Before Genshin Impact officially launched at the end of September 2020, I wasn't exposed to any game-related promotions. That doesn't mean I don't like games. In fact, I own a 2W+ high-performance PC, NS and PS4, and my main gaming platform is a PC on a day-to-day basis. What really attracted me to experience Genshin Impact was a second-generation section that I accidentally saw during the first week of the server. The ** shows the diving of different characters. Although I can't find the original ** now, I took a screenshot when answering this question (as shown in Figure 1). In the picture, the tall man dives smoothly and gracefully, while the short man bends his knees to hug himself, and the way he enters the water is slightly comical. At that time I found its creativity and imagination to be very unique and appealing, so I decided to ** and started playing this game.
After that, I delved into the root cause that attracted me to this point, which is the new gameplay experience and gameplay brought about by "multiple different characters in the open world can switch freely". In contrast, other large-scale map games such as Breath of the Wild, the Assassin's Creed series, The Witcher 3, Monster Hunter, and Old Ring, including the now competitive Phantom, like Genshin Impact and Tower, usually only allow players to take on a single character and fight by changing different **s or props. On the big map, the experience is completely different from the feeling of switching between different characters for battles or interacting with the world in Genshin Impact. For example, the diving example I mentioned earlier is a good example. That's not the point I'm going to talk about, though, and that's just one of the things that drew me to the Genshin Impact universe.
Fig.1 Comparison of the diving postures of tall characters (left) and short characters (right).
2."New" real-time animation technology 3D graphics technology.
The word "new" here is in quotation marks, because Mihoyo's modification of the refactored Unity engine may not really count as a next-generation technology. What made me sigh "Oh my God, this looks like a new game graphics engine" is, as shown in Figure 2 below, there is a "space warp" effect at the edge of the swing. A character's normal attack.
Here I will talk about my background and mental journey. About a decade ago, I had a period of time where part of my work consisted of graphical visualization, such as OpenGL, and I had been doing algorithm development myself, so I had at least a rudimentary understanding of what I used to think of as theory. A basic drawing object is nothing more than a point, line, and area diagram with 3 or 4 color channels. The basic effects are nothing more than material lighting and shadows. Advanced point effects just make particle effects more complex. 3D display is nothing more than perspective and rotation. , occlusion and perspective, transparency effects are nothing more than setting alpha to blend the colors of objects and things behind them in a certain proportion, and so on. New technology is nothing more than making the top more detailed, calculating faster, and so on.
However, please note in Figure 2 that when the character attacks normally, there is a large "space warp" around the swing trajectory. As can be seen from each of the images in Figure 2(a)-(e), the background appears in real time in the rendered area of the ** trajectory in a way that is "distorted" and refracted by the optical path, rather than a simple special effect with full color coverage or full coverage by other competitors. Translucent overlay. As you can also see in Figure 2(a), this "distorted space" also has a partial mirror effect (partially reflecting the character's head).
The above explanation does not mean that the technology is new or unattainable by others. For example, some of the contemporary 2In a 5D fighting game, there is also an air distortion effect when magnifying moves. I mainly think, first, that the ideas added here are relatively new and I didn't think of them; Secondly, the optimization is good, after all, it has been included in the basic attack, and it can be regarded as a regular display. You know, it's completely different from competing products that just stack special effects. It has to calculate the distorted path in real-time and blend the colors of everything around it. The amount of computation itself increases a lot. Genshin Impact has dozens of characters, each with different movements, but the special effects can be displayed smoothly, not only on PC, but also on mobile phones, which makes me feel that the technology of this generation is very good and new. Sometimes I even take the time to appreciate the special effects of different characters' normal attacks.
In general, behind it is miHoYo's long-term technology accumulation and continuous breakthrough and improvement of the industrial chain.
Figure 2 An example of five normal attacks by the protagonist Shadow. Note the effects around the sword's swing trajectory.
3.Cultural Consciousness Ideology.
I think some people may disagree with that. After all, there are differences between people with different cultural consciousness and ideology.
The background of my journey was that just before Genshin Impact was released (September 2020), I was in a state of anxiety about not having a good game to play. I bought all kinds of AAA masterpieces at the time and before, but they weren't fun to play. The main reason is that I'm tired of their cultural consciousness ideology. Let me give you an example. I summarize the underlying ideology common to foreign games as follows:
a. Everyone kills and robs each other, or gangs up to kill and rob each other;
b.Kill all animals, big and small;
c.Kill all the natives in the game's virtual world;
d.Some of the natives in the game's virtual world are stupid and some are bad. You seek justice and kill the bad guys and kill their king.
I'm not saying that the cultural logic above is bad, because maybe the truth of the world is just that, the jungle. I mean, I'm tired of these stories. Especially those so-called triple-A masterpieces, such as those of Ubisoft, give me the feeling that they are exquisite "skin-changing games", which are nothing more than beautiful ** and sets, as well as high production costs.
ps: As a digression here, it's better to play the game as soon as possible. I was in my twenties when I started having the money to buy a high-performance computer in the tens of thousands of dollars; I was in my thirties when I bought many games worth hundreds of dollars without thinking. At this point, I don't think it's fun to go back and play a lot of so-called triple-A games. I have experienced many beautiful landscapes firsthand, I have learned about the backstories and cultures, and I have developed various ideas and opinions about various social phenomena and issues. If you were able to play these triple-A titles as a teenager, you might find them very much fun.
To get back to the point, "Genshin" gives me the feeling that there is finally a Chinese person who writes a story about the virtual world according to the Chinese's own ideological and cultural awareness. For example:
1) The Battle of the Feather Pavilion. Synopsis: In the battle between the immortals and demons of Liyue Harbor, at the last moment when all means of attack were exhausted and on the verge of defeat, the equivalent of the United Executive Director of Ningguang Liyue Harbor sacrificed most of his wealth. He Xinxin's massive aerial villa, the Fish Pavilion, serves as an "air-dropped nuclear bomb" to repel monsters and protect the people of Liyue Harbor. This article will not discuss it further.
2) The "Sea Lantern Festival" in the first year. I'm going to do a brief analysis of this below.
The Lantern Festival is a festival where people set off fireworks and lanterns (similar to Kong Ming lanterns) in Lei Yu Harbor, which is the prototype of the Chinese New Year. In the first year of the Lantern Festival, the main activities and games before the last day were to help different people make night lights and do odd jobs (because they happened to have all kinds of troubles or had various social responsibilities to fulfill outside) and didn't have time. prepare your own night light); Then the final day is a beautiful and moving cutscene, lit up with night lights and fireworks, rendered in real-time in the game. After this incident, many players expressed their dissatisfaction or ridiculed, feeling unhappy and working for other NPCs. But I see the opposite. I was very touched by the condensed expression of Chinese culture.
The Spring Festival is a festival when everyone can finally reunite and rest for a few days after a busy year. It is significantly different from Western festivals such as Thanksgiving and Christmas in terms of cultural connotation. After the Lantern Festival event, I recalled an example I saw in real life. When I was an undergraduate, I was friends with the owner of a coffee shop next to the school. The night before the winter vacation, after seeing off the last table of customers, I saw the boss sigh in a low voice, "A busy year is finally over." I smiled and leaned back on the couch and fell asleep after a while (of course, the proprietress was still cleaning at this time, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to close the shop and go home). That's how the Spring Festival is. When the industrious and brave working people gather together to welcome the New Year, it not only draws an end to the hard work of the past year, but also pins on the expectations for the new year.
Another insight I had from my first Lantern Festival in Genshin Impact was that I understood my father's mood of liking fireworks during the Spring Festival. In contrast, I hated the crackling sound of firecrackers. My father came to Beijing from the Northeast to take the college entrance examination, and was later assigned to work in Beijing, where he settled. However, he was also sent abroad to work for many years. Whenever he returns to his hometown in the Northeast in the spring, he will be interested in setting off fireworks. Now I understand that setting off fireworks carries the memories of his hometown when he was young, and expresses his longing for his hometown and his parents after leaving his hometown for many years.
PS: During the Lantern Festival the following year, Mihoyo no longer continues to express the theme of "hard work before the festival" hahaha. The second year's Lantern Festival is dominated by the fun of game activities, and there is also a lot of interaction between autonomous characters and NPCs. This time it embodies the "reunion" theme of the prototype spring.
There are many different types of cultural sense, and it is difficult to list them all here. Generally speaking, due to different cultural backgrounds, if Westerners are asked to tell stories of the West, Japan, and China, and Japanese people tell stories of the West, Japan, and China, the sense of culture will be different. Now we can finally tell the story of the West, Japan, and China from the perspective of Chinese culture, rather than being confined to the ABCD routine of this article.
4."Silhouette" design.
The "outline" here refers to the main story and plot content of the game. Most depth players should now agree that the outline for Genshin Impact has been written. In other words, this game, which was launched in 2017 and launched on the server at the end of September 2020, has been in development for 3 years and is constantly being updated. Before the server went live, the main story and story setting had already taken 3 years to write.
Genshin Impact has a major update every 40 days, 20 of which are minor updates, interspersed with some small event gameplay updates. Unlike other games, players are not simply experiencing game after game or slaying bosses, but more like chasing a TV series that updates several levels every 20 to 40 days. The decisive factor in achieving this effect is the contour, which takes a lot of time to polish from the very beginning. Specifically, on the one hand, players can find a lot of foreshadowing in the previous game content in the new plot; On the other hand, there are also elements that exist in the open world itself, and even a lot of text on each ** equipment. , all of which hint at the development of the whole story. These can attract some players to continue to pay attention to the plot and enhance the sense of immersion when playing. Even after the version is updated, a large number of players who quit the game will return to the game.
A counter-example is the Tower of Fantasy. At the beginning of "Genshin Impact", the protagonist's brother and sister had an encounter with the NPC "Tianli". At this point, the player chooses one of the protagonist's siblings as the protagonist controlled by the player behind them, while the other is captured by the NPC. At this time, if you choose your brother, then the main plot will be "Find Your Sister". On the contrary, if you choose your sister, the main plot will be "Finding Your Brother". As for the Tower of Fantasy, a man and a woman appear in the opening animation. At the critical moment of encountering NPC monsters, choose one of the male and female as the control character. But, damn it, after the Tower of Fantasy chose this place, the other person on the male and female side disappeared! ！The storyline is not mentioned or explained, as if it never happened. It's too embarrassing to plagiarize Genshin Impact. With such a level of contour design, do you think the experience of the game plot can be the same? Of course, as an MMO, this is not the core competitiveness of Tower of Fantasy. That's not to say that Fantasy Tower is bad (especially since I also tried to play Noah's Heart for 2 hours). This is just to illustrate the contrast in the level of outline making.
Of course, when it comes to plots, different people have different preferences for different types of plots. I've noticed that some people think that the plot of Genshin Impact is a "younger" plot. Although subjectively I disagree, I generally understand the criteria for judging these people. For example, if there is no ** element, no frequent killings, no *** pieces, no tragedy, then it is considered "young". Everyone can do what they want, there is no way to force it.