Gamers admit they were wrong about Black Myth: Wukong as final trailer drops

The game looking ‘too good to be real’ is almost here

Game Science

Gamers often have very strong opinions about things despite having virtually no background or context on the things they have an opinion on – the initial announcement of Black Myth: Wukong is a good example of that. Back then, the prevalent opinion was that the game looked way too good to be real or that the shown footage was a vertical slice of gameplay created as a scam without the actual game it belonged to existing.

With the final trailer for the action RPG having arrived, the game having gone gold, and the Black Myth: Wukong release times being set, some online commentators are owning up to their errors. 

“I was saying the game looked fake back when it got revealed simply because it looked too good to be real for basically a debut title,” one commenter on Reddit admitted. “Lies of P was similar in that way to me, but that one turned out great and I hope Black Myth: Wukong does too.”

Some users argued that people had good reason to be skeptical at the time as developer Game Science did not have a great track record ahead of Black Myth: Wukong’s announcement – that is a valid point.

As others pointed out, though, a good deal of anti-Chinese sentiments fueled that past wave of negativity as well. Four years ago, when the game was first revealed to the public, the Western view of the Chinese games industry was not a positive one – possibly the biggest factor leading to change in this regard, the release of Genshin Impact, would take place a month after Game Science first showed off Black Myth: Wukong.

This really speaks to the fact how quickly Chinese developers like HoYoverse turned opinions about their work around on a global scale. Game Science contributed to that with a policy of transparency – it regularly released footage showing the current state of gameplay, keeping potential players interested and convincing skeptics that the game is, indeed, real.

“Looks great. From the beginning it looked too much like a tech demo to be true, especially the animations,” one such former skeptic wrote. “Over the past two years or so, slowly as they approached finishing the game it looked more and more like an actual game with fun to be had. Very excited.”

With many Chinese studios pivoting towards high-budget single-player games that have global appeal, Black Myth: Wukong is just the tip of the iceberg. The action RPG is set to arrive on PC and PS5 on August 20, 2024. Information on the Xbox Series X|S release will be following “soon” according to the developer.