Editor's note: This article is reprinted and integrated from the official account Southern People Weekly, with the original title of: "Dialogue with < Black Myths: Wukong> Producer Feng Ji: When you are at the peak of self-confidence, you are also in the abyss of ignorance", and "Creating Black Myths - Exclusive Interview with < Black Myths: Wukong> Production Team | Cover People", author Zhang Mingmeng, editor Li Tuimao.

From the moment "Journey to the West" came out, the monkey spirit that has repeatedly appeared in the small talk books since the Song and Yuan dynasties officially had a plump literary image - Monkey King.

In the more than four centuries since, along with countless novels, operas, picture books, film and television, animations and even video games derived from "Journey to the West", Monkey King has gradually become the most well-known mythological character on the planet, as well as the most unique totem in the spiritual world of Chinese.

Therefore, from the day "Black Myth: Wukong" was established and entered people's attention, it was inevitably expected and imagined far beyond its ontological value. It is seen as an aspect of a country's gaming industry capabilities, artistic aesthetics, and cultural narratives. In the 21st century, when video games have become an important cultural carrier, an expectation that is not taken for granted is self-evident today: a great civilization should have great games worthy of it.

A team that is not favored wants to use the most unique monkey in the hearts of the Chinese to make a work that attracts worldwide attention, which is undoubtedly an adventure no less than traveling west. Feelings can't be eaten, and making a game masterpiece that benchmarks against the international first-line requires not only unbridled gorgeous fantasies, but also a series of sophisticated and complex industrial processes.

Romance can be cruel, creating a black myth, a journey to look up at the stars, and a journey on thin ice.

This is the process of the birth of "Black Myth: Wukong", the legend of a spirit monkey who became a god after a catastrophe, and the story of a group of Chinese gamers who regained their original intention after following the crowd.

On August 12, 2024, in Zhuantang, Hangzhou, in the office of Game Science Company, the all-staff meeting is being held. The theme of this year's conference is "CE06 Officially Launched". From August 12th to August 19th, it is the sixth internal test time of the single-player game Black Myth: Wukong. On August 20, "Black Myth: Wukong" was officially released worldwide.

On August 20, 2020, "Black Myth: Wukong" released its first promotional video, and the number of views on station B exceeded 10 million on the same day, and it has exceeded 50 million so far, making it the game promotional video with the highest number of views on station B. Set in Journey to the West, the game claims to be China's first triple-A game in years (a common but not precisely defined concept in the gaming industry, generally used to refer to high-cost, high-volume, high-quality buyout stand-alone games), and ignited the enthusiasm of players the moment the trailer was released.

A sentence quickly spread through the player's mouth: "I was an assassin in Egypt, a demon hunter in another world, a dragon hunter, a knight, everything." Now I finally see a glimmer of hope that I can go back to the other world of my country to be a monkey brother. ”

Every year on August 20th, Game Science will release a new version of the trailer to show players their progress. Finally, in 2024, this day has become the game's release date.

According to the internal statistics of Game Science, in the first two weeks after the release of most games on major platforms, the complaints about the game focus on stability: the game is stuck, crashes, errors, screen crashes, server disconnections, etc...... These account for more than 50% of negative reviews. "It seems that everyone wants to pursue those metaphysical, advanced things, but if these (basic things) are not done well, it will be counterproductive." Feng Ji, founder of Game Science and producer of "Black Myth: Wukong", said.

The sixth edition of the test requires everyone to participate, and some will also get targeted sections and play repeatedly to find out the existing loopholes. As big as a stuck, black screen, flashback, ...... From typos to punctuation, all the art issues, performance issues, gameplay issues, and hard-to-reproduce issues are designed to enable members of the company to get through the game smoothly.

The fifth episode of the beta version has a CD-KEY (game redemption code), and after the overall clearance, the hidden achievements have their own special rewards, and the highest reward is a laptop co-branded by Black Myth.

I asked the colleague next to me how many times I could clear the customs, "I can't clear it once, I don't have time." ”

"Can anyone do it all?" "Under the great reward there will be brave men......" he said.

At the end of the meeting, Feng Ji read a piece of the experience of clearing the customs for readers and players sent by the game media - after the completion of the game production in August, Game Science successively invited a group of game media to try and evaluate in advance. The media did not hesitate to praise, but in the end it ended tragically: If "Black Myth: Wukong" is destined to become the fly ash of domestic 3A to the world, then I am willing to bury it.

Feng Ji thought about it, and the surroundings were quiet for a while, and a burst of laughter erupted.

I asked Feng Ji how he felt, and he said, "I am very touched and grateful, but there is still a long way to go, maybe we can do something ten times greater than now." This sentence says that when the game dies, he dies with it, but we are not ready to die...... We're not that sad, it's just a bunch of people doing what they love. ”

Finally, Feng Ji said that he also has a sentence about clearing the game and wants to tell players:

"I'm going to be a Destiny too."

▲ "Black Myth: Wukong" producer Feng Ji Photo/Southern People Weekly reporter Da Shi

"This is our first game and everything is experimenting"

Jiang Baicun, the head of planning for "Black Myth: Wukong", recalled a discussion he had with Yang Qi, the head of art, Yang Qi believes that the production standards of world-class triple-A masterpieces can be learned, taking "God of War" as an example, the character pushes a very old door, Kratos (the prototype character is Kratos, which is the deification of the concept of power) has great strength, the speed of pushing the door is very slow, and dust falls on the door, with sound effects, it feels like this is a very heavy and old door, "These things are details in the eyes of players, For us, that's the standard of production, the standard of triple-A games. Yang Qi said.

Under this standard, many pictures and plots are more demanding. The inspiring picture of Sun Wukong against 100,000 heavenly soldiers in the first version of the promotional video looks very smooth in the animation, but there are many difficulties encountered in the actual production: the stick has to be extended, bringing a large number of attacks and the basic animation has to be redone, every posture must be like the Great Sage, walking, turning, jumping, and being hit must be like the Great Sage, and the production team has to make a complete battle Great Sage for a prologue.

The bigger risk is that the fight is not fun to look at. One person beats 100,000 people, the essence is "mowing the grass", and the brainless flat A looks very boring. Even if you design some plots and performances, it is difficult to have interactive fun.

Even if these are overcome, there are performance issues. At the beginning, the production team planned to use 150 units to express 100,000 heavenly soldiers, but when they did it, they found that it was deserted. The complete technical animation is stacked on top of each other, and the heavenly soldiers on the periphery walk around the Great Sage, reacting to the Great Sage's behavior, which can ensure both performance and quantity. However, this effect performed very badly on mainstream graphics cards and CPUs, and the calculation was reduced to 15 or 16 frames per second. "We have to face a trade-off. It's the climax of the prologue, but it's boring in less than 30 seconds. Feng Ji said. Considering the pace of the battle, the presentation of the graphics, the performance of the game and other factors, the team finally abandoned this plan.

Jiang Baicun is the one who makes all kinds of wild ideas come to fruition, and in the process of making "Black Myth: Wukong", he cares a lot about the rhythm.

▲ Jiang Baicun, the person in charge of the planning of "Black Myth: Wukong", Photo/Reporter of Southern People Weekly, Big Food

His accumulation comes from many triple-A masterpieces and Hollywood movies around the world, and he believes that all narrative content should revolve around the ups and downs of narrative emotions, which is a high-level narrative presentation.

Taking the first chapter as an example, the planning team first determined that there were a total of 3 big bosses in this level, and the emotional high point focused on these three points, and the rest of the elite monsters and small monsters were arranged in a certain order, "For example, like Guangzhi is a 3-point level experience, then the next ghost (the strongest and challenging elite monster in this chapter) may be 4 points, to Lingxuzi (the first boss) to 3.5 points, Guangmou continues to drop to 2.5 points, and the next white-clothed Xiushi." [The second leader] went up to 4.5 points...... "We made sure it was a rhythm with ups and downs, and the time in between didn't stretch too long or shrink too short." ”

The boss that the protagonist encounters in the lake (normally, you will encounter him about an hour after entering the game) has undergone three adjustments. In the original case, he had three transformations, which were triggered in different ways. After the level design was completed, the internal thought that this boss share was too heavy, and the design was more complicated than the final boss of this level.

After the design of the first level was completed, the team decided that only the protagonist and the monster were too neat, so they added an NPC (neutral game character) such as a monkey who delivered a gourd and a passerby who provided a store. "I want players to connect more with the game world, to know that this world is not just an abstract space made up of me and cruel monsters, but also people who have different purposes than mine, but are willing to help me and need me to help them." Jiang Baicun said.

There are still a lot of details to pay attention to: whether the air wall is in the right place, whether the character reacts correctly when stepping on water, and how the footsteps should differ in different places...... "I will focus more on the realization of the idea and some details. ”

In the process of various calibration and corrections, he deeply felt the gap between domestic games and world-class triple-A masterpieces in terms of industrial standards. Sometimes these problems are very intuitive, but they just can't be solved. For example, the lip sync of a character in a game's animation doesn't match the language perfectly. They want to refer to the methods of the world's advanced teams, but the resources of others are not necessarily open, so they can only find another way.

After years of development, first-line manufacturers have a complete set of program standards, such as how to set up character movements, how to step on high places and low places, how to climb over obstacles, and how far should be when approaching the wall...... Some players complain about the problem of the protagonist's "sliding step", which is a direct reflection of the lack of standards.

▲ "Black Myth: Wukong" game battle screen / provided by the interviewee

Even if you can borrow the standards of other big manufacturers, it may not be applicable in "Black Myth: Wukong". A major factory has set up the height of the monsters in the game according to experience, but "Black Myth: Wukong" has a flying dragon, a huge bear, and a demon that calls the wind and rain, each of which is far beyond the standard. "This happens in all areas and in all dimensions. We can only find our own standards after many iterations, and it comes at the cost of a lot of manpower and time. Jiang Baicun said. We're not at the point where we have established standards, and as development evolves, it's expensive to work with standards, because it requires all the assets in the entire game, or all the designs, to follow the standards, and that standard only makes sense, and the premise of following that standard is that it's right, or it's appropriate for the product. But this is our first game and everything is experimental. ”

Among the details that more players don't care about are the exploration of technology and the investment of time in game science.

The protagonist picks up a knife that falls to the ground and puts it in his ear. It took the team two or three months to make the movement look smooth. The ideal state is that no matter where the protagonist is, facing or sideways, it is natural to pick it up. Feng Ji and technical director Zhao Wenyong found that the game company Ubisoft has proposed "Motion matching" as a solution, according to a set of rules to record a batch of animation data of the basic movement of the task, which can automatically generate the movement of the character.

They found an open-source version online, but it was immature, and they had to work backwards through Ubisoft's plan details to achieve the final protagonist action in the game.

The game screen is undoubtedly the most intuitive criterion for judging the quality of the game. ON MAY 26, 2021, EPIC GAME RELEASED THE PREVIEW VERSION OF THE GAME ENGINE UNREAL ESTATE 5. In the same year, Game Science decided that Black Myth: Wukong, originally scheduled to be produced by Unreal Engine 4, would be developed using Unreal Engine 5 instead, which meant that 20% of the games were made, and most of them had to be rebuilt. "Fortunately, this engine was released in 2021, and if it is a year later, we will be more entangled in whether to change it." Yang Qi said.

▲ Yang Qi Photo/Southern People Weekly reporter Big Food

Most of Yang Qi's works are based on realism, and the new engine can fit in with reality more realistically. In the game, players can see the face "Diamond Sutra" carved on the cliff stone, the Xixia stone tablet standing in the northern land, and the broken arm of the Buddha statue after weathering......

To get closer to reality, Game Science took the dumbest approach possible: scanning the reality and importing it into the computer. Most of the temples and Buddha statues that appear in the game come from here.

To this end, the company set up a special team that scanned hundreds of temples and monuments across the country over a period of four years, so that these scenes can be recreated in the game 1-to-1. This is also largely due to the replacement of the engine. Reality scanning usually solves hundreds of millions of faces, and the old engine can only solve a few thousand faces of the building, and the new engine can be increased to millions.

This seems to be quite sentimental and a little clumsy, and it is also the consideration of game science after precise calculations.

If you refer to the real building to create in the computer, the production cost of a building will reach hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan, and it will take more than half a year. The team scanned the monuments of Shisi Temple in Zhejiang, went for three months, swept 14 buildings inside and out, brought them back to solve, and it could be formed in the game in half a month. "If we make these dozen assets by hand, we will start in two years. The efficiency can be exponentially improved. Yang Qi said.

In the first year of scanning, Yang Qi and his partners in the scanning team stepped on various points to determine the scanning plan. Based on his memories of the university's ancient Chinese art history course, he circled a number of Tang Dynasty wooden buildings, "There are very few, and we can put one of them." "Swept down the Buddha Light Temple and other buildings. The second is the architecture and statues from the Wei and Jin dynasties to the Song Dynasty, and then the utensils after the Ming and Qing dynasties.

▲ The game scene of "Black Myth: Wukong", filmed in the statue of the thousand-armed Guanyin of Baoding Mountain carved by Dazu Rock / provided by the interviewee

At many scanning sites, Yang Qi and his partners were fascinated by the buildings and statues in front of them, the oil paints and sculptures that had taken generations hundreds of years to make, been restored thirty or forty times, and weathered over the years, forming colors and damages that were difficult to restore, and the textures and folds in them filled the time.

Several colleagues in the team are usually very outgoing, chatting and walking in, and they were silent for an instant, and only reacted after more than ten minutes, saying: "What am I doing for so long?" ”

Yang Qi told his colleagues in the 3D team that it was important to preserve the appearance of the scan, including the current colors, damaged corners, weathered details, and even the grass stalks embedded in the statue and the small piece of wire exposed. "It's a cool thing to see it from the perspective of the present, and at the same time observe the time." Yang Qi said.

From this point of view, "Black Myth: Wukong" can be said to be a "Chinese travel simulator", the 28 star sculptures in the game come from the Jade Emperor Temple in Jincheng, Shanxi, the Xiaoxitian where the King of Huangmei is located is taken from the Shuiyue Nunnery in Lantian, Shaanxi, and the Pilu Buddha statue is scanned from the Mingshan Temple in Anyue County, Ziyang, Sichuan......

So far, the stock of assets has exceeded the actual needs of the game by six to seven times. Game Science plans to create a library of assets that will be made available to the world.

During the scanning, I encountered a number of practical difficulties. The team really wanted to sweep the Iron Buddha Temple in Gaoping, Shanxi, where an iron Buddha head is enshrined under the towering pagoda. When they managed to apply for approval and finally entered, they found that the 24 Heavenly Clay Embryo Statue was placed in a 15-square-meter room, and if they wanted to shoot it, they had to build scaffolding on all sides, and there was a possibility of damaging the embryo body, so they had no choice but to give up.

Shuanglin Temple in Pingyao, Shanxi Province is famous for its colored sculptures, and the team finally negotiated it after several twists and turns, but before the start of filming, the temple was flooded, and the statues were moved outside to dry and could not be scanned.

▲The game science team conducted an investigation at the Shisi Temple Photo/provided by the interviewee

On August 20, 2020, the first promotional video exploded, and these real-life scans became a major boost. Since then, the scan has gone a lot smoother.

From the beginning of the production of the game, Game Science takes the initiative to report the game progress, actual image, process planning, etc. to the competent authorities in stages and according to the process. The whole process was strongly supported by the administration. In February 2024, Black Myth: Wukong received the game version number.

"We have just stepped into the stage where graphics technology and game engines are mature, which could not have been achieved three years earlier, and we need more people, more investment, and the performance of the work is far worse than it is now. This is the dividend of scientific and technological progress. "At the same time, we also feel that there needs to be an outlet for national pride." It's a power that people want to have something that talks about Chinese culture, Chinese themes, and the Chinese team does it. This power has chosen us. These two backgrounds are the biggest amplifiers of Black Myth: Wukong. ”

When working on the English version of Black Myth: Wukong, some specific nouns are presented in Hanyu pinyin: Wukong is translated not as monkey king but as wu kong, and as Jingubang instead of golden stick, monster - a term unique to the Chinese mythological system that is not translated as monster but yaoguai.

So the translation of foreign players seeing Goku raising a golden hoop stick to fight monsters is: "Wukong beats Yaoguai with Jingubang." ”

Be true to your ideals and face reality

After the beginning of autumn in 2024, the temperature in Hangzhou will still soar above 40 degrees Celsius in the afternoon, and even the suburbs will not be cool because of the greenery. It is nearly 20 kilometers away from the southernmost point of West Lake, north to the Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art, and to the east and west, you can get on the expressway, leading to Shaoxing or Tonglu. Next to it is a campus of Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital, which stretches from the foot of the mountain to the green forest. The autumn tiger has not yet sunburned the leaves, and his eyes are blue. In August 2020, Game Science's Hangzhou office was officially opened, and they became the first company to settle in the Creative Park.

But until now, it was not possible to get an accurate address by entering the name of the company in various mapping software. It wasn't until the location was sent by the friends of Youke that I found the door of the company.

In 2014, Game Science was established in Shenzhen and made two online games. In 2018, "Black Myth: Wukong" was established, and considering the overall cycle and cost of the stand-alone project, Feng Ji and Yang Qi both hoped to find a new R&D environment. They chose several new first-tier cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu, and Hangzhou, and finally settled on Hangzhou Zhuantang.

"Stand-alone games are not like mobile games, which can come out in a year or two, and need a place that is less bothered by substances. People who do it also need to be less concerned about the prosperity around them. ”

The first seven members of Game Science have experienced two rocket-like rises in China's game industry, the first is the rise of online games, from "Legend", "Journey" to the popularity of Tencent games, the industry has a compound growth rate of 30%-40% per year, and finally large online games such as World of Warcraft and DNF occupy the market.

The other time was in 2012, when the mobile game market exploded in full swing, and the number of active users in the game market changed from one or two hundred million to five or six billion. They have heard too many stories of life rising like a rocket after seizing the wind.

According to the experience of international game production, the cost of triple-A game development often exceeds 100 million US dollars, and the development cycle is as long as 4-5 years.

"It's hard if we're hiring people in a place that's surrounded by these stories. To be a stand-alone machine not only needs to be able to endure loneliness, but also (ability) is very good, which is actually a contradiction. Feng Ji believes that the place itself can also screen out some people with higher material needs.

"You're not allowed to go in!" A security guard stopped me at the door. In fact, I couldn't get in at all, and there was a very strong face recognition access control in front of me. Next to it are two signs that read "Busy design, intense R&D" and "Please do not enter, please forgive me". It is covered with a large blue umbrella with "GAME SCIENCE" printed on it, and a 3-meter-tall ficus tree on top of its head, which together circle a shade piece. Cicadas chirp everywhere, like a stopwatch urging the game to go live.

This building has two doors, and the other door has a nearly 3-meter-high bamboo next to the access control system, through which you can only see the scattered limestone road on the ground, gray and black floor-to-ceiling windows, and a large white wall of the Hui style, and a curtain on the window, on which is a monkey playing in the clouds.

The security guards were also helpless. On August 20, 2020, Game Science released that promotional video, the main purpose of which was to recruit people, in addition to job seekers, but also to attract curious passers-by. The administration has received many players who have come to visit the company and taken them on a tour of the company. Game development cycles are getting tighter and more players, and companies are having to close their doors.

Game Science has removed the company's location on navigation software, but the real address has long been circulated among players. Some players bring their cameras to shoot inside and want to record their work. They hung curtains and set up some flower beds at the door as a sign of "refusal", but to no avail.

This year, it was replaced with bamboo, but there were still players holding a telephoto lens and stretching the lens through the gap in the bamboo. Game Science had to add an access control system with three-shift security to ensure the safety and tranquility of the company.

The office is concentrated on the ground floor. Several rows of computers are arranged according to workstations, and the screen is the game content of different progresses, and it is not easy to see a computer that has not opened the game, and the desktop wallpaper is also related to "Journey to the West" - on the Lingtai Fangcun Mountain, in the three-star oblique moon cave, the Bodhi Patriarch is knocking on Wukong's head.

Yang Qi's desk is in the middle of the art group, looking up at three screens side by side, on which are hung game screens and mapping software. There are more than 200 youkai in the game, all of which were created by him and members of the art team.

Yang Qi entered the game industry in 2007 and has long been famous in the industry. On Baidu Encyclopedia, he was described as "a representative of Chinese game concept design...... His solid painting foundation and aesthetic literacy, mature and atmospheric design style have become his creative labels, and he has made outstanding contributions to the re-examination and definition of traditional Chinese style design. ”

Yang Qi is more than 1.8 meters tall, and every time he appears, a black mask always hangs on his face to cover his chin. In the first 20 years of his life, he couldn't weigh more than 120 pounds no matter how much he ate, and he once thought he had stomach cancer. "Later I found out that it was just that the time [for gaining weight] had not yet come."

After playing the game, he gained more than forty pounds, with meat hanging from his chin, and he was able to squeeze the black mask tightly. He studied art at the China Academy of Art and was attracted to games when he was growing up. The intersection of two worlds pushed him into the door of the gaming industry, and he dreamed of making a single-player game.

He said that he has been a "liar" for many years, "the first job is to trick people in the clothing industry to make games, and the second wants to trick people who do online games to make stand-alone games. ”

In 2017, he got a physical examination report and found out that he had fatty liver and pharyngitis caused by smoking all year round. He realized that he was in his thirties, and if he didn't do what he wanted to do, he would not have enough energy or something. He found Feng Ji and told him: "My body is 'not good', I can't wait any longer." ”

On the night of February 25, 2018, Feng Ji convened a meeting with his partners, and Yang Qi knew that the time had come. When he went out, he posted a Weibo: "The new year begins to die, and 10 years in the industry seems to be waiting for this day." When I went out for a meeting in the middle of the night, the woods of the entire neighborhood were softly calling my name. ”

At the meeting, Feng Ji announced the launch of the stand-alone project.

Feng Ji agrees with Yang Qi's "can't wait any longer", but he is more rational. He considers himself a "pragmatic idealist": a game of integrated fantasy, but with great respect for science. In his opinion, every choice supported by feelings must firmly believe in data, identify with business, and follow trends.

In 2016, he prepared information to talk about investment, and found that Steam, the world's largest personal computer game platform, has more than 30 million Chinese users, ranking first in the world, and Chinese Steam users account for 38%. However, there is no domestic buyout 3A masterpiece on the market.

Feng Ji compared China's game market at that time with the film market from 2000 to 2005, which was not small in size and the market was constantly expanding, but there were few domestic blockbusters. "Our consensus is that Chinese are already fully capable of consuming single-player games. (The appearance of domestic stand-alone game masterpieces) this will definitely happen. Just like if you don't shoot "The Return of the Great Sage", "Thai Embarrassment", or "Wolf Warrior", someone will shoot the same good thing. Feng Ji said.

Before the development of the project, Game Science had collected the company's Steam accounts for research, and found that the first place in game time was "Monster Hunter: World", and the second and third were also ARPGs (action role-playing games). Therefore, doing ARPG has become the direction of game science, and it has also become the type of new project.

"The entrepreneurial team does not have the advantage of a platform, and the product must be the intersection of the team, which is the direction with the most user empathy. If the team is not a natural user of a certain type of product, it is difficult to effectively understand the inner needs of the user. Even if you find something that seems to be liked by users through data analysis or luck, when the product is iterated, the efficiency will still lose to the team of users who are already users of this kind of thing. So after research, our initial vision was to become the world's number one ARPG developer for Game Science. It's not because I did "Black Myth: Wukong" that I did ARPG. Feng Ji said.

Several founders began to think about what game content this stand-alone project should be: everyone should be familiar with it, the game world should have some wonders, there should be oriental fantasies, and it should be able to become an IP ...... The collection of various directions finally points to "Journey to the West".

Feng Ji believes that "Journey to the West" tells a profound truth in the most simple way, the gods and monsters are very exciting, but a fight scene may also have different rhymes, why kill this monster and not kill that monster? Monsters are not only vicious, but Bodhisattvas also have thunderbolt means. The grandmother on the side of the road gives you a watermelon, which may be a human relationship behind it. Look at the spectacle, see the violence, look at the terroir, look at the world...... can be satisfied.

"Journey to the West" is the consensus of the team. The seven founding members of Game Science were all involved in the production of Tencent's 2010 online game God of War, which was based on Journey to the West and reconstructed the story of Journey to the West from a dark perspective.

The game that died halfway carried the dreams of this group of young people who were less than 30 years old at the time, and it was once popular when it was first released, and then disappeared due to various factors.

Feng Ji, Yang Qi and seven other colleagues who had worked together in God of War left Tencent the following year to found Game Science. "God of War" didn't do it to the extreme, and it doesn't seem to have an explanation to everyone when he left to make a new one. If you change one, you don't have the confidence that you will be able to do it well, so you can first start and finish what you have accumulated. Yang Qi said.

▲In 2017, from left to right, they are Xu Liangliang, Jiang Baicun, Yu Ranxing, Feng Ji, Yang Qi, Zheng Runzong, and Zhao Wenyong, the founding members of Game Science

They decided to tell a story after the end of "Journey to the West". They extracted clues from the fourteenth episode of "Journey to the West" "The Heart Ape Returns to Justice, and the Six Thieves Are Gone", the six thieves see joy, ears and anger, nose smell love, tongue tastes and thinks, body worries, and opinions, which just correspond to the six eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind of Buddhism, and the team singled out the monsters that were not killed in the original work, and Yang Qi conceived 13 levels such as Lion Camel Ridge, Daughter Country, Black Wind Mountain, Yellow Wind Mountain, and Flame Mountain according to these, and embedded the six thieves and six roots in it.

The team prioritized a part of the creation (in the end, due to the rush of the construction period, nothing was made except for the priority selection). The story takes place after another great battle between the Great Sage and the god Jiro. Players take on the role of the Mandate of Heaven and embark on an adventurous journey to find the six scattered roots of the Great Sage and resurrect the Great Sage.

When working on "God of War", the internal saying was "kill boldly in a dark world of Journey to the West", and as they grew older and more experienced, the team members had different understandings of "Journey to the West", and the new project deepened and deconstructed the old theme.

"In a dark world, demons and monsters are rampant. But are they really all bad? The creatures that shine in this world are like some stars shining in the darkness, and they can also embody heroism and shine in such an environment. All the stories in the world are probably stories like this – stories that shine in the dark, stories of life. Feng Ji said.

During his work at Tencent, the company found that products named after three words were more likely to become popular. He wanted to make a series of Chinese mythological stories that also reflected the theme of darkness, so the game was named "Black Mythology".

Since he is doing Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is the greatest common divisor. "Black Myth: Wukong" got its name. The English name "Black Myth" is the option with the highest overseas votes after a survey of the number of purchases on Facebook.

"Romance is our competitiveness"

There was still a week before the official release of the game, and all the lines were summarized at Feng Ji. "Black Myth: Wukong" will complete the final closure "attack" at the end of July 2024, and the game has been largely completed, and all that remains is to check and fill in the gaps.

Feng Ji hopes to add a small biography similar to "Liao Zhai" for each monster, a story of several hundred words, which is related to Journey to the West, which can make people think a little.

The copywriting team worked overtime, almost every character was accompanied by a poem, and the blue wolf elf Xuzi in the first chapter was based on the original book, and was a passerby in a flash, but became the first enemy the player faced in the game. He was dressed in white fluff, two people tall, with big shoulders and a round waist, and one of his skills could shatter a piece of ground in front of him.

In the story of the illustrated book, it became a homeless person in the lion and camel country, and with the support of the black bear spirit, it became the wolf demon king, guarding the Guanyin Zen Temple. Its poem reads, "Pseudonym becomes a Taoist friend, and the Zen temple is full of virtual images." The poor fruit is scattered, and it is still an old skin. ”

"In "Journey to the West", it is said that the Sihai Cave Mansion is full of Zhaozi Spirit, Deer Spirit, Tiger Spirit, and Leopard Spirit, all of which are animal names, but they are all brushed aside, 'Wukong shouted when he saw it, and beat it into meat puree', which gave us a lot of space, enriched their stories, and let the protagonist explore the encounter in the game." Yang Qi said.

▲ "Black Myth: Wukong" game scene Black Wind Mountain Picture/provided by the interviewee

Feng Ji hopes to present a modern panorama through these stories, "Their (monsters') predicament, confusion, desire and pain are also common to modern people." This allows the game to have a more modern core. ”

It takes Feng Ji 15 minutes to read the story of a monster, "In the end, I found that (the whole story) was only read once, without any modifications, and 3 days had passed." Now I can only sleep twice in three days. Feng Ji said.

On August 8, 2024, his right eye suddenly swollen, so painful that he had to go to the doctor, diagnosed with "blepharitis", prescribed some medicine, asked him to apply a warm compress, and waited for it to break. If it continues to deteriorate, it will be excised. "Hopefully it can take on some of [the pressure of the game] and then break."

Among the triple-A masterpieces on the market, the number of original monsters is usually 50-100, and "Black Myth: Wukong" far exceeds this number. This is something unplanned. "Now that you're already popular, you will have a kind of (momentum), and you should try all your ambitions and ideas that you didn't think you could achieve before." Feng Ji said.

More than 200 youkai are the result of "give it a try". Also "give it a try" are the battle ideas conceived by Jiang Baicun and the level ideas of Yang Qi...... In the process of making the game, what he said the most was "give it a try". "I'd rather cut it at the end than say we can't do it at the beginning."

There is a scene in the game where swarms of spiders emerge from caves. The original plan was for the protagonist to also turn into a spider, crawling on the spider silk hanging from the cave wall, and being chased by countless spiders behind him. They tried to mimic the movement of particles in swarms of spiders, but found it difficult to follow the path naturally. Spider silk is very poorly recognizable, not only thin, but also translucent and difficult to see. Unless the spider silk is made very thick - but then it becomes a cartoon game, which does not fit in with the realistic style of painting.

Once the protagonist is caught up, he will be eaten by spiders and start fleeing again, and in order to reduce the player's frustration, this road can't be too long, but it's a deep cave, so you have to try to control the pace.

But when the production team solved all these problems in a beta version and let everyone try it out, it was unanimously rated as "boring". As a result, the idea could only be "realistically abandoned".

There is also a scene in the game that takes place on a giant tortoise. The original idea was that the giant tortoise was moving on the sea, and the protagonist and the opponent were fighting on the back of the turtle, and the sea could be seen drifting in the process, as well as the tilt of the turtle's back, weightlessness and vibration caused by the movement. There are even three tiers where you can go down when the sea recedes.

In order to realize this vision, the production team set up a commando team to tackle the problem. In practice, it was found that there were too many elements involved: how should the turtle back tilt camera move? Should the characters be unbalanced? Does the opponent want to influence? How does the surrounding scene fit? …… So I cut layer by layer, first gave up the complex layer, and then canceled the rise and fall of the sea, and did not do the up and down slopes, and the sea was only left with a close-up view...... The final scene shows the protagonist fighting his opponent on the back of a stable turtle.

"It's like there's someone in this world who has done it, so let's give it a try. In the end, I was scolded by all my colleagues, and I said forget it, let it go. Feng Ji said.

The time spent on "giving it a try" and the technology it worked on became a usable asset, and the plan to become a spider was useless, but it was dismantled into elements such as controlling animal movement, jumping in complex three-dimensional structures, and being chased by particle creatures, which were used in other different levels.

▲ "Black Myth: Wukong" game scene Xiao Xitian, Wukong's clone Picture/provided by the interviewee

"Doing your best but not achieving your goal in the end will help the spirit of the whole team, not utilitarian, it is very important. Utilitarianism means that two months can only do this, and we should not set too many plans beyond this level. If it's not utilitarian, it may not be able to be done in two years, and we have to try it too. Willingness to try is a plus. Feng Ji said, "It's boring to do things within my ability all the time, and many people say that I came here to do the coolest things." If you have some ambition in your career ideals and say that you want to be the number one in the world in this thing, and I see who is doing something right now, and I want to do it better than him, that's great! We don't want you to say it's almost there. Have this kind of heart. It's a kind of romanticism. Moving forward on the road of romance, you can sometimes get beaten to the head. But this romance is our competitiveness. ”

The extent to which "Black Myth: Wukong" has reached today is due to Feng Ji's "give it a try".

He is very disgusted by the argument in the Chinese game industry: there are no triple-A games in China because Chinese players do not have an international standard aesthetic and only deserve such games.

"(This argument) is too arrogant, as a content creator, the target of the service is positioned as a person lower than himself, and it (there is no triple-A game in China) attributed to the user's poor aesthetics, too strict supervision, too small the market, and single-player users playing piracy...... These are nonsense reasons. No, I'm a firm believer that players can see if they make something good. When presenting their sincerity to users, users will immediately reciprocate. ”

Feng Ji took the promotional video on August 20, 2020 as an example, "We took out a live demonstration of more than 10 minutes, telling everyone that we really put our heart into making something that we feel satisfied with and that everyone is satisfied with, and we have gained much more trust and enthusiasm than we imagined." ”

There are many "romantic" easter eggs buried in the game. There are 81 bosses in the game, corresponding to 81 difficulties. When it is difficult to beat the boss, Chinese players can open the game's official setting strategy book - "Journey to the West". Each boss of the game is designed according to the description of the original book, so the method of breaking the game of the great sage in the book is also applicable in the game.

An up master in the game area of station B concluded: "The strategy is buried in your memory, through decades of time, to help you today." You pray to the gods, but in the end it is your young self who responds to you. This is a destiny unique to Chinese players. Players all over the world are 'facing the destiny of heaven', but only we can be regarded as 're-walking the journey to the west'. It's just that this time I traveled west, and I didn't need to ask the Buddha for help, because the Buddha who could help you has always been in my heart. ”

"Romantic" was the word Feng Ji said the most in the interview. When it comes to romance, his face has a completely different look than when he talks about data and grand narratives.

He liked very much the section of the original book where the four masters and apprentices crossed the Tongtian River, they stood by the river, and several corpses floated on the river, exactly like them. They pointed at Tang Seng and said, "It turned out to be you!" "In front of us is Lingshan, the end of the scriptures.

"If you want to get something, you have to kill your past self, you have to look at your corpse and walk past, this kind of imagery is very romantic, and romance can be cruel." Feng Ji said.

The four Tang monks and apprentices learned scriptures from the west, went through nine hundred and eighty-one difficulties, and spent 14 years in the south and north of the world.

In 2010, Feng Ji, Yang Qi, Jiang Baicun, Zhao Wenyong and others jointly launched a dark westward journey theme game "God of War". On August 20, 2024, "Black Myth: Wukong", also based on "Journey to the West", was released and became a hit, topping the global sales list of the game platform Steam and many other charts such as China, United States, and Japan, and "Wukong" spread to all over the world.

This journey also happens to be 14 years.

Before the trial meeting on August 20, 2023, Feng Ji posted a message in the company's group, which was his understanding of romance:

"Many people think that 820 may be dissatisfied, and they will scold us when they are finished, and there is a high probability that there will be a large number of negative feedbacks, which may not be groundless, but may be reasonable, sharp, and heart-piercing...... Negative feedback is infuriating, painful, and powerless, but I want everyone to maintain a pessimistic and optimistic undertone, and that nothing that is dead is a big deal.

I said that the attention and recognition we have received is a great luck in itself, and there are many elements of virtue and mismatch, and now the angel has fallen to the ground and is complained about is just a kind of self-cognitive dissonance calibration, which is a good opportunity to learn and observe. When the time comes, players will come to play, let's listen more, watch more, think more, and don't rush slowly.

The trial is not important, nor is B1 (the codename of "Black Myth: Wukong"), the only thing that matters is to keep moving forward, to solve boring, difficult, and trivial specific problems day after day with a normal heart and serious energy, never ending, never complacent, this is the hardest place to do things, but it is also the most romantic place.

The most romantic part is to do specific things every day, to do specific and difficult things, and then don't feel that your achievements have reached a certain height, forever, until you die on the road. ”

Journey to the West has been written for nearly 500 years and is one of the four great masterpieces of ancient China, and it has been continuously interpreted. Taoists believe that it is a book of Dan, and Buddhists revere it as a book of scriptures. In recent years, more interpretations have become available to the public. Many colleges and universities in China have opened courses related to "Journey to the West", and treatises on "Journey to the West" continue to be published. On station B, different up masters reinterpret Journey to the West from the perspectives of workplace, thick black science, game theory, etc.

This masterpiece has not only not faded in the changes of the times, but has also been rejuvenated by the years. The reason why a masterpiece is a masterpiece may be precisely because it has its own flowers, and all roads lead to the answer to life.

The game is also one of them, and "Black Myth: Wukong" is the most popular one right now.

The following is the original text of QA content (original title: "Dialogue < Black Myth: Wukong> Producer Feng Ji: When you are at the peak of self-confidence, you are also in the abyss of ignorance").

Go down with a loss of control

Southern People Weekly: What is a special day on August 20th, and why are the major nodes of the game set on this day?

Feng Ji: There was indeed a coincidence on August 20 at the earliest, when I wanted to invite some media to come, and it happened that there was ChinaJoy in Shanghai in July, so I would invite them to come over at the end of July, and we could send it in late August.

We have made a statistic before, every Thursday everyone goes to work with the most relaxed mentality, and it is easiest to click on the video. So I chose a Thursday in late August, which happened to be August 20, 2020, and after looking at the yellow calendar, it was not a very fierce day, and it was released.

After it is decided, there are some inspirations, such as Apple's press conference is the second week of September every year, just like the Spring Festival Gala. In essence, it is a fixed time, it will bring it is a crystallization of thinking, not to say that I am going to have a development conference in March, hurry up and warm up in advance, we find that as long as there is a fixed time every year, this time will slowly be embedded in people's minds.

So we will post a video every year later, and if we can match it on August 20th, it is actually the most trouble-free, and there is no need for people to remember. Maybe this time will be the time for all our future marketing behaviors and product launches, which is also a kind of IP thinking.

The game was originally going to be released in the first quarter of 2024, because historically, things like "Zelda: Breath of the Wild", "Monster Hunter: World", "Wolf", and "Elden Ring" are all in this time period, and it seems to be a good time for ARPG to be released. September in the second half of the year will be the release date of important New Year's goods in Europe and the United States (the annual masterpiece of the series of games), and we want to avoid the Christmas file after the connection. But I found that I couldn't finish it, and it wasn't until the second half of 2023 that the "8·20" was set, and everyone was very relaxed. It's easy to remember, and the time is a little free.

Southern People Weekly: "Black Myth: Wukong" hasn't come out yet, but it's been popular for four years, what impact did the initial explosion have on your game production?

Feng Ji: Surprisingly, the trailer for 2020 originally felt that it was already very satisfying to have 500,000 to 1 million views, and the trailer of a very top game released was just that. As a result, it broke 10 million on the same day, and now it is more than 50 million, and no one has ever encountered such a situation.

Do you say there is no such self-aggrandizement? Yes, I will (feel) suddenly chosen by something, and then there will be a sense of mission - since I am given such a degree of attention, everyone really likes it, then whether we are from the level of resources, the level of manpower (to be more forceful), we will feel that we should set the goal a little higher, to benchmark the best games in our minds, whether it is in the degree of completion, picture performance, gameplay, plot performance, We all want players to feel like watching that video.

Driven by this attention, we have come up with a blueprint that may not be so realistic, but also some concrete indicators, including new engines, a lot of [old buildings].Scanned assets, more realistic light and shadow, recruit new colleagues. When planning new levels and new plots, I will also think of some more unrestrained and grander designs. In 2022 and 2023, we have suffered many setbacks, and we realized that it is not a lack of money and people, but the experience and strength that cannot make some ideas really come true. Maybe it should be described as this, we originally set a goal of 70 points, and maybe we can end up doing 75 points, and we have surpassed ourselves. But then we got a goal of 90 or even 100 points, and we couldn't do it all, but in the end we probably got 85 points, and we still exceeded that 75 points.

I feel very strongly that something that can reach a certain height, it's not a completely controllable thing, maybe the whole team has a little bit of a slight loss of control at all times, but it's still realistic and goes down with that loss of control. It's not that you have to take a risk and do something you can't do, but a slight sense of loss of control may be better than doing something that you can be sure of.

Southern People Weekly: How to grasp the sense of proportion that is slightly out of control?

Feng Ji: Many people are very pessimistic, thinking that you have done it? How is it possible for such a project to be released in 2024? They feel like they're messing around. A colleague even asked me directly if I could stop trying such fanciful things, which is not something we can do at this stage now. Of course, their own (starting point) is good, and I hope to be more reliable and practical.

But a few of our old colleagues who have been working together for fourteen or fifteen years since "God of War" actually have a number in their hearts. We will pull each other, a bit like a collective sense of proportion, probably know what the other party may be able to do, what they are good at, everyone in their own areas to correct, find an intersection, after these corrections will show a kind of stability, maybe not so sharp or jumpy, but I am proud of this sense of proportion.

This project has done it so far, it's a complete product, and it's not bad. I can't say that it will meet the expectations of users 100%, but I believe that the expectations of some people will be met, and even some places will exceed their expectations.

And one of the things I'm most proud of is that all the seven people we came out with are still doing specific work on the front line. Not only are we not leaving, but everyone is still learning and doing things, and they are getting stronger.

Southern People Weekly: Has this loss of control ever caused actual trouble?

Feng Ji: Yes, for example, the translation problem. We plan to do 11 languages and English dubbing, but we underestimate the amount of plot and information in this game, all the monster illustrated books may have more than 100,000 Chinese characters, and how long will it take to translate them all into the languages of 11 countries?

At first, we thought that after the Chinese was in place, it would be okay to stay for another month, no. Their (translation) process is like this, after the text is stable, they first go to the local translation, and do a good job of giving feedback to the local relevant agencies on the quality, whether the local is authentic or not, whether there is a problem with the terminology...... After a few rounds of back and forth, foreign masterpieces have to be left for a small year. We haven't fully stabilized the text until now. By August 2024, from the perspective of Chinese, it is a relatively unapologetic end, and the common practice in Europe and the United States is to reserve 9-12 months before releasing the global version.

Therefore, in the estimation of things like this, there is an idea of "how bold people are, how productive the land is", and we think that it is a big deal to pay money or parallel, but it is not possible to do it, and in the end, there is indeed a lot of hard work that requires this time. In this regard, there is still a tuition fee.

Of course, we are very fortunate to have a lot of excellent ability and take on a lot of them. The English dubbing is our own translation, but many other languages have not been finalized, and they are all my problems, such as my swollen eyes, lack of sleep, and too long to see the screen...... So there is no time to do enough calibration after the translation is done. There are some Bestiary text translations, and we don't have time to finish all the languages, so we can only ensure the completion of English first, and strive to update them from the end of August to September.

▲ "Black Myth: Wukong"

You have to always realize that you are not that great

Southern People Weekly: "Black Myth: Wukong" seems to many people to be the hope of a domestic stand-alone machine, you seem to be placed in a certain position, will these expectations give you a sense of mission?

Feng Ji: There is a sense of mission, but it does not come from this game, of course, the fire will definitely be strengthened, and "8 · 20" is certainly a very strong boost.

When we were working on the two mobile games, "Hundred Generals" and "Red Tide", we had a common idea, we hoped that no matter what theme or genre, there were Chinese elements in it, and we wanted to make Chinese stories present in a very trendy and modern way.

Modern times not only need technology, what kind of graphics, what kind of sound and light methods to present, but also need its core to have a certain modernity, that is, the dilemma, confusion, desire, and pain we encounter today, modern people can also find something common in these stories, rather than simply acting out the story over and over again. Human nature itself is also common, and Sun Wukong's boredom may not be completely different from the boredom of people who go to work today.

At least in the field of games, I personally feel that there may be room for improvement in both aspects, first of all, (technically) the game needs to be presented in a way that is of the next generation, and if it is presented in a very low way, it is difficult to get on the table. Everyone has already seen some very good things, so you have to use a super-first-class thing, and at a glance you can know that its grade is at the same level as the best literary and artistic works now, which is of course difficult, but this is a hard quality.

The second is that its spiritual core is still worth studying, and it's hard for me to express it as a methodology, [like] what kind of model is the most profound or the most modern. But first of all, you have to move yourself with a story, there is something in this story that has charm and some uniqueness.

Black Myth: Wukong is a step forward from what we've done before. When you play the second or third time, you may feel more strongly the complex and ambiguous things I am talking about. I originally did "God of War", and the main feeling was "cool", it was cool to fight monsters, and it was also cool to expose some conspiracies, he was a lonely hero. When it comes to "Black Myth: Wukong", I think that all living beings are suffering, and everyone has their own fetters, troubles, and obsessions, and these things will eventually converge and affect the trajectory of everyone's destiny.

We present this panorama rather than assigning a strong, singular set of values to one character and saying that one character is right and the others are wrong. You get to feel different characters, have different ideas, and in the end, you derive a story that you understand. This somewhat ambiguous, complex, and grey presentation is more comprehensive than directly telling you that good triumphs over evil.

We want to talk about the depth of the mythological panorama, but "Black Myth: Wukong" is only the first step, and its popularity makes us more confident. I hope that Chinese culture can conquer the world in a more modern way, and make the good things of this nation popular all over the world.

I think it's the responsibility of our generation, because we've seen the good things in the West, and we know some common things, and we have some capabilities, and we're confident that we should make some (good things).

Be sure to talk about a sense of mission, although it's a bit elevated. If a person is still in elementary school and he sees a "Black Myth: Wukong", maybe he can't play it yet, he's just a child, but he knows that this kind of original Chinese-based thing can be expressed like this, and he grows up (and might) make something much more powerful than "Black Myth: Wukong", because he has such confidence or inspiration.

We're hoping that it's not that only we can make it, but that once it proves that this kind of thing can be done, more people will make something far beyond us, and it doesn't even matter if it's not in the form of a game. If "Black Myth: Wukong" can play a little bit of a role, I think it will make everyone feel that this thing is not so far away.

We can already be an incentive to launch a promotional video because we're there for views, but if we can launch the game and achieve a certain level of commercial success, maybe it can make it more sustainable. Of course, we will also wonder if there is a way to summarize and share our experience or lessons, how we can use a Chinese story to interpret the ability of next-generation games, and use a reasonable way to help people who also want to do this.

We haven't had time to do this yet, because we are still looking at the bugs (vulnerabilities) of this product every day......

Southern People Weekly: How do you and your team deal with self-aggrandizement?

Feng Ji: I think it's because people always believe in us that we don't lower our expectations of ourselves. We're going to do things that feel more interesting and look a little farther away.

I think there's still a contrary idea, you have to always realize that you're not that great, you're not that noble, you're not that important, but that doesn't stop us from trying to do it well. We also think that this thing is definitely valuable, but at the same time, you also look at yourself from another perspective as a self chasing fame and fortune, a speculative self.

I told all my colleagues at the annual meeting last year that if I had one thing to give you, it would be this from Fitzgerald: "The measure of first-class intelligence is the ability to always have two opposing thoughts in the mind, but still to act normally." "You always feel like it's going to be successful, you're going to feel like you're going to fail, but that's okay, you can still do things; You always feel that this is your most important project, this is your highest moment, but you always feel that this thing is not worth mentioning, and you will do something far greater than this project.

I would be such a person, people can't be too one-dimensional. (I don't think) this is the most important thing in my life, this thing is not over, everything is there, and life will be happy from now on? There may be a moment when you are the highlight, but when you are at the peak of self-confidence, you are also in the abyss of ignorance, and this time may also be the time when you are most dangerous, or when you least know your true state.

Southern People Weekly: What will you do on August 20th?

Feng Ji: I'm probably with you in the company. We've never dealt with so many users, so many people coming in, how many concurrent issues are there? Do you want to prepare an emergency patch? Do you want to write an announcement to apologize? …… This has to be prepared. Anyway, we'll prepare some rituals for our colleagues that day.

(Colleague: Many people have said they want to give us champagne, and I have been refusing today.) What? Okay, then I think we can collect it now, and then we can open it again if there is no problem. (In case) the "violent death" on the same day of receiving the results, a little bit of performance art knows, right? Bad reviews are flooding.

Southern People Weekly: Are you worried?

Feng Ji: Actually, I am confident, I am not confident now, I said at the 2022 annual meeting that I am confident, I said no need to hesitate, don't worry.

We are now the best ARPG ever made in China. At that time, it was CE03 (3rd Edition Testing), and the game was 60%. But I'm not saying this for nothing, we have found a unique combat experience that belongs only to Black Myth. Our kernel has begun to solidify, and this kernel can be perceived by players, and I believe they will recognize that this is a longboard and irreplaceable.

How do the two heroes in Chinese mythology show their own magical powers, and there are also weapons that clash and become higher than a mountain, how do these things be presented in the game? It took us four or five years to figure it out, and a lot of things didn't work. But after all these years, we've finally figured out a way to achieve this unique match. This part was eventually identified by us as the most important soul of the game.

If there is one sentence to describe what we have done well, then what I want to hear most is: "This is what I think Sun Wukong vs. Erlang God looks like." ”

Southern People Weekly: "Black Myth: Wukong" feels like a pretty bleak story.

Feng Ji: I think desolation is the essence of all stories.

From a biological point of view, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin are the three main substances that bring pleasure to people. But these substances are short-lived, and it is impossible for people to continue to be excited, and after excitement there will be a refractory period, and the action potential will protect people from having that orgasm experience again. As Schopenhauer said, life is like a pendulum, always oscillating between pain and boredom. The moment you put it is happy, but soon it will be either boring or painful.

It's hard to present a happy story, you can only say that the ending is happy, or a moment is happy. But in fact, the essence of all stories is about how people face death, different people choose different deaths, some people choose to sacrifice themselves, and some people choose to be forced to perish, because his desires may lead him to the end of destruction. There are also people who choose to be bland and disappear silently. Isn't it desolate when you listen to this?

But desolation is only the background color, and the most attractive part is knowing that in such a desolate and absurd world, people will have moments to shine. The glow is not necessarily righteous, it may also be for ambition, for paranoia, but at that moment there will be a light that carries out one's will, and I can't say it's romantic...... But it's romantic. It makes people feel that maybe they can take a look at this story and see how it exploded in that moment.

So on such a black undertone, we will see some fireworks. In dramaturgy, it is called the character arc, and in a moment there is a decisive transformation, when he decides to go back, he decides to give up, he decides to fight, he decides to face death.

(Thanks to Li Lingshan Ma for her help with the interview)

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