The characters of Genshin Impact are a major reason fans have flocked to the open-world RPG. The game gets regular updates, including new playable characters that become available during special events. With Genshin Impact's 1.2 update coming up in the near future, dataminers have allegedly discovered another eight new playable characters that are coming to Genshin Impact soon.
As is the case with most leaks and datamining, it's best to take these possible new Genshin Impact character images with a grain of salt. Developer miHoYo hasn't officially confirmed any of them, and it's always possible for people to have just made them up. However, at least one of the characters in the leaks has been featured on official promotional materials for Genshin Impact, so it's always possible that every leaked character is real.
The eight new playable characters are presumably a part of the Inazuma nation, although some appear to hail from places already in the game, like Liyue. The Inazuma nation was rumored to come with Genshin Impact's 1.1 story content, which turned out to be false. It's more likely that Inazuma is coming in a bigger update, perhaps in Patch 2.0 next year, so it may be a long time before these leaked characters appear in the game.
Who The Leaked Genshin Impact Characters Are
Reddit users believe they've identified all eight characters, although most of it is either pure speculation or educated guesses. Some of the characters do seem more legitimate than others, though. Yaoyao (pictured above and on the far right) was already featured in a promotional artwork for Genshin Impact that showed her hanging out with Paimon and Qiqi. However, this could be a case of one real character being placed with fake ones in order to appear legitimate.
Another character, Hu Tao, apparently works at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor with Zhongli. The strangest part of these leaks is that they're believed to be a part of the Inazuma content, but almost all of them have been speculated as being from Liyue - which just doesn't make sense. It's also important to note that none of these characters have been a part of the character leaks for Genshin Impact's Patch 1.2 either, which is another reason to be suspicious.
Overall, it's unclear whether these new characters, which were allegedly datamined from the game and appeared on Reddit, have any real merit. Yaoyao is at least already featured in official artwork for Genshin Impact, but the others may be earlier drafts of unused characters - or simply fabricated. Fans will have to wait for a future update of the game to know for sure if these leaked new characters are actually real or not.