Zenless Zone Zero’s Zhenyu Li says being better than Genshin is both pressure and motivation

Initially revealed on June 19, 2024.

Safely remoted from the humid and scorching local weather of Singapore simply exterior the glass home windows, we get an opportunity to take a seat down with HoYoverse’s Zhenyu Li, the lead producer of Zenless Zone Zero – you might have seen him introduce the city fantasy motion RPG at Gamescom Opening Evening Dwell in 2023. Flanked by retainers, he will need to have felt each aid and dread on the method of one more group of overseas journalists planting their recording gadgets in entrance of him, hungry for his each phrase. Although not used to the eye, the developer faces us bravely and we clearly hear the eagerness filling his speech as he solutions our questions via translators.

That we will communicate on to the person behind the sport is in itself an indication of adjusting instances: Such interviews with HoYoverse’s builders nonetheless are the rarest of commodities, however following the exceptional success of each Genshin Impression and Honkai: Star Rail within the West, the corporate and its artistic minds are opening up extra.

Work on Zenless Zone Zero began in 2020 and in these 4 years, the staff led by Zhenyu Li has elevated to round 400 builders with no indicators of development slowing down. In China, the corporate is understood for “consuming individuals” – not in any nefarious manner. Proficient individuals would rapidly vanish, their on-line initiatives laid on ice, and months later followers spot their names within the credit of this or that HoYoverse challenge. Hierarchies at HoYoverse, we’re instructed, are flat – every member of each staff can give you concepts and make their artistic voice heard. 

One of many examples of this freedom comes from the artwork staff for Zenless Zone Zero. As a way to seize the broad number of artwork in our lives, the staff’s creatives had free reign when it got here to designing property just like the covers for the videotapes Zenless Zone Zero’s two protagonists, Belle and Smart, lease out of their retailer on the Sixth Road of New Eridu.

Such manpower and a sure diploma of freedom are essential to feed the well-oiled machine that’s HoYoverse’s replace schedule. Each Genshin Impression and Honkai: Star Rail get a wholesome content material replace each six weeks and the plan is for Zenless Zone Zero to observe the identical cycle.  For this to work out with out having the builders work themselves to loss of life – bodily and creatively – the groups at HoYoverse all the time work in a number of content material pipelines concurrently, giving themselves sufficient lead time to not solely end the content material, however polish it to perfection.

Anybody who’s performed a HoYoverse recreation will be capable to attest that the system works – hardly ever will a bug worm its manner right into a dwell model, and even then they’re so obscure that folks typically joke that the builders are placing them into the sport deliberately to be able to give out some freebies as compensation. One other developer from the studio tells me that these bugs are, the truth is, actual.

Zenless Zone Zero will really feel acquainted to HoYoverse veterans, as its common infrastructure – what sorts of currencies there are, the way you degree up characters, get new tools, and so forth – is constructed on the identical framework. Regardless of the shared DNA, its inside recreation challenge groups work in isolation from one another. 

The place it actually begins to vary is the story’s common set-up: In different titles, you’re instantly solid as a grand savior and destined hero who will save the world. Whereas the scenario of New Eridu isn’t precisely nice – giant components of town have been swallowed up by hostile dimensions referred to as Hollows – life on the town is fairly regular and folks face the identical challenges we do: Deliveries getting misplaced, schoolwork getting in the best way of a ardour challenge, getting your folks collectively to play the latest recreation on the arcade, and so forth.

It’s this slice-of-life side paired with the immensely trendy and funky vibes – that ‘city’ a part of city fantasy – that retains Zenless Zone Zero contemporary in between the exploration and fight that can fill most of your playtime. For Zhenyu Li and his staff, this stability is vital to gamers having fun with the sport. “It will likely be nearer to us regular individuals,” the producer explains. “If we solely had gamers struggle within the Hollows and had no different content material, they’d get sick of it. So the gamers get to have totally different lives exterior of the Hollows with our city expertise, particularly New Eridu.”

It’s not simply the gamers, after all. Playable characters from the sport shall be round city as nicely for quests and occasions, giving customers an opportunity to unwind from the strains of the Hollows with them. Billy might wish to play a recreation on the arcade and Nicole might wish to get pleasure from a espresso collectively – and doubtless have you ever pay for it, however that’s a special story. “We wish you to produce other joys and experiences as nicely,” Zhenyu Li says. 

This versatile id as an city fantasy motion RPG was a strategic alternative as nicely, he elaborates, permitting potential future content material additions to come back from all kinds of instructions – and with how versatile HoYoverse’s different video games are with issues like time-limited occasions, one can solely think about at this level how wild the staff may go along with Zenless Zone Zero.

In fact, the staff has to stay to the touchdown first and nail the speedy part of post-launch help with its unavoidable waves of participant suggestions rolling in. Zhenyu Li indicators that they’re ready to make reasonably drastic modifications if gamers demand it – particularly in terms of the time dedication everybody must make to maintain up with the content material that’s being rolled out. In instances like these the place gamers are spoilt for unbelievable gacha recreation selections from HoYoverse and different studios, and a military of Western live-service video games vying for consideration as nicely, it’s fairly vital to not demand an excessive amount of time from anybody. Zenless Zone Zero, the producer says, is settled someplace between Genshin Impression and Honkai: Star Rail on the dimensions, nevertheless it’s greatest loved “in your free time” as a substitute of on the facet at work. That, although, may change.

Options like auto-battles are probably on the desk, however the staff doesn’t wish to make a transfer on this route till it is ready to gauge the gamers’ temper. “We are attempting our greatest to know,” the producer mentioned, “however no matter we’ll discover out, we wish to make one thing actually enjoyable for the gamers, reasonably than simply making it simpler for them to take their arms off the keyboard.” 

Zenless Zone Zero already tries to cater to these searching for a problem and those that’d reasonably take it a little bit simpler. Its total story is accessible in two difficulties, with the more durable one buffing up enemy stats and making foes act smarter throughout fight. Its two-pronged method with the slice-of-life facets on one facet and the fight plus exploration combo on the opposite feeds into that need to make one thing accessible to everybody, no matter talent degree. Plans for additional exploration gameplay and modes centered on informal play are already being laid as nicely.

For Zhenyu Li, the allure of motion fight video games is the liberty of alternative in terms of team-building. Whereas gamers can – and can – min-max to construct essentially the most environment friendly combos they will, “that’s not the aim” for the producer. “Please, gamers, select whoever you want,” he says.

Part of the push to open up team-building is the “city staff” side of the character roster. All of them belong to totally different factions rooted within the recreation world and teaming up fighters with the identical affiliation gives comparable advantages to teaming up these of particular harm sorts. There are secret combo assaults that may solely be unlocked by placing sure characters and strikes collectively as nicely, which additional rewards gamers for experimenting with their compositions. 

In addition to, talent all the time trumps spending in Zenless Zone Zero, based on Zhenyu Li: Gamers can sort out content material with any groups they need.

Throughout growth, greater than ten potential titles for the sport have been thought of – although the producer wouldn’t inform us even one, saying that they didn’t fulfill him and have been unable to really signify the sport that grew to become Zenless Zone Zero. At one level staff sizes of 4 and two characters have been thought of, although four-character groups ended up feeling too chaotic resulting from Zenless Zone Zero’s characters being extra advanced on the entire than these within the studio’s different video games, whereas two-character groups seemingly will make their manner into the title as a brand new mode sooner or later.

At launch, no healers shall be within the line-up of obtainable characters, although that’s one other space during which change appears to be like to be coming – a minimum of, in the event that they match the “type” of the sport. Generally the staff builds characters round a sure package it want to introduce to the sport, different instances a specific design idea is so visually interesting that becoming skills are created. But it surely all has to suit into Zhenyu Li’s grand imaginative and prescient of a quick-paced, trendy fight recreation that finds enjoyment in simplicity.

With HoYoverse driving excessive on the continued success of Genshin Impression and Honkai: Star Rail, expectations naturally run excessive for Zenless Zone Zero. For Zhenyu Li and his staff, “the strain is there, nevertheless it’s additionally our motivation.” His guideline? “Be higher.”

It’s a aggressive perspective that seemingly fuels each challenge staff’s drive ahead at HoYoverse. Requested concerning the common trade scenario, Zhenyu Li merely says, “The one solution to survive is to do our content material correctly and make it the very best.”

Earlier than leaving the lodge and getting again to his conventional area, the person who counts Frieren, Jujutsu Kaisen, Evangelion, and the Destiny collection amongst his favourite animes and who “may speak for days” about his most beloved video video games – a cultured mixture of Satan Might Cry, Bayonetta, Hades, Counter-Strike, Overwatch, Road Fighter, Monster Hunter, and “Miyazaki video games” – is shyly accepting photograph requests and signing some merchandise. He even goes together with my typical ‘awkward white man who doesn’t know methods to pose in a photograph’ peace gesture, so I feel he’ll get used to this.

Zhenyu Li and Zenless Zone Zero lead a brand new period for HoYoverse – and you know the way it’s with change: For a very long time it could actually appear to be it’s by no means coming after which it’s arriving suddenly.