Genshin Impact gets easier to recommend with every update, and its recent Enkanomiya patch is particularly engrossing. There’s an enchanting subsurface region full of yet more secrets to unearth, story quests which feature new and returning characters in fun ways, and possibly the best music in a soundtrack which has delivered non-stop anthems since day one. 

Other than the release of Inazuma, which is still the biggest new area in the game’s history, this has probably been Genshin’s best update ever, and the weeks ahead look promising. There’s never been a bad time to get into Genshin Impact – it is, after all, free and fun – but now’s an especially good time to make the plunge because players will get quite a treat soon. 

Under the sea  

Enkanomiya is the second sub-area to come to Genshin, putting it in the same category as the arctic mountain range of Dragonspine, and it’s proof that the game’s environments are only getting better. After Dragonspine dropped, I remember wondering if exploration, which is handily my favorite part of Genshin, would eventually get stale. Can I really just hunt for chests and collectibles forever? 

Yeah, actually, I can.

It turns out I can happily do exactly that, but only because those chests and collectibles are draped in new mechanics and flanked by spellbinding scenery. There’s something powerfully ancient and primordial about Enkanomiya that separates it from the rest of Genshin, and its central quest line has more of a dramatic edge to it than much of the game’s main story, perhaps thanks to its Greek inspirations. It’s also exciting to see these kinds of sub-areas woven into the main regions in bigger ways, but I won’t spoil the connection there.    

I have fond memories of stumbling into a bit of sequence-breaking while poking around for side quests when Inazuma came out, and Enkanomiya tactfully set me up for a similarly electrifying revelation. See, I found a locked gate right by the first checkpoint in the new area and made a note of the named key required to open it. (Side note: if I’m writing shit down on an honest-to-god piece of paper, the game is good.) This key surfaced a few hours later while I was rooting around some ruins, so I eagerly made my way back to that gate to pop it open. This being a video game, obviously there was some treasure inside – locked behind more of Enkanomiya’s clever day-and-night puzzles – but there was also some art on a wall seemingly depicting a sequence of runes. I couldn’t get the runes to do anything, so I just took a screenshot of them and went on my merry way.

Fast forward 10 hours of exploration (spread across two full days) and I’ve made my way to an old tower with five magic doors, each emblazoned with a different rune. There’s an activation sequence scrawled on the floor, and sure enough, touching the doors in the specified order triggers something in the environment. Just as I’m about to leave, I remember the wall art that I screenshotted earlier, which showed a different rune sequence. And what do you know, punching in those runes spawns three big-ol’ treasure chests, all for me. 

See, these are the little things that actually make me care about a game’s world. All of this stuff was both entirely optional and completely off the main path. There were no waypoints telling me where to find that gate or tower, and no tooltips telling me what those runes meant. Too few open-world games are capable of this kind of restraint, of trusting the player to not only figure things out but also enjoy figuring things out. Many games would’ve left their fingerprints all over the whole process and spoiled the discovery. But not only do I not need you to tell me, video game, I don’t want you to tell me. 

I happened to find a mysterious ‘key’ and then, several real days later, I happened to find the ‘lock’ it goes to. It was exhilarating and organic, and infinitely more meaningful precisely because I easily could’ve missed it. The fact that I had to refer to my own notes and screenshots just made the process more exciting and the result more rewarding. And you’d better believe that from that moment onward, every nook and cranny in Enkanomiya was like catnip to me. Who knows what I’ll find next?

Collect your New Year’s money  

This kind of experience isn’t unique to Enkanomiya; it’s one of the core pillars of Genshin’s world, and that’s probably why I haven’t gotten bored of it. And while you can’t access Enkanomiya until you finish most of the main quest, this isn’t one of those games that gets good after 30 hours. Genshin Impact gets better after 30 hours – and in my experience, is still getting better after hundreds of hours – but it also starts off strong. I’d love to be able to experience the opening regions, Mondstadt and Liyue, with fresh eyes again. New players don’t know how good they’ve got it, said the Genshin boomer, actively disintegrating as he approaches Adventure Rank 59.  

Speaking of which: players who start Genshin Impact today, like right the hell now, really don’t know how good they’ve got it. You’ve got until around February 14 to get in while the gettin’s good, but the sooner, the better. We’re coming up on Genshin’s New Year holiday event, you see. That means fun mini-games, stellar animated scenes, and a boat-load of free resources up for grabs, including Fates and Primogems used to unlock new characters and weapons through the game’s gacha system. Not only that, the second half of the current patch will feature some of the best character banners in history. 

Ganyu, who’s widely regarded as Genshin’s DPS queen, is returning with fabulous four-star characters on each arm: Beidou and Xingqiu, who are both among the strongest support units around. I’d be hard-pressed to build a better banner for a new player to spend their first Wishes on. All we’re missing is Bennett, but you can get him from the item shop anyway. Not only that, the other banner running alongside Ganyu is Zhongli, the comfiest defensive unit there is. 

I’d recommend Ganyu over Zhongli to new players since it’s better to secure strong DPS first, but you can’t go wrong with either of these powerhouses. And between the new player and New Year bonuses, you’ve actually got a decent shot at landing one of these five-stars. Your first limited five-star should be someone who’ll put you in their backpack and carry you to the finish line, and Ganyu and Zhongli will definitely do that. Hell, Beidou will do that, and she can carry me any day. She can princess carry my ass through the Spiral Abyss for all I care.

I’ve played and watched a lot of live service games in the past decade, and Genshin Impact’s first year and change has been downright enviable by so many metrics. There have been some minor growing pains and content droughts, sure, but nothing that needed a Destiny 2: Forsaken-grade overhaul. Some of its biggest hang-ups are baked into its gacha DNA, but I’ve learned to love it anyway. It is simply one of the best free games you can play today, and even if it wasn’t free, it’d still be one of the best games to start playing this year. 

All throughout January, GamesRadar+ is exploring the biggest games of the new year with exclusive interviews, hands-on impressions, and in-depth editorials. We’re also checking in on big games from the previous year to see how they’re faring in 2022. For more, be sure to follow along with Big in 2022. 

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Immortality is Barlow’s most ambitious, experimental project yet. Having now armed players with the knowledge and experience necessary to navigate labyrinthian, video-driven mysteries, he’s ready to push the concept further. Throughout Immortality, you’ll strive to better understand actor Marissa Marcel, uncover the circumstances behind her disappearance, and piece together the contents of three movies which she filmed but were never released for public consumption.

The mysterious life of Marissa Marcel

Key Info

Game Immortality
Developer Sam Barlow
Publisher Half Mermaid
Platforms PC
Release 2022

Much of Barlow’s work has been driven “by this idea that you could take a lot of the elements of a traditional video game (challenge, expression, exploration) and apply them to video.” Those elements would manifest in weird and wonderful ways through Her Story and Telling Lies. 

Simple interactions with a database of recorded clips – fast-forward, rewind, pause, play – seemed to tap into a subconscious, voyeuristic curiosity. Who are these people, encaged behind a camera lens, and what can our incessant clicking reveal about their lives – who they are, what they have done, and what might they do next? Barlow wants us to ask similar questions in Immortality, but the answers won’t be bound to a database in quite the same way.

“We’re using this as an opportunity to radically change how someone might experience a movie. In the way that Her Story deconstructed a detective story, we’re deconstructing cinema. Part of that is trying to craft an experience, interface, and mechanics that give you the same proximity to physical film that, say, an editor might have. I think all my games in this fashion have been about unpacking a neatly packaged story and pulling players back into the creative process side-by-side with me.”

Barlow is drawn to making another mystery game because “there’s not a lot of pyrotechnics or epic battles in a mystery, just lots of characters and questions… the mystery story is always special to me because it’s upfront about the player’s interest. All stories are interested in who did what, how, and why they did it. But the mystery story is interesting because it makes room for the player explicitly to be part of that question.” 

“This is perhaps why the vast majority of story-driven video games are mysteries. Silent Hill? Bioshock? Gone Home? Super Metroid? You show up after the fact and have to figure out what the hell went down. They’re all pretty much detective stories. I’m most interested in getting inside character’s heads and a good mystery is all about that.”

We’ll peer into Marcel’s head via uncovered on-set footage of her filming three movies thought to be lost or otherwise destroyed. Little is known about the actor, but we do know the films we’ll be exploring. 1968’s Ambrosio, a gothic thriller, which should have marked the on-screen debut for Marissa; 1970’s Minsky, written specifically with Marcel in mind, a thriller reflecting the artistry in love and loss; and 1999’s Two of Everything, a subversive thriller exploring the duality of a pop star and her body double. Three films, two directors, and one actor whose history is shrouded in mystery. 

“We thought it’d be amazing if we could figure out an interactive format that would let players themselves explore the footage and formulate their own ideas as to what had happened,” says Barlow. We’ll be interested in the wayward celebrity’s story because of “the fact that there was so little documented, that there were hardly any photos or footage of her; how her movies were lost, how she had also disappeared,” he says, adding, “we’re so used to everything being exhaustively documented online that this had a real air of mystery to it.”

Rather than focusing the lens of the camera on one character or a small ensemble, the driving force will be the live-action footage shot to mimic three distinct eras of cinema, as we’re handed an “amazing treasure trove of footage from Marcel’s movies” to pour through. Given the scope, it makes sense that Barlow would want to bring outside writers in to help craft this interwoven story: Allan Scott (Don’t Look Now and Queen’s Gambit), Amelia Gray (Mr. Robot and Maniac), and Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart and Lost Highway). 

As for how something as singular as Immortality will be received, Barlow is confident that players will vibe with it. “We were slightly nervous about whether gamers would be as interested in digging into this stuff from an earlier era, but seeing how people reacted to Wandavision this year was reassuring. Jumping through those different decades of television really reminded me of how it feels to look at these different movies. It’s a fascinating lens for thinking about movie making over the second half of the twentieth century. But at its heart, there’s this mystery that pulled me in in the first place – what happened to Marissa Marcel?”

All throughout January, GamesRadar+ is exploring the biggest games of the new year with exclusive interviews, hands-on impressions, and in-depth editorials. For more, be sure to follow along with Big in 2022. 

The post Immortality will be an ambitious step beyond Her Story and Telling Lies appeared first on Game News.