We’ve had our first glimpse of the Zenless Zone Zero characters we’ll be playing as in Hoyoverse’s new action-RPG game, which was recently announced. It’s immediately clear that this is going to be a different style of anime game than Genshin Impact with guns, anthropomorphic animals, and a contemporary cityscape featuring prominently in the announcement trailer. We don’t know much about this new “urban fantasy” adventure, but its exuberant cast of characters were shown off in plenty of detail.
First off, a little context. In Zenless Zone Zero, players take the role of a ‘Proxy’, a person that is uniquely able to enter and explore ‘Hollows’, which are dimensional rifts that have caused the destruction of the wider world. Hollows are also inhabited by roaming monsters called Ethereals, and as a Proxy, you can form a squad drawn from a diverse cast of Zenless Zone Zero characters to embark on expeditions into these rifts.
Why? That part’s a mystery for now, but one thing we do know is that the last surviving city of humanity – New Eridu – has survived partly because it has managed to find a way to exploit the Hollows for valuable resources, and there are plenty of factions in New Eridu that want to maximise these opportunities. So basically, the answer is loot. For now, let’s take a look at everything we know about the characters of Zenless Zone Zero.
For reference, here’s the announcement trailer with a first look at several Zenless Zone Zero characters:
Proxies
We know that the player takes on the role of a ‘Proxy’, a person capable of entering the ‘Hollow’ rifts. There are two people from the ZZZ announcement trailer – first at 0:22 and then again at the end from 2:25 – that we think represent the player character – a young man and a woman. They remind us of the Traveler from Genshin Impact, where the player can choose whether to play as the brother or the sister.
We don’t know if only the player character is a Proxy, or whether the rest of the characters who you see in the trailer are also proxies. We also don’t know if the player character has weapons or abilities themselves for combat, or whether their only job is to enable other characters to enter hollow rifts. The official website states “live dual identities, two opposing persona. Behind seemingly peaceful stress, proxies operate in a warped reality.”
Gentle House / Cunning Hares
The largest faction we see in the trailer, their logo shows what looks like a rabbit with a menacing grin. According to a series of tweets relating to one character, Anby, this faction is known as the “odd-job” faction Cunning Hares, also called Gentle House. In this group we have:
- Billy the Kid – A cyborg who wields dual pistols and has a carefree personality
- Nicole Demara – The founder of Gentle House, Nicole has a device that looks like a briefcase, which expands into a weapon
- Anby Demara – “accidentally” adopted by Nicole, Anby has no past. She wields a thick blade-like weapon
- A short girl with cat ears who also wields some kind of bladed weapon
Industrial faction
The next faction grouping we see in the trailer looks like they’ve stepped out of an anime factory and are ready to crack heads instead of rocks. The obscured name ends in ‘Industries’, which suggests a construction or mining theme, and the logo shows a roaring bear wearing a hardhat. In this group we have:
- A man with black and red spikey hair, who wears a coat over his shoulders and has arm-mounted drills for weapons
- A small, woman with long red hair, an eye patch, and a big hammer
- A large bear man with black fur wielding a massive slab of metal that could be a rocket launcher, or just a slab of metal
The Samurai and the Demon
This pair of characters is the most mysterious, as we don’t see any partial faction name and even the logo is obscured. In this group we have:
- ‘Unagi’ – A woman wearing a robe over a formal office uniform, she wields a large, sci-fi katana
- A blue-skinned woman with horns and a metal mask. She’s wearing a short jacket and wields a very, very large fan on a pole
Victoria House Keeping
The only group whose faction name we can see in full, this is another pair of characters – a woman who is dressed up as a maid, and a male fox-man who is dressed up as a butler. The woman wields some kind of polearm weapon that has a rotary blade at the end, but the fox-man has no obvious armaments, but we do see him kicking a lot in the trailer.
11 Defence force
Hoyoverse showed off a new Zenless Zone Zero trailer during Summer Game Fest in June, which gave us a look at a brand new character and faction. All we know is the number ’11’, and then the logo behind the new character has ‘defence force’ written along the top. 11 could be a codename for the character, but it’s hard to tell at this point.
This new character is a white-haired girl with an orange and black uniform, and she wields a short, blocky sword. She resemble’s Gentle Houses’ Anby Demara in a lot of ways – the two appaer to wield similar-looking weapons, wear similar kit, and potentially even use the same fighting style.
Other Zenless Zone Zero characters
While the focus of the trailer is very much on the main character factions, there are fleeting glimpses of other characters. Mainly, there are several small creatures that look like rabbit teddy bears, except they have no face other than glowing round eyes. We also see a crab-style robot manning a shop, and a robot with green hair and glowing green eyes sitting on a chair.
And there you have it, everything we know about Zenless Zone Zero characters so far. We’ll keep this guide updated as we find out more. In the meantime, read up on everything you need to know about the Zenless Zone Zero system requirements. Beta sign-ups are also open.
