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Discussion Genshin Impact head says staff were extremely upset when accused of copying Zelda: Breath of Wild

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https://mynintendonews.com/2023/08/...when-accused-of-copying-zelda-breath-of-wild/

Wei spoke about the strong accusations that were levelled at the company and development staff when they unveiled Genshin Impact and how it was initially portrayed by gamers and the media as a Zelda: Breath of the Wild clone. Wei said that many of his colleagues were extremely upset and that he thinks that helped inspired them to make the game what it is today. G
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“The accusations of plagiarism took a heavy toll on the development team. According to Wei, many of his colleagues were crying and saying “Why is this happening?” and “What did we do wrong?” “Let’s prove ourselves,” Wei said. “Let’s make the part of Genshin that everyone didn’t see!” The establishment of Liyue in Feb. 2020 gave players a better understanding of what miHoYo was building with Genshing Impact, leading to a more positive perception of the game.”
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Well, when the game started, it was unabashedly a clone of various mechanics from popular games at the time, including BOTW, as well as directly ripping character motions practically frame for frame from popular action games at the time, so if they didn't like that, maybe they shouldn't have done that.

No idea if they got better or worse from that starting position of course.
 
And this is why they never bothered with bringing it to Switch at the end of the day /s

They can't be serious with that initial trailer and not sharing some similarities with BOTW, especially that first grassy area.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
Well, when the game started, it was unabashedly a clone of various mechanics from popular games at the time, including BOTW, as well as directly ripping character motions practically frame for frame from popular action games at the time, so if they didn't like that, maybe they shouldn't have done that.

No idea if they got better or worse from that starting position of course.
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From what I played the game barely changed, but it got a lot more content with soon 3 full new regions and a couple of smaller ones, which all have small unique puzzle mechanics scattered over the map.
It just really exhausting when the game puts so much emphasis on the times events which mostly consist of walking from conversation to conversation, everytime I got back to it I was burned out by those and never really got to contineu the actual story.

The game is such a huge time investment I wonder if they will add more options to skip parts of the story cause you have get through those quests in linear order.
Which is whats sets the game aparts from the Switch Zeldas, its linearity and overreliance on longwinded conversations.

I don't think I could get into the game if I started with a new account now.
 
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when it first came out it was giving borderline plagiarism, but now the game has become its own unique and successful thing so it's all good. i'm surprised they were annoyed by the "accusations" tho at the beginning, they knew what they were doing.
 
I think comparisons to BOTW were entirely fair but as always people get way too heated about that kind of stuff and now I'm wondering if Nintendo recent spree of dumb ass TOTK gameplay patents were because of games like Genshin Impact blatantly taking gameplay concepts wholesale (with very similar looking UIs)
 
Ah, I remember that bloke who smashed his PS4… Anyway, while that was an overreaction, I think there’s no denying the initial trailers for Genshin cribbed a lot from BotW. There were a lot of UI similarities too.

Genshin Impact did distance itself with subsequent updates, and became its own thing.
 
It's such a mystery where the comparisons even came from...

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Just such a mystery

genshin-impact-4.jpg


Any way, here's a quote from the developers of Genshin about how BotW was one of their main influences:


www.nintendolife.com

Genshin Impact Dev Responds To Breath Of The Wild Clone Comments, Insists It's A "Very Different" Experience

Arriving on Switch at a later date
www.nintendolife.com www.nintendolife.com

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the most popular and respected titles in the industry, and one which our staff hold in high regard. In a post that our team circulated to players last year, we mentioned that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was one of our inspirations for creating Genshin Impact as an open-world action RPG.
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Again, just a total mystery...
 
Hoyoverse in general should have expected that considering their games. I very briefly tried out Honkai Impact 3rd and it literally has Witch Time from Bayonetta, but it was a cooldown-based thing. They consistently take inspiration (being generous) from other video games and mix it into their own. I also hear that Honkai: Star Rail rips off Trails/Final Fantasy 10's combat system in general.

Like, I'm not sure what they really expected.
 
Whenever people accuse my game of being too much like the best game ever, I always cry and wonder what I did wrong.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
It's such a mystery where the comparisons even came from...

1280x720.jpg


Just such a mystery

genshin-impact-4.jpg


Any way, here's a quote from the developers of Genshin about how BotW was one of their main influences:


www.nintendolife.com

Genshin Impact Dev Responds To Breath Of The Wild Clone Comments, Insists It's A "Very Different" Experience

Arriving on Switch at a later date
www.nintendolife.com www.nintendolife.com



Again, just a total mystery...
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I don't know, that second screenshot doesn't actually look like BotW at all. There was definitely a lot of cribbing from the game with the climbing + gliding as will happen with popular games, feels like half the indie devlogs I see on youtube are shoving in paragliders and botw mechanics. But some of the accusations just feel like people think BotW invented toon shading and grassy fields.

Couldn't you equally make the argument that the second screenshot is a Dragon Quest 8 or 11 clone?
 
EtherPenguin said:
I don't know, that second screenshot doesn't actually look like BotW at all. There was definitely a lot of cribbing from the game with the climbing + gliding as will happen with popular games, feels like half the indie devlogs I see on youtube are shoving in paragliders and botw mechanics. But some of the accusations just feel like people think BotW invented toon shading and grassy fields.

Couldn't you equally make the argument that the second screenshot is a Dragon Quest 8 or 11 clone?
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Agreed about the second one.
 
Good for them for carving out their own niche after starting things off on a derivative foot.
 
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More embarrassing than keeping quiet about it
 
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EtherPenguin said:
I don't know, that second screenshot doesn't actually look like BotW at all. There was definitely a lot of cribbing from the game with the climbing + gliding as will happen with popular games, feels like half the indie devlogs I see on youtube are shoving in paragliders and botw mechanics. But some of the accusations just feel like people think BotW invented toon shading and grassy fields.

Couldn't you equally make the argument that the second screenshot is a Dragon Quest 8 or 11 clone?
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The main issue is that BotW has a very distinctive way of rendering grass: where most games, including DX 11, render grass as a flat sprite with each sprite containing multiple blades of grass, BotW renders grass as an oversized polygon for each individual blade. It's this which gives the grass in the game it's distinctive reflective and behavioural qualities, such as reflecting after rain or the way it bends around Link.

Genshin doesn't just have big open green spaces, it even renders grass in the same way BotW does.
 
Honestly I consider it a fair comment. As other mentioned the experience now (and even at launch) is different, and while there are elements that are similar, I would call them derivative because they still do their own thing and even work different (like the physics) so telling them "you copy this" is kinda saying their work is not valid

A more extreme case would be Enchanted Portals where they made an entire game based on Cuphead (No the concept, literal Cuphead). They still did everything original even if the shooting and jumping animations are 99% similar to the work they used as reference (and it is reference because they drew their own animations), so if they said "we feel our job is being dismissed as a copy of cuphead" I still feel they have a valid case because run and jump shoot is not something that Cuphead inventend, in the same vein that enemy camps, climbing, stamina bars and gliding wasn't created by BoTW

EJi2jUl.jpg
 
It is true that Sony very blatantly copied Nintendo's BotW marketing when they advertised Genshin on their own social media channels. It was so obvious that I remember having a laugh at it back then. Whether it specifically helped or hurt Genshin though seems immaterial given the game's overall success since then.
 
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mazi said:
when it first came out it was giving borderline plagiarism, but now the game has become its own unique and successful thing so it's all good. i'm surprised they were annoyed by the "accusations" tho at the beginning, they knew what they were doing.
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for real. the game absolutely started as plagiarism. like there’s no question. i remember my friend picking it up and sending me clip after clip of ‘inspired’ assets - wizrobes, bokoblins and their skull encampments, etc. this in conjunction with the similar aesthetic, glider, climbing. don’t pretend y’all.

I’m thrilled that it’s managed to come into its own but I have zero sympathy for them around early accusations.
 
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JazzPotatoes said:
The main issue is that BotW has a very distinctive way of rendering grass: where most games, including DX 11, render grass as a flat sprite with each sprite containing multiple blades of grass, BotW renders grass as an oversized polygon for each individual blade. It's this which gives the grass in the game it's distinctive reflective and behavioural qualities, such as reflecting after rain or the way it bends around Link.

Genshin doesn't just have big open green spaces, it even renders grass in the same way BotW does.
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Isn't utilizing new rendering techniques just general progress in the industry? Like I never see people say every game that uses a fresnel shader on water is a rip off of whatever the first game was to simulate the fresnel effect.

The specific way you render grass feels like small potatoes compared to everything else in that screenshot like the handpainted look of the clouds, or that almost ghibli-like way the leaves on the trees are shaded that looks very different from BotW. The environment design itself looks unlike BotW's landscapes, it's very terraced with chunky cliffsides more evocative of DQ11. I don't recall off hand a place in BotW where the land is terraced to that extent. Admittedly, I've never played Genshin, maybe there are locations with more similarities. But with the specific screenshot you posted I just don't see it at all.

While I'm not super interested in Genshin, I guess I just don't want to see devs shy away from more painterly looking worlds for fear of being accused of being BotW clones. Cel-shaded characters in trying to be realistic environments aren't my favorite thing, I like this approach more.
 
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Well they pretty blatantly did so to the point where I always assumed that was a big part of the appeal. I don't think people who make knockoff Pokémon or Smash games are fooling themselves into thinking they're coming up with something 100% original.
 
Bomber Pepe said:
Well they pretty blatantly did so to the point where I always assumed that was a big part of the appeal. I don't think people who make knockoff Pokémon or Smash games are fooling themselves into thinking they're coming up with something 100% original.
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The idea could be expanded to genres as a whole. Is anyone ever actually making something 100% original?

Pokemon itself could be called a knock off of monster catching games that predate it like Dragon Quest V
 
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This is like when someone gets defensive when your callout was right on the money and they're trying to deny

Are they trying to make people feel bad about the "accusations" as a deflection or something
 
Feigning umbrage isn’t the play because no one would reasonably believe MiHoYo didn’t CTRL+C, CTRL+V most of Breath of the Wild for that trailer. You gotta lean into it. Act like Genshin Impact is better than Breath of the Wild in every way, even in originality. Just hella gaslight everyone. Better to be inexplicably overconfident than meekly faux offended.

lemonfresh said:
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These kinds of “protests” are always hilarious. Sony already got your money, yo. Homeboy smashed his PS4 for nothing.
 
Lord Azrael said:
This is like when someone gets defensive when your callout was right on the money and they're trying to deny

Are they trying to make people feel bad about the "accusations" as a deflection or something
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If I wanted to iterate on a style or genre I liked or wanted to employ a new rendering technique and got accused of plagiarism, I'd probably be bummed too. It's why I always feel bad for the creators of indie pixel art RPGs when every review of their game begins with "but how does it hold up to FF6 and Chrono Trigger?"

edit: for comparison, I think devs would feel better about it if people received it like they did One Piece Odyssey, where the response was more like "Oh it looks like DQ11! That makes me want to play it!" But the accusation of plagiarism on the other hand is rather serious and having people shout that you instead would certainly feel different. The One Piece game also didn't have people smashing consoles on the floor, that probably changes the way devs feel about the response as well
 
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EtherPenguin said:
The idea could be expanded to genres as a whole. Is anyone ever actually making something 100% original?

Pokemon itself could be called a knock off of monster catching games that predate it like Dragon Quest V
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When I talk about Pokemon knockoffs it's pretty obvious which games are intentionally trying to make a game explicitly similar to Pokemon. Dragon Quest V, Shin Megami Tensei, etc have monster catching mechanics as well of plenty of others that make it a significantly different game. Games like TemTem are very clearly trying to go after Pokemon fans by making a very familiar game with their own twists. And that's fine. GameFreak isn't going to make a Pokemon MMO anytime soon, if ever, so if that checks the box for some fans go ahead and fill that void.

So no, Pokemon itself could not reasonably be considered a knockoff of Dragon Quest V. On the flipside, it is very apparent why Dragon Quest Monsters was considered one back when it was released. It was extremely obvious that it was a reaction to Pokemon at the height of Pokemania at the time.

Same with Genshin Impact. It very clearly is taking aspects of BotW and applying them in a new kind of game. I'm OK with that, again I doubt Nintendo would be making anything similar any time in the future and they don't own every mechanic in BotW/TotK. As I said, I thought the comparison to BotW was part of the appeal for many. BotW/TotK, though vast, do have finite content. An MMO providing some semblance of that would be appealing.

As to whether or not anyone is making anything 100% original it really depends on your point of view, but my point was specifically that the people who make those games are not deluding themselves into thinking they came up with everything themselves. They wear their inspiration on their sleeve. While I do believe that Genshin Impact did copy aspects of BotW, I would not consider it specifically a BotW knockoff. I was just using games like Pokemon and Smash as reference because there are dozens of games that are very clearly trying to make their own version of them but are not hiding what they are doing.

I say this as someone who is currently enjoying 30XX, a game that is very much aware of what it is.
 
Bomber Pepe said:
When I talk about Pokemon knockoffs it's pretty obvious which games are intentionally trying to make a game explicitly similar to Pokemon. Dragon Quest V, Shin Megami Tensei, etc have monster catching mechanics as well of plenty of others that make it a significantly different game. Games like TemTem are very clearly trying to go after Pokemon fans by making a very familiar game with their own twists. And that's fine. GameFreak isn't going to make a Pokemon MMO anytime soon, if ever, so if that checks the box for some fans go ahead and fill that void.

So no, Pokemon itself could not reasonably be considered a knockoff of Dragon Quest V. On the flipside, it is very apparent why Dragon Quest Monsters was considered one back when it was released. It was extremely obvious that it was a reaction to Pokemon at the height of Pokemania at the time.

Same with Genshin Impact. It very clearly is taking aspects of BotW and applying them in a new kind of game. I'm OK with that, again I doubt Nintendo would be making anything similar any time in the future and they don't own every mechanic in BotW/TotK. As I said, I thought the comparison to BotW was part of the appeal for many. BotW/TotK, though vast, do have finite content. An MMO providing some semblance of that would be appealing.

As to whether or not anyone is making anything 100% original it really depends on your point of view, but my point was specifically that the people who make those games are not deluding themselves into thinking they came up with everything themselves. They wear their inspiration on their sleeve. While I do believe that Genshin Impact did copy aspects of BotW, I would not consider it specifically a BotW knockoff. I was just using games like Pokemon and Smash as reference because there are dozens of games that are very clearly trying to make their own version of them but are not hiding what they are doing.

I say this as someone who is currently enjoying 30XX, a game that is very much aware of what it is.
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I get what you're saying, I'm more of the "everything's a remix" school of thought. Like making a Pokemon inspired game and going aftering Pokemon fans by putting their own twist on it, isn't really different than making an RPG/Platformer/Shooter and going after RPG/Platform/Shooter fans putting their own twist on it. Yes, I was being facetious with DQV comparison, but Pokemon still did start by looking at RPGs and wanting to put their own twist on it. Nothing comes from nothing

I guess I was somewhat prickled by the two games you picked for example which is my bad. Pokemon and Smash inspired games tend to get dragged through the mud by online folks almost more than RPG Maker games. It makes it seem like any attempt at making your own monster catching RPG or platformer fighter is off limits.

Really I understand I'm projecting some personal fears/concerns of mine on this topic and just making myself angry so I'll probably just duck out. But thank you for the thoughtful response
 
I had a much better time with Immortals : Fenyx Rising than any I had with Genshin "I can't choose a single voice dub that doesn't make me want to kill fairies instantly".
 
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I can get being upset now but early Genshin Impact wore its influences on its sleeve so hard you can literally tell which prominent early character was an OC of Kizuna AI.
 
And they're still talking about this because?

thinking-columbo.gif


EDIT: When I first saw this game I thought it was BOTW, so unless they happened to blindly fall onto those kinds of similarities, which.. let's face it.. is a statistical anomaly at best, heavy inspiration was borrowed at the very least.

EDIT 2:
www.eurogamer.net

Nintendo patents Link's Tears of the Kingdom abilities, and the loading screen

Nintendo has patented Link's Ultrahand and Fuse abilities from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The company has recently ma…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net
 
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C'mon, the first enemies you encounter are elemental slimes and Genshin's version of Bokoblins. The first area Mondstadt was clearly heavily inspired by BotW.
 
It's not just the gras, or the enemies, or the color palet and the artstyle, or gliding, or the explosions... It's the combination of all those aspects, that where NOT random.

Dere is also a different between homage, reference, inspiration, copy,... It's just not a strict one.

It's initial trailer and marketing also borrowed a lot. All those things don't just happen.

What I think happened here is, they where well aware what they where doing, they where not hiding it, but they where fought off guard that people thought that it's ONLY a BotW clone since the marketing failed to highlight the differences and other aspects. So they needed to first establish that they also want to have a game that stands on its own legs.

Add to that a ton of mobile games and MMOs that actively try to get fans by emulating the look and feel of popular games without investing in the game design aspect and being Microtransaction riddled gameplay, and you can see why people where sceptical.

In the end they showed that it's not just a BotW clone, AND that a free to play game doesn't have to be overtly payment driven.

(I'm still not the audience, but I understand their vision and effort)
 
i feel for them on some level but it's pretty hard to argue it wasnt taken very directly. a lot of games have actually taken BotW's designs over the years but most of them it's clearly just influence and a lot of people dont notice even. like Elden Ring's world design

here though, i mean both mechanics n visuals are identical enough that basically anyone who took a glance said "oh, botw rip". you know something's wrong where even to the minute details we cant express it still feels the same.
 
The game was obviously havily inspired by it when it comes to approach to the open world and gliding/climbing. But aside from that and the starting region it was a different game.

The game is significantly more different now (and better imo) compared to Botw, with it's own identity that still calling it a BOTW clone is just wrong.
 
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I don't see the problem, when genshin impact released a ton of people said that it was "botw but better". They should be happy about it no?
 
Catsylvania said:
Feigning umbrage isn’t the play because no one would reasonably believe MiHoYo didn’t CTRL+C, CTRL+V most of Breath of the Wild for that trailer. You gotta lean into it. Act like Genshin Impact is better than Breath of the Wild in every way, even in originality. Just hella gaslight everyone. Better to be inexplicably overconfident than meekly faux offended.
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Except... Tears of the Kingdom is much better than Breath of the Wild in every way! :p
 
We could refer to Genshin as a BOTW clone in a similar vain to the 80s having the Mario clone. Or the 90s having the Doom clone, the 00s with the COD clone, and the 10s with the BOTW clone.

I’m curious what the 2020s will yield for a clone.
 
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Adulfzen said:
I think comparisons to BOTW were entirely fair but as always people get way too heated about that kind of stuff and now I'm wondering if Nintendo recent spree of dumb ass TOTK gameplay patents were because of games like Genshin Impact blatantly taking gameplay concepts wholesale (with very similar looking UIs)
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What's dumb ass about patenting your ideas so others have a harder time stealing from your work?

I think Nintendo is going to take a lot of measures in the coming years to make sure people aren't stealing from them and I'm glad for it. As a creative person myself, I abhor the idea of people stealing from the creativity.of others.
 
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Evil Lucario said:
Hoyoverse in general should have expected that considering their games. I very briefly tried out Honkai Impact 3rd and it literally has Witch Time from Bayonetta, but it was a cooldown-based thing. They consistently take inspiration (being generous) from other video games and mix it into their own. I also hear that Honkai: Star Rail rips off Trails/Final Fantasy 10's combat system in general.

Like, I'm not sure what they really expected.
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No idea about trails battle system but as big fan of Final Fantasy 10 who plays Star Rail.... what? There is NOTHING similiar between the both battle systems except that both games have a timeline which character/enemy acts next. And there are a lot of games that do that.
 
Kreese said:
What's dumb ass about patenting your ideas so others have a harder time stealing from your work?

I think Nintendo is going to take a lot of measures in the coming years to make sure people aren't stealing from them and I'm glad for it. As a creative person myself, I abhor the idea of people stealing from the creativity.of others.
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it's a slippery slop where if you make patents vague enough you're essentially preventing other companies of all sizes everywhere to even attempt their own spin on similar ideas/concepts which I personally think results in a more creatively bankrupt industry that in a lot of cases has blossomed through the iteration of gameplay ideas introduced over the years/decades.

BOTW and TOTK directly profited from that since there have been previous games with either emergent gameplay with elements or games with the crafting of vehicles helping you in reaching obstacles or solving puzzles. What makes those Zelda games is how Nintendo chose to implement those already existing concepts and creating a sound gameplay loop from there.
 
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