Genshin Impact’s 5.0 update – which takes players to the new region of Natlan – is probably the game at its most gorgeous. Inauma was pretty nice when it first came out, especially the walk up to Tenshukaku. Sumeru raised the bar yet again. But Natlan has shattered such expectations. For the first time ever, I’m playing Genshin Impact just to look around.
And that might sound strange to two groups of people – both the folks who are focused on the action and the people who have been looking wide-eyed at Genshin’s lovely vistas for years now – but I think Natlan has a certain vibrancy to it that takes it all to another level. Painted murals splayed alongside the sides of cliffs clashing against the brown of the stone and the green grass covering the top…it’s brilliant.
A lot of the world design in Natlan innovates on previous updates too. One of the first main locations you head to is a small town belonging to the Children of Echoes tribe in the North East corner of the map. It’s a little settlement built into the stone between two giant cracked stones. There’s a path along the ground that leads right through, but to actually reach the people there you must walk up hand-made bridges that forces your camera to get this picture-perfect image of the locale. Over the years the HoYoverse team has become especially good at framing, which is hard to do in open world exploration-heavy games like this.
This big expansion to Genshin Impact has you scaling a lot of large rock faces which can prove a tad tiresome if you’re using the standard climbing mechanics, especially for newer players who have just shot straight through the main story content to catch up. Thankfully, this is where Saurian forms come in. You get your first one within five minutes of stepping into Natlan and it brings a much-needed refresh to the game’s traversal systems. For a while now the Breath of the Wild climbing and gliding has lost its lustre. This isn’t due to any fault of the game, it’s just been a while!
Saurians provide a healing balm to any feelings of tiredness and frustration with this aspect of the game. The Tepetlisaurus lets you burrow underground, but more importantly you can use this technique at certain spots to quickly shoot up the side of massive mountains! Without this, actually seeing all the lovely new vistas and landscapes in the 5.0 update would be frankly more effort than it’s worth. The Yumkasaurus lets you soar up into the sky great distances, while the Koholasaurus finally makes water travel lovely, rather than a massive headache.
So that’s Genshin 5.0’s visual splendour at a macro level, but I firmly believe the HoYoverse team have outdone themselves when it comes to character combat effects too! At Gamescom I was able to play Kinich early, and his retro video game move set pops off the screen in such a fashion, such an intensity, that I hardly wanted to play anyone else. Other characters introduced here like Mualani and Kachina also show signs of improvement from new characters from prior major updates. Genshin Impact’s version 5.0 update is a visual step up in body and soul.
And like, it has giant dinosaurs. That’s got to count for something.
Genshin Impact’s version 5.0 update is out right now! You can download it on PC, console, and mobile platforms.