There exists a story from long ago about a pious monk who embarked on a perilous journey to the west, to receive scriptures from the Buddha himself. Aided by a former river ogre, a dragon in the form of a horse, a slovenly pig demon, and an immortal monkey king seeking redemption.
Black Myth: Wukong (黑神话：悟空) is an upcoming single-player Souls-like RPG, developed by Game Science. It was "announced" on August 20th, 2020, with a 13-minute gameplay trailer where it positively exploded with hype. From there, the company has produced a couple more trailers but has remained cagey about what the actual plot of the game is.
Another 12-minute gameplay trailer was released one year after the first one, on August 20th 2021, giving a few more details but still remaining vague about the game's exact plot.
Another year later, on August 20th 2022, a 6-minute in-game cut-scene was released, showing a bit of the story but without any context.
An offcial release date trailer was uploaded on December 8th 2023 in both english and chinese marking the first time a trailer for the game was dubbed in english.
It is planned for release on 20 August 2024 for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X, and Microsoft Windows.
Black Myth: Wukong provides examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: The gameplay demo seems to take place before Wukong's famous journey, with him being a largely untested vagabond on the hunt for more power. But some comments from NPCs put that interpretation into question, with a mini-boss even hinting at there being another monkey like the one currently played. An earth god references the fire that burned down the Guanyin Temple, an event that took place at the start of the journey in the original book. And finally, the ending of the demo has the protagonist intercepted by what appears to be the real Sun Wukong in all his Victorious Fighting Buddha glory and without the tightening fillet.
- Bilingual Bonus: All of the promo material's dialogue is in Chinese, and there are some parts that aren't even subtitled. Even with the subtitles added later on, there are a lot of inherent double meanings you probably won't get from the translation.
- Crapsack World: What the trailers paint the land the protagonist traverses as, which is a far cry from the Adventure-Friendly World of the original epic. Civilization lies in ruins, demons run rampant everywhere, the human population is nowhere to be seen, except as mutilated corpses in the demons' hideouts, and almost everyone the protagonist interacts with in the trailers and demos either acts hostile towards him or attacks him.
- Good Is Not Soft: Invoked by one of the narrators in the release date trailer, who tells his young student that good "without teeth" has no chance of punishing evil and is bound to be defeated.
- Shapeshifting: The protagonist has this ability, as expected for someone who appears to be the Monkey King. So far he seems to be able to change into a cicada for a stealth approach, and can even transform into defeated mini-bosses as temporary power-ups.
- Shout-Out: The 13-minute gameplay trailer uses the theme from the 1980s adaptation of Journey to the West.
- Vocal Dissonance: Contrary to his gruff appearance, the protagonist's voice as heard in the promotional material when he screams, is very high-pitched and shrill, much befitting a monkey. Oddly, the other anthropomorphic monsters that populate the setting have very human-sounding voices.
- Wham Shot: The first official gameplay trailer ends with the protagonist having defeated Ling Xuzi and raising his staff for the killing blow - only to be blocked at the last second by another monkey, who appears to be the actual Sun Wukong.
