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Back in 2020, there were several character leaks for Genshin Impact– leaks far further ahead than the next patch. These included characters ranging from Monstadt locals like Rosaria to the then-unannounced Inazuma region’s key players, like Kazuha and Kokomi. Some of them sported some radically different looks, too.
With the official announcement of Shenhe and Yunji yesterday, we have a sizeable chunk of these Genshin Impact character leaks being ok to talk about publicly- and a rare chance to take a look at how wildly you can change a character in just one year.
Do note that any talk about ties to other characters in the designs are purely speculative, it’s not like I have any insider knowledge about the design process for these characters.
Very little is known about miHoYo’s internal development culture, so until someone speaks up we don’t actually know what the turnover for many of these character designs is, or what order they were originally supposed to release in.
The Ones Who Didn’t Change
Right off the bat, you can pretty clearly see that characters like Kazuha, Hu Tao, Sayu and Yun Jin pretty much remained unchanged from the leaks. These characters were probably much further along development than the others, hence their near 1:1 match with their official releases later on. It also helps that characters like Sayu and Kazuha have pretty straightforward tropes in their design- so it makes sense they wouldn’t change as much over time.
Sangonomiya Kokomi
Kokomi had a pretty drastic change from her leaked model, most noticably dropping the more traditionally Japanese flourishes on her outfit. While still looking like a priestess she also incorporated many more modern touches, such as the hair bow as well as replacing her raiments with more fish-like coat tails.
While it’s impossible to know how the characters were designed, it stands to note that a lot of her older priestess elements can be seen in Yae Miko, who embodies a lot of the fantasy-shrine-maiden trope.
Rosaria
Rosaria is an example of a character whose design looks like they’d firmly decided on the key elements- her changes seem more about enhancing the original concept, rather than a change of focus like in Kokomi’s case.
The only real change comes in the form of her fishnet stockings- absent from her old design, as well as more jagged lines on her skirt. Overall it feels like someone took another pass at her design to really play up the fact that she had modified her Habit, and that it’s supposed to look markedly more aggressive when put next to other Church affiliated characters like the nun NPCs or even (read: Especially) Barbara.
Shenhe
Similar to Kokomi, Shenhe has undergone a radically different design since her first unofficial appearance. A lot of her key motifs are there- the first impression you’d get looking at her is that she’s meant to be some sort of ghost. But that being said it also looks like a lot of her unused design elements can also be found in Ganyu, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if miHoYo came out and said that they were originally meant to be the same character, especially since they’re both tied to the Adepti.
There’s not much we can go into with the reasoning here, since we’ve literally never even seen Shenhe in the story yet, but her more muted new appearance definitely sells the more mature air to her as well.
All in all, it’s really cool to see how much characters can change over the course of development in Genshin Impact compared to their leaked models. If nothing else, it proves miHoYo should look at possibly releasing an artbook so we can see more work-in-progress designs, especially if they include artist commentary on some of the decisions.
