During the Tokyo Game Show 2019, the authors of MiHoYo presented a new gameplay demo of Genshin Impact, the controversial open-world action-adventure considered by many industry insiders and by a large number of video game enthusiasts as a shameless clone of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The Genshin Impact demo presented by the developers to the public at the Japanese video game festival, in effect, makes the graphics, playful and artistic points of contact between their project and the last chapter of Eiji Aonuma even more look-alike to The Legend of Zelda.
From the use of ascending airflows generated by the fire to cover large distances to the enemy lock-on system to focus the player’s interest on a given opponent during the most frantic combats, the references to Breath of the Wild are really many and feed the doubts of who, rightly or not, considers this title as a plagiarism of BOTW and, therefore, spoiling the hard work carried out by Nintendo and Eiji Aonuma who directed the game.
All this was the basis of the protests we witnessed with the presentation of the MiHoYo title at the Chinajoy 2019 by a fan of The Legend of Zelda who wanted to express all his disappointment by destroying his PS4.
The western transposition of Genshin Impact should arrive on PC, iOS and Android mobile systems and PlayStation 4 in an unspecified period of 2020. Again in the course of next year, curiously, important clarifications are planned on Breath of the Wild 2, the next title of the Zelda saga exclusively coming to Nintendo Switch.
