Summary
- Genshin Impact's latest update, Fontaine, offers gameplay that is completely different from the rest of the game and has the potential to attract back absent players.
- The underwater sections in Genshin Impact introduce a level of traversal and awareness, making swimming feel more engaging and rewarding.
- The game's charm lies not only in its gameplay, but in how it uses gameplay mechanics to tell a narrative that explores the idea of spiritual representation and personal identity.
Hands-on opportunities at Gamescom take a lot of different forms. Sometimes you play a very specific level that the devs have chosen to best show off their game. Sometimes the dev stands over you and hops you around the build to offer a whistle-stop tour of everything. Sometimes you begin at the start and are barely out of the tutorial before time is up and you learn nothing. Sometimes the devs overcook the difficulty because no one besides them has played it, and through the week they get more desperate with hints and assistance in the hopes that someone, anyone, might see the whole of the boss battle they have painstakingly prepared. And sometimes, the best times, you play a game you already know and the devs trust you to just run around in it for a while. This is how it went with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Genshin Impact.
When TheGamer team was🌳 splitting up appointments for the show, I was designated our Genshin Impact expert, and for the second time in as many years, was nominated to brave the busy public halls to go hands-on with Hoyoverse’s big hit. Before this week, the last time I played Genshin was one year ago at Gamescom. But before that, I played each day for months, completing every daily๊ task as I made my way through every quest and gathered every flower. I’m a lapsed Genshin Impact player at best.
However, this year’s hands-on will get me to commit to heading back over to Gacha City again. I played through part of the Fontaine update, which launched earlier this month, and experienced the underwater combat for the first time. Live-service games are constantly under pressure to add new experiences to keep players hooked, but this goes way beyond what you might expect from a new region w꧂ith an extra bit to the story. Fontaine offers gameplay that’s completely different to anything else the game has to offer, and I’m sure a lot of other absent players will be convinced to🌠 return.
Initially, the swimming works much like other games. You go in the water, you swim, that’s the whole deal. However, once you get under the surface, Genshin shows its hand. As you dive, you can still gather resources, as well as fighting enemies or zooming past friendly seals. Once the quests underwater begin, mystic bubbles wi💞ll be fired at you, sending you back to the start of the lair if they catch you. It introduces a level of traversal and awareness to swimming that some games can lack, and avoids making swimming feel like a slower, bluer form of walking. As you go deeper, you’ll also unlock devices that help protect you from the bubbles, adding a puzzle element to swimming too.
But I’d be lying if I said I played Genshin Impact for its gameplay alone. It plays fine, good even, but mostly it was consistently rewarding and had a lot of charm. It’s not the gameplay itself, it’s how Gens🍌hin u💟sed it. That’s repeated in the underwater sections.
Through a system of underwat𓆉er caverns and vacuums, you’ll sometimes be able to walk and therefore play Genshin as you usually would, but even here you’ll get a lot of fun with elemental powers as enemies are Wet by default (no giggling, you in the corner). You’ll also meet a new bunch of characters,🍒 including a military squirrel, a pig who’s actually a dog, and a finch and a goose who are somehow siblings.
The narrative explores the idea of spiritu🌠al representation, and the idea that we are who we say we are. I’ll need to reach the end to see how it plays out, but it feels once again like a fresh direction over minor political squabbles. I’ll also need to reach the end to take on the Fell Dragon, of which I imagine I have 17 to conquer having spent so long away.
A lot of the time wh꧋en you play a game at Gamescom, or any convention, you make a mental list of the games you enjoy and hope that when the release date rolls around there are no other games releasing around the same time. But with Genshin, I can dive right back in straight away. There’s no other big games out now, right?
