Game / Character
This page is short on purpose. Almost nothing about the player character has been confirmed — and that is the finding.
Quick answer
Game Science has not given the playable character a name, and has not stated his relationship to Zhong Kui of Chinese folklore.Game Science The 15-minute reveal shows a swordsman; it does not identify him.Official video
Claim by claim
The playable character has not been named, and his relationship to the folkloric Zhong Kui has not been stated.Game Science
The single most-misreported point about this game. A title is not a character biography. The official FAQ goes as far as “新主角” — a new protagonist, distinct from the previous game’s — and stops there, without a name or a relationship to the folkloric figure.
The protagonist fights with a sword, in contrast to the staff combat of the previous game.Official videoPC Gamer
The reveal shows event scenes and combat against apparently undead enemies.RPGamerPC Gamer
Two outlets describing the same footage. Kept at Reported until we publish our own frame-by-frame pass.
The protagonist is Zhong Kui himself.
Widely asserted as fact across aggregator sites. The title names the myth, not necessarily the player character — the previous game was named for Sun Wukong and cast you as someone else.
The reasoning
The assumption that you play as Zhong Kui is easy to make and may well turn out to be right. It is worth noticing, though, that the studio’s previous game was called Black Myth: Wukong and did not cast you as Sun Wukong — you played the Destined One, a separate character moving through Wukong’s story. Applying the same pattern here, the title tells you which legend the game draws on, not who holds the sword.
That is an argument, not evidence. It is labelled Analysis for that reason, and it will be replaced the moment Game Science says anything on the subject. Until then, a page that tells you the character is Zhong Kui is telling you something nobody has confirmed.
What would settle this
A character name in an official trailer description, a store page, or a press kit. Any of the three would move every claim on this page from Unknown to Official in a single edit.
Until then, the honest answer is that we do not know.
Sources
“PC+主流主机平台，正式信息请以发售前通知为准。”
Chinese-language page, rendered client-side. Its 常见问题 (FAQ) tab is the first-party record for the platform line — “PC and mainstream console platforms, official information subject to the pre-release announcement”. No specific console, storefront or date appears anywhere on it.
“As the game is still in early development, all footage was captured in-game from a work-in-progress build running at a 21:9 aspect ratio. The final release may differ.”
The 15-minute reveal this archive breaks down. Embedded, not re-hosted. The quote is from the video’s own description — it is the first-party origin of the “early development” and “work-in-progress build” lines that Gematsu and VGC both carry. The description also calls the player character only “the protagonist”.
Hands-off impressions of the same reveal. Used only for descriptions of on-screen content.
“is in development for PC and consoles, and does not yet have a release window”
Describes the footage as “a mixture of event scenes and combat against apparent undead foes”.
Links open the original page. We quote and link rather than re-host, and record the date each source was last opened.