Opinion: I wish I could see the Genshin Impact characters on the overworld more

At time of writing, the Hues of the Violet Garden event is ongoing in Genshin Impact, which sees the cast celebrating the Irodori Festival. Pretty much all of the currently available playable characters of Inazuma show up, having some screentime alongside some little more unexpected guests from other nations. That’s all well and good, since otherwise it’ll be quite rare to see their interactions outside of such occasions.

With how big the game is, there’s a lot of fun tidbits that can get lost and hidden away in the most unexpected of places, whether it be artifact descriptions or noticing design choices. Character voicelines and story blurbs in their profiles can’t possibly cover everything either. I myself have dipped into fandom circles to discuss dynamics that the game has yet to flesh out. Part of the fun is letting that imagination go wild, and praying the narrative could somehow validate us in some way.

The thing is that, now that I’ve completed all the story quests, I don’t see the playable cast anymore. This feels especially jarring when the Lantern Rite festivities let you follow Zhongli around to hear his thoughts, with the rest of the Liyue cast hanging out in other areas in their nation, at least until the event concluded. Isn’t the Irodori Festival also a cause for celebration? Where have they gone? What are they doing?

It makes completing the event rather hollow, in a manner of speaking, the festivities feeling lifeless with their exclusion. I understand that this is most likely a matter of resources and difficulties in recording lines should the voice actors’ schedules be too packed. There’s also characters, while having generic designs, make recurring appearances which people can also get attached to. It doesn’t have to be only the playable cast.

However, besides Genshin Impact being a gacha game, what draws people to the game in part are the playable characters’ designs, isn’t it? Even if they’re not voiced, knowing that your favourite characters are doing their own thing in the world outside of specific story or event sequences can be quite enjoyable, and you can take photos of them for your favourite pairings – romantic or otherwise.

As an example, in Guild Wars 2, I can head over to the throne room in Divinity’s Reach to see the queen and her guard without needing to be on a story step. They will just say generic dialogue at me, sure, but they’re there, where you’d expect them to be. If I want a selfie with some of the most important characters of the world, I can do so if I wish. Like, really, I’m happy enough if my favourite Genshin Impact characters could simply stand side by side more often. I don’t need them to explicitly refer to each other.

While you can argue character overworld appearances are possible through the Serenitea Pot, this does rely on you actually having the characters to begin with, and this is only your personal instance, not the world at large. Maybe it doesn’t even have to be in the open world; maybe you could find them in a building somewhere just vibing like I’ve demonstrated. It would be nice to have the world feel more vibrant, so it is my hope that it can be implemented someday.

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