Genshin Impact’s new Four-Leaf Sigil makes me feel like Spider-Man

Climb the steep, sheer, mountainous cliffs of a long-abandoned mine, jog through the dark, torch-lit rock tunnel and you’ll be immersed in a lush green jungle Genshin Impact‘s new Sumeru region. For the first few steps after entering the region, the game will indicate a small four-leaf icon hanging in the sky. The game prompts an image showing a tutorial, and if you press the correct keys, your anime-style character will transform into a glowing ball of gold and race towards the symbol via a gold vine. After hearing my character grunt and gasp from climbing and running, using this four-leaf sigil makes me feel light for the first time.

The four-leaf sigil, named for its shamrock-like shape, is a new feature of Sumeru update 3.0 in the open-world exploration game. If you interact with it, it will allows you to soar through the air and speed along a varied and winding jungle path. As you fly, you can string together movements from sigil to sigil and experience an almost Spider-Man-esque rhythm as moving from point to point turns from a time-consuming task into an intriguing pleasure. I got caught in a sweeping river so quickly I forgot to unlock a waypoint to stop at along the way.

Image: Hoyoverse via Polygon

The addition is part of a new patch released on Tuesday. The 3.0 Sumeru update brought many new features to the game – a lush new region to explore, new characters and a new story. And while all the flashy additions are certainly welcome, flourishes like the addition of these sigils feel like a true example of how far the game has come.

Genshin Impact is an open world game with live service. In the past this has worked so that we get more and more regions over time. The game is literally getting bigger, and what we’re able to play today feels like an ever-growing number of regions to explore. As the game has evolved from its already ambitious launch, we’ve seen the developers not only increase the size of the game, but consistently refine the mechanics from region to region.

Earlier regions like the stormy island chain of Inazuma share a similar feature. It works similarly to the four-leaf sigil in that it allows you to travel fast and take to the skies, except it was more annoying because you had to collect another separate item called the Electrogranum before you could fly. (Also, the item would disappear after 15 seconds.) The four-leaf sigil doesn’t use a tiny limited-time item that forces people to manage the countdown. You can just fly

I love it so much I’ve even started fantasizing about other places in ancient regions that might benefit from it. Of course, I wouldn’t expect developers to go back and add them to earlier regions. However, it feels like a clear sign that even now, Hoyoverse is still interested in improving fundamental aspects of the game, including locomotion.