Hoyoverse, the absolutely massive game development studio and publisher behind global hits like Genshin Influence And Honkai: Star Railknows how to turn up the hot control. Whether it was the absurd physics of the bouncing breasts, Genshin started, or the heart palpitations of Tears of ThemisHoyoverse has never shied away from creating lustful characters. But now, with the introduction of Jane Doe in Zenless Zone Zerothe studio, which is known for being pretty awesome, has seemingly outdone itself.
Jane Doe is a character with a level S physical anomaly that will be introduced in the second half of Patch 1.1 of Zenless Zone Zero. She’s also very hot, in a stereotypical way. Her high-waisted shorts (which she wears over ripped tights) accentuate what is perhaps the most dramatic hip-to-waist ratio I’ve seen in a game in a long time. Other features of her design, like a small devil tail that wraps around her leg, are meant to induce tons of lust among fans. On August 30, developer Hoyoverse has released a character demo trailer for them and well… it’s so awesome that it inspired comments from both Sims and critics.
The trailer shows a scenario where a character is being interrogated by Jane Doe. The character, strapped to a chair, gasps and breathes heavily while Jane taunts her in a sexualized manner. Jane lowers her face between the character’s legs and shoves an apple down her throat – and it’s all shot from a first-person perspective, so the viewer feels like she’s doing it. Now, both the trailer and the character have drawn mixed reactions from fans.
Some people already adore Jane and TikTok is full of fan edits of her. A video edit that more than 3 million viewsis full of commenters shouting that they wanted to “save witches with her” – a phrase people use to circumvent moderation parameters on TikTok. A short clip showing Jane walking also drew wild reactions from fans, with one commenting, “Bro, thigh physics is diabolical, what the hell.”
Others, however, are not so happy with the character. For some players, the character’s design was fine, but they didn’t like how she was portrayed in the video. Others questioned Hoyoverse for using the sexualized trailer for marketing on TikTok. The developers uploaded the trailer to the official Zenless Zone Zero Account and one of the top comments, which received over 2,200 likes, read: “The animation is so good bro but what exactly is the creative team thinking when they create a character that behaves like that.”
Then there are the people who are just angry. Video viewed more than 186,000 timesOne person put a text over a clip of their trailer and said: “Cannot protect [Zenless Zone Zero] Anyway, this trailer is just disgusting.”
Hoyoverse is used to causing controversy with its character designs. When the game launched in 2020, people criticized the physics of the boob jiggle in Genshin Influence and the developers added alternate outfits for four of their characters that covered more skin. But it’s also a company whose fans really like to thirst for so many of its characters. The company has always had to walk a fine line between creating popular and sometimes sexy characters without overdoing the sexual elements. Now it just seems like Zenless Zone Zero will focus entirely on these parts of the fandom.
