Genshin Impact 1.4 Impressions – Windblume Dating Simulator

Genshin Impact has now been updated to 1.4, adding new events, such as the Windblume Festival and new quality-of-life updates and features, similar to previous patches. While we had the Lantern Rite Festival in Liyue in 1.3, this time we’re going back to the town where everything began—Mondstadt.

And no, we’re not scaling yet another mountain like Dragonspine again. We suffered enough with that in 1.2. Sheer Cold is a terrifying thing. This time, we’re celebrating a very famous event hosted in Mondstadt, called the Windblume Festival. As stated in the Special Program, the Windblume Festival is known as the festival of freedom and romance, which ties into Mondstadt’s being known as the City of Freedom.

The events of the Windblume Festival won’t officially begin until later, so for now, let’s focus on the thing that has everyone’s attention, the Hangout Events. Have you ever wanted to get close and personal with a specific Genshin character? Well, now you can! Hangout Events are basically a series of quests where your choices impact how the story progresses. For this patch, we have four characters to choose from: Barbara, Noelle, Chongyun, and Bennett.

Hangout Events are exactly what it sounds like—you hang out with the character. Throughout the story, you’ll be given a series of multiple-choice answers, and depending on your answer…the outcome of the story might completely change. You can even see this in the Quest Menu screen, where there are tons of branching paths.

Each character has six endings, and once you get to an Ending, you get a screenshot in the form of a Hangout Memory, which you can save to the game’s screenshot directory.
Developer MiHoYo seems to encourage players to unlock all six endings. There are tons of rewards, such as Primogems, Hero’s Wit EXP items, and even materials that are related to the character.

Don’t worry about any mistakes made during these hangout scenes either, as you can easily rewind to a branching point in the story. Just hover over the spot you wish to start from, and you can then experiment with different choices until you receive the outcome you’re looking for.

Each Hangout Event requires 2 Story Keys. You can get those by doing the daily commissions in-game each day. If you do all of them every day, you can get the eight total keys required in about 16 days. Yeah, it’s a bit of a long period, so I suggest starting with the character you really like.

After playing through the events and getting to know my favorite characters, I honestly enjoyed what they offered. It allows the characters’ personalities to shine a little more without an entire group of other characters fighting for the spotlight. However, I’m looking forward to when the celebrations truly begin within the festive, which we should be expecting in the next couple of days. We’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Genshin Impact is available now on PlayStation 4, PC, and iOS and Android devices.