Team Ninja has shared new gameplay footage of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, featuring a gnarly initial boss battle with an aoye.

The aoye is alternately translated to the aoyin or ao yin. It is a creature from Chinese mythology, named in the Shan Hai Jing. This book does not have any big stories, but instead describes several mountains and seas across China. It is also something of a bestiary, and there’s no doubt many other creatures that appear in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty were also first noted here.

The aoye itself is said to resemble a bull, with a hair that is so strawlike that it resembles a moving straw rain-cape. However, unlike domestic bulls, this one likes to eat humans. It resides in the mountains.

For Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Team Ninja took a bit of artistic license, but to good effect. This aoye doesn’t have a body that resembles anything like that of a bull, but instead is a giant mass of strawlike hair and tentacles with a head.

Gameplay wise, the aoye is an open target, but don’t let that fool you. It throws out a constant stream of fatal attacks, that take a lot of life and sweep a wide range of the battlefield. This gameplay gamely demonstrates that you just won’t win a war of attrition against it. Of course, like most action games of its type, the way to win this fight is to study the aoye’s attack patterns, and keep dodging and moving until you see an opening.

As you can see, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is invested deeply in the world of Chinese mythology, and especially the world of wuxia novels. These novels were the basis of movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and of course there are many video games that are also set in this period or use characters from this mythology. This includes the classic 1990s turn based PC game Bandit Kings of Ancient China, that happens to have been published by Toei.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty distinguishes itself from all of them by bringing the mythological side of this literary canon to the forefront more than any video game or movie has done before. We already know that it will have only 13 weapon types to play with, with only seven initially playable. While Team Ninja does not share details on it, one of those weapons is also featured in this new gameplay video.

In spite of the artistic license Team Ninja is taking, it is still the most detailed that modern audiences will see of this world than ever before, and they have built it for an international audience.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty launches on March 3, 2023. It’ll be available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC. It will also be on Game Pass at launch. You can see the boss fight below.

Source: YouTube