Much like in 2021, the developer behind Black Myth: Wukong has released a new video for the game to celebrate the Lunar New Year for 2022. This time, Game Science Studios gives us a sneak peak behind the scenes of the game, showing off some expert motion capture tech. Well, okay. That’s certainly what the footage alludes to, but only at first. It doesn’t take too long for this 12-minute video to start smelling a bit fishy. The pretense completely vacates once the glitched-out tiger shows up, revealing that the video is just a prank made by the Black Myth team.
Of course, the developer doesn’t exactly hide the joke. A disclaimer under the video on YouTube reads: “This is a work of fiction with absolutely nothing to do at all with actual people or events or how we are working on the game. Yeah, right. We are still working on it.”
Still, if you simply jumped into the footage without the context, you’d no doubt get taken along for the ride. It highlights from the, ahem, Game Science team, talking about the challenges faced in making the game. Specifically, it highlights issues that come with creating realistic motion-captured animation for non-human creatures. As the game leans heavily on Chinese myth, it introduces many fictional beasts that you can’t just strap mocap gear to.
This is the Year of the Tiger, so of course Game Science jokingly gathered up a bunch of house cats to animate its tiger enemy. The results? Well, you can see for yourself at 7:50.
Bad kitty
As you can see, things take a bit of a bad turn. The tiger, with a sword uselessly floating next to its body, starts snapping around the playing field. Every time it settles in a place, the tiger begins animating like one of the aforementioned cats, licking its paw and chasing after some unseen toy. After this silly display, it makes like Team Rocket and blasts off into space, possibly returning to its home planet. Yes, I did use two references in one sentence. It’s called writing.
For some who have been waiting on an update to the game, the video might come off as disappointing. But it’s all in good fun. Hopefully Game Science brings something new in the coming months. For now, check out the bizarre tiger in the video above, and wait to hear more on Black Myth: Wukong.
“Roses are red. Violets are blue. Don’t have new demo this time. Will share when we do,” writes Game Science. “A BIG greeting from Game Science. Happy Year of the Tiger! Keep fit and roar on!”
