Hello. If this is the second time you see me on youtube, well, that means you are an avid game player roughly around the same time last year I made a video on Blackmyth Wukong's first game playing trailer video. This year. The second game playing video has just being released. Initially. I wasn't really thinking about making another video, but i've seen my regular drama review viewers telling me that they have seen on the internet people. were wondering, where was that chinese lady? So this is that video A couple of things before I start to talk about this newly released game playing video. First, I am not a game player in any sense the only game I play, which I actually haven't played for over a year is Sims And I only like the part where I build a house for the people. I don't even bother to have people living in them. This video will contain no comment on the actual game playing experience that is left to the professional game YouTubers to do The second is this game playing video. Actually contain thinks a lot of details referred to the original novel Journey to the West. Xi You Ji (西游记） referred to the very famous 1980s Television series, also referring to chinese history, architecture, religion, everything. So I subjectively picked out the things that I think might be interesting to international viewers, and I will have it time coded so that it's easier for you to find topics i'm talking about throughout. Also the stuff that i'm gonna talk about come from my own research plus me watching other people making analysis videos. If they say something, I go double check and see if that's true. And then I put it in this video. So i'll link some of the Bilibili chinese content creators' videos that i've looked at and used as a reference for my own video, but they're all in chinese and without english subtitle. This time i'm not gonna run the trailer. As I talk about it i'll just tell you the time code and then with the screenshot so that you can go and check out that particular part, right from the beginning of this video, you hear a narrator's voice. At the end of the video, you kind of have an idea about who this person would be. This person is addressing the group of the characters that are the central characters of Xi You JI, Journey to the West. You want this You want that you want that, but you are all gonna fail. This copy is probably written specifically just for this video. I doubt it will come out of the game exactly like that But the people that he is referring to are the four two legged characters in this core group. First is Tang Seng the tang monk within Journey to the West IP ip not really such a lovable character, then another monk who is really a river god/ demon. However, you wanna categorize him, not a good person to start with, but eventually turned good and decided to become a disciple of the monk, protect him and help him on his way to the west. Although he is pretty much useless, then it is addressing the monkey, the core character of Journey to the West also kind of the core character of Black Myth Wu Kong But then the Black Myth Wu Kong probably isn't the original Wu Kong We will have to wait till the game comes out to know exactly who that is. And then it is the pig who likes to eat. And that's probably the only thing he likes plus pretty girls and it totally excluded the horse. Often people just forget, it's actually five people's team, and the horse is actually a dragon who is actually a prince. He only takes the horse's form because the monk needs a ride. Nobody cares about the horse. I'm very sad about that. Around time code 00:18 you see a shot of quite incredible carvings. This it's taken from real site in china, Da Zu Shi Ke Dazu Rock Carvings, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is located in the place Dazu which is from the city Chonqing which is also my hometown one of the most interesting cities topographically speaking in the world. So if you ever wanna travel to China highly recommend you travel to my hometown, Chongqing pick one day out of your schedule, join a local tour package which will just take one day, get on the bus travel to Dazu Go see this incredible site. The carvings were made between the 9th and 13th century. Throughout those hundreds of years, people kept on adding stuff, so it eventually become what it looks like today Around 00:34 you'll see a low angle shot, slowly tracking towards, a stone fence that seems to be outside of a building that looks like the edge of a temple in the middle or three bigger figures on the side are two smaller figures and they are deities or gods from Daoism, Fu, Lu, Shou representing good luck, good fortune and longevity. So from that, we can tell that shot is taking place. In a Daoism temple Around 00:53 you'll see a quite interesting statue that looks like it's on the top of a roof of a building. And it is the center statue that sits on the beam of the roof of a temple. It is filled with details. And it's kind of suggesting Black Myth is Black Myth because it has twisted stuff that is not really following the canon. You'll see at the bottom, there are three turtle like animals. They all have Buddha heads on their back. The middle one is particularly big. And standing on top of that big turtle is a fat bellied monk. First, the turtle, it is a mythological animal called Ba Xia or many other names. It's an auspicious mythological creature Often it functions as something that holds an important stone tablet, often sits on its back in temples or in other type of ancient important architecture. This round bellied monk is a chinese version of the Bodhisattva/Buddha Maitreya in Buddhism. It is considered that our current world is still under the time of current Buddha, which is the Buddha who lived around 2,500 years ago in ancient India, although it's been 2,500 years, We are still within his teaching time frame. And then in the future, when the teaching time of our current Buddha runs out, a new Buddha would come. And that will be the future Buddha. That will be the Maitreya Buddha that will be in chinese. Mi Le Fo So this buddha is currently technically still a Bodhisattva who is just one step away from full total enlightenment, but because he has already being recognized by our current Buddha as the future comer. So people would call him both a Bodhisattva and a Buddha The classic Maitreya Buddha looks like all the other Buddhas but in China Mi Le Fo often takes the shape of this. fat belly, laughing, happy monk reason being. There was a very famous monk during Wu Dai period, who is a very fat monk with big belly always smiling. He holds a huge sack on his shoulder all the time, and he was later remembered as Bu Dai He Shang, the sack monk. And he is also recognized or agreed upon later by Buddhism community as the actual incarnation of a Maitreya Buddha or Bodhisattva So in chinese Buddhism, the big bellied version is the better known and more beloved one. If you go to a Buddhist temple, usually this Buddha statue will show up in the last building because he is the future one. The reason that I say it's very creepy and not really the canon design of this type of statue is you will not see Buddha's head on the turtle back really like that in a proper temple. so this is showing this is not a normal temple, this is not the "good" temple at the time mark 01:00 you will see a shot from the inside of a temple of a grand golden, many hands Buddha statue. Qian Shou Guan Yin Thousand hands Guan Yin the most popular, Bodhisattva in chinese culture. It is hundred percent totally taken from the real statue and it is also located at Dazu Rock Carvings site. Another reason for you to go and visit and see it in its magnificence around the time code 01:20 the narrator is still talking. And he's saying, if you cannot put down your obsession, you are bound to fail. But the chinese line actually means if you cannot put down your idol. So I think that's just a translation decision. But the interesting thing is, as those lines are spoken, you see the camera pan across a group of statues and they are totally 100% based on real things. There is a temple called Yu Huang Miao, Jade Emperor Temple So from the name you can tell it is a Daoism temple located in the province, shanxi in the city Jingcheng and the statues you see in this video video are taken from the real clay statues within that temple. They were all made in Yuan dynasty and managed to be kept until today. Look at the photos of the real statue. and the game it's almost hundred percent copied, not sure how they did it, whether they just used a photo and recreated it 3D somehow or whether they actually went there to 3D scan the actual statue I can't tell. I'm not an expert in that, but i'm super impressed by it. And those statues are 28 in total number, although in the video you only see a couple of them and they are the 28 constellations in traditional chinese astrology and also in mythology, the ecliptic of earth is divided in four directions and for quadrant north, south, east, west, and each section of the ecliptic and the sky has seven constellations. So multiply by 4, 28 in total, and in the story of Journey to the West. And also in mythology, each of those constellation is represented by a god or a deity. And the fact is they're not very high ranking gods in the Daoism heaven's structure They do the dirty work, but don't get really recognition. And you see our main character, the monkey transform from a statue within that temple, which is one of the monkey's superpowers. And he walks into another kind of courtyard of a temple and see a huge statue. It is also one of the 28 statues from that real temple. This is the statue of the deity, Kang Jin Long which belongs to the east section of the ecliptic. And this is a very important role that we'll come across later Around 02:10 Our main character walks into this snow field with frozen zombies, and you'll hear a music instrument playing the very classic, very representative, very important Chinese ancient instrument. Qin the 7 string music instrument that looks like this. If you're interested to find out more about it, I do have a couple of videos on my channel talking about Qin just type in QIN in search, and you'll find them. 02:28 we see a really big monkey on the roof. This monkey is probably the game's design of a type of monkey that exists in the story of Journey to the West. called Chi Kao Ma Hou literally means red buttocks, giant monkey. It's wearing red pants in the game play so i'm just guessing naked butt that's red It's not really censorship friendly? because of that red pants people decided and feel that it must be that character. In the novel Journey to the West, it's been mentioned that there are 4 types of unusual, special monkey or apes that do not belong to any other categories of primates. And they each have very strong but different powers. The first one being a stone monkey which is Sun Wukong who was born out of a stone. The second one is this one Chi Kao Ma Hou, also very powerful monkey, the third one being Tong Bi Yuan, which is long armed ape. And then the 4th one being Liu Er Mi Hou, 6 ears monkey which is one of the major characters in Journey to the West who can copy Sun Wukong exactly and almost impossible to tell the difference, then we see a battle display of these two characters fighting in snow. I just have to say the snow texture is so good. When I saw the human movement, even the stick going through the snow, I was very, very impressed about how realistic it looks during this battle. You'll see a new skill that you haven't seen before in the first trailer of our main character. He drew a circle. That's like fire around him and it protects him. One of Sun Wulong's trick in the book and also in the television series in the 80s. Often when he has to go away to do something, he will use this magic, draw a circle around him (the monk) and say, Shi Fu, just stay in the circle and nobody can harm you. No one can get in. You'll be hundred percent safe guaranteed if you don't get out. And you know what happens right with this type of plot, usually when he leaves something will happen to make the monk step out of the circle and get grabbed by all kinds of monsters and demons. And the monkey has to go and save his Shi Fu again As Game Science has promised, they will use reference to the original ip the novel, all the skills, all the weapons from the book. Now you see one of its iteration very exciting after this fight. You see a bird with a human head flies in. The lines that this character speaks doesn't really have english subtitle, but basically he's kind of mocking at our main character and saying you may have skills, but you're unfortunate or you don't have the fate to get what you want. You should just give up or basically just stay here, but you're here. You must be like all the previous people who came here. You are all looking for "that thing". We do not know what that thing is, it's kind of a hook, and you have to play the game to find out what "that thing" is. Then you hear the bird say xiao xi tian, tu di, calling himself xiao xi tian is little west heaven, which is not west heaven. And we'll talk about that later. It has a lot to do with one of the plot in the book. tu di is earth. It is the type of localized. Little deities who's in charge of an area of land. You see a potato version of this type of local small gods in the first trailer. And this is a different type that has wings. And it may be based on a couple of mysterious creatures in chinese mythology, but there are different types that have human head and bird wings. So not sure which one it's based on, or maybe it's just the concept that's been used. And you see our main character turns into a bat and follows this local god and got led to frozen ice lake and epic reveal of a white dragon. I think for most game reviewers, when they saw the white dragon, that was the most exciting part for them. And I would agree it looks. epic First let's talk about dragon and then this particular dragon who most people in china believe this dragon is chinese dragon is different from western dragons in the west you see dragons mostly as evil creatures having bat like wings and breath fire whereas chinese dragons They're more like the water side of magic animals. and they don't have wings, there's only one type that has wings, but it's not bat wings. It is actually a mixture of multiple animals. Supposedly a dragon would have the head of a camel, the antlers of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow and neck looks like a snake, and it's belly looks like clam, and its scale looks like carp's and It has eagle's claws and it has palms of tiger. Yeah, taking the cool part of different animals and almost frankenstein, it into one mythological creature without wings. Dragon is able to fly. Dragons are also associated with weather, and often you see in folklores and mythology they have the ability to control rainfall or thunderstorm throughout the thousands of years of chinese history, dragon gradually morphed its shape and style until what we see today. It wasn't until Yuan dynasty that dragons have been decided in its final type of shape and look. And it's association with emperor after that only the emperor himself or the princes who are Emperor's sons can wear dragon on their body and the way to distinguish what type of dragon it is about how the head is positioned and also how many fingers they have on their claws. The five fingers are reserved for the emperor and the princes and the four finger ones and three ones are actually not dragon, but a different type called Mang which literally means python. But it's still a mythological creature, just one level down. And it's used for other aristocrat or important officials, but that didn't really got consolidated until Ming Dynasty. so coming back to the white dragon, we see in this game playing video, if you pay attention, its front legs have five (finger) claws its back legs have four (finger) claws It may just be an aesthetic choice made by the designer. I will still call it a dragon because it does have five claws of its front legs. But what is this is the dragon well this is the dragon form of that statue earlier. Kang Jin Long one of the deities who represents the east quadrant of the ecliptic. Kang Xiu, the Kang constellation. Jin means metal Jin (金) Mu (木) Shui (水) Huo (火) Tu (土) Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth In traditional culture, these five elements are represented by five different colors. The one coordinates with metal is white, which is why people think this definitely is Kang Jin Long a character in Journey to the West. Long means dragon. And if you look carefully, you'll see a horn on the top of the head of this dragon, a single one, which is also a defining feature of this character, Kang Jin Long in Journey to West. The interesting thing about this characters in the book. He is on the side of Su Wukong in the game playing, you see they're actually fighting against each other. well, that is one part of the mystery of what is really the story of Black Myth Wukong After this epic fight, they fall into the water and you hear the narrator's voice come back. He's talking, again, very annoying. He says at the conference or meeting of Ullambana Buddha said these things. First, what is Ullambana? It's a very important festival in Buddhism but also in traditional chinese culture. It happens on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month which only took place about 2 weeks ago and it is the traditional chinese ghost festival. Supposedly on the night, the gate of the ghost world will open all the ghosts who could not travel to our human realm can just that one night. and a lot of ceremonies will take place on the day to appease the ghosts and also pay respect to ancestors and also not a good night to go out alone, middle of the night for obvious reasons. But in Buddhism, this is also a very, very important day. It is often a day that huge ceremonies are held in temples to help, trapped ghosts, hungry ghosts to be fed, to be appeased and to be able to travel. To their next stage of reincarnation. Yu Lan Pen Jie in chinese. During that conference, Buddha has taught everybody about five important things. The five, you can translate that as commandments or precepts or rules. It is the basic 5 type of things you are not allowed to do if you want to become a proper Buddhist. 不杀生，不偷盗，不邪淫，不妄语，不饮酒 meaning no killing No stealing, no misconduct in sexual behaviors, including many different types of misconducts no wrong speech, including lying, including gossiping, including instigating fight between people. The final one is no drinking of alcohol, I guess in ancient time, there weren't that many intoxication stuff laying around. So wine is picked out as the one representing that. In contemporary life, it gets extended to not using addictive drugs and substance, but this narrator, he started to attack each rule, such as if there is no killing, then the hatred in this world will never end such as if you cannot drink, then the emotional upheavals will never get appeased Now you can tell this narrator is not a good person. This is the anti-Buddha almost type of role also within this grand speech of this character You hear three more rules that he attacked. These are not really standard rules from Buddhism. I'm guessing this is the game developers' copywriting Adding their own extra lines in the speech. This video is already getting very, very long. Thank you for your patience. We're gonna run through two or three more points, and that will be the end of it. At the time code 10:30 the shot goes into an interior of a quite magnificent wall of a temple, and the things are moving and talking to each other. This is very likely, pretty much 99% to be Xiao Lei Yin Si Little Lei Yin Temple in the story Journey to the West. Supposedly, the Buddha is living in Lei Yin Si thunder sound temple. But this one is "Xiao" Lei Yin Si little thunder sound temple. So it's not the real one. It is a copycat one. In the book. It goes that there is a temple that is called Xiao Lei Yin Si that our traveling pack arrived at the Shi Fu, and monk being who he is, believed it must be the temple where Buddha resides and they finally reached their destiny. Wu Kong was like... No it smells fishy and the monk insisted, even if it is not the temple that we're looking for, still, it's a temple, so it must have Buddha's statues in it we have to go and pay respect and very soon the pack will find out The monkey is correct It is not a good place to go. The monkey king encounters a very difficult enemy called Huang Mei, Yellow Brow. And he has a very strong weapon that we will talk about at the last bit of this video that managed to trap Su Wukong in it and Su Wukong couldn't get out In that part of the plot in the book there are multiple fights and battles happened between the monkey. and the bad guy and the monkey lost. Eventually they only got saved because outside help came in. And this yellow brow bad guy. Can you guess who he is and where he comes from? And who is his backing? in the most ironic way This is actually a servant boy of the future Buddha Maitreya Bodhisattva/Buddha the big belly smiling monk, yellow brow escaped from his duty got down to human realm, took away a couple very strong, magical weapons and stuff and decided i'm just gonna be the king of this mountain. And this is a very classic kind of thing that happens over and over and over in the story of Journey to the West, a lot of powerful creatures who are actually servants to bigger bosses decided to escape their duty and wreak havoc in the human realm. If you think about how that may be related to a type of political satire to the human politics and power structure, depending on from which angle you read the story, there are a lot of things to dig out of it. So in the book itself, eventually nobody can defeat this Yellow Brow They have to go and grab my Maitreya Buddha who is the owner of this misbehaving servant. Sometimes certain enemies are just impossible to defeat. You just have to find the power behind it who backs it up and then that person can just take care of it in a snap of fingers. Isn't that interesting? So among the talking figures on that beautiful wall carving, you see this yellow robe, big belly, but looking very angry and not laughing, character turns around and said, Ji Jian Wei Lai (既见未来), Wei He Bu Bai (为何不拜) That is the clue that made everybody decided this definitely is the part of the yellow brow plot, because it says since you've seen future, why don't you bow down to me? Future means the future Buddha. So this yellow robed person says he himself is the Maitreya Buddha of the future. This probably 99% is the yellow brow who just shape shifted himself into his owner Buddha. One thing I wanna point out is looking at that grand carving on the wall. It's also based on real things in china. It's likely to be a mixture of two different temples existing in two different locations. One is also in the province of Shanxi called Xi Xian Xiao Xi Tian Xi Xian is the county's name. Xiao Xi Tian is Little West Heaven and this temple contains some hanging carvings. It was made during Ming dynasty. The other temple is located in Xi'an. Lan Tian Shui Lu An Lantian is the place name and Shui Lu An is the temple's name within this temple you can also see this kind of hanging over structure of thousands of Buddhas' carving. I think the number is around 3,700 individual carvings and this temple is even older. It started in Tang dynasty afterwards during different dynasties. It got rebuilt over and over again At the very end of the game playing video, you see a snowy mountain, a huge metal thing, and the camera is close to it and slowly pulling away. This is likely to be the Jin Nao The weapon of yellow brow. It is the weapon that he used to trap. Sun wukong and Sun wukong couldn't break out. And the Kang Jin Long, the white dragon in the game version, used its horn to jam into it, to open the crack so that the monkey can come out. and you can hear this knocking sound of the metal. So it's probably suggesting the monkey is inside of that. Jin Nao similar to western music instrument, the cymbal 2 piece of metal dish hitting together and making a beat. and as it fades out, you see, the characters show up Dou Ba Jian Xian You Chu Fa 斗罢艰险又出发 Fighting off the difficult challenges and we start our journey again This is a line coming from the ending song from the 1980s (1986) television series of Journey to the West. And the most classic line from this song is asking where is the path? The path is underneath your feet Dou Ba Jian Xian You Chu Fa 斗罢艰险又出发 is one of the lines in the middle of this song and I think this comes fromt Game Science's very genuine expression of how many difficulties they have already come across and they will come across in the future to keep developing this game. In the year past, a lot of things have happened. For example, Tencent still manage to stick its hands into this business and got 5% of its share and this game developing team. They've also done some controversial thing on chinese internet, such as they sent out these announcement, looking for game developers to join the team, but they are all written in extremely inflammatory languages that got really bashed by the internet. Realistically don't look forward to it before 2023. In that case, we're likely to see another trailer a year from now. 20, 22, August or September, maybe the third trailer, maybe the final trailer before the final thing comes out, who knows and in this new trailer, I do see a great improvement from the first trailer in terms of using references of real things in China The first trailer actually has a lot of Japanese-vibe architecture that is not from China. Whereas this time, second trailer I do think they intentionally and carefully did research and start to use a lot of Chinese element. So that should conclude this video. Thank you for watching. AvenueX if you are a chinese drama viewer, you can stay subscribe and then watch my future videos on chinese dramas and occasionally on chinese culture. If not, well, still, thank you for watching my video. And let's hope I get to see you again. In a year's time. Bye for now. Please take care.
