When it was first revealed, Genshin Impact drew comparisons to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Those comparisons aren’t entirely unfounded–both games feature similar visuals and gameplay mechanics, and Genshin Impact allows you to explore its open world with a similar level of freedom to Nintendo’s opus.
Thankfully, GameSpot has a Breath of the Wild expert on payroll to dive into both games and see whether Genshin Impact is just a rip-off or something more. In the video above, Max Blumenthal (better known as RinHara5aki in certain Breath of the Wild circles) explains how Genshin Impact builds upon the Switch launch title’s mechanics and features–sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.
After putting over 2300 hours into Breath of the Wild and over 50 into Genshin Impact, Max can confirm that the two games are similar but very much not the same. Which isn’t to say one is better than the other–both happen to be good, just in different ways. For the specifics, you’ll have to watch the video.
Breath of the Wild’s approach to exploration and player-created stories was acclaimed at the game’s launch–it’s only natural that developers would take notice of that and try to build on it. It’s not like Genshin Impact is the only game to take inspiration from what Breath of the Wild has done: just look at Ubisoft’s Immortals Fenyx Rising, which copies Breath of the Wild almost beat-for-beat in some instances.
