Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is at its core an open world RPG, but it’s experimenting with different types of gameplay. For the Lantern Rite, we got tower defense. For Mondstadt’s Windblume event, we now have what amounts to a visual novel, dating sim-type experience, though likely without the explicit romance, given that they’re called “Hangouts.”
These are essentially “choose your own adventure” stories with different dialogue options that will lead to multiple endings for each storyline. The characters being focused on in this first batch are Barbara, Noelle, Bennett and Chongyun, all original Genshin Impact launch 4 star characters, and ones that generally speaking, have not had very major roles in the main story so far.
Genshin Impact
Each Hangout will require 2 story keys, where you get each story key by doing 8 daily login quests. Most avid players will have the cap of 3 maxed, but it also means you won’t be able to start them all at once, and you’ll have to choose who goes first.
During the Hangout, the other character will have a “heartbeat meter” which signifies how things are going, and if that depletes, apparently the hangout ends in a less-than-good way. A heartbeat meter does sort of signify a romantic connotation, but if I had to guess, miHoYo isn’t going to go fully down that road. While the game does tends to lean heavily into sexualized character design at times (see the next new character being introduced, Rosaria), there is no overt sexual content in the game, nor can you romance any of your teammates. I mean maybe the introduction of Hangouts could change that, but my guess is this is supposed to be a platonic, get to know these characters better type thing.
Rosaria
While we have yet to see how this is going to play out, I think it’s a fundamentally good idea that I’d easily like to see replicated across more characters. MiHoYo usually has fans fill out surveys after events to see what they like and didn’t, so we’ll see what the reaction is here. Presumably these encounters will involve no combat at all, which is a bit unusual for the game, but if the story content is good enough, perhaps that won’t matter. I’m curious if these are going to be fully voiced storylines or simply be text dialogue choices.
I’m not sure if these are going to launch right when Update 1.4 hits next week, but it’s possible. Regardless, you’ll need 8 story keys to unlock them all, and you’ll only be able to stockpile four, I believe, before then, the max of 3 and another one ready to claim.
We’ll see how this pans out, but I think it’s another interesting experiment for a game that loves to break genre lines whenever it feels like it.
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