Here’s something entirely new: Game Science head Feng Ji was taken aback by how quickly the pre-alpha footage of Black Myth: Wukong gained attention and traction.
Beautifully rendered environments with a healthy number of animations and abilities readily on display wowed nearly everyone that saw the footage coming from an unknown studio, and the video went viral across the gaming industry.
A completely unknown title just reared its head and astonished everybody; that alone is a massive surprise within the industry that relies so heavily in recent years on marketing and campaigns. It gets a bit odder, still.
Feng Ji has made a post on Weibo, apologizing to fans for astonishingly tiny details that he feels was not representative of the studio’s best work. Further, he is asking fans to ‘forget what they saw’ as it wasn’t representative of the studio’s capabilities and competence.
The viral trailer that blew everyone’s minds isn’t good enough for the studio Game Science; they’re apologizing for a trailer that makes triple-A titles look amateurish.
Jeng Fi pointed specifically to small details that many didn’t even notice: sculpting of smaller 3D models, a lack of water physics effectively applied, and a frame-rate drop during the ‘thousand enemy Musou sequence’ which ‘horrified’ the developers when they saw that the entire world had latched onto their offerings.
The title itself is quite a long ways away; the entire purpose of the video was to entice more developers to come and work at the small studio, and Game Science is concerned that many are taking the video to mean that Game Science itself is a massive studio within China when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Game Science is far closer to an indie studio than anything, with 30 developers out of 40 staff members, and they’re desperately looking for more.
After the massive note that everyone made of the title yesterday, however, it’s very likely that publishers are chomping at the bit to fund the title and get a piece of the pie when it finally releases; speculation that Microsoft and Sony are both trying to get Game Science into their pocket has been wide-ranging, yet no concrete proof has been offered from any party as of yet.
It’s important to note, however, that the trailer that was seen is not representative of the entirety of the title; it could wildly change as it makes its way through the gauntlet of development that can take years to fully realize. Not that this will stop the hype-train anytime soon; that thing left the station yesterday.