Genshin Impact studio head says Breath of the Wild comparisons left some devs in tears

At a recent Genshin Impact event, miHoYo president Liu Wei shared that the comparisons made to Breath of the Wild was difficult for the dev team.

Wei recently made an appearance at the Genshin Impact FES event in Shanghai, where he spoke about the game as well as what it was like working on it. But as reported by CBR, it doesn't sound like things were always easy for the time. In a clip shared and translated by tokinohikaru_00 on Twitter, Wei spoke of the criticisms Genshin Impact garnered over its similarities to Breath of the Wild. Important to note is that Wei didn't mention Breath of the Wild by name in the clip, though the timeline he laid out makes it clear that that's what he was talking about.

"When I put out the [closed beta], I was pretty proud," Wei said. "But [the closed beta's] response [was] different from our assumptions, it was completely different. When we did [the closed beta] we faced an unprecedented crisis." Wei went on to explain that everyone that saw the video didn't really understand what the team or the game was trying to do, but the team was left feeling worried.

"I remember many young colleagues crying and saying to me, 'why is this happening? What did we do wrong?'" According to Wei, though, both him and the development team took the criticism as an opportunity to prove themselves, and obviously the game is a massive hit now.

The Breath of the Wild comparisons aren't unwarranted, the team even admitted that Breath of the Wild was one of its inspirations. Though one fan went so far as to smash their PS4 in protest of the game, with others taking their Switches and copies of Breath of the Wild to the 2019 event Wei was referencing, even flipping off the game, all of which is clearly taking things a bit far.

If you're still on the Genshin Impact train, you'll also be happy to hear that Version 4.0 is dropping later this week, adding in a whole new region, Fontaine.