Genshin Impact is no longer playable on the PS4, and HoYoverse is plotting a “truly noticeable leap in visual quality” as it focuses all its attention on the PS5.
Earlier today, the studio released a behind-the-scenes video about the open world RPG’s long anticipated region, Snezhnaya. The headline news here is that it’ll launch on 12th August alongside a spate of improvements to the game.
The gargantuan gacha is now some six years old, and the video acknowledges how gaming tastes and interests have changed over time. Without really delving too deeply into specifics, it explained that its goal is to continue to evolve the experience to keep pace with what players want.
Specifically it mentioned that it’s plotting “significant visual enhancements for upcoming characters”, but it will implement them while retaining true to the title’s original art style.
Snezhnaya itself is being touted as the culmination to over half a decade of storytelling, and so we can certainly appreciate the importance of the region to both the developer and fans alike.
It sounds like it’s drawing inspiration from both the Snowpiercer comics and Metro novels/games to build the frigid landscape’s atmosphere, with trains being a pivotal part of the overall experience.
The video is 20 minutes long and we’d definitely recommend watching it if you’re interested in the development processes behind the location, but the dev has summarised the key details in bullet-point form in a press release, which we’ve reproduced below:
- Snezhnaya Arrives August 12: The Nation of Cryo is finally coming in what is a narrative and gameplay milestone years in the making.
- Story and World-Building: The culmination of plot lines, dating back to the game’s launch, will reveal the Tsaritsa’s agenda and the fate of the six Gnoses.
- Cultural Inspirations: Trains, as both a new cultural element and new functional vehicle, and music inspired by classical symphonic traditions and Slavic folk music.
- Evolving Combat and Interaction Mechanics: Cryo as a means of preservation in the open world, along with more brand-new gameplay.
- Visual Improvements: Across-the-board character visual upgrades and greater integration of gameplay and cinematic storytelling.
It’s really interesting to think about the way in which ongoing games like this are required to perpetually evolve, because it’s true new titles launch all the time, and tastes continuously change.
If we had one request for Genshin Impact it’d be a story skip feature, because while we enjoy a lot of the narrative that’s there, it’s hard to keep up with some of its more verbose writing at times.
