Genshin Impact has had fans asking the same question since launch last fall: When is the game going to add a new region?
We already know which region that’s going to be, Inazuma, home to the Electro Archon, and yet we are headed toward the better part of a year and it still hasn’t arrived. Genshin Impact has added a lot of new live content, and even one landmass in the form of Dragonspine, but no Inazuma.
It seems unlikely that Inazuma will arrive in the next update, 1.6, just a few weeks away. We got some teases of Inazume concept art in the last 1.5 livestream, but my guess is that we’re going to need to wait to something akin to a full 2.0 update to put Inazuma in the game. In the end, I would wager that Inazuma’s release date might actually be close to the full year anniversary of them, which would be September 2021.
That may seem far, but given how many weeks each patch runs, and the fact that we’re really just four months away from September, I think it adds up.
What do we know about Inazuma so far?
It seems to be heavily inspired by Japan (Genshin Impact is made by miHoYo, a Chinese developer). Inazuma means “lightning” in Japanese, Inazuma citizens wear kimonos, and leaks suggest that it will be a crescent chain of large islands off the coast like Japan.
Who will arrive as new characters in Inazuma? Again, all we have are leaks and lore. The most important figure will no doubt be Baal, the Electro Archon, who will join Zhongli the Geo Archon and Venti the Anemo Archon as a key story figure, and no doubt a valuable 5 star character. Past that, we could see Ayaka, Scaramouche and Kazuha, who have Inazuma connections.
I understand the Inazuma anticipation, but at this point I genuinely do not expect it’s realistic to expect the region to arrive until fall. Pretty much each new patch has players assuming that Inazuma is coming with it, but considering that it is likely going to be at least as big as the existing two regions, it will be a major expansion of the game, and taking a full year to produce it does not seem unreasonable, with all the other work they’re doing. Though if the pace becomes a region a year, the map won’t be “complete” until uh, 2025? I mean, I honestly think this game will have legs until then, so that may not be as crazy as it sounds. Look at Destiny all these years later, and Genshin has a larger playerbase spending even more money.
More to come, stay tuned.
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