Highlights
- The future of Genshin Impact rests on post-story content beyond the known nations, teasing new adventures and villains.
- HoYoverse must introduce a larger, overarching plot line post-Snezhnaya to maintain player interest and longevity.
- Speculation about Celestia as a future setting hints at potential storylines beyond the current Teyvat map.
The story of Genshin Impact has a clear trajectory: the Traveler will explore the seven nations of Teyvat until they find the truth about their missing sibling and the fate of the lost kingdom of Khaenri’ah. Two nations have yet to be released, Natlan and Snezhnaya. If HoYoverse continues to maintain the major patch release schedule that they have had thus far, then Natlan should be released in late 2024, with Snezhnaya to follow in 2025. Fans have been left to speculate as to what will happen to Genshin Impact after the whole of Teyvat is made available to players.
Genshin Impact lives off of continual updates. Surely, HoYoverse wants to continue updating the game after the Traveler takes on the Tsaritsa, leader of the Fatui, Sneznaya’s Archon, and the presumed main villain of the game. If HoYoverse wants Genshin Impact to keep updating after the story of the Traveler is told, then they need to start thinking about what comes after Snezhnaya. It would be better sooner rather than later if HoYoverse began to hint at a story beyond the one players are expecting to come to a close in the next few years.
Genshin Impact Lore: Is Teyvat Upside Down? (What Are The Light, Void, and Human Realms?)
Genshin Impact’s quest lore and fan theories suggest the world of Teyvat might be upside-down, and the various in-game realms seem to support this.
Genshin Impact Holds the Future in Its Hands with ‘The Dream Yet To Be Dreamed’
One of Genshin Impact‘s strengths is the clear path that the story will take. The game often introduces information, lore, and characters from the next nation that the Traveler will visit long before its release. This is why it is key that a plotline that will take the player beyond the end of “Act ??: The Dream Yet To Be Dreamed” needs to be teased.
HoYoverse laid out the whole plot of Genshin Impact in a 2020 video titled “Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview: Travail.” This video introduced players to each of the six nations that the Traveler would visit and ended with an allusion to Khaenri’ah, the apparent final destination of the game:
- ACT: PROLOGUE – Mondstadt – The Outlander Who Caught the Wind
- ACT 1 – Liyue – Farewell, Archaic Lord
- ACT 2 – Inazuma – Omnipresence Over Mortals
- ACT 3 – Sumeru – Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana
- ACT 4 – Fontaine – Masquerade of the Guilty
- ACT 5 – Natlan – Incandescent Ode of Resurrection
- ACT 6 – Snezhnaya – Everwinter Without Mercy
- ACT ?? – Khaenri’ah – The Dream Yet to Be Dreamed
The obvious next country after Snezhnaya is the fallen kingdom of Khaenri’ah, a once-prosperous nation that fell during the Cataclysm 500 years before the game’s current timeline. While this nation was destroyed, it did not cease to exist. Genshin Impact‘s Khaenri’ah is somewhere deep underground, and many players have discovered what appears to be the gates to this ancient kingdom in a cave beneath Sumeru. Given how entangled the story of the Traveler and their twin is with the fate of Khaenri’ah, fans have assumed that Khaenri’ah will be the final puzzle for players to unravel.
However, this assumption does not account for what happens after the story of the twins is resolved. HoYoverse leans heavily on alluding to the mysteries surrounding the Abyss Order and Khaenri’ah, but HoYoverse will no longer be able to do so after players explore this lost kingdom. To give Genshin Impact longevity, a new kind of conflict will need to be introduced.
New Chapters, New Places, and New Villains Await Genshin Impact
“The Dream Yet To Be Dreamed” might help to keep Genshin Impact going after the defeat of the Fatui, but it cannot keep the Traveler traveling for years to come. A larger, overarching plot line—perhaps a villain more intimidating than Genshin Impact‘s unknown god who first confronted the twins or a land beyond the seven nations of Teyvat—needs to be introduced.
This might mean that HoYoverse needs to start leaning into the idea of Celestia as a place, rather than just the mysterious seat of the Archons and home of the Heavenly Principles. Celestia hangs over the map as an omnipresent island, presenting an obvious opportunity for it to be a part of the world in the far future.
HoYoverse has obviously been playing the long game, mapping out years of content, but those years have come and passed. Players are approaching the latter acts of the story detailed in “Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview: Travail” and wonder what will come next. Genshin Impact can give them an answer in the form of introducing storylines that don’t rely on Khaenri’ahn mysteries and go beyond the borders of the main Genshin nations.
HoYoverse will hopefully dream up new adventures for the Traveler before the end of the game’s projected timeline. While all stories must come to an end, the world of Teyvat is so vast but detailed that it demands more stories. Plus, those stories need to be hinted at soon so that they don’t appear rushed when they come into play later.
Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is an open-world RPG made by MiHoYo. Focusing on the interactions between seven elements, Genshin Impact is a free-to-play gacha game with a host of characters, weapons, regions, and more.
- Released
- September 28, 2020
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Engine
- Unity
- ESRB
- T for Teen – Fantasy Violence, Alcohol Reference
- Metascore
- 86
- Platforms That Support Crossplay
- Mobile, PC, PS4 & PS5
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
