HoYoverse builds memorable cities. The quasi-Bavarian streets of Genshin Impact’s Mondstadt and Honkai Star Rail’s Huizhou-inspired Xianzhou Luofu have their own culture and real-world effect. The hub sections follow the model of most open-world games. They may host questlines, although they are mostly static sandboxes with unchanging topographies and merchants. You may visit for quests or upgrades, but you shouldn’t reside there. Adventure awaits in the wide outdoors and distant cosmos. The city is the player’s world in Zenless Zone Zero.
HoYoverse invited me to Singapore to meet producer Zhenyu Li to grind a new New Eridu region for the Zenless Zone Zero 1.0 update. Lumina Square depicts a postcard-perfect San Francisco bay area with a suspension bridge and cruise ships. The spacious streets and bustling plaza are a nice change from Zenless Zone Zero’s limited beta testing.
As beta testers know, Belle and Wise’s Sixth Street residence has essential stores for player growth. Everything in Zenless Zone Zero serves its mechanics, from improving your Bangboo at the Modelling Shop to making Drive Discs in Bardic Needle. In comparison, Lumina Square lets players breathe. Its verticality is remarkable. A cafe-bolted staircase leads to a porch with a new Commission Broker, which speaks well for the studio’s urban space concept. I also think of the stairwells and passageways on Sixth Street, which are now blocked by chain-link fences and invisible barriers but may be freed up in future renovations.
This preview version gives me a jungle of floating quest signs to navigate in Lumina Square. It’s daunting at first since I don’t know which NPC to prioritize or what may happen. Due to the abundance of options, taking up a side mission on the street seems random rather than a content advancement step. RPG veterans tend to vacuum them all up at once, but I take them individually. Unlike Inter-Knot requests, I’m not taken to Sixth Street for Hollow commissions. Instead, I take some photographs for a lost tourist, assist a Bangboo get a job, and report to PubSec’s charming community police mascot, police Mewmew, who awards my community spirit with Polychrome film, improvements, and cash.
While Zenless Zone Zero and Persona 5 share a “urban genre” backdrop, Li emphasizes that the game’s fast, Street Fighter 6-inspired fighting is quite different from turn-based games. Instead, he surprises me with a Digimon World influence, my favorite PS1 game. Now that I know to look, the parallels are evident. While we won’t recruit digital monsters to New Eridu, File City’s steady metamorphosis into a city of stores, restaurants, and municipal services mirrors Li’s plans for Zenless Zone Zero’s live service model.
Li reveals that Sixth Street and Lumina Square are “not adequate” to show the ambition or size the team aims to develop over time. Zenless Zone Zero beta members frequented General Chop’s noodle eatery and Tin Master’s coffee shop on Sixth Street, but their simple bonuses are only the beginning. Li says, “We have a lot of strange and weird shops, including some we haven’t really explored the gameplay and interactions.” He jokes about a hot-pot restaurant opening soon, and I laugh—I should be reading about it in New Eridu’s paper. Li calls Zenless Zone Zero’s urban development a “living city” rather than a “real” metropolis. HoYoverse uses life game components for immersion and a laid-back tone, but it’s not a simulation game.
Li also notes that, like Digimon World, Zenless Zone Zero’s time structure features “special incidents” that only happen at particular times of day, but perhaps none will be as painful as seeing Garurumon for a rematch at 4am. The beta showed me how missions are confined to particular hours, however in this preview version, I see various NPCs in Lumina Square as I go around at night. I see shark girl Ellen among the throng, dressed in a schoolgirl’s attire instead of her leather maid uniform, but she gives me the same icy shoulder I’ve come to expect.
When I leave Lumina Square and fight, I realize that urban dynamics affect personalities. Based on their jobs, they form alliances with ethically dubious odd-job agencies like the Cunning Hares or ethical companies like Belobog Heavy Industries. As I explore newly disclosed character Zhu Yuan’s talents and uncover a devoted synergy with career criminal Nicole, I see how character dynamics may blur these sides. Whatever cat-and-mouse game these two play in Zenless Zone Zero’s story puts them on a collision course for players to pair them in combat, and I’m sure we’ll see more synergies as we learn more about upcoming factions like Sons of Calydon and Section 6.
Li discusses character design throughout our conversation. “We work closely with our planning team, but unlike other companies, they don’t tell us what to do,” Li says. “The planning team tells us what they want, then we design.” I don’t think it’s a fortunate coincidence that Zhu Yuan, the first playable police officer, is Ether-aligned and can corrupt. It shows that HoYoverse isn’t afraid to cut to the bone with Zenless Zone Zero’s off-beat humor, and while I don’t expect serious social commentary in an action-adventure game with jiggle physics, I appreciate this exploration of urban living’s real-world issues.
New Eridu’s self-contained metropolitan environments need a quick travel mechanism that may require players to switch between loading screens to go around. Though not as immersive as Genshin Impact’s seamless open environment, HoYoverse’s mission system must account for this. Starfield shows that rapid travel may shrink larger planets and make them hard to manage. Honkai Star Rail has a similar world structure and avoids the problem, whereas Zenless Zone Zero’s loop’s Hollow Deep Dive mechanic is independent of the game world, making it harder. Li says several gacha game and HoYoverse ecosystem aspects are designed for this area. Consider the daily quest system. We wanted to integrate it into the urban atmosphere, like drinking coffee in the morning instead of other quests.”
Zenless Zone Zero’s dystopian metropolis looks little compared to Genshin Impact’s vast planet or Honkai Star Rail’s endless possibilities. After this hands-on peek, HoYoverse’s next urban fantasy seems personal rather than suffocating. After a long day, the idea of a universe at my doorstep is tiring. I sometimes simply want city life, an old game I love, and a bowl of noodles to wash it all down.
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