What Black Myth: Wukong's Tiger Vanguard 'Really' Looks Like Without Special Effects

You've most likely heard the game is good, but you might not realize just how much "Black Myth: Wukong" is blowing everyone away. After debuting on August 20, the game quickly shot to the top of the Steam charts, racking up the second-highest concurrent player count in Steam history. Part of the success of "Black Myth: Wukong" can be attributed to the game's visuals. Game Science has taken full advantage of the latest GPUs and even custom software to get the motion capture visuals just right. This can certainly be seen in the movements and animation for the game's many powerful bosses, such as the vicious Tiger Vanguard.

You don't need a high-end PC to play the game, but if you have one, it's going to make the most of that hardware. Technical issues are reportedly keeping "Black Myth: Wukong" off of Xbox for now, but on PlayStation 5 and PC, the game looks truly next-gen. When you strip away all the special effects that make the game look the way it does, all the technological work that went into the visuals in "Black Myth: Wukong" becomes even more impressive. In the case of the Tiger Vanguard boss, it took tech, ingenuity, an adorable team of real-life furry friends (no, seriously), and one hugely dedicated mo-cap actor. 

"Black Myth: Wukong" is based on the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West" (the same story that inspired the "Dragon Ball" anime and manga), and that source material presented the developers with some challenges. Many of the most memorable characters in the book are anthropomorphized animals, and "Black Myth: Wukong" incorporates them as friendly NPCs and some of the most fearsome bosses in the game. To get the visual fidelity that they wanted, the devs at Game Science had to develop new motion capture software that could accurately bring animals into the game. Designing the software probably gave the company's programmers plenty of sleepless nights, but it also provided all of us with some of the cutest "behind-the-scenes" footage ever recorded. Game Science released a comedic video showing a fictionalized account of the devs' attempts to use real cats as a model for the Tiger Vanguard boss.

According to IGN, Game Science originally worked with a team of actual cats to try and get the enemy movements just right (presumably also putting them in bite-sized motion capture suits). However, it didn't work out. According to the team's 2022 video, it took hours of recording to get enough useful movement information, because most of what the cats did when they were let loose was not exactly useful. After all, cats will be cats. This video offers an exaggerated look at the process that ends with the team giving up on the game altogether. In reality, the developers moved away from using feline actors and turned to a tried-and-true method to bring the Tiger Vanguard — and many other incredible characters — to startling life.

The cats helped to give the team some fun ideas for the Tiger Vanguard's movements and to make its attacks feel more realistic, but Game Science couldn't finish the job with cats alone. As it turns out, they weren't very good actors. "Black Myth: Wukong" was created with some truly advanced technology, but the animators still ran into the limitations of nature. Therefore, much of the motion capture work for "Black Myth: Wukong" had to be performed by humans — and one human in particular. Behind-the-scenes clips from the making of the game show stunt performer Yin Kai providing the real guidance for Game Science's animators, filming mo-cap for a vast majority of the game's characters. Tiger Vanguard may have feline grace inspired by the real thing, but the beast's most devastating and terrifying moves come from Yin Kai's physical performance.

When you first encounter the boss, he's drinking from a large pool of blood, then decides to attack after you interrupt his meal. That specific animation, as well as some of the more complex movements Tiger Vanguard makes in cutscenes, were created by Yin Kai — presumably while China's top cat acting troupe took a little nap.