Black Myth: Wukong needs an Assassin's Creed-style discovery mode

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Odyssey, and Origins all have one thing in common: they've got a Discovery mode, which replaces murdering with learning. You can, quite literally, go on tours curated by historians around each of the game's respective maps. Instead of diving off a Sphinx and plunging your hidden blade into someone's spinal column, you can look up at the Sphinx and read a paragraph on its significance. Maybe view an actual, real life bit of ancient Egypt from an actual real life museum collection in-game. Perhaps embody an Anglo-Saxon lad in Valhalla, instead, and like, cook up some nettle soup having just got a fresh "Friar Tuck" at the local hair choppers (no guarantees on this last bit).

This is all to say that Black Myth: Wukong deserves such a mode, too. There were so many times throughout my review time where I stopped and stared and wondered as to something's meaning. Not only in the architecture, but in the characters, too. So here I am with a proposition: how about instead of thwacking things with my staff, I can use it as a walking stick and point it at things I want to learn about.

If you weren't already aware, Black Myth: Wukong is an action adventure, Soulsy hybrid that's heavily inspired by Journey To The West, a classical Chinese novel. You control an athletic monkey in third-person and as you go on your jaunt through verdant forests, golden deserts, and crimson pagodas, you mete out punishment with a staff. Enormous frogs with electrified tongues, gyrating dragons, corrupted monks with spikes for hair follicles, all of them are to be thrubbed.

But between the thrubs, there's a trove of beauty to be had. And it's to a degree where I'd like little museum-style paragraphs about 90% of what's happening on screen, to be honest. We're talking the designs of the characters, like the wise sage man who helps you out in the first chapter and who looks like you'd plucked a potato and left it for a bit too long in a kitchen drawer. Plus, the little wand he holds, at its end a curled hand. What about the tiger's temple in the second chapter, where walls are home to intricate figures in small, circular windows? What about the towering statues at the start of chapter 3, illuminated only by the light that pours in through cracks in the cavern above?

Sure, there are lots of text descriptions of the game's key characters and all its frog demons and what have you. And yes, I could go ahead and read Journey To The West (which I plan on doing, by the way). But I think that's still no argument against a mode that could introduce us to ancient Chinese history and mythology, and how Game Science were inspired by them. I just think that it's rare for a game of this scale to come along and envelope us in Chinese history, especially as China's somewhere I sometimes stupidly forget has a wealth of beautiful historical sites and importance.

And in a way, I think the game's relative linearity suits the whole Discovery mode thing. It could have us transform into a cicada and fly through its points of interest, as a monk explains the ins and outs of the terrapin-shaped incense burners or the engravings on a tall vase. Perhaps it could show us how the devs went about and photographed real life sites and their significance. They did say to me in my preview, that they'd visited over 100 sites since 2021 for 3D environment scanning.

The more complicated aspect of Game Science doing in-game museum exposition on Chinese culture is that they and their partners don't seem willing or able to discuss the game's relevance to present-day China. In particular, the studio has closed the hatches in response to an IGN report about sexism at Game Science itself and across the Chinese games industry. Their partners at Hero Games, meanwhile, have asked certain content creators to avoid talk of "politics" and "feminist propaganda" in their coverage of the game. It's unclear how much this reflects the intentions of the developers or the need to appease Chinese censors. Adding something like a Discovery Mode to enlighten people from other cultures would make the developers' silence on other fronts more conspicuous.

Which is a shame, because there's so much in this game to be curious about. At this point I'm just a rambling man who is hungry for a tour of Black Myth's world, without all the combat and the killing. Let us shake hands with the rats and stroke our furry chins as we ponder some statues. I think that would be nice.