As it adds new regions, Genshin Impact’s politics only get messier

polygon.com:

Tantalizing food stalls selling bubbling, spicy hot pot adorn the streets of Genshin Impact’s Liyue Harbor. Colorful koi swim in tranquil lotus ponds on a terrace above the meticulously constructed city. Should the player wish, they may partake in Sichuanese-inspired water-boiled fish at a restaurant where player-character Xiangling cooks. As the sun sets over the mountain ranges that overlook the city, the slow duet of erhu and harp music enlivens the landscape. Through design and musical compositions, the developers at Hoyoverse paint a fantasized facsimile of Guangdong, Xiamen, or port cities of China’s southern provinces.

For all the effort that Chinese state propaganda puts into showcasing traditional Chinese landscapes, tourism agencies may have been outdone by a video game. Now entering its third year, the open-world adventure game’s attention to detail has drawn fans — and their wallets — into the gacha system. The world and its story remain free to explore, showcasing ambitious visual triumphs of landscapes inspired by locations in the real world. However, this attention to detail is not universal. Inazuma, a pseudo-Japanese shogunate, and Sumeru, which blends Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural references, art direction, and language allusions put the game in close proximity to tense real-world racial and political issues. As Hoyoverse’s directors and writers journey away from tried-and-true fantasy role-playing game environments inspired by Europe and East Asia, they expose storytelling limitations of stereotype over-reliance and callous usage of real-life history.

For each of the game’s major updates, Genshin’s developers take the wheel of key content preview streams. On these occasions, leadership at