Minecraft build magnificently recreates Genshin Impact's Mondstadt
It took five months' work but it certainly looks the part.
Mondstadt is the first major city in Genshin Impact, and essentially acts as the game's main hub for much of its length. It's where you meet tonnes of the game's characters, pick up quests, and generally spend a lot of time. Genshin's equivalent to Whiterun, if you like. For a city like this in a popular videogame it was only a matter of time before the Minecrafters got interested.
A German group called Skyblock Squad, led by Marvin Schmidt, spent the last five months recreating Mondstadt in Minecraft at an almost 1:1 scale (thanks, NME). I say almost because, while that was the ambition, the team had to go with a 1:1.15 scale because of the limitations of adding detail and particularly interior detail in Minecraft. That in turn allowed the group to build the city with the most important buildings having Genshin-accurate interiors.
The below timelapse video shows off most of the city, and there's no denying this is a beautiful build.
"Reconstructing a whole City out of another game is quite the challenge since you've got to take measurements and get the right scale so it does look right in Minecraft," reads Skyblock Squad's description of the build. "The city is actually slightly bigger than the 1:1 scale since Minecraft got limited ways of getting detail into your Builds. Marvin started planning everything out in early August and we finally finished it, so this is 5 months total."
This isn't the only Genshin Minecraft build by a long shot: Last month, someone built Albedo's campsite. Doesn't look like anyone's quite managed to build the whole of Tevyat yet (including MiHoYo), but this is one heck of a start. You can grab the build and have a wander over at Planet Minecraft.
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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."