'Genshin Impact': Crafting an Anime-Style Open World



In this 2021 GDC session, miHoYo CEO Haoyu Cai shares ideas behind the making of Genshin Impact, including the game’s …

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42 thoughts on “'Genshin Impact': Crafting an Anime-Style Open World”

  1. Even though I'm not a fan or even a player of this game, I want to thank you for taking the stylization to the next level. Perhaps due to the success of Genshin, we will be able to see more beautiful games in the future.
    I also want to note the optimization and cross-platform.

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  2. For those who haven't played… at first glance it looks like Breath of the Wild with Garter Belts, but it really is its own game.

    It's well worth a look.
    The environments are gorgeous (actually much better looking than BOTW), and the world is vast.
    Despite the gacha mechanic, it's never once pushed me to buy a single thing. (And I haven't.)

    But the game also has its issues :

    – the resin system, the deliberately confusing currency systems and the gacha mechanics: all designed to obfuscate the real cost of playing. It's straight-up gambling. Not all all suitable for children.

    – environmental interaction isn't anywhere near as good as BOTW. This game is pretty, but BOTW is clever.

    – the dungeon boss combat doesn't gel with the adventuring. It's like playing two different types of game. The dungeons are a purpose-built grind-engine designed to extract money from whales.

    – there's a gross lack of diversity in the characters: most are girls or very young women with big breasts. Almost all have the same body shapes; it's only height that changes.

    These girls are animated sex objects designed to fire the hormones of teenage and YA boys. It's really that simple, that obvious. Boob physics = $$$. Even the sexy librarian is a meme for her moaning noises.

    Disturbingly, we have young, childish female characters with garters and stockings. The sexualisation of children is on full commercial display here. It's not subtle.

    The boy and young-male characters also look and dress like girls, most with slim, feminine features. There's no "tank" in the game or other body shape archetypes. If you did a silhouette test on these characters, you'd think almost all of them were girls.

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  3. I've played genshin for a while on release (Untill liyue part iirc)
    From technicality and production value, its outstanding. The world is beautiful, charming, and mostly run well cross platform.
    I just can't stand the ridiculous grind and some mechanic locked character wise and unobtainable via upgrade. Oh you want infinite water dash? get this character. You want blink? get this character. You want uplift? get this character. It left a sour taste in the end of my play-through

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  4. Too many people here treating GDC talks like a place to share gameplay opinions; this is a place for developers to discuss the production process. This video has a lot of great info but left me wanting a lot more technical detail. I'd love to see the breakdown of the character face maps or shadow techniques like you did for the clouds, we're always struggling to find ways to balance the technical challenges of something like custom lighting with artist accessibility. I'd also love more info on the ambient lighting model. You mentioned that you have no baked lighting but I'm wondering if that includes baked GI, or light probes. Like how does the local point light contribute to the ambient? Very curious about this.

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  5. that was great, but please in genshin impact liyue too stand out and the other region especialy inazuma, i hope mihoyo make stories in different region balanced too.

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