Black Myth: Wukong | Official thirteen minutes gameplay trailer

This is an Indie dev? The modelling, motion, and polish on this is freaking amazing. Hope that I can run it on the same detail level as the demo without setting my video-card on fire!

Here I am, reposting a youtube comment of all things, but it seems knowledgeable and the best explanation of how such a shockingly good looking game could come out of nowhere:

I found many friends had told stories about the Wukong and the Myth Journey to the West (JTW). For those who did't know the history behind the game and the developing team, I want to tell you a long story. Maybe you will understand why the small team would like to take such a huge risk, why Chinese gamers are so excited, except that it may become the first decent Chinese game.

Some developers of the "black myth: Wukong" team once were employees in the Tecent, which is in charge of the well-known Roit company. The team was famous in China for their game "斗战神(Asura)" since 2014. Asura is an Online 3D MMORPG based on the JTW. It gained countless fans owing to its dark interpretations of the JTW, its elegant animations, etc.

But soon, due to potential pressures from the managers, due to the tight development schedules of an online game, after several expasion packs, maybe after the pack "White Bone", the quality of the game declined.

Some developers left the Tecent or were transferred to other departments. To gain more profits from the nearly dead MMORPG, the gamers were encouraged to invest more money by Tecent. Eventually, the game differed from the original one. The fans got really frustrated. There was a famous word in China, "There is no more JTW after the White Bone". BTW, the white bone wife is a famous monster in JTW :)

After the failure of the "Asura", some of the developers created their own company, aka, Game Science nowadays. They made some games without much public attention. Few people knew that they were still focusing on such a huge project these years.

The 8 characters at the end of the video means "Come back to the JTW after the White Bone" literally. Indeed, this is a response to the fans of Asura, as mentioned before.

Part of the slogan of the "Asura" is "命不由天" in Chinese, which means "Nobody else can control my fate". If the game is truly such a huge masterpiece, I think the developers are the real heros who control their own destiny.

So, in summary, a bunch of highly skilled developers left Tencent and founded their own company, Game Science Studios, to produce the game they actually always wanted to make and couldn't under Tencent management.

Also: It apparently uses Unreal Engine 4 and it's based on an old, Chinese tale, "Journey To The West", which supposedly also inspired Dragon Ball.

an old, Chinese tale, "Journey To The West", which supposedly also inspired Dragon Ball

There's no contest to say that Journey to the West inspired some characters in the original Dragon Ball (not Z). It's as if you were to put in your story a little girl with a red hood visiting her grandma.

The game seems to be in early days despite the gameplay we've seen. I really hope it comes out, but I feel like this is going to be one of those things that disappears after 2 years of waiting.

It should at least turn heads and get other developers aware of what's possible.

Wow! I'd lost touch with upcoming releases over the past couple years so I hadn't heard of this, but I'm excited to see what this could potentially mean for the gaming industry. It's amazing we haven't gotten a big JTW game up to this point, at least outside of China.