Aloy is coming to Genshin Impact, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. On the face of it, it’s quite exciting. I like Genshin Impact, and I love Horizon Zero Dawn, so this crossover should be the perfect match for me. I’m not entirely sure how well Aloy’s aesthetic or story fit into Teyvat, but the gameplay works – Aloy uses a bow primarily, much like many of Genshin Impact’s characters, and having explored icy terrains and used various powerups in Horizon, there are several different Visions she could wear. The problem is it feels a little hollow. It feels like when I was a kid and used to make The Rock fight Bert & Ernie. I hate how every game feels like that these days.
FIFA 21 introduced Volta, which was essentially a diluted version of FIFA Street. In this game mode, you could unlock a range of different pro footballers, as well as pop star Dua Lipa. This is an example of a great crossover. Dua Lipa and FIFA have very different demographics, but they’re both popular enough to have fans in both camps – me, for example. I never would have expected to pull off a rabona with Dua Lipa on the streets of Sao Paulo, but FIFA 21 gave me that opportunity. There were a few more celebrities to unlock – Lewis Hamilton and Anthony Joshua joined the party too – but I knew that was as far as it was going to go. I wasn’t going to boot up FIFA one day and see Lara Croft or Harley Quinn or John Wick doing stepovers and elasticos. As much of a cash grab as Ultimate Team can be, FIFA is still sacred. Genshin Impact no longer is.
Related: Inazuma Could Be Genshin Impact's Best Region If It Understands TraversalAloy is not Genshin’s Dua Lipa, she’s its John Wick. Wick, and Croft, and Quinn, and even Aloy herself are all in Fortnite already, along with just about every other character you can think of. Call of Duty: Warzone has tried, and mostly failed, to get on board this gravy train with John Rambo and John McClane being added to the game. It’s difficult to do these crossovers without them feeling soulless – Fortnite just about manages it by being the frontrunner and never trying to have a greater sense of artistic credibility. Fortnite is a fun toy full of all those characters you remember from your childhood, and spreads its range of inspiration wide enough that the ideal holds true whether you were a child in the ‘80s, are one now, or are any age in between. It’s clever, but it’s also very honest. Fortnite is just a box of toys, come along and have fun.
Genshin Impact is not. It attempts to tell a far more complex story, and we even gave it points recently for preserving its artistic style by rejecting a ray-tracing upgrade to ensure its visual identity remains intact. If Aloy was a one-off crossover, a product of mutual admiration between the studios and serendipitous circumstances, I’d give the game a pass. But it’s clearly not.
As part of the Aloy reveal, Genshin Impact developer Mihoyo clearly stated that Horizon was to be the first of many crossovers. Sure, this one’s free. But when something’s free, the product is you. This is advertising. When Aloy was revealed, the comments section was awash with Asian players asking who the hell Aloy even was. Horizon is one of Sony’s big properties in the West, but it isn’t quite as big in Japan. This ‘free’ giveaway is actually a huge advertisement for Horizon right before Forbidden West gets a release date. Funny that.
Western players are part of the advertisement too, of course. While most of us are well aware of Aloy, that just means Genshin is likely to see a spike as players log back on after a little while away to unlock their free character. I mean, it’s free, right? But the next one won’t be.
Genshin Impact will be more selective than Fortnite – I don’t expect to see LeBron James or Harry Kane running around Mondstadt anytime soon. But the door is open. The lid has come off Pandora’s box, and all the crossovers in the world will soon spill out. Even if Genshin is more picky than Fortnite, it will not be short of suitors, especially with Aloy nailed on to be a success. In Fortnite, crossovers risk being drowned out. They’ll get eyeballs the day they launch, but with so many characters to choose from, most quickly fade into the background. In Genshin, with a much smaller cast and a much more cohesive way of playing – a squad of four rather than a battle royale free-for-all – any characters that join the game will likely enjoy a much bigger share of the spotlight, even if Fortnite offers better raw numbers.
Then, of course, there’s the issue with gacha. If you want a character in Fortnite, you just buy them. As games with cosmetics go, Fortnite’s way of doing things is fairly straightforward. While Aloy is free, that might not be true of every crossover character. Give us too many great characters for free and we’ll stop spinning the wheel for Diluc, won’t we? But making them second-rate means players never use them, which won’t make the companies buying said crossovers particularly pleased. It seems inevitable that the crossover characters will eventually be folded into the gacha system of Genshin Impact’s current structure, and that only heightens the already predatory nature of the game’s gambling system.
In isolation, Aloy coming to Genshin Impact is a great thing. She’s a popular character who, narrative aside, suits the game very well. The problem is Aloy is not the end of the crossovers, she’s the beginning, and it’s deeply concerning to think about how her presence may change Genshin Impact in the future.
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