In an interview with Famitsu, Zenless Zone Zero producer Li Zhenyu talked about how he and his team crafted the world of New Eridu. He also states that the world of Zenless Zone Zero is completely separate from the pre-existing Honkai and Genshin universes.
Though Zenless Zone Zero takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, the story is anything but pessimistic. He wants to focus on human-oriented plots, as well as a sense of community and city life. He also wanted to share his childhood experiences of hanging out with his friends at the arcade, talking about movies at the video rental shop, and listening to music at the CD shop. That’s why he set the story in such an urban environment. These details were present in the closed beta as well. The Proxies run a video rental shop. Something you can do from time to time is recommending movies to customers.
While you’ll be able to explore areas outside New Eridu, Zenless Zone Zero will mostly focus on that one city. As you can see from the designs, there are beastmen and robotic lifeforms. “Coolness” is a major factor behind a lot of the team’s decisions in the world and characters. Li wanted to create the idea of a post-apocalyptic border-less city that acts as a melting pot. From a character design standpoint, the Zenless Zone Zero team wanted to create something the player has never seen before. So it thought about the different varieties of people that would appear in a post-apocalyptic world, as well as how they can depict this heterogeneous society. It welcomes ideas from players as well.
Zenless Zone Zero is in development for the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. It’ll come out in 2024.
