It's no secret that popular free-to-play RPG Genshin Impact was heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, implementing a number of gameplay mechanics that were extremely similar to Breath of the Wild. Since it's a live-service game, Genshin Impact has added quite a few new mechanics over the years to keep gameplay varied and interesting for players. Now, with the Breath of the Wild sequel, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, in the hands of gamers everywhere, the team behind Genshin Impact may consider taking inspiration from Nintendo once again.
Hoyoverse, the studio behind Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, has consistently updated Genshin Impact since its release in September 2020. New areas, characters, vision abilities, and additional mini-games and traversal mechanics have made the game less and less similar to Breath of the Wild over time. However, many core mechanics like the stamina wheel, the ability to climb virtually any surface, paragliding, and even some design aspects of the world continue to call back images of Breath of the Wild for players. The Nintendo game's sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, has dozens of mechanics that weren't in its predecessor, and one new element of gameplay would be a perfect fit for Genshin Impact.
Genshin Impact Should Allow Companion Avatars Like in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, players are tasked with completing the in-game temples with the help of NPC companions. After completing these temples, these helpful NPCs will realize their roles as sages and lend their respective avatars to Link to call upon whenever he needs their abilities. These avatars possess specific elemental abilities like the power to produce large gusts of wind that can aid Link in combat or traversing the world. This is a clear parallel to the system in Breath of the Wild that allowed Link to use Champion Abilities after freeing the spirits of the champions from their individual divine beasts.
Unlike the champions in Breath of the Wild, the sages are still alive and are providing Link with their avatar rather than a spirit form. Because of that, this mechanic is a much better fit for Genshin Impact — a game where at any given time, a player likely has anywhere from four to several dozen unused characters in their possession. Players in Genshin Impact are required to create four-character parties and can swap between the characters in the party at will. A well-balanced party will typically be comprised of characters that use different weapon types, different elemental vision abilities, and different combat styles.
However, because leveling Genshin Impact characters can be time-consuming and costly, players often choose a party that they enjoy and simply level those four characters as much as possible, leaving a number of unleveled or under-leveled characters unused. This problem only worsens as players progress in the story and the level gap grows between used and unused characters. A system similar to the avatar system in Tears of the Kingdom could allow players to still make use of characters that aren't usually kept in the dispatched party. Allowing players to choose one or two characters to be support avatars that can be called upon to perform one specific action would give players the opportunity to make use of characters they weren't otherwise using.
Because Genshin Impact utilizes a Gacha system for obtaining new characters, this mechanic could incentivize players to roll for new characters more often. Because characters in Genshin Impact already have special abilities that can be used in the world, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to implement these abilities in a new way. As of now, it's unclear whether Hoyoverse will take inspiration from Tears of the Kingdom and add any similar mechanics in the next Genshin Impact update.
Genshin Impact is available now for Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. A Nintendo Switch version is in development with no confirmed release date.
