Genshin Impact's Best Update Yet Is Full Of Killer Moments

The Lantern Rite event puts the focus on character development, leading to lots of wonderful moments


Genshin Impact’s events can often feel puzzle-driven and sparse. Last year’s Lantern Rite Festival was a bit like a festive museum display. The Windblume Festival and Moonlight Merriment events, meanwhile, were little more than vehicles for seasonal minigames. In contrast, this year’s Chinese New Year-themed Lantern Rite contains tender character moments that help make the city-state of Liyue feel like a dynamic place, rather than a resource location on a map. And that’s exactly what a live-service game like Genshin needs.


Some of the game’s most vocal critics often claim that the daily grind is too repetitive, and that the constant pressure to spend all their resin (resource points that regenerate over time) starts to feel like a job after a while. Part of this is by design, of course. The developers can’t constantly push unique content outside of major updates, and there has to be some pressure for impatient players to buy resource packs. But eventually, players start to feel fatigued with the same boss enemies and farming dungeons.


Seasonal events act as pressure release valves for miHoYo to remind players why they fell in love with Genshin in the first place. For most players, it was because of the immensely popular gacha characters who are constantly trending on Twitter. For miHoYo, these moments that rekindle players’ attachment to the characters aren’t fluff. They’re key to the game’s long term survival.


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