Inazuma is the latest region to arrive in Genshin Impact as part of its 2.0 update. While the concept of the Electro nation is fascinating in and of itself, it needs to significantly change how exploration works in the game if it wants to be truly successful.
Mondstadt, the starting area, consists of a large walled city surrounded by a wide moat, as well as vast open fields to wander. Liyue, which came next, is a port region, and has lots of piers, peninsulas, and, well… ports. This nation also introduced more water to the game, adding rivers and isolated pockets of land while also sticking to the open exploration of Mondstadt. Although Dragonspine was technically the third region, it’s probably more accurate to just call it a frosty extension of Mondstadt. That’s why Inazuma, a cluster of islands entirely independent of the Mondstadt-Liyue-Dragonspine landmass, could bring with it a big change in traversal, which is exactly what Genshin Impact needs right now.
Related: Cross-Save Is Going To Be A Game-Changer For Genshin ImpactI've always found the "too much water" Pokemon meme a little confusing because, like, have you ever played Sapphire or Ruby? There's too much water. People mock the critique on the basis that the game is set on a bunch of different islands – and therefore necessitates a lot of the blue stuff – but that's kind of the point. The game doesn't need too much water, it chooses to have too much water. And because water is the worst part of every Pokemon game – yeah, fight me, Tentacool is more annoying than Zubat – that makes it a bad design choice. Sure, it gave us Sootopolis, one of Pokemon's most interesting locations ever, but Hoenn is ultimately let down by the fact it has too much water. This wouldn't be so bad if there were interesting ways to explore it; something I hope Inazuma brings to Mihoyo’s RPG.
Traversal in Genshin Impact is heavily inspired by Breath of the Wild. Personally, I didn't care for Zelda’s latest outing, but I hope I hate the sequel even more, because I recognise the cleverness of its mechanics and the ways it has already begun to influence modern game design – and there's arguably no better example of that right now than Genshin Impact. Genshin and BOTW both let you soar across the map with on a glider, and both use a stamina meter that determines not just how long you can sprint for, but also how high you can climb, and how far you can swim, with food being used for limited time perks and buffs. Thanks to this mechanic, you can essentially go anywhere, so long as it’s not too high or across too big a body of water. It uses the environment as a natural way to limit your traversal, much like space does for us in real life.
However, while traversal is the same, exploration is not. What I mean by that is the way you explore is the same, but the places you explore are very different -, and not just because Genshin Impact's live service model means it's constantly expanding like , just as it is with Inazuma. Its world is teeming with life: – there's always a new town or city or encampment for you to discover, and clear landmarks dotted across the map. That's not to mention the map itself is far more detailed. Breath of the Wild is deliberately empty, leaving you to wander around and discover the story for yourself. Genshin Impact doesn't hold your hand, exactly, but since its gacha model relies on constant bursts of play, it is always throwing new activities at you. Both approaches work for what they're trying to do, but it's clear that despite Genshin's BOTW inspirations, it does things very differently.
That's why Inazuma is such a fascinating prospect. A group of clustered islands offer a completely new way to explore, and after Genshin Impact's world has grown increasingly large – and therefore ever more difficult to organically fill with stories – a change of pace feels like the best possible option.
If this happens though, we need some new traversal mechanics to support island- hopping. With the right Vision, you can free water and slide across it, but that only works for so long, as does swimming. Hoenn has too much water because it largely just expects you to deal with it as you did in Kanto and Johto, when there was significantly less of it. Sure, a few new features are added, but they're only present to counter new roadblocks. They're not there to make standard water traversal any more interesting. Genshin Impact has a chance to experiment with more mini biomes and different styles of world building, but if it wants to be a success, it can't make the same mistake.
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