Genshin Impact by developer and publisher miHoYo—Sony PlayStation 4 spotlight article written by Nick with a free-to-play copy downloaded from the PSN.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
This is the second of my two image shares from my adventures in Genshin Impact. There’s something about the visuals and music to Genshin Impact (I recently wrote a Memorable Music article about it as well) that appeals to me as I explore. Certainly some of the zones are more visually appealing to me than others. Mondstadt is largely green, with outcroppings of mountains and other terrains. It makes sense that this is the game’s initial area, as it sort of just fits with a typical fantasy landscape I think. The second nation you come into contact with is Liyue, and it is much browner and more mountainous. The landscape here is actually my least favorite of the regions. Admittedly, the largely brown and yellow backdrops do allow certain colors and structures to pop more, and the tall mountains do provide some really impressive views outward.
There is another region, called Dragonspine, that was introduced awhile ago. It’s probably the harshest of the zones as it introduced a new freezing mechanic where you need to find sources of heat periodically or you will suffer some damage over time. Like Liyue, it tends to be a bit more bland in its color scheme, though it’s perfectly suited to the snow-covered, mountainous theme of the area. Visually Inamuza has been my favorite region in the game. It has a lot of lush colors, with pink Sakura trees standing out against darker shades of blue and purple that dominate the colors here.
The visual differences and styles of each area just add to the sense of exploration and discovery (much of which is often walled behind puzzles as well, in a very Zelda-like way). There is also a sort of home / area builder called the Serenitea Pot that lets you theme the region and build things out the way you like. I’ve built out a region in each style, but mostly stick to the Inazuma style, which I have some screenshots of as well.
Most of my images come from one of two sources. There is a photo system baked in, that lets you do some posing with a character and manipulation of the camera angle to get some nice scenery shots. There is also a ‘Hangout’ subsystem that has your character learning more about other characters in the game. These mini-stories can end in a variety of ways, and those different endings offer you a chance to take a screenshot of the last scene in the story. I would like to see the former system given a bit more flexibility in the future.
It might be nice to add other characters to the scene, or even take action shots. Right now anything that happens in action is only caught by the system (using the screenshot capability of the system or automatically generating one if you earn a trophy, but it lacks some of the bells and whistles baked into the in-game camera system).
Having played through all of the available content so far in Genshin Impact, I’m looking forward to the next major content drop later this year. Hopefully I’ll have some new locations and characters to share with you then.
