Farewell to High-Octane Spectacle! Black Myth: Zhong Kui Shifts to a More Street-Level, Humorous and Everyday Style

Game Science recently held a Black Myth: Wukong-themed concert in Los Angeles, once again bringing Chinese-style game music overseas.

Taking the opportunity, IGN conducted an exclusive interview with Game Science music director Li Jiaqi, revealing the sequel Black Myth: Zhong Kui's new creative direction in detail for the first time. The new game is said to contrast sharply with Wukong and completely overturn players' established impressions of the Black Myth series.

Li Jiaqi said plainly that Wukong and Zhong Kui are two stories with completely different styles, emotions and cores.

Wukong draws on the grand epic backdrop of Journey to the West. Its narrative is sweeping and weighty, filled with a sense of struggle, while its music continues the passionate, uplifting tone, using a great deal of soaring and forceful orchestration to express the courage and rebelliousness of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, Sun Wukong.

By contrast, the forthcoming Black Myth: Zhong Kui completely breaks away from the framework of grand narrative. Li Jiaqi revealed that Zhong Kui's characterization is more street-level and down-to-earth, focusing on folk tales of the strange and the many facets of everyday life.

People tend to picture Zhong Kui as a stern and fearsome celestial master. In actual folk New Year paintings and legends, however, he has an inherently witty and humorous, wine-loving and approachable everyday quality.

Based on this folkloric positioning, the new game's musical style will be comprehensively renewed. It will move away from the previous game's impassioned, weighty arrangements toward a relaxed, humorous, soothing and comforting listening experience. Its melodies and rhythms will be looser, matching the everyday texture of street life.

From the perspective of the creative plan, the striking contrast between the two works forms Game Science's dual-track system for Chinese-style storytelling.

Black Myth: Wukong is rooted in a grand epic of gods and demons, focusing on the laws of heaven and earth, cultivation and resistance, and struggles with fate, making it suited to passionate, high-energy musical expression. Zhong Kui instead focuses on folk supernatural vignettes, looking at streets and alleys, the many faces of human life and small moments of warmth. What it needs are gentle, relaxed melodies that unfold at an unhurried pace.

For the entire Game Science team, this is also a breakthrough beyond its previous approach.

Li Jiaqi said candidly that everyone remained in a highly energized state throughout the production of Black Myth: Wukong. With Zhong Kui, they will completely change pace and polish the content in a calmer, more everyday way.

It is also worth noting that the pieces performed at the Los Angeles concert have already given audiences in China and overseas an early sense of Zhong Kui's new stylistic tone.

The game is still in the early research-and-development preparation stage. The team is studying folk culture and materials about strange tales in depth, laying a solid cultural foundation for the new work.

At the end of the interview, Li Jiaqi also expressed his sincere gratitude to players. He said that most members of the development team are introverted, work behind the scenes year-round and rarely have opportunities to meet players face to face. Events such as offline concerts, where they can personally experience players' enthusiasm, make the entire team feel deeply warmed.

This is the first time the official side has clearly established Zhong Kui's humorous, street-level style, and it has thoroughly overturned people's earlier speculation about the character's portrayal.

In fact, it also reveals Game Science's ambition to build a Chinese-style Black Myth universe: using Wukong to support the grand upper world of immortals, Buddhas, gods and demons, and Zhong Kui to fill out the lower world of folk life and customs.

One is epic and the other street-level; one is hard and the other soft. The two lines complement each other, move beyond the limitations of a single mythological IP, and build a complete, three-dimensional, layered and warm Chinese cultural universe of ghosts and deities.

The extreme stylistic contrast between the two works also greatly increases the series' flexibility and completely avoids the common sequel problem of becoming repetitive. Many players have exclaimed, “The sense of freshness is off the charts. We are looking forward to a brand-new Chinese-style Black Myth world.”