Gaming Weekly: Black Myth Turns Two, the GTA6 Leak, and the Eve of Gamescom#

Long Zhiri | August 23, 2026

Hello everyone, Long Zhiri here. It’s 11:30 on a Friday night as I write this. The late-summer heatwave in Shanghai has finally eased a little, and the newsroom is down to me, Chasun, and the ceiling light that refuses to go off on schedule. This week flew by — fast enough that I keep feeling I owe something: probably that Black Myth guide update Zixing has been chasing me for, and the tab at the BBQ stall downstairs.

The habit of writing a weekly report was drilled into me back on the games desk of Computer News. Back then, “Xiaosheng’s Notes” was the flagship column, and I loved crouching nearby to watch Xiaosheng turn the newsroom’s petty daily grind into a full page of fun. Only now that it’s my turn to put pen to paper do I understand that behind every installment of banter and griping was a life actually lived inside the job.

This week, our newsroom lived some of those days too.

Zixing flashed the new handheld firmware early Monday, stayed up half the night running image benchmarks, and dropped a Cyberpunk 2077 neon-sign comparison shot into the group chat saying the picture finally stopped looking washed out. Chasun ran nonstop from Tuesday through Thursday and finished the entire Black Myth second-anniversary special — content tables, art appreciation, achievement routes, all of it. Wubian swept the new Palworld region on Wednesday, then went back to the Beast of Reincarnation boss fights, saying he wanted to verify whether parries are genuinely easier to land now that the camera pulls back, and tossed a screenshot into the group. Zhanlan Yingren cleared the new Mafia: The Old Country expansion on Thursday and came back complaining that its open-world filler feels exactly the way it did ten years ago. As for me, I pulled an all-nighter Wednesday finishing the GTA6 leak deep-dive, slept it off Thursday, and here I am Friday night writing the weekly.

That was our week — fragments, patchwork, arguments, BBQ, drafts, launches, and more arguments.

Black Myth Turns Two: Each of Us Has Our Own “Wukong”#

We had actually been circling the two-year mark for a while. Market discussion around this game has run for a full year straight, from launch hype to long-term word of mouth, and everyone in the newsroom dug in on their own take without convincing anyone else.

It started with a message Wubian dropped in the group on Monday: “Black Myth is two years old and our guides still haven’t fully sorted out all six staff lines.”

Zixing replied instantly: “I just finished the stat tables for all six staff lines last week, Chasun’s achievement routes are still in progress, and I’m waiting on Wubian for perfect-dodge frame data on the Hundred-Eyed Daoist Master — stop pushing, pushing won’t help.”

Chasun twisted the knife hardest: “I’ll be impressed if you two ever write up Guangzhi’s second-phase move hitboxes clearly. That ‘One Steelyard’ swing’s hitbox — I suspect the designers measured it with a laser gauge.”

Wubian picked it up: “The ‘One Steelyard’ hitbox in Guangzhi’s second phase is indeed absurd, but if we’re talking frame data, the Hundred-Eyed Daoist Master’s ‘Thousand-Eyed Annihilation’ is the real frame killer — it takes no perfect dodges for the entire fight. I ran it plenty of times before I could read its rhythm.”

Zixing: “That’s because you don’t carry the Mind-Calming Pill… wait, the Mind-Calming Pill doesn’t add dodge frames. Then how did you get past it?”

Wubian: “Lotus Platform plus Adamantine Body plus Immobilize on cooldown. Tank it.”

Chasun: “…And that’s a play the designers never saw coming. This is exactly why mechanics breakdowns matter — players will always understand the exploits better than the designers do.”

Listening to them argue, I felt oddly settled. Over two years, this series’ coverage on our site has spread from beginner onboarding and quick boss references to hidden-area maps, later adding the progression systems, a full achievement route map, a long-form appreciation from the perspective of the original novel, and then an art special — one piece at a time, ground out exactly like this. I remember who stayed up late writing each one, who revised a table three times, and who went to war with the designers over a single frame-data number.

On Wednesday night, Zhanlan Yingren sent a rare long voice message: “Honestly, what I most want to talk about is the art. On launch night I posted a screenshot in the group — the cloth physics the moment Elder Jinchi transforms, the subsurface scattering as light passes through the kasaya. Someone replied, ‘Isn’t that just UE5’s Nanite and Lumen?’ I didn’t answer then. But here’s what I wanted to say: technology is the skeleton, art is the soul. Black Myth’s sculptural modeling, its ink-wash-rendered cutscenes, frames that look like a living classical Chinese painting… you can’t write that in code.”

The group went quiet for two minutes. Then Wubian posted a sticker: “All right, all right, the art director has spoken. Back to work.”

I saved that voice message on purpose. Because I know that’s roughly why we built this site — not just to write guides, but to preserve the moments of a game worth remembering, through words, data, screenshots, and even arguments.

The GTA6 Leak: Nobody Wins This Circus#

If Black Myth was a topic where the celebrating got celebrated, GTA6 was purely a topic where the arguing got argued.

GTA6 leak chatter kept building all week, with clips and screenshots circulating through the community. The newsroom has been through this kind of thing in its early years, so the discussion looked nothing like our usual topics — it was mostly a debate over whether leaks should spread at all, and what attitude to take toward them.

Zixing’s first instinct was a frame-by-frame technical teardown of the leaked footage to see how much underlying information it could yield. His view: leaks do surface plenty of technical highlights early, but they come tangled in unverified riddle-solving and quotes taken out of context, and players get misled easily.

Chasun slammed the table: “However impressive the tech, a leak is a leak. These people are doing shady work under the banner of ‘players’ right to know,’ and it’s gross. And everything that leaks is a hand-picked highlight reel — no bugs, no frame drops, no unfinished quest logic. This isn’t ‘showing players the real game,’ it’s ‘selling expectations by passing off the prettiest slices as the finished product.’”

Wubian, for his part, settled in to watch the show: “Honestly, the attention businesses harvest from a leak is sometimes bigger than their own marketing. Traffic is traffic — whoever swallows it wins.”

Listening from the sidelines, I suddenly remembered the run-up to GTA5’s launch years ago — leaks, fake trailers, and forged internal documents everywhere then too. Rockstar never lost its footing in a leak cycle; it rolled out trailers, events, and deep previews on schedule, burying low-quality noise under high-quality official content.

This week I wrote a dedicated deep-dive on the GTA6 leak, working through the timeline, several representative community viewpoints, a comparison of the two leaks, what to watch in the official preview, engine technology analysis, gameplay system speculation, historical comparisons, and risk warnings. After reading it, Zixing added one note: “The technical analysis holds up, but your ‘release window prediction’ is too aggressive. Rockstar never plays by the book.”

He’s right. I’m not changing it. That piece wasn’t written for analysts — it was written for veteran players who have waited years. They need to know what in the leak is real, what is bait, what to believe, and what to wait for.

Zhanlan Yingren got his own jab in: “The funniest part is the wallet addresses and crypto promotions riding the leak for attention. Going that far off the beaten path means it’s either script kiddies who don’t know the industry, or pure clout-chasing.”

Wubian added: “Speaking of response times, the official takedown notices went out faster than the leak itself spread. That reaction speed is way quicker than back in the day.”

Chasun waved it off: “Forget the leak, let’s talk business. When is the official deep-dive preview actually coming?” “Honestly, no way to tell,” I said. “Rockstar’s marketing rhythm never plays by the book. Rather than guess a window, wait for them to open their mouths.”

Zixing: “Right. Reading today’s Rockstar is harder than picking lottery numbers.”

The Eve of Gamescom: A Barometer for Show Season#

In late August, the annual Gamescom opens its doors, and just like that, show season is here. Publishers spent the week rolling out lineup announcements — no small amount of information — and the newsroom started scheduling early.

Attitudes toward trade shows in this newsroom have always been split.

Zixing cares about hardware and performance: “The most worthwhile thing to watch during show season is what specs each new game actually hits in real gameplay. Performance, storage solutions, port quality — those are the hard metrics. What I especially want to see is how a batch of these titles achieve their image quality; the shadows on the last generation of handhelds were far too chunky.”

Chasun was running the numbers on everyone’s lineup sheets: “What to watch now is whether the open-world titles can actually break the ‘canned’ template. Big maps and long quest logs mean nothing — you have to see whether NPCs genuinely remember you and whether regional factions actually influence each other. Otherwise it’s the same old ‘climb the tower to unlock icons, clear outposts, collect.’”

Wubian had his eyes on the mobile section: “The Chinese publishers’ overseas lineup is tighter than in previous years. Tencent, NetEase, HoYoverse, and Kuro Games are all going. The titles they’re bringing hold up well on mobile and in cross-platform play. You could call this show an ’exhibition of Chinese games going global’ and not be wrong.”

Zhanlan Yingren cared about exactly one thing: “Any new ship models on display for naval games? If not, I’m not going.”

I said: “You get more zen every year.”

He replied: “Zen or not, I do know this — after the show, our guides section is in for another crunch.”

Can’t argue with that. Show season has always been peak content production. After last year’s show, Zixing cranked out hands-on reports for days straight, Chasun assembled a technical whitepaper, and Wubian built crossover guides. This year will almost certainly run on the same rhythm — except this time we’ve laid out the schedule in advance, so we’re not scrambling at the last minute like we did last year.

Site News: We’re “Shipping” Too#

Since this is our own turf, let’s spend this week’s issue advertising what’s newly live on the site:

1. Black Myth: Wukong Two-Year Anniversary Retrospective — art appreciation by Zhanlan Yingren, a technical breakdown of the ink-wash rendering pipeline by Wubian, achievement routes updated by Chasun, and staff stats completed by Zixing. The page is live, richly illustrated, pulling two years of appreciation and analysis into one special. Plenty of people shared it in the group after publish, one commenter sighed that “this is how an anniversary should be celebrated,” and when I screenshotted it into the group, Zixing replied, “Oh please, stop glowing, go fix bugs.”

2. GTA6 Leak: The Full Recap — the news-desk quick report, with the timeline, each community’s core takes, and the official preview’s highlights all in one place. It got forwarded to multiple forums on publish day, with one reader commenting, “Far more detailed than the official statements.” Chasun smugly flicked the link at Zixing.

3. GTA6 Leak Deep-Dive Analysis — the long-form edition, covering technical analysis, gameplay system speculation, historical comparisons, and risk warnings. This one is for players who genuinely want to weigh how much the leak is worth. Zixing’s copy edit left plenty of margin notes, a good chunk of which read “align the data here” and “cite the source here,” with a few others reading “this section works.”

4. Major update to the Black Myth main guide page — a new anniversary chapter appended to the end of the Black Myth: Wukong complete guide, including an ink-wash aesthetics research table, the evolution of its art direction, real-hardware performance test data, and a full set of subpage navigation. The hub grew from its original length into the current full edition with clearer navigation. Wubian’s ink-wash aesthetics research aligns three columns — descriptions from the original novel, the game’s art recreation, and engine material parameters — and after reading it, Zhanlan Yingren said, “This table could go straight into an art class as a lesson plan.”

5. Beast of Reincarnation and Halo: Campaign Evolved guide hubs stood up — the subpage frameworks for both hubs are fully laid out, with dedicated pages for onboarding, mechanics, weapons, items, achievements, compendiums, Q&A, and update logs — twenty pages per game — so veterans can jump straight to what they need and newcomers can start from zero.

The Hugo build finished in sync, the sitemap is updated, and entry links to all the new pages are in place.

Still Happening This Week#

Beast of Reincarnation is three weeks into release, and the dev team has shifted its update cadence up two gears: the August 15 patch added three camera distance tiers, support for mainstream upscalers and frame interpolation, a subtitle size option, and raised the Bloom arts’ damage and healing. The studio has also teased that ultrawide support, frame generation, and skippable cutscenes are on the way. Chasun says the most guide-worthy thing about this game is actually its “one heroine, one dog” hybrid combat — Emma swings her blade in real time while Koo strikes on command, the two resource pools never overlap, and you’re forced to convert successful defense directly into offensive resources. It’s rare to see an action game treat “defense” as its main output. After testing the camera changes, Zixing’s verdict: “With the camera pulled back, parry timing is finally readable. A lot of the hits I ate in boss fights before were ones I genuinely never saw wind up.”

[Mafia: The Old Country’s new expansion] has split opinion — the story is polished, but the free-roam content is being called “watered down.” After finishing the main story, Zhanlan Yingren said: “The narrative tension of the mob genre is still there, but the open-world filler feels exactly the way it did ten years ago. The developers need to wake up.” Chasun twisted the knife: “Side quests are all ‘go here, grab that, go there, kill this,’ NPC daily routines are still scripted patrol loops, and huge chunks of the city can’t be entered… This isn’t a current-gen open world — it’s a ten-year-old game in an HD remaster costume.”

Halo: Campaign Evolved is coming to PS5 for the first time — officially confirmed, and a milestone as the first Microsoft first-party title to cross onto another platform. One clarification: the “PS5 player percentage” figure that circulated earlier was actually an internal site estimate with no official data behind it, and this page no longer cites that number. The site’s Halo hub has also been updated with cross-platform teaming tutorials and input-device balance testing.

Handheld firmware update: the handheld platform got a version update this week, adding image enhancement, variable refresh rate, and custom fan curves. Zixing spent half the night testing on his own unit and posted a comparison shot: “With enhancement on, the neon in Cyberpunk 2077 finally stopped looking washed out. This is what a handheld’s picture should look like.” He added this on the dev team’s patience with handheld hardware: “One of a kind in this industry.”

Newsroom Talk#

When work wrapped on Friday, the gang headed down to the BBQ stall again. The owner’s wife knows us by now — she starts laying out lamb skewers, eggplant, and chive pockets the moment she sees us coming.

Zhanlan Yingren got things started around a mouthful of lamb skewer: “Which do you think is worth more — our Black Myth anniversary package, or those GTA6 leak clips?”

Zixing didn’t look up: “No comparing them. One is ‘confidence in a finished product,’ the other is ‘anxiety over a half-finished one.’ One shows you its best; the other is scared that if you see too much, you won’t buy it.”

Wubian sighed, counting skewer sticks: “Fine, tonight’s tab is on me, a treat for the leak crowd — they’ve been feeding on content for ages anyway.”

I laughed out loud, and Chasun took a slow sip of cold beer and added: “Enough yakking. If we’re talking value — when these skewer sticks are cleared, how many pre-order slots can we trade them for? Oh wait, pre-orders haven’t opened yet.”

The whole table cracked up. The owner’s wife poked half a head out from behind the counter, probably wondering what’s wrong with us.

Zixing suddenly turned serious: “Seriously — this week we wrote the Black Myth anniversary special, wrote the GTA6 leak analysis, revised guides, launched pages… a handful of people pushed out a whole batch of long-form pieces and several pages of updates. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed we could pull that off.”

Chasun picked up the thread: “Two years ago we were arguing about server choices. Now… now we argue about which frame of Guangzhi’s second phase registers the hit. Progress. That’s real, measurable progress.”

Wubian raised his beer for a toast: “Progress aside, the BBQ stall tab still needs keeping. Ma’am — ten more lamb skewers and two plates of chive pockets!”

Looking over the table’s smoky warmth, Zhanlan Yingren got uncharacteristically sentimental: “You know, I don’t think the value matters. What matters is — we’re still doing this together. Getting to write about the games we love thoroughly, deeply, in our own voice, and having a group of like-minded people to argue, eat BBQ, and shoot the breeze with… that’s a life pretty well lived.”

I glanced at Chasun, then at Wubian and Zhanlan Yingren. Nobody spoke, but everyone was smiling. In that moment I thought: more than the big industry headlines and spec sheets, this is what a weekly report should be about.

After years at this, the thing I fear most isn’t running dry on topics, traffic, or revenue — it’s the day I sit at this table and realize the urge to “tell other people about this game” is gone. Fortunately, watching this crew go red in the face this week over Guangzhi’s hit frames, over drop curves, over technical details buried in leak footage, I knew — the urge is still there, and it burns hotter than it did two years ago.

And that was the week. Next week, show season officially opens, and the work won’t be any lighter. The BBQ tab stays on the books — we’ll pick it up next week.

See you next week.

— Long Zhiri, NTGame Editor-in-Chief