of an epic fight between Sun Wukong and the three-eyed deity Erlang Shen, another legendary, extremely powerful character in Chinese mythology. Erlang defeats Sun Wukong whose six senses are scattered across the land.

The Destined One turns out to be a descendant of Sun Wukong, and his perilous quest is to reclaim the latter’s six scattered senses or relics. And that is the premise of the game.

BMW has been so well received because the creators have stayed true to the folklore, the character’s origins and abilities, and enriched the game with faithful depictions of real historical locations.

My game playing has been limited to a few mobile games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds, and even on those, I didn’t do well. A role-playing game that requires nifty fingerwork on the controls of the gamepad or a PC keyboard was always too hard for me.

But now at 65, I was so impressed by the clips I saw on YouTube, especially the opening video introduction, that I wanted to play BMW.

I also wanted to know why it’s so spectacularly well received, so I asked my daughter Kelly and her boyfriend Gino Kolling, who are both video game artists.

As it turned out, Gino had bought and completed playing the game in 40 hours, and he had nothing but whole-hearted praise for it. He should know, as he worked on Baldur’s Gate 3, which won Game of the Year 2023.

Since I wanted to have a feel of BMW, I visited them on Sunday and saw and heard it in its full glory on Gino’s high-powered PC and speakers. Sure enough, I had trouble figuring out how to control the buttons and thumbsticks. By sheer luck, I managed to kill an evil monk in the game and then died repeatedly after that.

From Gino’s perspective, BMW is nearly flawless in practically all departments. The amazing and meticulous attention to detail was evident throughout the game. As an example, he showed me the many types of armour that Wukong can wear.

Indeed, I was gobsmacked by the textures, colours, layering, embroidery, metalwork and sheer fluidity of how the armour moved.

For Kelly, who designs costumes for characters, the creativity and rich details were a feat in both design and modelling.

Gino also pointed out how realistic other aspects of the game were, like the footprints in the snow, the way the water parted or rippled, the individual strands of hair blowing in the wind, the falling leaves, and the gorgeous play of light and shadow.

What is yet another winning aspect, for him, are the many enemies Wukong has to fight.

In gaming parlance, they are usually called “bosses”, but in BMW, they are called yaoguai, meaning strange monsters or demons. There are 100 yaoguai for the player to fight and they are all amazingly unique and imaginatively crafted.

Then there is the panoramic scenery and surroundings that give it a cinematic experience. They are so beautiful and detailed, Gino would pause many times just to take in the stunning visuals.

As an artist in the industry, he absolutely appreciates how much time and effort were spent on crafting this magical world filled with many real-life rock carvings, statues, paintings, temples and grottoes.

Indeed, the game features 36 historic locations throughout China, with 27 in Shanxi province.

Because of that, it has sparked a boom in cultural tourism with millions of gamers now drawn to discovering the rich historical and cultural heritage of China.

This is soft power at its best. Earlier generations, including mine, grew up admiring the West as we were fed on Western pop culture and fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. BMW has piqued the interest of millions around the world to learn about Chinese mythology and folklore, especially the 100-chapter Journey to the West tale.

Black Myth Wukong is not the first top-selling, critically acclaimed game from China. There is the 2020 Genshin Impact that my older girl Jill is a huge fan of.

But it has heavy Japanese anime influences in the art and even the name.

BMW has also reclaimed Wukong, which many thought was inspired by Japanese manga Dragon Ball’s main protagonist Son Goku when it is the other way around.

Even the “making of” of BMW is a worthy tale. Fans have described it as a labour of love, and based on interviews with the founders of Game Science, that does seem to be the case.

The company first gained attention when it released a 13-minute demo trailer of BMW in August 2020. The quality was so good that it shocked the industry because it was not produced by a prestigious AAA gaming company but an unknown small independent studio from China where the trend was towards making mobile games.

Game Science was started by three ex-employees of China’s media giant Tencent – Feng Ji, Yang Qi and Jiang Baicun.

As the story goes, over six years, they assembled a comparatively small team of 140 people (typically, teams range from 200 to 500 people) and worked on a budget estimated to be US$40mil.

In contrast, the award-winning 2020 game Cyberpunk 2077 by a Poland-based company reportedly cost more than US$400mil to make. That’s why BMW is being seen as an industry game-changer.

Finally – at least in this column – I must mention the music. I am obsessed with the original soundtrack with its diverse range of genres. But the song that has millions reportedly crying with delight is Celestial Symphony because it is a breathtaking and moving reinterpretation of the theme song from the iconic 1980s TV series, Journey to the West.

The songs are featured in the game as music videos done in diverse animation styles. Good thing is, you can watch and listen to them on YouTube. That’s what Aunty has been doing all week.

So what’s next for Game Science and BMW? In an interview with IGN China after the release of its 2020 trailer, Feng said he and his team have plans to build a Chinese Black Myth universe, like Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.

After all, Journey to the West is just one of the many wonderful, enduring stories in Chinese mythology and history.

If Game Science continues to put as much passion and dedication in future works, we can expect more great things ahead. China boleh? You can bet on it.

As for me, I will stick to watching YouTube videos of gamers fighting the yaoguai while munching on kuaci.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.