The man responsible for Zhang Yimou’s beautiful action films is working on a game now

Say what you will about the plots of some of Zhang Yimou’s more recent films like Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower, but there’s no denying that visually, those films were spectacular. And yes, part of the reason for that is that Zhang’s own background is in cinematography, but there’s another reason: production designer and art director Huo Tingxiao.

Huo, who was also the production designer for Feng Xiaogang’s Aftershock, has apparently moved off the silver screen, at least for a little while. Giant Interactive has revealed that Huo is now the visual director for its 2D MMORPG Jianghu, which the company is pushing hard this year.

It’s clear that bringing Huo on board is partially a promotional move in and of itself. The company has even released a video about Huo’s participation that includes cameos from famous Chinese film directors like Feng Xiaogang and He Ping.

But it’s worth pointing out that the latest screenshots of Jianghu show the other reason that Huo was brought on board: the game may only be two-dimensional, but it is looking damn pretty.

It’s obvious that Giant Interactive is betting quite a lot on Jianghu this year; it will be interesting to see whether the game is able to overtake some of its competitors and maybe crack China’s top 10 list (last time we checked, it wasn’t even in the top 25).