I’ll save the details for my friends and therapist, but when my partner of three years broke up with me last month, I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time. We were both big gamers and often spent evenings playing our favorites together, which meant I kept seeing traces of him in everything I played while trying to keep my mind off him. I figured it was time for something completely new, so in search of a game that was fully my own, I downloaded Genshin Impact.
I’ve been kind of afraid of trying Genshin, not because it’s a whole new world for me, but because it isn’t. To say that my best friend and her husband love the game is an understatement, but they’ve let me talk about my own favorite games enough that I’ve never minded their occasional tours of Teyvat. I had watched bits of them playing time and again, but starting the story at their house one night was the first time they’d be watching me play instead of vice versa, and they were both chomping at the bit to start.
The Games Are Huge, And They Just Keep Getting Bigger…
The sheer enormity of Genshin Impact has intimidated me for quite some time, even before I began playing it. I was staying at their house on a visit when the Fontaine update came out, and I couldn’t fathom why they wanted to stay home playing Genshin that night, but we sat in their living room swimming, discovering the new area, and witnessing the birth of the Oratrice Mecanique D’Analyse Cardinale meme in real-time. Hearing the two of them discuss characters and locations and powers and weapons and archons and the Seven and ascension, I felt like my head was rolling. I’d contemplated trying the game before, but every new thing my friends eagerly discovered that night felt like just one more thing I’d have to learn if I did.
If I thought I was nervous before I started playing, it only got worse when I actually began. As I explored the opening area, my friend’s husband, a completionist like I am, showed me his finished map on his own screen. He’s 100 percented every quest in every area, and seeing the tiny little splotch of Teyvat that I uncovered at my first Statue of the Seven made discovering the rest of the world feel positively daunting.
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They spoke of main quests “hours down the line” as I struggled to run down the straight path toward Mondstat without getting distracted. They both have dozens of really powerful characters, while the Traveler was the only one on my character select screen at the time. In that moment, especially as they assured me that gacha games get massive updates like Fontaine regularly, catching up to Genshin Impact felt impossible.
… But I’m No Stranger To Enormous Adventures
Bulky adventures aren’t new to me, though, since I grew up playing each Zelda game plenty of times over. My friends likened Genshin to Breath of the Wild when they first pitched it to me years ago, and I’ve found myself yearning for more of that style of game. Tears of the Kingdom came and went since we had that conversation, scratching the itch and consuming me for weeks as I explored Hyrule, and I didn’t have a single quest left in that game when I was finished. I mean I even found Addison in all of his weird, out-of-the-way locations, and for what? Some rice balls, a few bucks, and a colorful paraglider fabric?
It was while contemplating whether I should go back and replay Tears of the Kingdom that I decided to download Genshin instead. Why did an open-world adventure seem less enormous just because I’d played it before and would recognize a few major landmarks along the way? I knew I couldn’t get myself back to every one of the 152 shrines in the game without checking the guide I wrote on finding them at launch, and even knowing the secret of the Depths now, I wouldn’t take my chances down there until I’d collected a few few health and stamina upgrades. And what was I going to do, not play to completion?
I realized that if I’m putting the time and energy into discovering a world, I gain less if I do it in the same one for the billionth time instead of experiencing something new. And in Genshin, I won’t run out of things to do for quite some time, and meeting these characters my friends already pulled as I unfurl the main story is fun along the way. I see why they like these guys, and I’ll appreciate them even more when they finally join my party someday as well.
I want to say I have no idea how much there’ll be for me to discover as I dive deeper into Genshin Impact, but that isn’t true – I’ve seen my friend’s map. Now, though, instead of feeling intimidated by that, I’m excited. Ever since my ex left, I spend most evenings after work listening to music and playing Genshin for a few hours. I have dailies to finish, and weapons to upgrade, and characters to ascend, and who knows? I’m not putting a time limit on healing, but maybe I’ll even be over my breakup by the time I’ve uncovered the entirety of Teyvat.
Now, if I just could have some good luck on the banners and finally pull my man, Diluc…
RPG
Action
Adventure
Gacha
Open-World
- Released
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September 28, 2020
- ESRB
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T for Teen – Fantasy Violence, Alcohol Reference
- Platforms That Support Crossplay
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Mobile, PC, PS4 & PS5