I get a feeling you’d enjoy the poetry and storytelling in the portraits section of black myth: wukong, which is basically the compendium for profiles of enemies you fight in game.
Like it’s genuinely enjoyable material that is both fulfilling in art and philosophy. Both of which were completely insufferable for me to learn in college from insufferable people.
My favorite entry is from the “wolf assassin” portrait where his poem reads
Hills and rivers, nature’s way,
Kindness grows like grass and wood.
Plants may fade, then bloom in May,
All shall still stand where they stood.
Once upon a time, a young wolf followed a grey elder wolf to learn the art of hunting. Despite his cleverness and diligence, the young wolf struggled to catch any prey. One day, the pale elder commanded him to find food alone or face hunger. Then the young wolf, hiding in the shadows of the mountains, finally managed to catch a rabbit. However, instead of eating it alive, he gently licked the rabbit’s wounds, as if to heal them.
The rabbit took the chance and fled into a pond, struggling to swim to safety, but the young wolf in pursuit forced it back into the water. Just as the rabbit was about to drown, the young wolf rescued it, softly nudging its head and helping it breathe. The rabbit woke up conscious but bewildered. Suddenly, the distant howl of the grey elder startled both of them. In his panic, the young wolf accidentally crushed the rabbit under his paw.
Heartbroken, the young wolf wept bitterly. As the elder approached and inquired, it became clear: the young wolf couldn’t bring himself to kill the rabbit, so he repeatedly spared its life. Yet, he also feared his own hunger, and that’s why he refused to let go. Acknowledged, the grey elder then advised, “Your false kindness brought misery. Instead of hesitation, both of you would have been better off with a swift end.”
The grey elder’s words seemed to have dawned upon the young wolf. Later, it honed a lethal technique of hurling whirling blades from afar for stealth kills, believing this to be the ultimate form of mercy towards its adversaries.
Like it screams character to me for what’s essentially a faceless monster you may fight a handful of times.
Some more poems
For the snake patroller guai
As seasons turn, from slumber it parts,
Hidden in green, a hunter with arts.
Small in shape, it devours the grand,
Or strikes a pain no cure can stand.
For the wolf stalwart guai
Neither sky cares, nor earth will hold,
By liquor’s laugh, bold spirits unfold.
In drunken dreams, a cosmos wide,
Wake with worries cast aside.
For the Crow Diviner Guai
He knows the world’s fate through divination,
Yet cannot secure his own salvation.
In what he thought was a place of peace,
Fate’s tangled threads never cease
I genuinely don’t like soul-like games, but this has been the one exception to my feelings on the genre.
