According to “Xiaoting Xulu,” Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty ordered Zhang Wenmin to produce a performance, “The Peaceful Raft of Ascension,” depicting the Journey to the West. The script, written by Zhang, was crafted to uphold the idea of “domestic peace,” using the play to reinforce the Qing dynasty’s rule. After Wukong’s defeat by Buddha, the creators added a celebratory scene titled “Taming the Greedy Tiger and Bringing Peace to Heaven.” Wukong, referred to as “the Greedy Tiger,” was portrayed as the disruptive force and enemy of the Qing’s order. The theme of “suppressing the rebellious” ran throughout.
Sounds familiar to Western media tropes regarding revolutionary villains.
I get the argument, but the title feels a little odd given how hugely successful it’s been in China, which they even reference in these last two sentences:
And the fans of the “Black Myth” can only gloss over the narrative shortcomings by boasting the game’s sales and overwhelming positive ratings. All of these just highlight how significant the story issues were.
Overwhelmingly positive ratings would imply most people are satisfied, no?
I dunno, it’s a weird article. I just liked that one particular paragraph lol
CGTN has released a dozen videos onto youtube promoting Black Myth Wukong. Why would Chinese media promote a game that is unliked by China?
Who is even the author of this article? No author is listed. It says it is an opinion piece. Whose opinion is this? There is a reference link to a quora-like website, but the link is an unrelated question. The question on Zhihu asks people how they feels about a video on bilibili called “Who wrote journey to the west?”, which doesn’t seem specifically about the game. The commentor on Zhihu seems to be someone who doesn’t like the story of “Journey to the West”, not specifically the game.
So if I understand this correctly, they did a “Killmonger strangling an old lady” to Wukong? I haven’t played the game and I’m not familiar with the story
The story is basically:
spoiler
- Journey to West happens.
- Monkey decides he doesn’t like it in heaven. Stays on earth to enjoy simple pleasures.
- Heaven becomes mistrustful of this. Sends army to force him to submit to heaven.
- Wukong loses because circlet he wears(given to him by heaven in the past) does stuff to stun him. Gets sealed under a mountain and has his senses split into 6 relics and scattered across China.
- Monkeys of the mountain he’s from regularly send monkey warriors out to try and collect these relics. You play the game as one of these monkeys, not as the true Wukong.
- Turns out this broke Wukong into a broken shell. After recovering the relics you fight him. 7a. When you defeat Wukong’s broken shell, his circlet drops on the floor. If you didn’t recover his memories through secrets in the game you put it on (becoming bound to the celestial court again) 7b. If you recovered Wukong’s memories through secrets in the game, you don’t wear the circlet (remaining unbound to the celestial court).
It’s sort of unsatisfying and open ended. It doesn’t have anything political to say. With that said I also think that if it did have much political to say it probably wouldn’t be made though. I personally think the chinese games industry is overly restrictive for fear of art being produced that might harm the state and it has a detrimental effect on the art produced overall. This dev wouldn’t have produced anything particularly great or earth shattering in terms of art if they were unrestricted though.
Also how political is anyone going to be when adapting Journey to the West? Like you can do vague theming about empires, but it is such a beloved and well known story, and one fundamentally about spirituality, not political intrigue
theres a fan theory out there that the game is a plot by wukong and erlang shen to overthrow heaven
spoiler
main point is that there is mutual knowledge between the two that wukong can’t die if he doesn’t want to (since he’s like six or seven different kinds of immortal), so the first scene where wukong ‘dies’ is just creating plausible deniability for part one of their plan to get rid of the jingu curse
as for why erlang shen needs wukong to overthrow heaven when he can probably do it by himself… idk, unresolved mommy issues probably
It doesn’t have anything political to say. With that said I also think that if it did have much political to say it probably wouldn’t be made though. I personally think the chinese games industry is overly restrictive for fear of art being produced that might harm the state and it has a detrimental effect on the art produced overall.
So does this mean we won’t get an FPS out of China where we play as Korean soldiers killing off American invaders?
😩
Sincerely doubt it. I have a feeling it would be considered to “dishonor the country” to make a videogame because they’d see it as trivialising the death of its soldiers. I don’t think that would ever be tested though, I don’t think a developer would even risk spending the money to make it to find out that it doesn’t get through the regulator for that reason.
I think more that they focused more on a rather nihilistic apolitical story
Even pop nihilism has a political message: “nothing can change for the better, do nothing, lol.”
Right? How can anything truly be “apolitical”? Apolitical to me means that it’s not ruffling any feathers politically, which would mean it has the politics of hegemony.
Also an apolitical game from a studio who sent out memos to influencers to not talk about “feminist propaganda”? Idek what’s going on there exactly, but it sure is political in some way
From what I’ve seen on chinese social media it’s a pretty big hit but I don’t doubt there are some legit criticisms out there. It’s a fun game, nothing mind blowing, but I love playing any game I can with mandarin audio / subtitles + english UI for language practice. Also I’m trash at these types of games so I get a lot of practice in watching the same battle intros several times over lol
