With Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd studio Hoyoverse managed to spin its gacha playbook into a free-to-play RPG with a premium feel, and now another Chinese giant is seemingly trying to do the same. Arknights: Endfield is a new "strategic" open-world action RPG based on the tower defense hit of the same name, and with a PS5 release now confirmed alongside PC, it's following Genshin's footsteps almost to the letter.
Arknights: Endfield was announced last year, but developer Hypergryph has been pretty quiet ever since, only putting out brief, but promising, gameplay snippets every now and then. But as noted in our roundup of everything announced at The Game Awards 2023, its latest announcement was a doozy: it's coming to PS5, and technical test signups are now open. It remains to be seen whether Xbox gets a piece of the pie after regretting missing out on Genshin.
If you want to sign up for the Arknights: Endfield technical test, you'll need to fill out this survey by December 24 and pray you get in. The PC-only test will start on January 12, 2024 and run for an unannounced period of time. You can also pre-register for the game in general, though it's sure to be quite a while until it's actually out.
We've seen a lot of Genshin Impact imitators since its explosive success – as a reminder, Hoyoverse has previously made more money than all of PlayStation in some fiscal quarters – and Endfield might have the best shot out of them all. Arknights is already a good, well-liked game, and Endfield's jump in genre and scale could excite existing players while entreating a new audience – namely people like me who don't like mobile gaming.
Endfield is also sitting in a very similar space gameplay-wise. "Take up the role of the Protocol Field Recovery Department Endministrator, clear your assignments, and explore the frontiers," the official blurb reads.
Earlier showcases confirm that, like Genshin, you assemble a team of four characters and use them to battle around an open world. Unlike Genshin, however, your whole party stays on-field at once, not unlike the Tales games or even the recent action-based Final Fantasies. Hypergryph has also stressed strategic elements of combat, which I'm interpreting as cooldown management and AoE spacing, among other things. It looks solid so far, and the overall aesthetic is a sharp reinterpretation of Arknights, so as a long-time Genshin enthusiast, you can put me down as interested.
Also shown at The Game Awards: this open-world game from GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 vet's new studio looks like a slick Tokyo dystopia.
