Unruly Heroes is an up and coming game that you’re about to hear about because it just
got released!
That’s right, we got ourselves some early copies because this video is sponsored by
Unruly Heroes, which you can check out using our link in the description!
And while you may look at this game and not quite know what to say about it, in reality,
Unruly Heroes is portraying a tale as old as time.
Well, actually it’s about 500 years old, but hey, that’s still some old ass storytelling.
Unruly Heroes was influenced by the ancient Chinese tale, Journey to the West.
While Journey to the West is fictional, it is (like many great stories) based off of
real-life people who actually did real-life things.
In this case, a chinese monk named Xuanzang.
1,400 years ago Xuanzang traveled to India from China.
He went west.
His goal was to do buddhist stuff, and buddhist stuff he did.
This, of course, was in the opposition to the Chinese emperor's wishes, but it ended
up being chill and no one got too butt hurt about it, that's the zen way am i right?
Upon his return, Xaunzang brought a bunch of stuff back from his journey to help out
the chinese buddhists, apparently their scriptures sucked, they needed most complete and better
translate ones.
After he got back they built the big wild goose pagoda, (yeah that’s actually the
name of it) to house all their new buddhist stuff in what is modern day x’ian
This is a big deal people!
The journey xuanzang took was a long one across some pretty dangerous country just to do some
hardcore learning, not to mention doing it against the emperor's wishes and risking not
being able to come back to the tang dynasty.
And i don’t know about you, but i think we all wanna be a part of the sweet tang dynasty.
It was a kick in the glass, The events of buddha boy’s life were so
significant to chinese culture that his story was not only written into the anus of history’s
annals but then novelized hundreds of years later into one of the greatest stories ever
told by humans on earth.
Journey to the west.
You may have heard of this 2000 page book but my guess is you probably haven't read
it unless you had to.
It's not exactly light reading.
However if you haven't heard of it consider it the star wars of china/all of asia.
Or the lord of the rings if you’re like that.
It's a big deal, just not so much to us western folk, or so you thought pilgrim!
Thankfully Buddhists are pretty good about writing stuff down, not that much of it makes
much sense… sound of one hand clapping and all that….
But the historical significance of this journey… is significant.
Hence the existence of Unruly Heroes!
Xuanzang’s little trip is not only responsible for the epic tale transcribed in this game,
but it also created some of the greatest pop culture tropes of OUR day and age.
Is that surprising?
ARE YOU SURPRISED?!
You’re surprised.
Now we get games thrown at us pretty much on the daily but we only talk about the ones
we ourselves are interested in, that we think you might like.
So sit back, relax, light some candles and drop that pomegranate bath bomb into the tub
baby.
We’re going to go on a journey in the west-ward direction.
First off let’s talk about Unruly Heroes.
It was developed by magic design studios.
Cool guys BUT more importantly you play through 29 levels across 4 worlds, including an incredibly
unique “Underworld” world.
Slight spoilers here: but in the underworld you regress to a childhood self thats invincible,
but you need to protect your soul while attempting to gain an audience with the Kings of the
Underworld.
The soul is an important game mechanic, when characters die, you can resurrect them by
hitting their floating souls, with another hero.
Each hero has unique special abilities to help the team progress through the stages.
The next thing i noticed was the art style which is non hyperbolically fantastic, but
also extremely reminiscent of well, rayman.
Particularly rayman origins.
Which turns out, was a project members of magic design studios worked on during tenure
at Ubisoft.
Needless to say i was pretty sure this was gonna be good.
Basically it's got all the excellent look and feel of rayman with a much cooler premise
and historical connotations.
The history lesson in the beginning wasn't just for fun!
Nay!
It was a setup for the following paragraph!
Here’s the paragraph!
See, the eastern world and the western world are still to this day extremely different
places.
A big reason for that is because they differ in schools of thought.
Where for the last 2000 years the western world focused on abrahamic religions like
judaism, christianity and islam, the east focused primarily on hinduism, buddhism, taoism
and confucianism.
There could not be a bigger cultural divide than that.
Whether you’re religious or not if you live this side of the middle east, Jesus has affected
your life.
His teachings exist in our laws, our speech, even the way we dress.
It's something that is so ingrained in our culture it’s not noticeable unless studied
or pointed out.
Same thing goes with the east, religious or philosophical thought patterns on that large
a scale become as natural as breathing.
Long story short because of our cultures we literally see the world in different ways.
Our languages are built differently and emphasize things like subject and object completely
differently.
In english you would say “he threw the ball,” whereas in japanese you would say “he the
ball threw” but if you already knew who “he” was, you would just say “the ball
threw,” making the ball more important than the person who threw it, where as in english
the person throwing it is the most important part of the sentence, he is the object of
attention.
For some this leads to confusion and xenophobia, for me it leads to fascination and appreciation.
This leads us back to our story.
Like many things from the other side of the planet, journey to the west as a novel hasn't
reached the minds of the western masses yet.
But as an idea it has.
Let’s see if you can piece some things together based solely off of unruly heroes.
You play as four main characters, switching between them to help solve puzzles or platforming
challenges.
They are Sanzang the wise, Wukong the fearless monkey, Kihong the greedy pig and Sandmonk
the sensitive brute.
Sanzang uses seven orbs to attack and looks like a monk, wukong is a monkey with a pole
that extends during attack, kihong is a pig guy with what looks like a rake and sand monk
looks like depictions of a middle eastern djinn, or evil genie spirit thing for y’all
non cultured pilgrims.
Do you see?
Do you see yet with your minds eye why this is so familiar?
Well let's talk about the actual story of journey to the west.
Like i said, it's a long story so this will be abbreviated.
Also spoilers?
I mean it's been over 500 years you’ve had time to read this.
Sun wukong is a monkey demon who was born from a rock, he learns a lot of kung fu and
stuff from his master as well as tao techniques to transform into a bunch of things, be able
to make copies of himself as well as become kind of immortal.
He’s a mischievous impulsive fool, who is also incredibly intelligent at the same time.
Throughout his early journeys he becomes the handsome monkey king.
To protect his monkeys he goes to the dragon king and steals his pillar which is really
a pole that can change in size and weighs like 20,000 pounds.
Look familiar?
Wukong in the game has a big monkey pole too, it also changes sizes based on attacks or
to cross large gaps.
He’s just not as op cause it wouldn’t be as fun.
Novel wukong was so strong he kicked all the ass, so heaven got scared of him and brought
him up there to tend to the horses.
Wukong thought that was cool until he figured out it was the lowest job he could have, he
rebelled, beat up literally everyone in heaven, ate all the immortality peaches, drank all
the immortality wine, did some other things he shouldn't have and then pissed on the buddha’s
finger.
That last one got him sealed under a buddha rock for 500 years.
Until guanyin a goddess (or bodhisattva depending on which eastern religion you're in) decided
that someone had to go pick up some super buddha scrolls in india to save sinful southern
china.
That guy turned out to be tang sanzang who is kinda moses and jesus rolled into one.
Also he was a monk so he ironically got no tang ever.
He’s sets upon this pilgrimage but is utterly helpless and hopeless until he finds wukong
under that buddha rock and sets him free.
Also there’s a headband wukong gets stuck with to keep him in check, if sanzang chants
the headache chant it squeezes wukongs head and incapacitates him.
They then meet a shape shifting pig guy with an iron rake who truly appreciates that tang
dynasty if you know what i'm saying, long story short they mess up his plans and get
him to come along with them.
Then finally they meet a dude who was pretending to be a dragon and messing with people trying
to cross a river, turns out this guy was supposed to help them too and he joins up.
His english translation is sandy for some reason and his weapon is a crescent moon spade.
After this set up the tale becomes an anime “monster of the week” kind of story.
Every few chapters a new demon shows up bent on eating sanzang because his flesh apparently
grants immortality.
Now obviously these four characters are the heroes of unruly heroes, and from what i can
tell the game starts off roughly around the “monster of the week” sagas in the journey
to the west story which it follows it very loosely.
There's many homages to the actual novel, and your main guide is definitely guanyin.
Unruly heroes is 100% the best way to get your video game slice of this story.
Some of the best demons and settings from journey to the west are used in unruly heroes,
but no spoilers!
You can even possess certain demons and use them to your will like in oddworld! but what
of the cultural significance of journey to the west as a whole?
Has your brain been tickled enough yet?
Well here's your answer.
First let’s look at another game briefly: overwatch.
Two years ago for chinese new year overwatch released new skins to celebrate the event.
Zenyatta, reinhart, roadhog and winston all received costumes directly from journey to
the west.
Zenyatta as sanzang, reinhart as sandy or sha wujing, roadhog as pigsy or zhu bajie
and winston as sun wukong.
Sanzang’s orbs in unruly heroes are reminiscent of zenyatta’s orbs, but what they actually
are are spiritual representations of the seven factors of awakening, the steps a monk must
take to reach enlightenment.
But thats just a recent example, wukong appears in a ton of games, even kirby.
However the most relevant examples are in anime, particularly shonen anime.
If you sit back and think of how many anime revolve around a group of young boys going
on an odyssey it becomes clear exactly how powerful and important journey to the west
really is… in the east.
But here’s one of the biggest examples.
Dragon ball.
The entirety of this show was loosely based on journey to the west.
In fact in japanese, sun wukong is translated to none other than son goku.
His nimbus cloud is a vehicle wukong received in the novel and game, his strength, his ignorance,
his tail, turning into a giant ape, and even his freaking power pole is directly taken
from this story.
Even his weakness of being grabbed by the tail is an homage to wukong’s headache crown
there.
Oolong the perverted shape shifting pig general is bajie, bulma plays the role of sanzang
and yamcha, the desert bandit plays the role of sandy.
Even the oxking and his palace on fire mountain are direct rips from journey to the west,
being fire mountain and the bull king demon.
There’s other less obvious examples of this, like inuyasha.
Inuyasha himself has many traits of wukong, but none more than the necklace he wears around
his neck which keeps him incapacitated when kagome who plays the sanzang role says “sit
boy.”
Miroku plays the bajie role (hence his perversion) and sango is sha wujing.
Even naruto borrows from this story in the use of the monkey spirit son goku, but his
signature move the clone jutsu is one of sun wukongs favorite and most iconic abilities.
You can probably think of more and i’d like to hear about it so post down in the comments
below your favorite references to this story.
Unruly Heroes is the most recent example of media using Journey to the West to drive the
plot and characters of a story.
Thankfully if you play video games you should have easy access to it cause it’s on the
switch, xbox1, ps4, and pc!
It takes a known story and gives us an entire world to play in, while still driving home
the best parts of Journey To The West.
The characters, the weapons, the bosses, the setting, everything is derived from this tale
in a way that feels natural and appreciated while still having a humorous side.
Plus, it’s got up to 4 player co-op and online pvp for you sadists out there.
There’s plenty to keep any player glued to the screen for a good amount of time, lots
of stuff to collect, checklists to fill and a ton of art to unlock.
It controls fluidly allowing for access to all skill levels and is coupled with a beautiful
art design and most importantly some cultural relevance you can immerse yourself in at your
leisure.
I mean, who even reads books nowadays anyway?
Check it out using our link in the description and have your own Journey to the West, featuring
some truly unruly heroes.
I’m Grant that’s all I’ve got for today.
Bye!