Genshin Impact glitch turns the game into a first-person survival horror experience

The game does feel a lot grittier.

A screenshot of a character from Genshin Impact
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Genshin Impact recently released its 3.4 update on Jan. 18 and players have taken to it like fish in water. The game has never been more popular than it is now, making it the best time for new and returning players to jump in the game with all of the recent content updates. Although, with the influx of new content comes errors in code, which is an inevitability in most dynamic online games.

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These errors lead to glitches that can sometimes ruin the gaming experience for many players. The other times, however, players have exploited these glitches to their favor, gaining an advantage when others cannot. One of the glitches currently being tested out by players and streamers alike is the first-person glitch, which allows you to change your player perspective to a first-person mode.

As shown above by Reddit user u/HeavyWeath3r, if you use the glitch to change your player perspective to first-person mode, a lot of gameplay possibilities open up for you. This player took it a step further and went to The Chasm, which is already quite a macabre location in the game, then turned down the game’s brightness to minimum.

This effectively made Genshin Impact feel like a first-person survival horror experience, similar to games like the Amnesia series. Completely turning a rich, colorful world like Teyvat into a harrowing experience like the one shown above might seem a little jarring at first, but for players looking for something new, this seems like a perfect change.

So how does this happen? It is actually connected to the Memento Lens and you need to equip it to make this possible. Navigate to the game’s Key Bindings option and configure the shortcut wheel to change the third option on it to “Take Photo.” Then assign the “Open Shortcut Wheel” key to the tilde (~) key on your keyboard. Once you have this setup, you can make the glitch happen.

Simply hold down the Left Alt and the tilde keys together to open the shortcut wheel while the cursor is still active. With the cursor fully functional, move it to the Memento Lens option and click it to activate it, then release the Left Alt and tilde keys and this should put you in Photo Mode. Then just disconnect from the server and wait for a reconnection to happen.

Upon reconnection, you should be in first-person mode. This allows you to head anywhere you want, including The Chasm, if you want to recreate your own horror experience in the world of Teyvat.

Author
Image of Anish Nair
Anish Nair
Freelance gaming writer for Dot Esports. An avid gamer of 25 years with a soft spot for RPGs and strategy games. Esports writer for 2 years and a watcher for 12 years. Aspiring author. Dad to a host of animals. Usually found trying to climb ranks in Dota 2, plundering the seas in Sea of Thieves, hunting large monsters in Monster Hunter World, or mining rare minerals in Deep Rock Galactic.