"Qu Gao may not be unknown to everyone, but he has his own voice and clear words." Recently, the open-world adventure game "Original God" developed by Mihayou has launched a new character, Yunyo. The design of Yunyi is widely welcomed by players because of its integration of traditional Chinese opera elements. Its opera singing segments, sung by professional opera actors, have been widely disseminated on social media at home and abroad. As of January 14, Yunwei's singing section "Goddess Split View" has been played more than 9.85 million times on the video website Bilibili (Station B) and has received more than 2.26 million views on YouTube. "This is the first time I've listened to Chinese opera, and now I can't help but loop it." Some foreign netizens commented under the relevant videos of Yunwei.
Yunwei and "Goddess Split View" are hot "going to sea", why does traditional opera let global players "enter the pit" for a second? Experts believe that by integrating the "Chinese gene" into the content design and narrative structure of digital products, the game has created a cultural symbol with wide influence, which has gone further and more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in the world. "As a carrier of mass entertainment, games are limited by many conditions, and it is difficult to carry the heavy accumulation of opera art for thousands of years." The production team of "Original God" said that they hope that through the more popular and easily accepted form of entertainment in "Original God", more people will know the artistic crystallization of traditional Chinese opera, and even use this to generate interest in this art, and then contact the essence of real opera culture.
Using iconic elements, the charm of opera is integrated into the virtual world
A melancholy "sigh" unveiled the moving story described in "Goddess Splitting", "Qiu Hong folded single and difficult to double, idiots obsessed with resentment and obsession..." In the game PV of "Original God", Yunyan's opera singing section is amazing. According to reports, Yunyan's opera singing section was composed by The Mihayou Music Team HOYO-MiX, the production team of "Original God" wrote lyrics, and Yang Yang, an actor of the Shanghai Peking Opera House, was specially invited to sing. "Combining games and operas was hard to imagine before." Yang Yang said, "How to lightly integrate the charm of opera into the virtual world and into the life and image of a young girl, everyone has really put a lot of effort and thinking. ”
On January 14, the production team of Mihayou's "Original God" released the documentary "Human In the Drama" of Yunyan character creation, which detailed the behind-the-scenes creation of Yunyan. In the virtual world of "Original God", "Tivat Continent", Yunyan is an opera performance artist from "Li Yue". She can write plays, perform well, and promote the "Liyue Drama" from the main story of the devil god and the immortals, and gradually shift to the narrator's own story, both the spirit of inheritance and the spirit of innovation - the character shaping of Yunyi is based on this feature.
According to the production team of "Original God", the inspiration for the image of Yunyi comes from outstanding women such as Mulan, Mu Guiying, Liang Hongyu, etc., and at the same time refers to their opera costumes to do the design. During the development of Yunwei, the production team continued to draw nourishment from the traditional Chinese opera culture, and used the pompoms, plumes, cloud shoulders, and iconic elements of traditional opera such as "dancing flower guns" on the costumes into character images and action designs.
The singing section of "Goddess Splitting View" has not only been loved by Chinese players, but also become the highlight of many overseas players.
On the overseas video platform YouTube, netizens commented on the punch card under the official account of "Original God" to express their love for the Yunyan singing segment, and some netizens spontaneously produced videos, using the Yunyan opera singing segment to introduce the opera culture from China. On the overseas social media platform Twitter, netizens enthusiastically discussed which opera elements were used in Yunweihua, and many people were eager to hear more opera performances. "It's a pleasure to be a part of this project, to use my voice to play this character, to interpret the story in the fantasy world, and to convey the opera culture to players around the world in this form." Yang Yang said. "I hope you can enjoy my performance and enjoy the ancient art of opera."
The use of new technologies and the ingenuity of designers permeate the whole chain of character production
The production team of "Original God" revealed that Yunyan actually completed the 3D production around 2018, but it was iterated and polished before the official appearance. "The early original design did not take into account the wide-angle distortion of the in-game camera." The designer explained that in order to improve the intuitiveness and accuracy of the production, the production team approached the tool group to develop a tool that could synchronize MAYA and the engine in real time. "With the new tool, we can observe the final visual effect in a real-world game environment in time while the model is modified." Optimization of new technologies has significantly reduced the cost of communication and modification, making the subsequent design and production process more efficient and accurate.
The use of new technologies and the ingenuity of designers permeate every small link in the character production chain. In order to avoid unreasonable and unsightly model interspersing of Yun's hair and shawl parts, the production team further adjusted the binding of the wiring and the skeletal animation. In addition, Yun's eye makeup is particularly intense, and the stretch is more serious when performing the blink animation. In order not to appear contrary, the designer tried to adjust the original painting to make the final performance more perfect.
The character rendering of "Original God" is also constantly iterating, and has successively added its own dynamic AO, scene dynamic projection, scene light source, and fog effect to the cloud viola rendering, so that the characters can better integrate into the scene and make the color light and shadow more coordinated. In order to match the character design and show a richer cartoon rendering effect, they also developed a "dynamic face shadow map" to make the light and shadow transition effect of the face more natural and stable; at the same time, the character also used "multi-layer shadow color" to show some of the artistic effects of the hand-drawn processing in the original painting.
In 2012, three Shanghai Jiao Tong University students walked into the incubator of Shanghai Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Center and founded MihaYou, and the high-end level and high compatibility of technology and art have become the goals pursued by the game production team. The same is to do mobile games, some companies can go to a project in a few months, but Mihayou's "Original God" research and development for three years, with an investment of more than 500 million yuan.
Integrate the "Chinese gene" and show the charm of traditional culture to players around the world
In the creative process of Yunyi, the production team also hesitated, but as the work continued to advance, they felt more and more that the opera culture was really profound, with amazing depth and breadth, covering many things that Chinese could perceive. "We would love to pay tribute to this ancient art in our own way." The production team of "Original God" said: "As a Chinese game team, we are in awe, and we strive to apply some things that we feel are better, some elements from different cultures, into this all-encompassing fantasy world, so that players of different cultural backgrounds in various regions can try to contact and experience." ”
"Original God" is not only concerned with the cultural heritage, but also in many parts of the game like a pearl. For example, the "Bandit Stone" task uses the Tibetan head poem of "The World is Changeable, the Bandit Stone Turns", the copy of the Monthly Festival "The Taste of the World" uses rhetorical techniques such as duality and top truth, and lyrics similar to "Chu Ci" are used in the music of the Ruotuo Dragon King. Incorporating the "Chinese gene" into the content design and narrative structure of digital products, the game has created a cultural symbol with wide influence, which has gone further and deeper into the hearts of the people internationally. Since its launch on September 28, 2020, "Original God" has quickly become one of the representative works of China's digital culture industry going to sea, and has been selected as a key project of national cultural export in 2021-2022. Following the App Store 2020 Game of the Year and Google Play Game of the Year 2020, Original God also won the 2021 Best Mobile Game Award at The Game Awards, known as the "Oscar of the Game Industry", in December 2021, the first original IP game developed by a Chinese development team.
According to statistics, on Twitter, the official account of "Original God" Genshin Imapct has more than 4.4 million fans worldwide, which is the most discussed game on Twitter in the first half of 2021. On YouTube, Genshin Impact, the official account of "Original God", released a character introduction video in the form of a traditional Chinese storyteller, "Zhong Li: Listening to The Book", which was played more than 24 million times. Liu Wei, president of Mihayou, said that the reason why "Original God" can achieve such good results is because in the process of creation and publicity, a large number of traditional Chinese cultural elements are added, and the charm of traditional culture is shown to global users in a fresh way.
Author: Xuanjing
Editor: Zhou Minxian
Editor-in-Charge: Huang Qizhe
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.