At Gamescom 2026, from Opening Evening Dwell to the Koelnmesse’s packed present flooring, you could not assist however discover the rising prominence of Chinese language studios with big AAA ambitions, from Netease’s Ananta that appears like anime GTA and every little thing else within the open world kitchen sink to Hoyoverse’s pivot to hyper-realistic darkish fantasy with the newly introduced Nodsufall.
However whereas these examples are nonetheless rooted within the cellular free-to-play house, Genigods: Nezha is following the identical path of premium AAA that started with 2024’s Black Fable: Wukong. In fact, simply being a Chinese language AAA recreation is not sufficient, and Younger Lau, Producer at Genigods Lab, is keenly conscious of figuring out the ‘secret sauce’ that units Genigods: Nezha aside.
“Earlier than Black Fable: Wukong, there was no Chinese language AAA, in order that recreation is profitable simply by proving that it is the first Chinese language AAA recreation,” he tells me. “Then there’s Phantom Blade Zero, and the key sauce is they’re motion-capturing all their martials arts. For our recreation, we’re tackling Chinese language genesis fable, the place we’re preventing within the sky, on the bottom, so our concept is conflict of the gods with distinctive relics.”
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As Spirit Pearl, the primary life cast by Nüwa, the Goddess of Life, you are battling towards colossal gods on an epic quest to fix the shattered sky and seal the spacetime rifts opened up by the slumbering Genesis God Pangu. It is lots to absorb, particularly in case your grasp on Chinese language genesis fable is a little bit rusty, however the best strategy to describe it’s that is China’s model of God of Struggle – or Goddess of Struggle.
(Picture credit score: Genigods Lab)
My hands-on demo at Gamescom is a fairly transient one, although it does lots to condense what Genigods Lab is. It opens on a crimson desert seemingly scorched by ten suns from above, and it’s right here we meet our heroine Pearl as she fights an armoured boss known as The Rift-Cursed.
It is an early demonstration to its melee fight system that is straightforward sufficient to drag off auto-combos when mashing face buttons whereas holding the proper bumper, whilst you can simply shut in on the enemy taking to the air or again to the bottom. “We would like you to combat within the air and on the bottom, but additionally from floor to air, air to floor, or air to air,” says Lau.
Thus far, Genigods: Nezha is not 1,000,000 miles away from different motion video games like Satan Might Cry or God of Struggle, although the aerial preventing did additionally make me consider Dragon Ball Xenoverse, whereas Road Fighter 6’s trendy controls was an inspiration for the auto-combo system.
What’s extra intriguing is the tech that is making these clashes really feel out of this world. An important a part of Pearl is that she has been produced from water and clay, and so these are parts you possibly can see as her kind shifts, the way in which liquid splashing results come from her assaults or a particular transfer summons water particles in fluid movement.
There’s every kind of particle results happening, whether or not it is the mud and sand the boss kicks up when touchdown a stomping assault. And once we’re on the particularly painful receiving finish of an assault, Pearl’s weak clay and water kind can also be uncovered, alongside along with her beating coronary heart.
All these results can nonetheless take its toll, and on this early work-in-progress construct, there’s evidently moments when each the decision and framerate take a success. But there’s a whole lot of ambition behind what the studio is attempting to attain.
Referring to it as ‘Cinematic Fluid Simulation’ and utilizing Vertex Animation Textures (VAT), Lau says the studio has basically developed expertise that may incorporate feature-film high quality rendering results to real-time rendering in Unreal Engine 5. In reality, this expertise has been developed with the animation studio behind the blockbuster Ne Zha animation movies (Ne Zha 2 breaking world field workplace information to grow to be the best grossing animated movie of all time).
Admittedly, it was more durable to see this within the transient demo, and Lau was maybe over-passionate to the purpose of exaggerating as he claims, “I am utilizing animation film expertise to make graphics 1000 instances quicker.” I as an alternative needed to depend on some slides proven throughout my appointment, which in contrast some animation results of water and dirt particles, and the way a lot smoother and movie-like the studio’s tech is.
But even with out these particulars, I additionally really feel that Genigods: Nezha is already distinct with its celestial artwork route, with a current trailer debuting at Gamescom Opening Evening Dwell additionally exhibiting colossal stone giants and multi-headed dragons, some which you will even be scaling akin to Shadow of the Colossus. Even this tutorial boss hides one other layer, because it seems you are simply preventing his ‘head’ as a large’s physique emerges beneath him from the sand in a later section of the combat.
It is nonetheless early days but, and Genigods is just getting began as Genigoids: Nezha is the primary of a deliberate trilogy. However regardless that it is also simply been introduced for Xbox Collection X/S alongside PC and PS5, I ponder whether we’ll have to attend for the PS6 and Microsoft‘s Venture Helix, at the moment anticipated to reach in 2028, to totally realise the imaginative and prescient this studio has deliberate.
Genigods: Nezha is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Collection X/S and you’ll wishlist now on Steam.
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