Genshin Impact has various modes of travelling and when we say travelling we don’t mean teleporting to different locations using any waypoints. In Genshin Impact, exploration is a big factor and the overworld has lots and LOTS to explore. Earlier when we only had Mondstadt and Liyue, explorations mainly involved climbing, running and gliding but with the release of Inazuma in Version 2.0, all that changed.
Modes of Travel in Genshin Impact: What Was Planned Vs. What We Got
In Inazuma, we permanently got the Waverider which allows us to sail through the seas and rivers of Teyvat. Other than that we also got Thunder Spheres and Phase Gates that zapped and zoomed us to difficult spots or faraway places easily. With the latest Version 3.0 release of Sumeru too we got the Four-Leaf Sigils that let us sling through difficult terrains and cover more ground quickly.
Recently a picture has been doing the rounds in the Genshin community and it’s a picture that dates back to before the game’s launch. It’s speculated even that the picture was when Genshin Impact was still in its developmental phase so even the first beta players might be unaware of this.
According to translators in the community, this picture lists various modes of travelling that the Traveler would unlock upon entering a new nation. What this essentially means is that we would have similar training quests as we did with Amber for learning to use our Wing Glider in every nation for a different mode of travelling. As of now, only the Anemo Wing Glider is the only mode that verifiably made it into the game while the rest were cancelled due to various reasons. The following are the other travelling modes listed in the above picture:
There’s also a text that discusses how these things would work or look on a more specific note.
As you can see above, “Anemo Wings” or Wind Gliders is something we already have in the game from the very beginning. We learn about it in the city of the Anemo Archon- Mondstadt which is the first region we enter in the game.
Geo Steps/Stairs is something we’re unfamiliar with but perhaps we would’ve had a feature similar to the floating rocks in Liyue that were part of various puzzles and quests. It would’ve helped to climb the tall mountains of Liyue easily but it was never implemented.
While we didn’t get the Electro Boat in Inazuma, we did get something similar in the Waverider. It isn’t powered by Electro but it gets the job done. Players speculate that perhaps instead of getting a new mode of travelling every nation, we get one every two nations. And while not all of them will be implemented, most of them have the potential to be even though they were cancelled before.
As for Dendro, we already got something similar to the Dendro rope in the Four-Leaf Sigils but these are still environmental features and not something the Traveler can use outside Sumeru. While the sigils are still a bit gimmicky and surely a rope or Grappling Hook would’ve been cooler, players are still having fun slinging around like web-slingers throughout Sumeru.
The Hydro Fin is something we can still be expectant about since it may possibly be coming to the game when we enter Fontaine- the region of Hydro. While this isn’t a leak, there have been confirmed utterances of Diving as something people do in Fontaine and that people can get their Diving Licenses in Fontaine.
Since we may be getting new travelling modes every two nations, it would make sense for Genshin to add the Diving feature in Fontaine.
As for the Pyro Cannon and the Cryo Mirror for launching and teleporting- their concepts and ideas seem too vague to make speculations. We do know there are Cannons in Genshin Impact that can be operated and we do know Fireballs exist from all the Pyro elementals we’ve faced. As for Cryo Mirror for teleporting, we have seen the Mirror Maiden and Cryo Fatui Mage pull off teleporting through portals and mirrors.
The original post and the thread speculates that the reason most of these are cancelled is that it would mean adding tons of new animations into the game and not just in general but for each playable character. That would not only increase the already ginormous size of the game but also put a higher load on the system.
Genshin Impact has since come a long way and we believe many of these features are being added to the game but only as regional features. Though they may not be exactly what they had planned during the developmental phase, these features do resemble their initial ideas and we players are glad for it.