Genshin Impact: Closed Beta Announcement, Switch Confirmation, New Characters and More

miHoYo, the devs behind the game have revealed a lot of info since my last video on Genshin Impact. I aim to cover everything I possibly can and condense it into as digestible a format as possible for you guys.
Yes, I’m doing all the hard work for you, you’re welcome.

Okay, let’s start with the most important announcement first: Genshin Impact is confirmed to be releasing this year – in 2020. They held Closed Beta registrations until the March 2020, where they’ve since closed applications.
While the game was initially scheduled to be launching in Spring 2020, it seems to have been delayed.
Closed Beta is expected to happen soon, with the full-release of the game coming out later this year at a currently undisclosed time. Specifics are currently unknown, but when the Closed Beta is over, we’ll have a much more accurate time frame.

While the game will feature several dubs for the game upon release, they’ve singled out and focused on their Japanese voice cast currently: And I’ll admit, I’m genuinely surprised.
The entire main cast of characters are going to be voiced over by quite a talented selection of voice actors. These are the voices behind some of your favorite Anime series and I cannot wait to hear them in action.
The game is scheduled to release globally, not just in Japanese. However, from what I’ve gathered, it doesn’t seem like there’ll be an English dub for the game. Or at least they don’t seem to have plans for one yet.
I’m sure a lot of you are probably happy with that though as I know sub watchers outnumber dub watchers quite significantly.

Genshin Impact was announced to be releasing, initially, on PlayStation 4, PC, iOS and Android devices. However, as of the middle of January 2020, it was confirmed that the game would also be heading to the Switch.
Which brings the confirmed platforms up to.. pretty much everything except Xbox. But then, especially with regards to the whole focus on a Japanese voice cast.. the Xbox isn’t particularly popular over in Japan or China.

Then each month they’ve slowly released background info on each of the main characters found throughout the game. And yes, I said “main characters,” as in playable characters.
In case you guys weren’t aware, Genshin Impact is an online multiplayer RPG, allowing cooperative play between several players at once.
But the game is very doable solo, and when playing solo you go out into the world with a selection of characters with which you can swap between and utilize.

So far we have Jean, the master of the Knights.
The perky Knight Amber.
The witch in charge of the library, Lisa.
Kaeya, Jean’s trusted aide.
Barbara, the knights’ own shining starlet.
Diluc, the Bill Gates of Genshin Impact.
Razor, the orphan raised by wolves.
Venti, the wind-wielding bard.
Klee, a uh.. younger knight. Honestly not sure why she’s a knight. Maybe her parents should speak to Jean about that.. Iunno, that’s just me.
Xiao, known as the Guardian Yaksha.
And finally, most recently Beidou, a.. pirate queen? I think is what she’s referred to as.

This isn’t every character, but every character that has been officially revealed as of the beginning of March 2020.

Each character has their own unique combat style with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. They have their own weapons, their own elemental affinities and are useful in different ways.
Building your party and knowing who to swap to depending on the situation is crucial to your success. You’re going to have a lot of characters to utilize and you’re going to want to make sure you know what each of their specialties are.

Then at the end of February, miHoYo released a full 12-minute gameplay video, showcasing a lot of the game from the perspective of multiple different characters.
The combat is looking as crisp as ever, and while yes I know every time I do a Genshin Impact video people claim it’s nothing but a Breath of the Wild clone, I can’t help but think this game, especially on PC is both going to look and play absolutely incredibly.
Seriously, you cannot watch gameplay from this game and think it looks bad. I mean you could, but then I’d have to question what you consider “good” then.

And that’s about it so far. We’ve had a lot of character information revealed thus far, we’ve seen a lot of gameplay, we have info on the voice cast, multiplayer functionality, the Closed Beta.
Things I’m curious of that have yet to be elaborated on are whether or not there’s going to be dungeons in-game to run with other players, if there’s crafting and how the gearing system is going to work.
Since this is an RPG you can bet there’s going to be a gearing system in place, yet not once have we seen anything mentioned pertaining to gear, which is a little alarming to me.
The game is going to be fully cross-platform compatible between consoles, PC and mobile devices meaning that the playerbase is no doubt going to be very, very large.
And with how well the Honkai Impact game turned out when they ported that to PC recently, I honestly have pretty high hopes for Genshin Impact.