Arknights: Endfield - Our interview with producer Light Zhong

• Arknights: Endfield hosted a stunning new preview event in LA
• During our time there we got hands-on with the second beta
• Meanwhile, we also got the chance to interview co-founder and producer Light Zhong

If you’re wondering where I’ve been over the past few days, then let me finally unveil the secret. I’ve been across the Atlantic in Los Angeles, getting hands-on with Arknights: Endfield’s second beta test! And I even got to speak of one of the key figures responsible for development.

Set to arrive on November 28th this newest beta will be the first time mobile players get their hands on Gryphline’s hotly anticipated follow-up to the original Arknights. But getting hands-on is one thing, as I’ve already given my thoughts on the upcoming Endfield beta in a second piece.

What I did get the chance to do was sit down with none other than producer and co-founder of Gryphline Light Zhong. There, I got the chance to ask him some key questions about Endfield, how it came about and what makes it stand out from others in the genre on mobile.

So, read on and find out why Endfield might be the pick of 2026 for mobile players!

Yeah, that's a big step for our company. Before Endfield we only had a few games including Arknights. But the company is becoming bigger and bigger, and the players and staff want to do something more challenging. 

Some players may be getting a bit tired of Arknights and they want to play something new from the IP, of course many others still play it. But for those others they want to have a new experience in the franchise. They wish we could do something new. So that's why we made Endfield. 

If we want to make the company stronger, if we want to make something new and to make a better game, we should face the challenges of making a 3D live-service game, which is far bigger and much more complex. 

And the Endfield does. It’s especially challenging for me, because before Endfield I didn't have any experience of making a 3D game. I mentioned in another interview that asking me to move from making a 2D product like Arknights and then moving onto a full 3D game is sort of like asking a motorcyclist to run a Formula 1 race and complete with Max Verstappen.

There were a lot of other games that inspired us of course, as well as movies. Including the movie Dune, both the older and newer version, as well as Mad Max and Borderlands. 

Many of Hideo Kojima’s games really inspired us to want to make something that aspired to the same level of scope and vibe that they deliver. There’re many other games that are very similar to the original version of the game. I don't know if you can guess, but many of our teams have been watching various movies and games. These are the games that made us want to go back and forth from the past.

There are also other cinematic works and movies that I can't list off my head, but many members of our team like science fiction and fantasy, as well as combinations thereof. This is something that we really want to incorporate into Arknights: Endfield.

When we were choosing Starset at the band, we found that the musical inspiration was more intense and heavy. Other games in the genre were usually choosing a more ‘light-hearted’ band. We chose this technical, and technological and very kind of sound.

I myself work as an artist. I've been drawing for a long time, especially concept and character art in the Japanese anime style. My style, of course, is influenced by other artists. But I personally want to do something that's more novel, doing something that everyone else is already doing is not really my kind of thing. 

So while everyone's doing anime concept art, that has more fancy, sunny, and lively vibes to it. My personal concept would be closer to what are typical of those Marvel comics, like American cartoon type of style and American action movies, or that has a darker, more sombre feel that's usually portrayed in science fiction.

But my work is still anime and we believe that this is the type of style that me and my team have delivered in Arknights. And since Arknights also has more of an anime realist style, that carries over to Endfield.

Now, going back to what you mentioned about risk, I believe there is a certain degree of risk when you do things that goes against the typical choice, the more common denominator. But from the feedback from our user community and the market, we realized that our unique stylistic approach is something that users actually prefer.

My personal take is that if you are confident about something and it's something that you really like, it has a really good chance of just standing out from the crowd and achieving something that goes beyond expectations.

Endfield features a diverse roster of characters. There's actually a lot of different themes mixed together. But if we need to identify this core belief that we're trying to deliver, I believe, this would be working together to overcome a challenge. Although there are many different themes in the story, the theme and the challenge are a little bit like interacting with them and understanding their own past.

And to elaborate on that, we have many characters, all of them with their own background story. Now the characters protagonist are both very different in terms of their own background. Their [protagonists] main job is to get in touch with all these factions, all these characters, and understand their past and people through some mechanisms of fate or the basis of shared experience that will identify that they actually share similar core values.

That's how they got together in this big team. All these stories happen on a distant planet, Talos II, which is an alien planet, and it's not an easy world to live on. There's a lot of difficulty that everyone has to overcome.

So now since Talos is the hostile and there's some unknown, mysterious enemies that they have to constantly fight, it brings out the theme that everyone has to work together to overcome these challenges.

Perlica is a character that I personally invested plenty of effort in. And since Perlica is also a protagonist, I really like her. But this is a question I get a lot from other interviews. So I would share something from a more interesting angle. There's another character I really like who happens to be Chen Qianyu. I adopted quite a different perspective and approach in creating her. 

There is another character similar to Chen Qianyu from Endfield also called Chen in the original Arknights. So when we created the original Chen in the original Arknights, we gave her Eastern design elements, so that she looks more like a character from a classical martial arts movie from Hong Kong.

So the Arknights Chen has a very strong sense of justice. She's extremely intelligent. Unfortunately, she also has quite a temper. But the Endfield Chen is a little different. We gave her a bit of straightforwardness and innocent naivety, so we livened up her personality a bit more.

I think that the characters are more complicated and detailed. They can satisfy some of the players who like the AAA style. But at the same time, they will want to keep some 20-year-old players. The characters' current style is very well-organized. We've put a lot of production on this; everyone has their own style.

In Endfield, our artistic quality and style, at least compared to other anime games, is something that's unprecedented, rarely seen in others. We are confident that that our style brings out a more somber, more modern fantasy and more modern science-fiction, and also character designs that are a lot more intricate. 

So Endfield, while capable of satisfying what new players would want to see in a AAA title, it also retains some of that anime elements to it. And now the Endfield characters, they have both. They're both like AAA grade with anime features. And this is why people have responded pretty positively to the promotional videos that we've released so far.

Another point I'd like to make is that Endfield has the unique factory gameplay that is integrated with our RPG character progression system. It's something not really seen in other games and taken in combination with the design, the environment designs of titles too, the art style, it's a pretty refreshing design. A factory gameplay itself can be quite hardcore serious, but it's something that would be new to allow these players. So, when combining with the style and the unique mashup gameplay, we believe that we're going to deliver something that's very groundbreaking.

Now, the theme of the story of unity and working together and gameplay itself is actually two separate pipelines. Of course, as I just mentioned to that in terms of gameplay, we want to deliver new experiences that players never before before, and also that we want to stand out from other titles as well. 

So that's why we arrived at having the entire team, like four player team on screen at once. Now, it comes quite coincidentally that it actually meshes really well with our theme of unity. 

Four operators on screen at once, fighting it out is a constant process. We've already set that down during the earliest test, and there were feedback that the effects weren't that perfect at the very, very beginning. But we polished out like experience, breaking bugs and all those issues. 

So while keeping close to the main theme of Unity, we have ensured that having four people fight on screen at once will constantly deliver a smooth combat experience. And that has a dynamic tempo and everything. And it's years of hard work to make this happen.

So during the course of development, we definitely understand that players on different platforms will experience things slightly differently. They will encounter their own different situations. Our idea is that whatever platform or device they're using, if they have an issue with that, we should go ahead and fix it. We're also trying to make sure that the experience on all platforms is consistent. And that consistency is to make sure that everyone's having a great time playing this game.

Especially for mobile device players, we would definitely try to fix some of the more common issues get them optimized and make a few compromises in there. Like we do understand that when you're playing on a mobile device, one of the biggest problems with that, it might have a smaller screen and control, the ease of controls might be an issue. 

So for mobile device players, the control should be easy. It should be easy to pick up. It should be easy enough to be controlled on the touchscreen. And it must be easy enough that I can load up the game anytime, anywhere. And now on PC, we would leverage having a big monitor to make things as beautiful as possible. So that that all being said, being able to play any place I want, in any setting or on any platform I want in any way I want, that is a big advantage that we'll be getting when we go cross platform. 

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So this is why we had many tests involving players on mobile devices. Of course, there are a few things that we might have a few problems with, and players gave us a lot of useful feedback that we adopted. So of course, the top aims, the top priorities we're trying to achieve for mobile device players is that there is a freedom of control as well as ease of controls.

And we made additional designs to make this happen. I, myself, play on all the platforms that we just mentioned. And I personally feel that being cross platform is especially meaningful, and not only attracts players or gets them to play together but mobile players would definitely want to play on mobile because that means they can play anytime, anywhere. 

Yes, these elements are all part of our considerations. We do have excellent art team capable enough to make a design based on the context and the vibe of the game. For example if we want to make a fantasy game, we can totally make a very anime fantasy character. 

Since we're designing characters for Endfield one of our considerations is it takes place in a near-modern science fiction not that far off into the future. So characters will definitely have to bring out that very modern, high tech industry vibe to it. Another thing to add is artistic rendering of any practical things still has to look good. So you can take our character outfits and wear, but it might not be that practical. It might be quite clunky, but you know, it is something that you can cosplay. 

When you take everyday mundane objects they may look quite ordinary, quite cold. We have to take these everyday things, put them through artistic rendition and combine it into something that looks practical but might not feel practical, but that will definitely look cool and realistic.

Yes, we did some fact finding tours. I felt that in the early part we didn't do quite enough. Of course, there are certain elements that you’re not seeing anywhere in real life. So we can really help with that, we got to just put our imagination to the test. 

So for the second map [Wuling City], that's where our, our fact finding tours got into gear. You realize that the first map in Valley IV [we imagined how] it would look based on fantasy or something, we just go online and check what things might look like.

But for the second map to make it more realistic we actually organized a team tour to Hongzhou. And also there's this place called Xi Hu at Hongzhou that we visited. We personally looked at these place and updated what our fantasies of these areas should be with what we actually saw.

So this is why when you visit the second map of Wuling you'll feel that it's more realistic, like the first small map section you arrive at in Wuling will be a city and will feature a lot of detailed artistic elements to it.

We're not that far off from beta test to our third test event. So in essence beta test two is more like a version that preps our official launch.

We will try to have as much stuff as possible in beta test two that players can have fun with. Of course, the official launch will definitely have systems game elements that we perfected during that time gap. There will be a few adjustments of certain game features based on player feedback. 

Of course, if you're talking about major changes like new game systems and all those, you can look forward to the upcoming version updates. And because a lot of them are actually already in the pipeline they will be released once a version update schedule hits.

I would like to really thank everyone for playing our games. Because as an artist and developer myself, expressing my own ideas, that's important, but having no one to know, no audience, that that would make my work meaningless. So this is why we really focus on improving player experience; when player play our games, and they feel good about it, they say they feel good about it, it makes us feel extremely happy.

It's far more fulfilling than just like finishing the game and putting it out there, it's the player feedback that makes us feel that our work is worthwhile we actually like to read their responses, their guesses, their fantasies. And this is why they game development is such an interesting process. It's not just a job.

We enjoy the process of creating the world building together with our players, actually, because sometimes players would have, they would have their own ideas, their own imaginations. They would say, oh, I hope this game can have this, deliver this type of world, this type of design. And they sometimes would guess like what's going to happen to next chapter, what's going to be the next map. 

Because this is our first global simultaneous release and major live service title. We believe this is something that's really meaningful because this is also our first opportunity that we're meeting players from around the world.

This is something that we never had before. Because in our kind of previous title, there is a certain degree of distance, but for Endfield, we can finally bring the global community together.

I think it’s safe to say Endfield is shaping up to be Gryphline’s most ambitious release yet. Does it have the potential? Well if you’ve already read my thoughts on the hands-on preview, keep your eyes peeled. Because I’ll also be discussing my thoughts on the whole event, and what it says about Gryphline’s ambitions for Arknights: Endfield as a whole!