Greetings Travelers! As the next beta test approaches, the Genshin Impact development team is picking up the pace, and creating more all-new content as Paimon cracks the whip! We want to bring you as much new, exciting content as possible!
Today we share with you a new piece known as the 'Developer Insight'! We invited a member of the team to share with us some of the exciting things they are working on, so that Travelers may get a better sense of our ideas and creative process, an in turn you can give your input on what you want to see!
Jige, a member of the dev team has come to talk with us today.
———The following contains a lot of technical content———
This article contains a large number of GIFs. Viewing over Wi-Fi is recommended.
Hey Travelers~! Glad to have your attention, I'm Jige. My job is to help plan combat gameplay. _(:з)∠)_
Genshin Impact contains a lot of interesting characters, monsters, mysteries, and other content. Our behind-the-scenes production process and design ideas will be introduced in this article by my colleagues and I.
Today we're going to talk about one of our most interesting enemies — the Hypostasis
[Hypostasis Design]
Hypostases (Hypostasis is singular) are primitive structures made of pure elemental energy that can be found in Teyvat. They are beings of extremely concentrated, high-quality energy that usually appear in places where ley lines have become blocked or elemental energy has otherwise accumulated. They appear in the form of ordered cubic units that surround an inner core, and will actively try to attack any Travelers who come near them.
The Electro Hypostasis Aleph was included in our last beta in November 2019. In our upcoming beta, more enemies from the same series will make their appearances in Teyvat, just waiting to challenge brave Travelers.
[Hypostasis Design Process]
During our June 2019 beta test, we found that our designs around the idea of 'elements' were not ideal. Most Traveler's understanding of the elemental system simply stopped simply at "bonus damage," without using the system to further advance their tactics. In the past six months, we have tried a variety of methods to convey the greater complexities of the elemental system to Travelers, including designing the Hypostasis. We hope that when Travelers first see it, their natural reaction will be "Oh, I think I need to have X character on my team to deal with this."
So the question then became; "How do we get Travelers to experience the different elements through the same enemy. The matter was much the same as the Abyss Mage seen in our first beta, yet more complex. We needed the elemental experience to be stronger, strong enough to get Travelers to change up their tactics, party members, weapons, etc.
When it comes to designing a monster, there are two core elements; artistic appearance and gameplay mechanics. As far as artistic appearance is concerned, we wanted the Hypostasis to embody the idea of "natural order." In contrast to the unregulated and curved appearance of Slimes and Hilichurls, Hypostases are cubic and orthogonal, to give it an appearance of being a greater life form.
For this, we drew a lot of inspiration from Ramiel from Evangelion and Galvatron from Transformers. Ramiel is simple in form but can change into many different shapes. Galvatron comes together from many smaller pieces, which helped us to better display the right effects when the Hypostasis transforms. As such, we referenced these elements as we proceeded to make our own new content.
Ramiel from Evangelion
Galvatron from Transformers
After discussions with the design team, we finalized our plan. Hypostases were to be elemental beings, with a design that featured all-new modeling and movements, so it was made of cubic formations clustered together, which would allow it to alter its form and use a range of elemental skills.
In the beginning, we believed that designing a creature that could change its form and move so violently would be very complex. But as early as July we were already able to see the early design in motion in animation software, as we discovered that it wasn't so hard to create after all.
Early Hypostasis Changes
Now that we had the visual design down, our next challenge would be the gameplay mechanics.
This was to be our first series of bosses, so we needed to make a sample. That sample, was Hypostasis Aleph.
In our first design, we had the following ideas:
1. We wanted it's attack pattern to switch back and forth between attacking and fortifying itself.
2. We also wanted it's combat mechanics to cycle between combat and rebirth, with the rebirth making for challenging gameplay that requires Travelers to strategize in order to beat it.
3. As an elemental structure, we wanted an "exposed core" form to contrast the fortified forms it took on. We also wanted the core to remain more or less protected during attacks, making it temporarily immune to damage.
4. We wanted its skills to force Travelers to have to switch between ranged and melee attacks.
We set a detailed skills plan for the Hypostasis. The most detailed of these have the working names of "Paper, Scissors, Rock," "Rotating Lazer," and "Rebirth."
"Paper, Scissors, Rock" — Requires a turn-based approach
We hope Travelers will be able to adapt to the attack and fortification cycle and use the right moments during the fortification to deal damage. As such, Travelers will need to move fast while the Hypostasis is attacking, and then fiercely counter-attack afterward.
In order to achieve this, we utilized close-range attack methods. During combat planning in July 2019, we decided to give it a "Rock, Scissors, Paper" close-range combo attack. Each of the three stages was to have a slightly varied range, direction, and preparation movement in order to make it harder for Travelers to grow accustomed to, and simultaneously require appropriate yet varied evasion maneuvers.
In order to increase the intensity, we then decided to allow the Hypostasis to randomize its attacks. Later iterations were then also allowed to seamlessly string together any of the three "Paper, Scissors, Rock" attack types, so be careful when you come across one, as it may perform the exact same move twice in a row! _(:з)∠)_
Based on this design, mindless attacking or long-range aimed shots are bound to get you killed. This is intentional, so as to switch up the tempo and prevent Travelers from just using one character to simply smash the Hypostasis to death.
"Rotating Lazer" — Designed to end continuous dodging
We hope that when Travelers come across a Hypostasis, they don't have to start learning its combat mechanics from scratch, but also cannot simply use dodges to evade everything it throws at them. So, the Hypostasis was also given an attack that is often seen in other creatures or traps that can't simply be dealt with by dodging.
To give an example, when Travelers first come across Kaeya and enter the Temple of the Wolf with him, they come across a flamethrower that breathes fire across your path. Sure, you can try to sprint right through it and take the damage, but it's smarter to use Kaeya's Elemental Skill to freeze the flamethrower's core temporarily. Other locations feature flamethrowers that breathe fire in four directions, making simply dodging through the flames very dangerous. These past experiences should allow Travelers to at least have a vague idea of how to deal with the "Rotating Lazer" attack.
We hope this inherited design will get Travelers to try a methodical and tactical approach to taking on the Hypostasis, given that its "Rotating Lazer" attack is another step up from the four-way flamethrower.
1. The Hypostasis cannot simply be stopped with elemental reactions unless it has gone into it's "Rebirth" formation.
2. The lasers can be blocked by obstacles made from Geo.
3. Once the lasers have ended, and the cubic components have yet to come back together, the entire area becomes completely safe for a brief while.
4. The lasers do heavy damage, and may even launch Travelers, to prevent them from quickly dodging through the lasers.
"Rebirth"
As was just mentioned, when the Hypostasis' health drops it may enter a "Rebirth" cycle. Hypostasis can't be thrashed around, only blown apart at best, and unless they are out of energy, they can then enter a "Rebirth" cycle.
As such, when Electro Hypostases are defeated, they don't simply die, and instead split themselves off into separate crystal chunks. If these chunks are not destroyed in time, then the Hypostasis will be reborn with health corresponding to the number of chunks that remained when time ran out. By using the appropriate corresponding elements, Travelers can drain these crystal chunks of their energy and destroy them.
The Anemo Hypostases and Geo Hypostases Travelers will come across in the next beta respectively require "Wind Riding" and "Pillar Smashing" counter-tactics to prevent them from being reborn. This further reiterates our earlier design ideas of the Hypostasis having skills that would feel familiar to Travelers to reduce the learning curve, whilst simultaneously showcasing each of the elements in a way that requires Travelers to constantly switch tactics.
Image of Anemo Hypostasis
Image of Geo Hypostasis
It was October 2019 when the Electro Hypostasis first came off the production line. The first time it was given to internal testing teams, there was a wave of disgusted cussing, given the number of ways in which the Hypostasis was driving them nuts:
1. The earliest version of the Electro Hypostasis gave an opening of no more than five seconds, with a high frequency of attacks, making it absolutely demonic to try to deal with.
2. Given it would always move a set distance, it would often rigidly move outside of the combat radius and proceed to return to its original location and have its health reset.
3. Once all of its skills were used up and in cooldown, it would just sit where it was without moving (and subsequently giving no opening for the testing team to attack).
What followed from this testing was rather torturous for the team. On the one hand we were implementing changes based on large volumes of internal feedback, on the other hand we had the beta fast approaching, and on the third hand (that we don't have) we were busily trying to work on new content as well.
We really hope that the Travelers that join us in the next beta really get a kick out of the challenges the different Hypostases bring. We will keep trying hard to bring you even more exciting content in future updates.
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Thank's Jige for sharing with us! (o゜▽゜)o☆ That's all for our first-ever Developer Insight article!
We hope the information provided can help Travelers better understand the design and development process for the Hypostasis series of bosses. So how about it, are you Travelers ready to take them on? There's so much other exciting content in Genshin Impact too — every little detail has gone through constant changes and optimizations, in order to bring you the best possible gaming experience. The more time you give us, the greater things we can have in store for you when we launch!
If Travelers are interested in the development of other aspects of Genshin Impact, be sure to leave us a comment, and we'll do our best to grab a team member to come and share the details with you all! Lastly, we'd like to thank all our Travelers again for their continued patience and support, we really appreciate it! Bye for now~! ヾ(ﾟ∀ﾟゞ)