I don't like how lore barely matters to the story sometimes, like Signora seems like a one-dimensional villain character unless you coincidentally happened to read her character backstory before what happened in inazuma.
This so much! It's also kinda funny how often people get really upset when other say "X character feels really shallow" when that happens - most people don't ever see any of the depth 😅
@@raptori Yeah, I really wish they would improve on that. I remember before Cyno had a second story quest, I used to complain that they mentioned that his backstory was similar to Collei's in optional event dialogue. Thankfully, they did make a story quest for this eventually, but there are plenty of other characters whose lore just remains untouched.
@@Sunrose-Who even is Signora really for her to be getting dickrode this much? Some characters are simply not meant to be main villains. Signora is one of them, thus she didn’t need fleshing out, and if you really were that interesting in her you have her lore.
one thing that annoys me about genshin is the expressions or lack thereof. the voice actors will be putting their all into it and then the character is just standing there like this 😐
Yes exactly! I got so sick of that and now it's almost unbearable to sit through... With how much money the company makes you'd think they'd be able to put in a little more effort to make the quests look good and the characters look alive
@@ClockiePizza i was doing an event quest in natlan recently and it looks like they did improve in this aspect but it took them way too long. and after experiencing it it's just even more stark in contrast to when i'm in other regions.
Agree, low budget animations are so lame i'd say it even lowers the matter of the topic to an average thing. I know cinematics are expensive and not so easy to do, so then an easy solution would be at the very least adding lip-sync for when they're talking, but hoyo is reeeally lazy when it comes to certain topics. Also a far easy solution for everyone would be just simply making those simple-animated dialogues short and straight to the point instead of filling them so much, very annoying.
I agree, but it has been getting better with overtime. Also, I think it might just be the matter of the animation studio. Because HSR and ZZZ does a grate job at this.
@Sora-Gi3 nah, hsr still bad, they just stand there talking without gestures or big facial expressions 90% of the time. zzz is a visual novel just like hi3 it would be even stupider if they decided to skim on the most important thing for visual novels (which is sprits), they will count in the losses and add more accordingly, what i mean by that is that genshin is an open world exploration game so obviously they wouldn't pay attention to the npcs and the expression, animation and design because it takes time and actual effort but with zzz? it doesnt have much to explore, the world isnt as big as genshin's world therefore skimming the details and animation would be a downgrade. they definitely prefer to work less and make more, they try their hardest to do anything BUT give actual good quality, if they can manage to post myriad celestial (demos?) trailers or character trailers for 3-4 games they can definitely improve in the actual games quality. quantity over quality just like the rest of chinese made products.
The end of the fontaine arc was the peak of investment in the story of genshin for me. It was so emotional and interesting to see the whole thing between the hydro archon and Neuvillette. Wish we had more of that... for some reason, I could not bring myself to be invested in anything or anyone at all in Natlan so far :/
You're not the only one. Fontaine's story in 4.2 made me cry. That's how hooked I was. Coming off that and going to Natlan... It's hard to describe why I think Natlan's story is like 2-3 tiers lower, but I'll try... Natlan is hard to get into because of the way the story is told. There's too many times we're on the brink of losing some battle and then Mavuika saved everybody... at some point you just expect her to clutch up and win the day. And then nothing you did really mattered in the story so far because it feels like Mavuika or one of the 6 heroes would have just come through anyway even in our absence. The stakes are paradoxically really high (the world is ending) and yet somehow also very low because I feel like Traveller isn't doing much that the other characters couldn't just do. Feels like Traveller could peace out for a year, let the Natlanders solve the crisis themselves, and we come back to hot springs with Mualani and barbecues on the beach like none of version 5.X ever happened. The story is also dragging for no reason: it really feels like us (Traveller) getting an ancient name is never going to happen - I haven't finished 5.2, so maybe it happens this patch - but maybe that's the story Hoyo will finish 5.3 when we finally get pyro Traveller. But that's sort of a silly thing to drag out over the end of 5.0 to the beginning of 5.3... what's the hold up (story wise)? So... for a story about the world on the brink of ending, things seem pretty lax. I mean we had time to go hot tubbing for a week with Mualani but not time to go build defences against increasing the Abyss attacks around Natlan's villages, which seemed sort of at odds with the tone of the story. Given how 5.1 ended the latter would have been a far better use of our time (Hoyo could have made a f**king mini-game out of it). I'm probably just frustrated that it isn't as good as Fontaine's story (which wasn't perfect, but is probably Genshin's best, with Sumeru coming in close behind). But for sure Natlan's story is off a beat.
Huh. I recently played my father 'La Vaguelette' to show him an example of the kind of music I was listening to. I had to explain why it broke me up every time. At that point, I'd spent months having my emotions twisted by this storyline, and then they dropped Furina's quest on top. Still gets me (though I think Nahida gets me more still).
I haven't finished Natlan yet. I don't know but I'm not that interested with the archon quest. Weird because I always waited for this before. I just like Capitano and Ororon.
Genshin's approach to story/lore is like a person who has a closet full of beautiful outfits but chooses to wear coffee-stained track pants every time they go out lol. There is a wealth of interesting, creative material that just isn't getting used to it's full extent.
@@Nixloyn I agree with you, honestly one of story elements I love the most about genshin are the world quests because its only with them that you tackle past events with the current time and funnily that has more weight in the world than the archon quest, which supposedly, should be even more important since its about the main conflict in the current time. And lets not talk about concept and places, Enkanomiya is such an interesting area and its been left forgotten after a single event and nothing's been done or said about it there. Same with The Chasm but at least it wasnt as horrible as the previous place. There's so much the game could do and improve but its as if hoyoverse likes making things halfway and calling it a day
The biggest problem for me is that world quests and arcon quests hardly connect together. We do something in there somewhere, but it's almost never reflected in the main story, and vice versa. it is also a bit annoying that, apart from events, and Fatui there is very little connection between the nations. Natllan is at war, meanwhile no other nation really cares? There is a feeling that when leaving the previous nation, someone goes there and turns off the light, and everyone who is there ceases to exist. Of course there are also good examples, but in my opinion there are not enough of them, it would be nice to see conection between all nations in the main story, not only in events.
They tried at various times and players didn't want it. Inazuma's quests on the first islands (except Enka) were meant to be done together with the Archon Quest, by the time you find Scaramouche you were meant to know he was from there, that delusions used Orobaxi's remains, who Orobaxi was and what Watatsumi's actual motivations were, how the various NPCs felt about Raiden, the VHC and the Sakoku Decree (they didn't care about the VHC too much but the Sakoku decree was starting a famine). The Chasm Archon Quest was weaven together with the Chasm World Quest, and players complained they had to interact with "boring NPCs and puzzles". The Khvarena quest, which tells us about the battle that ended Khaenriah and about Egeria's death. It's followed up by the Narzissenkreuz quest, which also weaves perfectly into the Archon Quest as we're slowly discovering the story of a group of occultists who tried to avert the flood and even reached the primordial sea, yet still failed, and the quest even gives us context on the nature of oceanids. The whole thing I felt was critical to understanding the archon quest. The music video End of All really shows it all ties together.
@@ancalymebye WTH where is this from the player complaints? I mean if mihoyo had a skip button maybe that wouldn’t be much of a problem. I personally think, but that sucks 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️. I mean the fan base is 💀. If I was in charge of the genshin team I would not listen to them and put a skip button…
Going off what you said about the nature of a gacha game harming character development, that's one of the things that really bothers me about Genshin's story. For example, I like Albedo. I think he's cool, and I like the story set up with him being this genius but also slightly insidious. Rosaria seems to think he's not trustworthy, and there's a chekov's gun set up with Albedo claiming he has the power to destroy Monstatd. He has so many compelling stories that could be told with him as the central focus. But this is a gacha game, and the characters are the product. Albedo has consistently had some of if not the lowest sales of any premium character. Mihoyo isn't likely to spend the significant amount of money to invest in stories surrounding Albedo because he isn't going to make them their money back. Which leads to his really compelling story being all but dropped. And now I feel more jaded about getting invested in the lore and story of new characters because, unless they're really popular with the community, their stories might just end up pushed to the side for the next new popular character.
Yeah Albedo is a great example! And also one of the perfect examples of the issue with time-limited content - the event stories focusing on him were great, but they're just gone now...
@@raptori So true. It feels like those time limited events shouldn't even be considered when talking about character representation in the story because they're completely missable. If Mihoyo would let us replay those old events then it'd be different, but they're married to the FOMO strategy.
@@strideytidey8665 Yeah exactly, but then if you *don't* consider them then several characters lose like half or more of their backstory... so it sucks either way. It's so stupid, people would still feel the FOMO just for the rewards, even if they could still play the story later on...
He has the carisma of a literal prince more than Aether, he can be a good antagonist and I COMPLETLY forgot about that sentence of him beaing a treat to Mondstad.
You were spot-on about the lore channels. Whenever I delve into the wiki, I constantly have to check their references (aka which in-game item lore said that). It's not that I don't like reading (my bookshelf is massive and occupies half my bedroom) but it's absurd that approx. 70% of genshin's lore is behind texts upon texts of artifact, weapon and materials descriptions (and all fractured too so you have to be willing to do massive mental gymnastics to piece it all together) I'm still bitter that HYV put a MASSIVE piece of lore regarding Dain and the Abyss' Sibling behind a *checks note* xbox-themed wiNGED GLIDER?????
Good video. I agree with most of what you said here. When people claim Genshin's story they are praising the worldbuilding not the writing itself. Those are two very different different things.
im one those people who praise the world building (yes i know the difference too dont worry) I agree the storytelling in Genshin might not be the best but I personally like it, a lot but that's a topic for another day. But I really like the way Genshin handles its world building and background lore. I don't like being spoon-fed the lore and would rather spend the time collecting the pieces and connecting the dots and making sense of the bigger picture. I feel that Genshin executes this part pretty well. That brings me great joy.
Yeah, Genshin story telling is often that of a mediocre anime but the world building and how everything connects is very interesting. The universe does feel alive. Some of the world quest is what really ties the whole thing together eg Ochkanatlan, the Jhett quest and the Melusine with Elynas
@@snailwhale6673 some of the world quests rly impacted me a lot more than the archon quest did I still remember chouji, that one boy who's collecting inazuma crystal and was the sole survivor of his villlage. That quest rly depicted the horror of inazuma's state as a nation in constant war. Knowing that kid managed to flee at the end rly made me happy The other quest was also the whole enkanomiya sun chilren lore. That whole place is so tragic and sad it's still my number 1 favorite map. Rven after 100% explorstion i still love going there every now and then just to enjoy the emptiness
You addressed the issues I’ve had with Genshin’s storytelling so well 👏 When I started playing, the very first thing that made me side eye was those fade to black cuts that give you a summary of what happened instead of showing you. I’ve played dozens of visual novel style otome games so it’s not like I don’t like reading. Genshin’s storytelling feels so weak that it’s difficult to stay engaged in the story. The game likes to tease you with interesting concepts only to nerf the potential it could have had later on once we actually experience the story. Fortress of Meropide and Arlecchino quests in particular come to mind. There’s also the issue of introducing constantly new NPCs and focusing on them instead of fleshing out playable characters.
These are all issues by design, sadly. There needs to always be the new thing to sell, profit is everything so every corner is cut etc. The price we have to pay for playing a gacha game.
I WANT to absorb all the story, I want to love it, I'm intrigued by so much of the lore, but I swear sometimes it's like I'm actively trying to get absorbed in the story and the game is just daring me to not zone out. I started the aranara quest line excited and hopeful, by the end of I was spamming the skip dialogue button, I know for a fact there would have been a ton of interesting snippets and lore in there, but the delivery just beat me down over time
I start almost every quest like "ok let's see what this is about i'll actually listen and read and pay attention", but by the end of it I'm aggressively spamming skip like "yesyesyes I understood thank you you said that already let's go goo lord how long will this take...!"
Your ADHD doesn't mean Genshin's writing isn't good. Personally, HSR I think is worse with the endless dialogue. I never skip dialogue with Genshin because the story is genuinely engaging but with HSR especially on the Xianzhou, I do. Penacony and Belabog were the only places I haven't done so. Also holy yap in SU.
@ I thought we stopped classifying attention span as adhd. Anyways, if the story is telling itself in a boring way, the writer should do better not the reader, specially when the writer is swimming in cash. Just because hsr is worse doesnt excuse genshin
One change I wish they do is TO MAKE THE TEXT SPEED FASTER. Jesus I played the pokemon games in the past and they're notorious for having a simple plot, bloaty dialogue, and heck, the whole game is unvoiced, unskippable too. But the thing is, I was able to stomach those and still understand what's going on because when they talk, I could just skim their sentences and get the whole gist of what they're saying. Fast enough to hold my attention for a bit to comprehend it In Genshin, with how SLOW the text speed is, I space out ALL THE TIME, especially if I'm not interested with what they're saying. The text speed is annoyingly slower than our reading speed. Leading us to just spam the mouse button to just get on with it. Not reading anymore
They could also just add a "skip" button. :) Because I hate clicking through that much text when (1) most of it is irrelevant, (2) most of it is repeated, and (3) the game is just going to tell me where to go next and what to do anyway, so why do I need to listen to all this?
@@John_IIit's one of the core elements of every game with a story so we need to read sometimes. I do agree on the skip button tho. Literally every triple a game I played has it
@@John_II Jeht's story was mostly fine. It got worse during last part, when I had to listen 'villain reasons' for the several characters, but overal I liked it. Compared to Aranara it was even great :D
Tbh i think it beacuse they HATE making the characters do anything special unless its in a cutscene. When was the last time you saw a character move there legs and arms while talking? When was the lost time you saw a character hold an item instead of levitating it? When was the last time a character use their facial expressions?? Aloy uses her hands and face to portray an emotion. Clenching fists, grinding teeth, soft smile, strenched hands. It shows emotion which genshin cant.
That’s one thing mfs don’t question and it confuses me because visuals and acting are just as important if not more to a story than plot or world building. You can have the most interesting and gut wrenching writing but if the visuals are stiff and ugly it will cancel out.
Honkai impact incorporates tons of animated shorts into the game For the life of me I never understood why Genshin and Star rail refuse to put those animated shorts in the game It's boggling, especially since its the same company that made all 3 games
I'd argue that Genshin has even more storytelling problems than what was stated on the video, including what I think is probably the worst of them all: the main character. We can't ascertain their motivations anymore, but not because they're deliberately hiding them, but because the writing is just bad and there's no motivation or hook anymore. Looking for the Archons stopped making sense when we found the sibling. Even if they told us to journey across all Teyvat, it doesn't make sense why the traveler does not research more about the Abyss or Khaenri'ah. It's not even a secondary goal. They just doesn't care and when the opportunity comes they just doesn't ask much questions. What caused the cataclysm of Khaenri'ah? Who are the dragons and the usurper? What happened then and there? What's in the abyss? What the hell does the Tsaritsa want? Those are just some of the questions they could have asked already. With this it comes to the fans to suppose why it's that way. Are they doing their thing off screen, like when they said they were looking into Khaenri'ah without Paimon knowing in the beginning? They just wanna make allies with the Archons? They have a secret goal that we don't know about? But at this point these don't feel like genuine theories, but rather the fans writing the story for the game, because we can see crystal clear why it's that way: Mihoyo just wants us to explore every region and give crumbs of the story so as to retain curiosity in the story for the fans, by not answering all or most of the questions, and keeping the important stuff to the end and drag it all for the most time possible, and they don't even bother trying to give good in universe reasons for that. When a story doesn't even have a primary hook or motivation for the main character anymore (or doesn't act on it at all), the story suffers greatly. There's barely any believable reason as to why we should look out for the development of the story, there's no natural flow to the narrative. Instead of questions being explored naturally by the protagonist's efforts, we are given them at the random whims of Mihoyo.
I think Hoyo has that lack of a hook in every game. I agree with your Genshin take - and I love exploration in Genshin - there's just not reason to explore Teyvat... why bother? We couldn't have thought our sibling was in the Fortress of Meropide or King Deshret's Tomb (two areas I loved exploring... but big picture? why the f**k are there? ) In HSR - I can think of no discernible reason why the Express goes to any planet. I really liked the story on Belobog - it's actually great. But then with each new planet, I cannot find a reason why we're there. Okay, fine there's that space cancer called a Stellaron on this planet or that planet... but it's a weak hook. The express crew is five people + Pom Pom. They clearly don't think they're going to find and cleanse every stellaron in the universe. So, what's the real hook? We got a glimpse from Kafka when we captured her... maybe our destiny is to fight the Aeons, maybe our final battle is against Nanook the Destruction... but there's no trail leading us there. In ZZZ - I have no idea what is even happening. Hoyo is so afraid to answer ANYTHING in the story (which was good upt o Chapter, which was in version 1.0). But I was mad at the end of 1.2 when the story felt like filler. Like really we go all the way to the Outer Rim to get Perlman... and then the story actually forgets about him at the end. Look, I don't always need the BEST story; I love Diablo III which barely has one. But Diablo III at least gives you a reason to be anywhere or do the next thing. You never feel dragged along, it's like: go find Deckard Cain... cool, game starts. GO find the fallen star... cool, that's the original story. Time to hunt down the Lesser Evil Belial (that's Act II). Azmodan is invading Sanctuary, you gotta deal with that.... that's Act III. We went to Heaven to stop Diablo in Act IV (which is the entire plot of Act IV). But all of it makes sense in context. Yeah, I summarized the plot of a 10-20 hour game in 3 sentences... I told you the story is bare bones. Hoyo's games don't actually even have that. I get that we're supposed to go all the nations and I like it, but I won't pretend for one second that it makes any sense to go to all the nations the way we do. Why did we go to Inazuma? Just so Yae Miko could tell us to go to Sumeru? Sumeru was right next to Liyue... we could have just gone to Sumeru. At least in Sumeru we learned about the larger plot... but still. Why did we go to Fontaine? What was even there for us? Why not go to Natlan first? The same "no reason" is waiting for us there too. Again, I love the exploration, music and world of Genshin. I have my favorite characters, but the overall story... my god, maybe put a little more effort in, Hoyo.
I think a lot of the problems with traveler stem from hoyo going for them being a mix of a self-insert and their own standalone character when it just doesn't work
THIS YESS, when I first saw the abyss twin reveal in the story and it is revealed that they are with them, sure it gives this good angst of "oh no, I found my twin but now we are in separated side" but then, what's next? Traveller's goal and the story's premise since the beginning is "Finding my lost twin by taking journey across Teyvat", worried for their fate. But then we found them, alive and well before the story even ends so then what? It just makes the story confusing and really lowered down the stakes and the unknown of the situation.
@@aerialfishuu Agreed. I think maybe the real plot ought to have been what we saw in the animated shorted: the Road Not Taken. When I saw that anime short (which is absolutely beautiful by the way) I shed some tears. If you haven't watched it: th-cam.com/video/T5-YMslEmxw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Kn21tJKmipsB_M4R And then afterwards, I remember thinking: why wasn't that IN THE GAME? Like that's the whole story! You're going on the same journey your sibling did 500 years ago with Dainsleif, you're walking where they walked and they ended up joining the Abyss... is that our fate? What did they see that made them switch over? Maybe 500 years later with Paimon at our side, it will be different for us? What an incredible hook! Because that is Genshin's best story. Never mind the lore with the Usurper, dragons, etc. that's all window dressing. Main point: we're stuck in a world with a false sky, Teyvat, and so is our sibling (apparently for 500 years). How do we even escape? Must we join the Abyss? How will we ever beat the Heavenly Principles and escape? Even if we reunite with our sibling, will things ever be the same? Come on, Hoyo! You've already done the work, just let that story be front and centre!
EXACTLY! Also I feel like the story isn’t even about the mc anymore if that makes sense, like they just keep centering it around these other characters. Ngl I cant say if this is true because I’ve been skipping almost all of the dialogue in the recent archon quests but I feel like it’s so boring and all they talk about is a whole lot of nothing 😭 wish we could go back to figuring out situations with the fatui and stuff like that, hopefully next regions will be better?
And is even worse then the pieces don't even show up to begin with. Like Paimon. We know as much of Paimon back in 1.0 as we know about her now. Let that sink in.
The time-gated lore is the main reason as to why i hate Genshin's storytelling. I took a break from 2.3 to 4.4, and my god i missed waaay too much lore. Reading is one of the most fundamental parts of Genshin, both in lore an gameplay. However, in this case, is not a "reading issue". Is a "you came here a bit too late issue". Which is, as you probably know, the main problem with live service games: punishing players for arriving late. Before it was gameplay parts. And now is lore?! You know, something I love about Star Rail has to be the permanent events. Sure, the rewards are minuscular compared to when these arrived, but the simple fact that i can learn about said events without an external website makes it worth enough. Huohuo is my favorite character in the game, and i'm so glad i could meet her for the first time months after her first release. Now imagine being an Albedo fan in Genshin.
Honestly the limited time event would have been better off as his story quest, as the quest was a pretty empty experience, there wasn't nearly anything important or memorable enough about his lore or character. For a story quest that's quite sad. And what you said about permanent events is true. HSR does a much better job at keeping the events available to play through even after they end. I wish they could incorporate those events into the base game for Genshin even without any rewards (or like 60 primos for the whole thing at best), but alas
@@DeadVoxel or only having the unique weapons would be enough incentive, I've seen so much people suffering because they didn't have festering desire nor Cinnabar Spindle because they were from events in the first patches
@@edgieststalker8141 exactly. Well, at least they added a craftable DEF sword, so it's better than nothing. But heck, even HSR just recently added event weapons to the Simulated Universe shop. Why not add them to the Imaginarium Theater? Make a new shop option or something. We already have an NPC to talk to that allows us to buy poses, why not implement a store when talking to him as well? If we can't replay events or get limited time event weapons from them, then why not give us a chance to buy them?
I'm sorry but that's on you buddy. No live-service game's obligated to give you a crash course on what happened based on how much you missed out. On top of that, whether it's TLDRing or quick recap watching, you'll have to take out time to do your lore revision anyways, which'll take time based on how much you missed. So basically, if you come back in the middle and care about the world of the game you're playing, there's no escaping lore revision.
the storyline is just really all over the place. i really liked the early game, but natlan is just so different from the rest and it really seems like finding the sibling isn’t really the focus anymore. there’s also the fact random important lore details are just forgotten or hidden in a random note in the middle of absolutely nowhere. i wish it was more story-driven and not money-driven.
The fact that Fontaine opened the door to the dragon sovereign vs archon and then Natlan the nation with dragons juts completely went in the other direction pissed me off
Realizing I've lost interest in a cutscene, have been skimming/not paying attention, and suddenly require Paimon to repeat most of what she just said was very humbling. But also annoying. I don't have this problem in other story-heavy games!!! GI dialogue overstays its welcome something terrible!!! Fontaine's lack of consequences felt super weird to play thru, too. Personally thought the impacts on characters werent even enough - the trial is never discussed again, nor does Furina ever speak of her divine self. Those ppl who saw Furina revealed as "fake" Archon - what did they do?? Did they tell anyone?? Like?? Heaps of stuff feels brushed over. Dont even get me started on Meropide as a whole lol
If you go talk to those people they tell you their reactions towards Furina no longer being an archon... it's present in the surrounding NPCs, Story Quests, and other genshin character About dialogue
As far as dialogues go, some NPCs genuinely think that Furina used up all her archonhood to stop the prophecy. Neuvi helping oit Furina also helped to ease people's minds, and even tho she may not have been a goddess, Furina is still considered a very old legendary star with amazing acting and scriptwriting abilities, so a lot of Fontainians still hold her in high regard
I got hooked into Genshin because at first their cultural and mythological references were top tier. I truly thought that the writers were some kabbalah of passionate visionaries that had an important message to tell. Boy was I wrong lol.
Same..I started playing like 1 month ago, still think it's top tier for the mythological references and just the overall world building/lore because it's really REALLY good, remind me a lot of Dark Souls lore, but then I look at the main story and god what a missed opportunity, the first three regions had some of the worst storytelling I have seen in any media, it gets better at Sumeru but even then it's not anywhere close to being perfect in term of storytelling, the side quests are far too interesting for what the main ones offers, and it's not even voiced. Since I learned that this game is going to have an anime made by ufotable I'm really hoping that they don't waste the game's lore and world building and animate it, that would be a really weird marketing decision for the game if they don't.
I got into it a year ago when I found out that there was a diverse selection of countries to choose from as well as finding the character designs to be pretty interesting. Boy, were my expectations ruined
I will never understand why instead of using random NPCs that nobody cares about in world quests… they don’t just use one of the 80+ playable characters…? That would make it way easier to characterize some of the ones with less screen time and wiggle them into the narrative somehow.
They also seem to have the problem of making all pullable characters "good". Like, people will still pull on someone who is evil if their design and kit is good.
I've been thinking about that too. Then I suppose that it's because if you use several playable characters to tell the world quest story, they'd have to be voiced in the 4 different languages of the game, which is very expensive...
I completely agree. Though I feel like its gotten a lot better in the past year? Like since Baizhu's story quest most of the story quests have other playable characters appear when it makes sense for them to
@@TuningAnApple THANK YOU!!!!!! I’ve been thinking about this soooo often and it kind of ruins certain characters for me. Arlechinno should’ve been more malicious than they ended up writing her, it’s a bit disappointing. I will say though I really liked scaramouches “redemption”
Im tired of hearing people say „Fontaine was so peak-„ and only talk about Furina and or Focalor. It just shows that they only remember the emotionally investing part in the story at the end of the whole quest, which is great cause it shows how a story should be written to keep the people emotionally invested. But saying Fontaine‘s archon quest overall, is just wrong when many flaws like uneven character screening time and half assed development were added. If they gave a little less for example to the twins and more to Chlorinde or Wriothesley it could have been well, or less of Arlecchino and more to skirk since that part was also not complete. The interesting part could have been Arlecchino or the meropide, perhaps even skirk but these scenes were barely fully flushed or written well. Everyone seems to only be remembering the Furina part but nothing other than that, which once more proves how boring and or irrelevant everything else was.
Thank god I'm not "people" Cuz when I think Fontaine was peak I think about multiple Acts I was extremely hooked especially during Act I and II because we were uncovering about Vacher and the Primordial Water through investigation and logical thinking and I love it when the story makes you think like that!
I feel like people also blank out the entiriry of 4.3 which was very painful as a lot of it was a lot of busy work to learn a single plot point Fotanie high points were good but I would say Sumeru is much better overall in terms of consistent quality
i want Genshin to do more showing rather than telling, less people are likely to skip if they see the characters move and actually interact with the environment rather than reuse animations for when a character wants to express something but then why work more when you can work less and make more money? if only they summarized the yapping/filler to get to the point, not have Paimon repeat everything she hears and other characters throwing words i bet 80% of people playing Genshin never heard of or don't know about.
im glad you mention the little things that also feel so major and offputting but are just very little like the lack of follow up to major events when little things based on preexisting mechanics (such as withering zones) that could easily make the narrative flow out better!!!!!! yapfest incoming i personally feel this kind of dissonance with npc models!!! theyre very generic even when comparing to other games npc models, the quality is ridiculously crappy, and the game constantly CONSTANTLY wants you to get emotionally involved in them when the very pretty playable or otherwise important characters are standing right there, i bet people are still saying signora will be playable due to how rare it is to get a truly unique model and just not be monetized thru gacha mhy is DROWNING in money and they cant even smooth out these models and i just refuse to feel anything for them, at least chascas sister did look a little better (mentioning her in a quality complaint.. girl deserved a cutscene for a certain moment of the 5.1 quest oh my god) but when you start saying "at least" about a game making this much money you have identified a problem. amen mihoyo at LEAST make their faces consistent with the playable characters i feel like the npcs are designed for comic relief only and forced to act serious and it doesnt work i always feel like im nitpicking about this detail but i cant get invested in so many important story moments, even things my friends and other people have been deeply affected by like cariberts quest and the dain chasm quest (fair enough the genshin burnout was getting me but the khaenrian npcs were my LAST STRAWWW) or honestly even dunyarzad for the first quest or two. i just felt pissed as hell watching mhy try to make me get attached to npcs like they were playable characters and it makes me mad how stingy they are with giving characters detailed design (which is what makes me hate the npcs instead of giving their writing a fair chance rather than me immediately thinking their lack of design implies a lack of depth in general) in other words: Oh My God The NPC Eyes Are Horrendous!!!
honestly the stark contrast between npcs vs playable characters is, without exaggeration, so immersion breaking. sometimes it feels like the characters don't belong in the same world. i know the "main" characters are supposed to stand out but nearly all of them look like they're cosplayers compared to others in teyvat. i stopped playing genshin a longgg time ago but the difference was always so jarring to me. that said i've been playing zzz since launch and never had the same problem. for any criticism i've seen of the agents having "boring" designs, i think they're excellent. the characters actually feel like they're regular citizens of new eridu. and the npcs - while still using some presets - look actually NORMAL, their designs are sometimes as interesting as the playable characters'. i didn't expect something like that from a hoyo game but i was pleasantly surprised
My problem with the gacha aspects harming characters and their development it's that every single playable character has to be portrayed in a way players may want to pull for them. That makes it so the very few characters that are actually flawed their flaws are incredible superficial, in addition to the game having next to none unabbiguously antagonistic characters or making extremely forced and undeserved "redention arcs" like what happaned to Scaramouche. I was always like "wow so Childe is the bad guy? Ah no, he is not" "Raiden is defenitely the antagonist- Ah no, there is an explanation to that" "Hey at least signora is certainly evil... oh, they already killed her off" "Well this time Scaramouche is CLEARLY an antagonistic character, right? RIGHT?" And althought gray characters are always interesting, not having clear antagonistic figures in my opinion hurts the narrative a lot. In the end all of this makes the roster of characters suffer a reverse cheerleader effect in which even if characters individually feel cool and deep when looking at the full picture Genshin Impact has a very shallow and generic roster of charcaters. Like I played through liyue and thought "wow Zhongli is a very interesting character. 3 years later after finishing Fountaine I was like "wow, they really did a good job with Neuvilette, what a cool character". Then I thought a bit about it and realized those two are essentially the same character even if they involvement on the narrative is different.
Yeah, I think it would be more bold if they were willing to actually make a pullable character a villain. And have more well written villains. Not whatever they did to Arlecchino. Even if she turned out evil, people would have pulled for her. Hell, people are still waiting on Signora's return.
What I've been thinking about lately is Genshin's characters and characterization, which is an important element of storytelling. Xilonen is the character that made me start thinking about this. In the story (Archon quests and tribal chronicles), she's presented as a crafts-person. She's an artisan who takes her work very seriously, but also needs to take frequent breaks to replenish. (I think many people who do creative work can recognize that). But in gameplay, she's presented as a musician--not just any musician, but a DJ (Yun Jin and Xinyan are both musicians, but types of musicians that aren't extremely popular these days). Those two things, being an artisan and being a musician, are totally unrelated, and in fact there's absolutely nothing in the story that mentions that she even has any interest in music. There's ONE story in her Profile that tries to excuse it, but it feels like a pretty lame and arbitrary insertion into an otherwise coherent character story. It's hard not to think that what happened was the marketing department decided that an artisan wasn't cool or sexy enough for mass appeal, and told the gameplay designers to ignore everything the writers put so much careful thought into. This feels like a change from most Genshin characters up to now, whose gameplay has usually had some relation to their personalities. (Edit: I'm not saying it's impossible to believe that someone could be both an artisan and a musician. I'm saying it's impossible to believe that Xilonen could be both, given how much time she needs for naps.)
i don't know if she's also responsible for the Archon Bike but i cannot imagine what contrived explanation they will have for that monstrosity. (they probably won't even bother since those who are lapping it up won't mind)
@@binsarm9026 Ha! I bet there will be a mention of the bike being one of her inventions. What the explanation should probably say is “Wuthering Waves has motorcycles and we are afraid of losing customers.”
@@callimas they literally haven’t lost that many and even if they did. Those people were already not playing the game anymore. Not sure why some people think a bike is impossible to exist when Cloud retainer has made one before.
I've been going through a lot of different videos on "why genshin / hsr / wuwa sucks", and almost all of them miss the mark from a critical standpoint... except for a few, and your videos are among those exceptions. This is a really thorough and thoughtful analysis on the subject. Great video 🙏
I think the main reason why more complicated changes to the overworld aren't implemented is just because of the rapid pace of Genshin's content. Like, the fact that there are new patches every 6 weeks and new areas at least every 12 weeks with very few delays is kinda amazing, but also limits what they can actually do. Games like RDR2 or BG3 took years to make and so they were able to add more depth and interactability to the overworld. I think if Genshin tried to do that they would have to considerably slow down their pace of releases which would frustrate a lot of fans.
I did the ixlel dragonlord side quest in Natlan and it was the most compelling non-dialogue quest I have experienced thus far. Apart from talking with the dragonlord for a few moments, there weren’t any big cutscenes and I barely noticed that a compelling plot was being inserted into my regular overworld exploration-it felt like I was the one exploring a cave, not watching someone else do it. I guess it only took four years for them to start cutting down on the lengthy cutscenes and adding non-cutscene dialogue mechanics!
The problem is, Genshin is not doing world building but nation building. When they introduced the concept of fake memories, I lost trust in the story (the unknown god encounter could be fake)
@@ahmedmubarak751yes they do??? The caribert quest… SPOILERS Caribert literally wiped their memory and they couldn’t remember their reunion with their twin. Even though he put a picture in their pocket at the end of the quest, the traveler was most likely clueless on how they even met their twin.
@@ahmedmubarak751The traveler's memories cannot be trusted, this has been said and shown before in the story. The traveler has missing memories of their own, the blinding headaches they get remember?
@@sky-t3imore so of the fact that the other twin is somehow native to Tevyat by the fact that it is recorded in the Irminsul and not one of the descenders. Perhaps the Traveler has false memories or something.
"Hoyo's writing style often makes me wonder if the writers are paid per word." You're an icon for that. I've been having a hard time enjoying Genshin as time goes on mostly because of the dialog bloat and that statement perfectly sums in up lol. Loved the video, this was a great watch~!
The dual city set up was something that got me REALLY excited when we first landed in Fonaine, and I was sos ure it wuld paly a big part in the Archon quest, so I think that's why I'm doubly disappointed that didn't happen 😔
@@saurusnessit's too bad too because they used the class divide in those Fontaine locations in world quests, a few story quests, and as backstory for several characters, but this never was brought forward in the archon quest. I have a suspicion that this partly because focusing too much on class divide would be uncomfortable for some rich/whale players and turn them off? It's the only thing that makes sense because they spent a lot of time on it and weaving it into a lot of the key Fontainian characters' history. The more I think about it the more I'm sure that's really what it is and it's like gacha and mobile concession issues rear their ugly heads again ..
@@saurusness I cannot agree less. There is no reason to touch on that story point because the story is not about that? The class divide was utilized in world quests, backstories... What do y'all even mean? Does every story about metropolies have to be about the divide between rich and poor? Does justice as a concept always come down to material wealth? Can't you explore other things?
@@StigerPLThats the thing right? The class divide doesn’t exist outside world quests. It’s not something miniscule I can see getting excluded from the main storyline, it’s something that affects everyone in Fontaine. Thing is we don’t need it or want it like you’re saying. Not every story needs a wealth divide. But the devs put it in so we’re wondering why they then decided to ignore it. Or why put it in at all if this was the direction they were going to go.
i loged in genshin today after 10 months of hiatus i decided to explore a little and unlock some waypoint colour me surprised an automatic event playing and some random NPC i dont care about talking about something irelevant, and it continues into some random flashback that i never wanted to part of you know what i did after clicking ruthlessly while roling my eyes? ALT+F4, thats what i did. they wanted us to care for their random ass story that doesnt have anything to do with the whole main narative, by forcing us to read such bloated nonsense of long text, with minimum coreography, i dont have time for such bullsht unfortunately, nor the patience, it was ran out earlier this year
Yeah, I feel the same. I love the world and think it's really beautiful but the unskippable bloated slow dialog is like a cage I can't get out of when playing the game. It's legit a block for me, last time I tried to play Genshin Chenyu vale just came out and I couldn't bear the dialogues anymore and just kind of quit for good. I played Witcher 3 recently and was shocked to see how cutscenes and dialogues felt interesting and funny, and I actually liked watching them. It opened my eyes to how robotic and bland Genshin sounds.
@@sanxxxx Chenyu Vale is what made you quit? I thought it was one of the better side regions, beautiful landscape and interesting local stories. Maybe you just don't like the game as a whole and needed to convince yourself of that
Genshin's lore legit could have led to a story in the same league as RDR2, Horizon, etc... such a shame that it's been a miss so far. Really curious how it'll come across in the anime!
potential is there but not that far, they had potential but after 4 years and a lot of burnout i lost hope, and the game seems to follow the lighter side formula maybe after the 4 year difference between the first mention of fake sky and the newest one it will lead somewhere but who knows
The anime has been put aside for priority over the anime studio, they won't take the risk. It will be complete when ready... that is a trouble for us, they are taking too much years and Hoyo played the Marvel card "Show prior before ready and not probably soon (so whats the point then?)"
Well said, very thoughtful. I completely agree with the Fontaine take. I was so excited when I saw the over-world / under-world dichotomy. It's like Arcane, FFVII, and it's a tried tested and true trope: how does the other half live? That should have been part of the story. Nah let's just go to Court for 45 minutes straight (and if you exit you have to repeat it all... yeah that happened to me). I think Fontaine was wasted in Court. Instead of wondering how the rich/poor of Fontaine live and how does that square with "justice" would have been a much better way to work in the Court. Show poor people not doing well in life, so they steal, so they go to Court, get convicted and go to Meropide. I know that's a little too much like real life, but it's a better story than what we got. Hoyo didn't have to change that much. Then the story in 4.1 could have had us follow some of the same convicted in prison and see how life is going (apparently Meropide isn't all that bad and the people get a second chance at life). That way the 5.1 story could have been relevant to the larger plot beyond and "then Tartaglia escaped, I guess we're here for nothing" and "oh no the primordial see is spilling out... oh wait, Neuvillette took care of it for us". 4.1 didn't need to be a filler patch, you could have seen Wrio and Neuvi being the two rehabilitators of Fontaine... maybe you don't always get the result you want in court, but you get the second chance in Meropide, and when you come out, you're free and maybe even forgiven. But instead, we had to sit through 3 too long trials. 2 didn't matter at all, and 1 was actually great. I think the trial of Furina (4.2) was great, maybe I even cried a little. It's the perfect way to expose her fraud, but not cheapening her contributions to Focalors's plan. But Lyney's and Navia's trials (4.0) were complete wastes of time. Nothing we did mattered. Lyney (and Lynette and Freminet) can come and go from the Fortress of Meropide any time they want (see 4.1). Catching that weirdo who was dissolving women meant nothing to Fontaine at all - seriously, life just went on. Fine, Navia got some closure, but her father is already dead and we didn't know him and we didn't get to see him and Navia. We can only see that people miss him. How cool would it have been to actually see the duel with Clorinde? To know he was innocent, couldn't prove it, and would rather die than let Navia be shamed? How cool would it have been to see Navia take up her father's burden at the head of the Rosula in the hour of her grief? Her father's body wouldn't even be cold and people would be clamoring to her for answers instead of grieving with her... Navia would be even better as a character. And I say all this not to take a dump on Fontaine's story, but to explain (1) how poorly it was told and (2) how some simple tweaks would have made it better with the world they build and the tools they already had. I absolutely hated seeing everyone gush over "how good" Fontaine's story was. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I just kept saying "I cannot be the only one who thinks it was mediocre at best". All I saw was missed opportunities, plots that went nowhere and glimpses of what could have been and should have been a far more compelling story to build up what Fontaine actually was. Two more points: could you imagine if the Research institute blew up when we were in Fontaine? Can you imagine how cool it would have been to see the map change? What if we had a part in it - helping a scientist who was trying to save Fontaine from the primordial sea's return, only have him/her blow up half the country on the brink of that life-saving discovery. Now imagine if that scientist was one of the parents of a playable character who finds out Traveller had a hand in that disaster? How would they trust us? How would they ever get closure. Maybe we'd find a way to seal the primordial see in 5.1 ourselves, so we'd have some agency in the story ... but that's what I mean. Hoyo is always "this close" to something genuinely good, and then the story takes zero risks, and just has repetition, boring plots that go nowhere, and it feels like a waste of time. Hoyo clearly had no trouble exploring, trauma, death and the lies we tell ourselves in 4.0-4.2 (very mature themes for a kids game, or even for an adult game), there was no reason they couldn't make Traveller a better part of it and engaged us more as players instead of just dropping line after line of dialogue (or text) on us to the point where my eyes glazed over. And that's just my take on what is generally considered to be Genshin's "best" story/archon quest, 4.0-4.2. I could write a book on how to fix Natlan or Inazuma, but I'll leave it there. I think Hoyo really needs to lean into the great world it built and let the Traveller be part of that development of the world instead of just passing through only to help here and there.
For me I liked Natlan way better than Inazuma and would go on my way to ignore Inazuma for Natlan. As for Inazuma… I must say if it wasn’t that the Shogun is pretty, people wouldn’t care much for Raiden. Cause all I could think was “What the hell is wrong with her?” And wishing we could’ve kept her sister. Although I do have my criticisms of Natlan. Like why isn’t our buddy’s story voicelined when many parts were very much interesting compared to the archon quest. Why did they sideline Kacchina so fast for Xilonen? I wish we had kachina be our active player much like Amber, diluc and Kaeya was on the monstad one. Why the heck we have to care for the dumb dragon who’s with kinnich? Or how Citlali has been alive for so many years despite immortality not being a thing as she was present and not somewhere away from
Dude is expecting Hollywood level story from a gachaa game 💀💀 I am just a simple man... sumeru and fontaine is good according to my point.... yeah they have flaws but if you think about it.... every story has flaws and plot holes.... not everyone will view the story like that....calm down "I hate how everyone praises the fontaine story" bro they don't view the story like you.... your criticism is just "I have expected that but it didn't work out like that".....
@@Supreme_Bargainer LOL - if only Hoyo could deliver Hollywood. :P To summarize my actual criticism: It's more about missed opportunities. Some small tweaks with what Hoyo already had built would have made the story a lot better. Version 4 was brimming with unused potential. Like Hoyo already wrote the back-story for Navia and Clorinde - the duel with Navia's father that changed both their lives and their relationship forever. But I kept wondering: why wasn't THAT the actual story? Hoyo already wrote it! It was in the game already! They just didn't put it front and centre where it should / could have been. Did we really have to play D&D with Clorinde and make macarons with Navia when we could have had that drama with the duel? Why Fontaine 4.2 story was basically great was because a lot of us figured out Furina was a fraud / impostor and there was a real Archon somewhere in Fontaine, but it's not her. All of Fontaine oozes that duality / deception: pneuma / ousia, rich / poor, just / unjust, truth / lies. Lyney and Lynette sell you on deception, Furina is clearly trying to deceive everyone about something. Nothing is as it seems in Fontaine. Arlecchino saw the secret, others probably knew or suspected. The walls were closing in for a couple of patches and we got the climax Hoyo had built. I can agree to disagree with anyone on this - but my main criticism is that Hoyo can write better stories and they do write better stories in the same game in the same patch. It's just weird that so often the story they put front and centre isn't even the best one they wrote (and the best story they wrote is sidelined or reduced to lore).
@@dcscruz2970 I agree Natlan is miles better than Inazuma. My critique of Inazuma is the same as yours: Raiden Shogun is basically a sociopath and we're supposed to forget it / understand why she is that way and make peace with it. No... she has to earn her forgiveness and she doesn't even try. Shame... Raiden is one of my favorite kits in the game too. Natlan's story is both too short and too long. It's too long in the sense that in e.g. 5.1, we spent 2-3 hours listening to Citlali scold Ororon, which was a waste of time. It's too short because the war felt rushed. That war - done better - should have been the whole patch. I was getting Mass Effect 3 vibes from it. I saw the potential but it was squandered. There should have clean-up/mourning after it was done. Such wasted potential. I could say the same thing for Kinich's quest and that tainted dragon. We kill that same boss every week. Is this really a story beat? I wouldn't have made a story around the Pyro Regisvine... so why this boss? By the end of that quest I just wanted to kill the stupid dragon so we would stop talking about it. That quest was pure filler. Meanwhile we got too short an intro to Mualani's tribe and life in Natlan. The contrast was good: by day we have hot springs, but at night the Abyss attacks. What an amazing concept! I would taken that to the bank! Can you imagine how cool Natlan would be if there were more enemies at night? Abyss attacks all over the map? Time-limited events / open world events about Abyss invasions? So much wasted potential.
@John_II You are just hating at this point....the first acts were character development for navia and clorinde.... they did a good job with that.... why are you so complaining just because what you expect didn't happen...??
I see Genshin as a Light Novel presented in a video game format and In order to love Genshin's story and lore u have to be patient like the world building of this game is insanely good but all of that is locked behind these long world quests and other in-game materials that u have to actively find and experience for urself. Someone that understands the lore will have a vastly different experience than someone that just plays the Archon quests and that's it...But yeah when U said that genshin has bloated dialogues I completely agree tho Natlan actually feels as a great improvement like I don't remember anything being bloated like I did in Fontane every single WQ and AQ has been incredible so far and I have yet to touch the new 5.2 WQs..!!!
nah fr tho, genshin is very dialogue heavy and i can see why that's not to everyone's taste. But it's weird for me because i hardly relate to any of these complaints because im always a 100% enganged and interested. Maybe I just like reading walls of text 😅
But being dialogue heavy is not a problem i ahve played some vn so in good vn the dialogues are actually well written i don't think genshin should spoon feed every little thing about the story rather than let us explore
that is just not right at all, if you read good light novel that is. Trying reading stuff like spice and wolf and then go back to Genshin you wouldn't even think hoyo writer ever wrote a story before
the story itself its so good, but the way they do it is really annoying. 70% of the dialogues are random stuff who doesn't contribute to the lore, neither the imersion of the world.
I’m only in the sumeru archon quest rn but so glad I’ve finally gotten there lol, there were obviously elements of the story that felt compelling before this point but ngl a lot of it felt so boring, badly written, etc. sort of like they just want to waste time :/
the Samsara was a real pain for me that i ended up disliking Nahida so much. i won the 50/50 for her but "kept her imprisoned in Surasthana" !! i must have gone two weeks before i finally used her !! 😂
@@binsarm9026 omg samsara is to this day in m opinion the worst story quest experience in the game! I absolutely adore and love Nahida more than any other character but that quest will forever haunt me. When my alt account got to that point I had to mentally prep myself and organise plenty of other distractions to get through it for the second time 😂
@saurusness when we were first faced with the deduction process i thought it would be very engaging but it got so sloppy in the logic setup that it wasn't really possible to deduce things and it became just a brute force exercise of going thru the options. my antipathy stemmed from her saying she respected her people but then proceeds to coerce them with mental manipulation.
@@saurusness Hell nah, fontaine archon quest act 3 was and is still is for me, the worst archon quest act, the only good thing that came out of it were arlecchino's introduction. I think the samsara loop is one of the best acts for me because it serves the purpose of the plot and gave light towards many mysteries that we were questioning throughout the act.
Only just starting the video, but I'll say that I absolutely hated Mondstadt through Inazuma and it isn't until Natlan that I've actually 'liked' the storytelling and not just the themes. Sumeru and Fontaine are both steps up from the first 3 regions, but they still feel bloated in the moment, which leads to me just wanting them to wrap it up whenever going through them. Natlan has been the first time in the main story where I'm fine locking in and paying attention throughout because the pacing is tolerable now. Part of the problem is the incredibly low quality cutscene direction. The storytelling in this game is 90% the characters standing in a circle and yapping at each other, which is boring and is frustrating when you know how much money MHY actually has but budget titles made by exponentially less devs and availability to resources put in the work. Also, like with how I feel about Dark Souls, 'lore' is not story. The sidequests also being largely unrelated to the main story makes them feel pretty pointless as well, as they won't matter to the actual narrative for the most part. Edit: Glad to see Fontaine's ending show up, because I felt largely the same for the same reason. I also did not give 2 craps about Folcalors because literally who? If the game wanted me to actually feel bad, they'd have had the stones to kill Furina, but since the only people that actually suffered permanent losses were NPCs (RIP to some real ones though), it further enforces the idea that, as long as a character is playable, they are under no risk of a serious consequence in their story, so the story putting them in situations that should be risky ring hollow. Edit Edit: I saw a clip of Tectone about that Arlecchino animated video, actually! I don't follow him, but he brought up specifically how annoying it was that they released the Arlecchino vid before Arlecchino actually dropped, so the entirety of her subquest is a complete waste of time if you've already seen it because you already know and the ingame version does nothing with that information to make it interesting otherwise.
well, yeah. Mondstadt and liyue has been exists since 1.0, which mean they're beginning part of the game and it's understandable they're not good. Inazuma... Uh, let's say it's so bad that Genshin decide to stop cramming their story artc into 3 parts
@@Renteka-Bond yea I personally didn’t really care about rukkhadevata and focalor’s deaths but how those deaths would impact nahida and furina two characters we actually know and give a shit about not 2 randos we knew a grand total of 5 minutes and we never even met Focalors it was literally only Neuvillette who got to meet her not us the traveler
they've been comfortable with the "don't show just tell" narratives, prime example is Furina and Nahida's story where if you literally spamming space to speed up the dialogue, you'll most likely be confused on what the heck's going on when suddenly presented with what supposed to be a "heartbreaking" cinematic cutscene.
Yes, the story has much more potential that sadly often goes unused and unexplored. Instead we get slop quests with padded or uninteresting stories and dialogues. Truly the definition of wasted potential.
Writing this comment before I actually finish the video, so if some of these things are mentioned already, that's why! My biggest issue with HYV stories, as an avid hater of them (depending on the case), is 100% presentation--I'm really glad you highlighted that first thing. I have ADHD, so I find it INSANELY hard to stay interested when the portrayal of the story, no matter how intriguing, is SO. DAMN. BORING. It's really disappointing, because I WANT to love Genshin. I WANT to be excited for every new archon quest. I really, really do. But I just can't, because it'll always feel like a 5 hour sit-down-and-stare-at-a-screen-with-paint-drying-on-it session rather than... playing an enjoyable game. The only times this game has been able to keep my attention well were during Childe's story quest (since that one was more concise), the Sabzeruz Festival from the Sumeru archon quest (people usually dislike this one, which surprised me), the trials of Fontaine's archon quest, and Kaveh's hangout (mainly because he's my favorite and I relate to him in every single way). And even then, I feel like my draw to those stories should be the expectation; it just makes me more bored and disappointed with every other story. And that's not even MENTIONING just how frustrated I am with HYV for having amazingly written character lore and just... Not using it. The story we play through in game almost NEVER touches on Diluc and Kaeya's relationship outside of lore hidden away from the actual gameplay or little lines barely hinting at it. A story about what actually happened between them--a look into the past--would have been SO much more impactful. Yet, we don't have that. This is why I privilege fan content FAR above the actual game. Because the fans actually care about these aspects. My biggest gripe was with Inazuma, mainly because the first hour or so of it got me thinking that it was going to be a metaphor for mental illness because of the way people get their visions taken away. Only for it to be used as an additional plot device rather than an overarching theme (it's also inconsequential, considering that in Itto's trailer, when he goes to retrieve his vision, he's completely fine). I could be wrong about that having (barely) any connection to the themes of Inazuma, but I also didn't feel the impact of its use in the story if that's the case--which is an even BIGGER problem. When your audience can't feel connected to your story and the points that build up the theme to be as strong as it could be, you've failed. I love the characters in Genshin, their designs, the world building, and at times, the story. But I will never be able to enjoy how the story is presented. I cannot stress enough just how much I feel like I'm watching paint dry while playing through archon quests. And the only reason I do it just because I don't want to fall behind. I'm really glad I'm laying off the game more recently, because it's been... so nice to just NOT deal with that boredom. But I still play Star Rail and have similar issues there. The only difference is that the stories in Star Rail have a lot more structure and get me at least mildly focused compared to Genshin (sometimes, even highly invested. If Penacony's story wasn't 8 HOURS LONG, it definitely would have impressed me). Anyway, I'm gonna unpause the video now! I really appreciate it so far. Those sentiments you shared right at the start about loving fiction struck a chord so hard with me--never let that go! Edit: YES. THEMES. THEEEEMES. Themes are the most important part of ANY story. They're my FAVORITE part of any story. They're WHY I consume stories!!!! They're why I WRITE stories!!! AND GENSHIN FLOPS ON THEM SO HARD!!!! GHHHHHHHH!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MENTIONING THEM BECAUSE.... GHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
One thing, I do think the writers would benefit from movie inspiration when it comes to their writing. Theres the 'show, don't tell' aspect that they miss so much, and they did bridge that a bit in Fontaine, but then it goes away to yap and yap yap yap yknow? they might do good with more time and consultants on their pacing, thats one of my biggest problems with genshins writing as well. It is OCEAN DEEP with potential we never see :( as someone who loves writing it makes me sad edit: also i agree with you, they keep adding more and more characters we do NOT need and then others get neglected. Example of characters insanely important to the story but are missing screentime (NOT limited events mind you) or do not have dedicated storylines that flesh them out : Albedo, Venti, Lisa, Kaeya, Alice, Ningguang, Dain (yes!), raiden ei pops up every now and then, and the entire natlan cast as of now...at least thats my opinion. I would like to know what others think
My one big thing, HOW DOES A PLATEAU FLOOD?? Genshin and plot holes are like besties and i'm sick of it, yet I still play this game in hopes that it'll get better.
My own hc to explain the flood was that Fontaine's whole floating area sank, and when they showed us water level coming down its actually just fontaine rising onto the sky once more
@@bubblesparks That doesn't make sense. Why would it sink when it's a Plateau? If it did, it's the same thing of a tectonic earthquake that would have created a tsunami to areas around it. Guess Yilong Wharf to Chenyu Vale would have gotten flooded.
No clue, just as how the people of Fontaine in the sewers should have died from getting stuck under debris of everything in the city before Neuvilette "saved" them in his cleansing. So many plot holes.
@@diahprasetianingtyas6822 i mean, teyvat has its own logic lol Even their sky breaks so why couldnt fontaine be able to sink 🤷♀️ At least it makes more sense to me that way than wondering where the flood flowed down from Also i forgot abt the existence of chenyu vale ngl. But what supports my hc was the shells found in the desert cave on our way to the tp near fontaine's big harbor. I assumed fontaine was on equal lvl with the desert before it eventually separated and rise a bit higher
@@bubblesparks That it does. I personally hate that Hoyo just avoids consequences of hazards created by post explosion/nature catastrophies. For me who does study to prevent/lessen casualties/injuries from happening in the first place is so irratating. Even the simple fact that Liyue was in one piece after Ningguang made a tsunami impact with her Jade Chamber that would have destroyed at minimal the lower section of the harbor. Could have explained it with adapti tech that shielded the city or something, but nope. Nothing. Fontaine has been aware of a "prophecy the nation will sink" since hundreds of years. No mention of even a simple safety drill? Zilch. Zero. What you have is ppl like the fatui and Wriothesly being more prepared than even those governing the main Fontaine. Fontaine story looks cool om the surface, but even I can't defend a lot of things with "Teyvat has its own laws." Those people in the sewers surviving? Unlikely, they would have sunk being crushed by the mixing of debris of crushed housing, etc. that was in the sewers before Neuvilette came back from the Narwhal battle. It's why I'm just like in Natlan people are now caring that people are dying? Really? That's only we felt/seen the numbers of ppl dying. There was a civil war in Inazuma, did ppl even care? Nope. Cuz Hoyo showed us nothing. All tell, no show. Lazy storytelling as its finest.
I think genshin really took inspiration from deltarune’s theme “your actions don’t matter” The dialogue is literally the same options or something they don’t even affect how the characters think or treat us Some dialogue don’t even try hiding the theme 🤡 “Are you okay?” “Are you alright?”
if this was their intention i wish they honed in on it as much as deltarune does, but in genshin it feels inconsequential and uninteresting…. in deltarune its like a cool 4th wall break and its like the opposite of undertale where out choices DID matter, genshin its 2 of the same dialogue and if u pick either its the same reaction and nothing else
Yeah hoyo could never 💀 Most NPC’s responses to our dialogue choice answer BOTH options even if the options were slightly different anyway “Haha just cook paimon” “Idk about cooking” Their response “lol” “Paimon come here let me cook you” It basically fits both if that makes sense
Sometimes it feels that everything interesting happened hundreds of years ago and nothing of note was happening in the recent history. The worst offender being the Cataclysm and everything else that happened 500 years ago.
To be fair, "everything intersting happened hundreds of years ago" is a trope that's present in like 99% of fantasy pieces of media and frankly I can understand why- complex world-building makes the world feel richer and alive. Also, in Genshin specifically, there is a reason why the story is set now and not hundreds of years ago. The Gods' Age is at an end, the intersting stories are but just legends and humans are ready to progress, but they are unable to bc of Heavenly Principles. Celestia's fall will be a culmination of all that happened before and a mark of a new age, that's why it's worth setting the story here in the timeline Also, I would like challenge that "nothing of note is happening now". The Tsaritsa's plan, Rex Lapis' "death", Vision Hunt and Sakkoku decree, Akademiya building a god, Fontaine's prophecy, Natlan fighting the Abyss are all the events that are happening now in the timeline. They're not comparable to the scale of the Archon War or Doom of Khaenrri'ah but they are not supposed to be. That said , the reason why it might seem that nothing of note is happening now is that these events lack gravitas and usually are not talked about outside the nation that it happened in. That's definately a failure of the writing :/
This was a really good watch. I like how well you articulated so many of your opinions and I do agree with most them. However, one thing that I find a bit surprising whenever I watch a critical think piece about Genshin's story, is that there never seems to be a discussion that tries to evaluate Genshin’s storytelling in relation to the massive technical and logistical scope of the game. I’m no game dev, but I would think Genshin’s live service and open world nature has to have a direct effect on the quality of the story and content that can be properly written, fleshed out, approved, storyboarded, animated, localized and dubbed in time before the release each new patch. Especially when considering the 45 day windows between each version. One could make the argument that a company that makes billions could simply throw money to hire more people and make it work, but I think there’s a limit to how much time one can buy even with unlimited resources given how aggressive their deadlines are. Now, I don’t think what I’m trying to say invalidates your criticisms, but I’d love to see if you had any opinions on this.
I've always felt like Genshin being a live service game was ignored in certain conversations. Not referencing this video in particular. I truly wonder what Hoyoverse had planned prior to Genshin's release in June of 2020. How much of the story did they have figured out? What characters did they have planned? How were they planning on building up the world? It seems like Hoyoverse was just making it up as they go, from how the storytelling has been going, thus far. Like, only as recent as 2022 in Sumeru did they seem to have a more clear idea of what they wanted. The way I would've done it was have certain stories written and voiced a year or two prior to its release. So, in theory, production of the game's story, at least for mondstadt, should have started in 2016-2018. I feel like that could left time to do Liyue and flesh it out properly.
@@Hesgot_apoint definitely agree with the first two paragraphs. I remember a video where one of the devs was talking about how during initial development of the game, even the most inconsequential graphical update would break the game's engine because the team had no experience with games of that scale. So yeah, I'm sure Genshin's team had to make several compromises just so they could get Mondstadt and Liyue ready for launch. I would even argue that Inazuma was significantly cut down in scope when you consider that its production most likely took place as early as 2020 during peak pandemic and continued into the launch of the game. Which could explain the strange pacing of that particular archon quest. Now, while I do think Sumeru marks the point where Hoyo's approach to storytelling became a lot less convoluted, I don't think Hoyo was making the story up as they went prior to Sumeru. I think that the lack of density in Mondstadt and Liyue's AQs were a deliberate choice to encourage players to focus more on exploration and to make the basic story concepts a lot more digestible + ease of development. Same with Liyue - although I do think Liyue's AQ felt directionless in comparison, so I definitely agree with the idea they could've benefitted from having extra time to cook.
Natlan avoiding showing consequences of what you didn't do is just not true lol. During the war part of the aq you went to the areas you at first chose to not go to and saw the dead bodies that were the consequence of your actions, after the arcong quest is done there literally are multiple npc's missing some of which you regularly interacted with before the acron quest as they were involved in daily commissions. You saw the consequences of you failing to save people (the optional objectives in each location during war part) at the end before mavuica blasted the abyss goysosomething in the sky like the mother of that one guy that asks you to look for her dying. There literally is a memorial of people that died during the war. There were actual consequences of our actions in this one. Ofcaurse it doesn't come close to proper rpg's etc but genshin is a liveservice gacha game
i cant even finish the natlan archon quest at this point 😭😭 all that dialogue in this game i went through after playing for 3 years makes me just just uninterested in any story they want to present
What is Teyvat. That is the question keeping me going and almost fully answered, me seeing a landmass right behind the moon/sun got me going at launch. Everything else was just a bonus
Unfortunately some players do seem to need the repeated dialogue- otherwise they get confused. Genshin is an interesting case because it is trying to appeal to such a wide audience. That audience includes people who only half pay attention to the story and lore and so I think they don't want to make Archon Quests with a lot of missable subtext lest those players become completely confused. But a lot of the world quests do have some great subtext which is cool
Great video- summed up a majority of my issues with Genshin's writing and execution. I would consider myself "in the middle" of the argument as well. I think a lot of us fans get so heated about this topic because all the pieces that make up Genshin are *potentially* great or even amazing. By pieces I mean its worldbuilding, it's environment and its characters. Everything is there, it just needs to be executed properly. Sadly Genshin's quality of execution is always so...Spotty. Cutscenes are an easy example where they tend to mess up on a lot. There are improvements (animated cut scenes have become better over time) but Genshin still resorts to the stale "have the characters stand there and move awkwardly as they talk" cut scenes that take up 80% of the quests. That and for some reason in these same scenes, they don't show actions that require the characters making contact with another character or an object. Like how they don't show Mavuika and Capitano's fist bump or Citlali punching Ororan. Or in Xilonen's tribal quest, they don't even animate an NPC *knocking on a door.* As much as I want to give Genshin's dev team a lot of "benefit of the doubt", whoever animates these cut scenes really needs to talk to the ZZZ or HSR dev team and get some tips. And this is just one of the things I am critical about. I really do see Genshin getting better in the coming years but I can't help but be peeved by the mistakes they're still making up till now.
One of my main gripes with the story is still the Unknown god stuff because she hasn’t been mentioned since the first cutscene ever since she just been kinda in the background doing nothing until her eventual return which might be the end of sneznaya i feel but we still should actually get something small done with her at least ya know?
@Periton yeah probably will see her a little bit after natlan but i bet will see her in sneznaya though my idea was always after aether and lumine are back together after being seperated for so long thats when the unknown god appears
I don't fully agree with the lack of environmental storytelling - I think Dragonspine, Enkanomiya, Sumeru desert (the big closed underground door with a one Mourning Flower growing there, along with the achievement name? good stuff) and some places in Fontaine do a great job with that (probably there's many more, just can't thing of the examples atm). Especially when you're a lore player and know what to look for. Anyway, the rest of the video is my exact thoughts. Genshin manga came to my mind as another external content example that works in a weird way - you don't really need to read it but it explains Kaeya and Diluc relationship, Diluc's hatred for the KoF, or why Cyno took care of Collei, even though in game he's a General and there's not much sense about it.
The biggest problem with genshin's story is the fact that other than poor storytelling, it's world building is far better than what we actually need to play in the main AQ, i don't give a fuck about the main story except if it reveals something about the lore, Genshin's lore is proof that Hoyo can write really good stories, but they don't with the AQ's, it gives a really bad impression l, it's like you are playing a Disney show with how tame the main story is, obviously except when it comes to the side quests.
Disagree with the AQs being tame. No world quest had anything more fucked up than Nahida gaslighting that random woman into becoming a terrorist and then letting her rot when Dottore caught her.
@supermonstars I didn't like that gaslighting part.. but i also didn't mind it that much in a way because Nahida herself said she didn't want to do it, not because she's a gaslighter, also even if this is supposed to be ironic, where does the Terrorist part comes from?
I actually did not watch the short but was not confused by arlechino, things started snapping into place as soon as the ghost girl started saying things that didn’t correlate to current time
The only time that I actually paid more attention to a side quests' dialog is when I was in Tsurumi Island and the Ochard of Pairidaeza( aka. Ruu's and Jetch's story quests) Each quests involves an entire region themselves which reenforce the immersion as you progress.
We need more attention to these issues. I'm glad you decided to speak on it, even if I don't necessarily absolutely agree to every single argument provided (for the most part I do, but some I would argue differently). I think the main thing I differ in perspective and argumentation would be regarding the storytelling bit. The way I see it - Genshin Impact has a relatively exquisite and amazing worldbuilding, which is completely let down by /some/ of the storytelling. Whether because of insight behind developmental processes, or assumptions (be they correct or incorrect), I find myself convinced that there are plenty of talented folk working on the game, including with some forms of storytelling (via the world, the music, the game design and others), which get purposefully and completely intentionally blocked and sidelined to the less relevant parts of the game by decisions, likely coming from the higher-ups, which would rather the game be or not be a certain way in the aspects that see most exposition and are designed for the "mainstream". Now, I know this might seem a bit cynical, but I've thought about it plenty and it's one of the main reasons why I started playing - to analyze the game and what it does well & what it does poorly - how and why? And this is the conclusion I've come to after close to a year. In short, it's most likely also due to completely different teams. I'm sure that the folks who've developed the wider world's lore, or certain tropes and ideas that we can see and optionally explore are not the same folks who decide how much Paimon's gonna yap or what'll be said in the archon quest, or the trailers. And the English localization team also plays a significant part in the notable degradation of quality, bringing in absolute dissonance in tone and genre, using different styles and methodologies haphazardly, breaking any sense of consistency in regards to what the story of the entire game is about - or sometimes even smaller, individual stories. This is, of course, the antithesis of immersion and lends itself to preventing the reflection of story elements and aspects, and that is by no means an intentional thing, as some sort of nod to the world being fake. It's an interesting thing to cope about, which I often lean back on as a comforting thought, but in truth - it simply is due to arbitrary limitations, imposed due to reasons that have nothing to do with the world/story itself, but rather the game as a product. All in all, one of the main questions I used to ask myself is - if I recommend someone to look into the world of GI, is it better for them to have played the game or not? And frankly - I'm conflicted, still. In many ways - yes, absolutely it is better to have played it - there are many things, which are assumed to be known that you'd be challenged to assume, without having played it. But there are also unavoidable aspects of how the game can thoroughly sour your opinion of the world and story, even if those are actually quite fine, apart from the main presentation within the game itself. It's something I generally just leave aside, as whether someone should play the game tends to be up to a bunch of other more important factors, but I still continue considering the answer to this question. Anyhow, if you've read this - thanks for reading and feel free to let me know what you think ^^ TL:DR There are different kinds of storytelling and different teams behind them - and they're not all bad. While the worldbuilding is great - arbitrary limitations and choices are made that thoroughly hinder the world and story of the game, creating this dissonant experience.
"Paid by Words" You may be on to something... I've always assumed it was to let voice actors talk as much as possible (regardless if playable or NPC), which explains why some side quest story that are not voiced, tends to be the best. It is short and quick to the point, delivering the message rather than stretching out where you forget the message.
natlan is the first region where i’ve actually just skipped through dialogue in the archon quest. the dialogue has always been shit but it often ends up paying off with the climax. natlan however ? while the war section of the archon quest was interesting you could not pay me to sit through that first half with citlali. this was NOT helped but the horrific audio quality of the english dub btw. i almost turned off my volume.
putting ayato's sq in the background while talking about subtext.... yeah. yeah that says enough LMAO his quests are one of the VERY few that I didn't mind being an npc quest, because I think the idea was that he was pulling strings from the back to make things go in his favor, but.... wow did they botch that LOL. a little rewriting and a little more subtlety would have saved that questline
Honestly I really like how Genshin handle its information between archon quests and world quests. In archon quests, they’ll give the most basic form of that said event. But in the world quests they’ll give you the what, when, why in which scattered throughout the quest. Sometimes in chronological order and some don’t. And sometimes it’s all connected like Sumeru with Fontaine or Enka with everything. It really makes us feel like an outlander who doesn’t belong to this world. And really feel like we work as an adventurer. Visual key in Genshin is okay but with all of the situations in Teyvat combines it’s just impossible. They tried their best. Like around the war zone in Kannazuka there are bunch of rouges and sword hilt. Near every dead dragon corpses there are mutant monsters. How much ruin guard in the desert( Khaenri’ah door is right below ) etc. But I must say how they treated dual city in Fontaine is just abysmal 😅. As for character contents. I see characters story quest as how they integrated into the world and if you really want to know them you just have to go to character profile. This is a game with so many after all there is no way all of them could’ve a role in the main story. AND PLS HOYO MAKE THEM STAND AROUND THEIR CITY. Genshin is suffers from having to much stories to be told in their world 😂. As for limited event quest. HOYO PLS GO HSR route. I don’t care if summer event gonna cost me a terabyte of space.
Yeah, I do have problems because the story is somewhat convoluted and confusing that all of the plots from each nation gets convoluted. I’m hoping that by Genshin part two I hope they could take cues from Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Regarding subtlety (or lack thereof), though... It needs to be said that brevity isn't easy compared to long-form yapping just because it's shorter, it's the other way around. With yapping, speaking is easier, freer, with no room for misinterpretation. But with brevity, it needs to be interpreted and communicated thoughtfully. This is why even the famous Blaise Pascal once famously said, "I didn't have time for brevity" when he wrote a long letter. Genshin's live-service business-model has no room for brevity for this reason. It needs to be a content-generating machine. Therefore, so long as things pass the first couple of drafts, it's good to go. From that perspective, there's no need to give it intricate ties to environments and other details, nor go through severe editing phase to cut off the chafe or repetition, because a simple rule triumphs here: High-quality slop will always be better and more profitable than a low-quality magnum opus. (And you're right about slop and repetition, so that becomes a justification.) Although, a more cohesive creative vision can somewhat overcome that, and it's not something merely expending resources to brainstorm on region ideas and concepts can fix.
I want to give Genshin some credit here. While the points in this video are valid (repeated dialogues, lackluster cinematography, not delving into lore while having it), comparing it to AAA video games or franchise shows and movies is not very fair. If you compare Genshin to MMO’s or gacha games that came before and even after, its storytelling through constantly evolving contents is stellar, especially at the rate of their rapid update schedule. Many games find it very challenging to even be consistent through times and multiple languages. (Like Eowyn’s ‘do you not know’ moment can be misinterpreted so horribly) Also the game can’t really afford changing landscapes and provide different experiences. People shouldn’t have been disappointed that Inazuma story didn’t end up in a civil war with more casualties because it would destroy all the development done in that region and character developments no matter who won the war.
Another point was about the time-limited stories and hidden lores, and I think this is where the devs trust the community for sharing. Their core business model is FOMO, so somethings have to be lost in time, but by enabling free discussion and hiding things strategically, they can still be uncovered and they can thrive together with CCs. I recently subscribed to you because you analyze overlooked aspects about the game really well. I wish I had time to look and find out for myself but I dont have enough tjme. So thank you for all your videos and please keep up the good work!
Remember when Genhin won GOTY? Yeah, I feel like if it was even considered in the race against AAA video games, then it's justifiable to hold it to the same expectations when it comes to it storytelling. I'm not trying to be rude, btw. I know my typing may come across as rude, but not my intention. 👍
@@Hesgot_apoint True and Hoyo made BILLIONS with Genshin, they could have hired more people to the dev team or gotten better writers. Even now they still have the ability to do that, they just refuse to.
@@Hesgot_apoint Well, I think Genshin only won the awards in mobile categories, but maybe I'm missing something. Anyhow, why I don't think these comparisons are fair is that all the examples used in this video had years of preparation, and for the movies and tv shows, their success criteria are on the storytelling alone. And I don't think the company spending more money alone can fix this issue because it needs time and different focus. As an ongoing game, if it had any dramatic changes, like main characters dying or settling with their loved ones, or saving the entire world from a big baddie, they will be pretty tough to follow in the next patch and sell characters. What I want to say to everyone reading my writing is, (thank you btw) I think we're all fans here and some of us may even want the game to be one of the all time greats like the examples, but there are hard constraints for us to consider, so having the appropriate expectations could help us appreciate the game better. Even though the developers try to listen to us, there just may be some things they cannot do, and we shouldn't feel too bad as if our feedbacks weren't even considered. Btw, I may look like I'm defending Genshin here, but you could say I'm actually more pessimistic than saurusness, who shared their hope for Genshin's future quite elaborately at the end of the video.
@@powguma I believe I understand what you're saying. I've long since lowered my expectations for the game. It's hard for me not to imagine what could have been, though. It's also a little fun. Hope all is well.
16:54There are a few NPCs that have disappeared after 5.1AQ, such as the legendary Scout who appeared in AQ, with only his accessories and a memorial bouquet remaining 20:27Armored Core 6 also has external story issues, and the protagonist's colleagues are only explained in the trailer, and there is almost no mention in the story. But Armored Core 6 has some good subtext
Natlan has been mostly great, but some of it has felt very half-baked to me. Most recently, the Flower-Feather Clan Tribal Chronicles are really odd in that they introduce really interesting tension between progress and tradition, create a confict in the tribe that could have serious consequences, and then kinda just go "so this modern thing actually turns out to be really immoral and this person that made it is evil, let's get rid of her" and everything goes back to how it was before. I was also disappointed by Kinich's story, or rather basically the lack of it. There's SO MUCH that they could do with his and Ajaw's characters, but there's just... nothing. A few texts and voicelines, maybe. And he (along with other Natlan characters) doesn't even get any development in a Story Quest, since Tribal Chronicles focus more on the tribes as a whole.
Fwiw, a lot of quests also explore this theme. It really balances some of the other regions like Liyue and Inazuma which only frame progress as a good thing. @malevolentmoose
Genshin's poor storytelling can be summarized in 4 main problems. 1. Shitty main character no matter how you look at it. 2. Lack of an overarching story that ties together the very episodic nature of the nation's quests. 3. Lack of good villains, and the Fatui organization as a whole making very little sense. 4. Paimon's existance.
@@itsmewhoknows Is it though? Can you tell me why the Traveler cares about it? Can you tell me why us the players should care about it? Like, you ever notice how we know nothing about the main character or it's twin? How literally none of their supposed friends ever ask them personal questions about themselves or their twin?
@@TheElizander Because the sibling told the traveler to walk the same path they did and see why they turned to the abyss and started leading the order. The Traveler clearly wants to get back with their twin but they know they need to understand them in order to even stand a chance. Also if you actually did the story and not skip like you braindead animals do, you would know that the travelers background has been revealed a little by little, from not knowing anything at all to now knowing he was one of the descenders
Aside from the story telling itself, can we all agree that the dialogs we choose during convos are pointless? Like we get this super long dialog then we have to click on like one dialog option just to progress... Like, I hate that paimon talks waaay to much (she also has a tendency to repeat sentences, like when a character explains their plans or stuff, paimon just resays everything differently) and would prefer our mc speaks. Also why the heck are event npc dialogs so dang long... Most are not even lore or anything, they're just chatting and we're the awkward third person trying to fit in the convo... (imo lol)
So much of this is true I want to add more tho… genshin has so many great concepts but the execution sucks I feel like had the story been given to writers who actually care rather than money grabbers it could of been amazing the stories pacing is awful, the character development is bad for pretty much all characters most are cliche or boring, the story just fails to invoke emotion, and of course there is many plot holes and many questions left unanswered and things left unexplained…
I feel like another issue is the game isn’t immersive none of the gameplay matches with the story so we have no idea how the fights actually go down for example when we fight dvalin how did Jean diluc etc actually fight? Or how difficult was it for them? That’s just a small example.
SO glad to hear that others have issues with this as well. It's not unreasonable to wish that we got more meaningful story content and worldbuilding that's not just locked in books and never addressed outside of them! This company definitely has the means to employ many of the things that would make the game's story more enjoyable. I sincerely hope that they put forth the effort to improve upon the game. Environmental storytelling is so important, but we only ever see it in little world quests. I want more things we can CHANGE! Things that we impact! We know that the world itself isn't an illusion or fake- it's only the shell/firmament/sky surrounding it. I wish they'd make that more CLEAR. I want more people to understand and enjoy the story
I think the game being way TOO verbose and bloated dialogue-wise for its own good is a very noticeable side effect from the game being translated from chinese. I otherwise agree with your points - I really wanted to enjoy the story and the lore behind it, but the presentation makes it fall flat on its face to me. I stopped caring about it when Scaramouche became the Wanderer (the only character I still genuinely like a LOT, along with Neuvillette and Nahida, like no wonder he's so popular, he's just very interesting and well done!!!), and now most of Natlan's content makes me go "hey. this is cool. i guess." I only hope the game gets better over time regarding this, since we still got the rest of Natlan and Snezhnaya to go.
I don't fully believe that it's wordy and bloated with unnecessary dialogue because of translations. Zenless Zone Zero is also translated from Chinese but the quests are much more digestible in wording, plot and just overall because they're split up better and give us a chance to breathe and process what's happening
Honestly... Traveler deserved way better like Jesus, Trailblazer in HSR and Wise and Belle in ZZZ got way better treatment in their stories than Traveler in Genshin
Great video. Been giving this some more thought, and I think one of the main problems with Genshin's story is that the main story/thread with the sibling is sort of cast aside, when it should be the thing that holds it all together. I point to the animated shorted: the Road Not Taken. When I saw that anime short (which is absolutely beautiful by the way) I shed some tears. If you haven't watched it, please do: th-cam.com/video/T5-YMslEmxw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Kn21tJKmipsB_M4R I remember thinking: why wasn't that IN THE GAME? Like that's the whole story! You're going on the same journey your sibling did 500 years ago with Dainsleif, you're walking where they walked and they ended up joining the Abyss... is that our fate? What did they see that made them switch over? Maybe 500 years later with Paimon at our side, it will be different for us? What an incredible hook! Because that sibling plot is Genshin's best story. Never mind the lore with the Usurper, dragons, Khaenriah, etc. that's all window dressing. Main point: we're stuck in a world with a false sky, Teyvat, and so is our sibling (apparently for 500 years). How do we even escape? Must we join the Abyss? Is there no other way? How will we ever beat the Heavenly Principles and escape? Even if we reunite with our sibling, will things ever be the same? One thing Genshin does well is help us get lost in Teyvat, you enjoy it there. Why would you want to leave? But maybe that's the whole trap of the gods. :) Come on, Hoyo! You've already done the work, just let that story be front and centre! I know it's later in the game, but no time like the present to bring it back.
Ugh yeah 100%! Honestly I kinda dismiss the "lost sibling" story as uninteresting ...but thinking about it that's entirely because of how they've presented it. We've seen so little of them together, and Traveler really doesn't seem to care... so why would we? That short is a perfect example of the kind of thing which should've been integrated into the story for sure, since it'd make it feel like it means something.
Genshin was so big of an edging experience i started pursuing art again because even scribbling away ugly bishounen was more rewarding. Dunno what instant gratification and illusion of accomplishment they talk about, didnt see any of it lol
I think Genshin has an amazing worldbuilding but an unremarkable storytelling. The change I wish they do is to lean more to organic storytelling; The characters are interacting naturally and they develop themselves. There are instances of organic storytelling but I wish they do more. The Traveler and Paimon are way too nosy in everyone's business. I know, they're the witness, but Genshin is leaning way too much to it that characters don't have meaningful stories, relationships and development because they're tethered to the Traveler and Paimon's existence. Basically, The devs are doing a solipsist approach where characters don't exist unless the Traveler is in the vicinity. In all honesty, I kinda get why they do things like this because they have to sell characters. That's why it's kind of hard to find genuine good storytelling in gacha games.
Yeah I always find it weird to have the traveler and paimon directly present and involved in everyone's business. HSR, on the other hand, does well in this regard.
@@jeongyunkim6360 A bit late but I wholeheartedly agree. HSR and ZZZ did it best by providing organic storytelling to each character, making them more compelling. I say this especially after finish hsr 2.7 quest.
I believe genshin's targeted to a very young demographic, which makes it a lot harder for them to create more subtle or complex narratives, also, there's the silly silent protagonist trope, I believe it started as a sort of homage to old jrpgs but the way they handle the story begs for the Traveler to talk, the reliance on Paimon to act as both the protagonist's voice and herself feels clunky now, even tough Paimon's VA improved a lot since launch it's a double edged sword that also brings everything down a bit
Since it's a gacha I'd be surprised if it was - the real money is in targeting people with disposable income, so I'd expect the real target to be early 20s' or older 👀
@@raptoriYou'd be surprised at the amount of children that play this game. A few days ago, I overheard a 9 year old talk about it with his friend at my workplace.
@@PeruvianPotato True, but they're much less likely to have a spare few hundred dollars to drop on banners, so I'd be surprised if Genshin is targeting them with their gacha system 😜
I think an issue with having any quest affect the world in a material way is that if it can harm side quest progress then it just can't happen. This is less a technical issue and more a business decision. If you can't complete a world quest you started because of a decision in the archon quest, people would complain because of the lost primos gems. Its why every time there's a quest with multiple outcomes you get an achievement with different text but the same primos no matter what even if one of them is "bad". They would have to account for possible states of your quest progress and provide alternates (like moving a chest or puzzle, something they already have done in the past)
Looking at the coms, it's really interesting to see so many people despise natlan overall story while Mrs Saurus over here praise it for being more and more inclined towards pretty good world building story. On a side note, what did you think of the 5.1 story Mrs Saurusness? For me it is probably, objectively speaking the best worldbuilding story of genshin so far, but I guess people really like constant bloated dialogue with wriothesley in fontaine act 3 just because bro got that jojo character model🤨
my boyfriend saw that i always skip the genshin dialogues so he doesnt understand why i like the game (LOL), i really really liked sumeru and fontaine’s archon quests, i wish most of the game was like that
I remember in 1.1, I was having fun with the game but wasn't very interested in the story. Then i explored dragonspine and learned about all this hidden lore about a civilization that once stood here, a mountain turned into a snowy hellscape by a giant nail sent from the heavens. That paired with the reveals of the infamous 1.1 falling stars event, and I was HOOKED. This idyllic world is a lie? Gods orchestrating everything? Fallen civilizations swept under the rug? I gotta see where this goes. And now its been 4 years that I've stuck with this game. All this void war stuff with Natlan that they're hyping up, stuff that I would otherwise be super excited for, I just feel kind of empty about. There's no stakes, characters dont stick around long enough for me to get attached to anyone, and none of that lore really mattered. This vid helped me understand a little more as to why I feel this way. A love-hate relationship with this kind of game is rough. At this point I'm only driven by FOMO.
As someone trudging through Sumeru, it feels like someone saw the worst part of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Endless Eight) and mixed it with a TV soap. All I want is to find Aether, Dansleif or Best Girl Amber to progress the story, not this... I think if anything it's inconsistent, Furina has an amazing story, Nahida got done dirty with hers before it, Raiden's starts great but at best is one big missed opportunity and Venti... I mean, it sure was a story I suppose. Meanwhile Brother dude (the actual story) is so absent the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale may sentence him to start paying sibling support. Though the characters suffer the same way too, Some of them have great stories like how Furina has a follow up "aftermath" type of story, while others like Ei simply give us a slice of life story completely detached from the main one aside from simply mentioning it briefly. I like the game, but I'm purely here for the gameplay and a handful of characters, most notably Best Girl Amber, Furina, Amber, the siblings(eventually), Amber, etc. The story ain't it.
You missed it cuz you started with ver 2 but the first Golden Apple Archipelago event was also an excellent example of environmental storytelling done right. As you unlocked more islands, you come across wall paintings depicting the lives of the people who used to live in the archipelago, the crashed ships of the Inazuman pirates and by the end of the exploration path, you find out through the environment that the trapped people of the islands and the pirates eventually worked together to find a way out of the mist and escape the archipelago. It was really cool to experience unfortunately, as you've mentioned, the event being time limited means no new players can experience it
17:55 And the insan thing is that we have a thing Like that in Liyue, we can help a guy build a little shrine to the memory of an Adeptus and at the end of it you can find Xiao and during the Lantern Rite he can be found there paying his respects, is a small touch and yet it's so rare to see
Honestly I can't get on board with the praise genshin gets for its lore when the overwhelming majority or it is delivered terribly. There's a lot of world building tucked away in long quest lines associated with certain regions like the Jinni sidequest and Pari sidequest, the former of which is okay at times and the latter of which is an unbearable slog from start to finish. The fact that these quests suffer from the same bloated dialogue as everything else in the game but none of them are voiced just compounds how laborious it feels to get through them. As a result, what could have been an enriching experience that adds color to the world of teyvat that Hoyo's spent so much time crafting just feel like set dressing meant to take up space and occupy your time while you wait for better things to come out
i find with genshin you just have to watch lore videos to get invested in the story because the lore ccs break it down to its bare bones and then connect it to the rest of the story and broader hoyoverse through lore bits, game mechanics, etc.
To be honest I'm fine with the story. What annoys me the most is the sheer amount of absolutely irrelevant smalltalk you have to sit through every. single. damn. time. Especially in the unvoiced quests. I find myself telling myself "get to the point already" so often it's exhausting. I noticed that again in the current Citlali/Ororon Event Quest. The first five minutes speaking to Ororon were revolving around vegetables and "I've read people liked being praised so I'll praise you ten times in a row now". Some people find it endearing and I do too to some extend but Genshin just goes ALL IN on the irrelevant nonsense WAY to often. And don't get me started on the "Someone makes a joke, someone else get's annoyed and suddenly the next ten conversation boxes revolves around "Haha, Whoopsie doodle!" about that joke before things get back on track.
One of my gripes is that it feels like there's more lore in the wikis than in the actual game. Like the first and 2nd civilizations. Unless I'm missing something, it felt like they reference it once in a great while but only the wikis have the full story.
I don't like how lore barely matters to the story sometimes, like Signora seems like a one-dimensional villain character unless you coincidentally happened to read her character backstory before what happened in inazuma.
This so much! It's also kinda funny how often people get really upset when other say "X character feels really shallow" when that happens - most people don't ever see any of the depth 😅
@@raptori Yeah, I really wish they would improve on that. I remember before Cyno had a second story quest, I used to complain that they mentioned that his backstory was similar to Collei's in optional event dialogue. Thankfully, they did make a story quest for this eventually, but there are plenty of other characters whose lore just remains untouched.
because she's not playable, if she was we will know about her lore in a story quest or something
@@Louis-gk7rkeven if they’re not playable you should probably flesh out your villains, wish Genshin would realize that
@@Sunrose-Who even is Signora really for her to be getting dickrode this much? Some characters are simply not meant to be main villains. Signora is one of them, thus she didn’t need fleshing out, and if you really were that interesting in her you have her lore.
one thing that annoys me about genshin is the expressions or lack thereof. the voice actors will be putting their all into it and then the character is just standing there like this 😐
Yes exactly! I got so sick of that and now it's almost unbearable to sit through... With how much money the company makes you'd think they'd be able to put in a little more effort to make the quests look good and the characters look alive
@@ClockiePizza i was doing an event quest in natlan recently and it looks like they did improve in this aspect but it took them way too long. and after experiencing it it's just even more stark in contrast to when i'm in other regions.
Agree, low budget animations are so lame i'd say it even lowers the matter of the topic to an average thing. I know cinematics are expensive and not so easy to do, so then an easy solution would be at the very least adding lip-sync for when they're talking, but hoyo is reeeally lazy when it comes to certain topics. Also a far easy solution for everyone would be just simply making those simple-animated dialogues short and straight to the point instead of filling them so much, very annoying.
I agree, but it has been getting better with overtime. Also, I think it might just be the matter of the animation studio. Because HSR and ZZZ does a grate job at this.
@Sora-Gi3 nah, hsr still bad, they just stand there talking without gestures or big facial expressions 90% of the time. zzz is a visual novel just like hi3 it would be even stupider if they decided to skim on the most important thing for visual novels (which is sprits), they will count in the losses and add more accordingly, what i mean by that is that genshin is an open world exploration game so obviously they wouldn't pay attention to the npcs and the expression, animation and design because it takes time and actual effort
but with zzz? it doesnt have much to explore, the world isnt as big as genshin's world therefore skimming the details and animation would be a downgrade.
they definitely prefer to work less and make more, they try their hardest to do anything BUT give actual good quality, if they can manage to post myriad celestial (demos?) trailers or character trailers for 3-4 games they can definitely improve in the actual games quality.
quantity over quality just like the rest of chinese made products.
The end of the fontaine arc was the peak of investment in the story of genshin for me. It was so emotional and interesting to see the whole thing between the hydro archon and Neuvillette. Wish we had more of that... for some reason, I could not bring myself to be invested in anything or anyone at all in Natlan so far :/
Capitano was the best thing in natlan for me that's all.
You're not the only one. Fontaine's story in 4.2 made me cry. That's how hooked I was. Coming off that and going to Natlan... It's hard to describe why I think Natlan's story is like 2-3 tiers lower, but I'll try...
Natlan is hard to get into because of the way the story is told. There's too many times we're on the brink of losing some battle and then Mavuika saved everybody... at some point you just expect her to clutch up and win the day. And then nothing you did really mattered in the story so far because it feels like Mavuika or one of the 6 heroes would have just come through anyway even in our absence.
The stakes are paradoxically really high (the world is ending) and yet somehow also very low because I feel like Traveller isn't doing much that the other characters couldn't just do. Feels like Traveller could peace out for a year, let the Natlanders solve the crisis themselves, and we come back to hot springs with Mualani and barbecues on the beach like none of version 5.X ever happened.
The story is also dragging for no reason: it really feels like us (Traveller) getting an ancient name is never going to happen - I haven't finished 5.2, so maybe it happens this patch - but maybe that's the story Hoyo will finish 5.3 when we finally get pyro Traveller. But that's sort of a silly thing to drag out over the end of 5.0 to the beginning of 5.3... what's the hold up (story wise)?
So... for a story about the world on the brink of ending, things seem pretty lax. I mean we had time to go hot tubbing for a week with Mualani but not time to go build defences against increasing the Abyss attacks around Natlan's villages, which seemed sort of at odds with the tone of the story. Given how 5.1 ended the latter would have been a far better use of our time (Hoyo could have made a f**king mini-game out of it).
I'm probably just frustrated that it isn't as good as Fontaine's story (which wasn't perfect, but is probably Genshin's best, with Sumeru coming in close behind). But for sure Natlan's story is off a beat.
Huh. I recently played my father 'La Vaguelette' to show him an example of the kind of music I was listening to. I had to explain why it broke me up every time. At that point, I'd spent months having my emotions twisted by this storyline, and then they dropped Furina's quest on top. Still gets me (though I think Nahida gets me more still).
I haven't finished Natlan yet. I don't know but I'm not that interested with the archon quest. Weird because I always waited for this before. I just like Capitano and Ororon.
Can unfortunately relate.
Genshin's approach to story/lore is like a person who has a closet full of beautiful outfits but chooses to wear coffee-stained track pants every time they go out lol. There is a wealth of interesting, creative material that just isn't getting used to it's full extent.
Honestly that’s not even just a story\lore thing. Genshin in it’s entirety is wasted potential
@@Nixloyn I agree with you, honestly one of story elements I love the most about genshin are the world quests because its only with them that you tackle past events with the current time and funnily that has more weight in the world than the archon quest, which supposedly, should be even more important since its about the main conflict in the current time. And lets not talk about concept and places, Enkanomiya is such an interesting area and its been left forgotten after a single event and nothing's been done or said about it there. Same with The Chasm but at least it wasnt as horrible as the previous place. There's so much the game could do and improve but its as if hoyoverse likes making things halfway and calling it a day
The biggest problem for me is that world quests and arcon quests hardly connect together. We do something in there somewhere, but it's almost never reflected in the main story, and vice versa. it is also a bit annoying that, apart from events, and Fatui there is very little connection between the nations. Natllan is at war, meanwhile no other nation really cares? There is a feeling that when leaving the previous nation, someone goes there and turns off the light, and everyone who is there ceases to exist. Of course there are also good examples, but in my opinion there are not enough of them, it would be nice to see conection between all nations in the main story, not only in events.
The problem is that Genshin is doing nation building, not world builiding
well in fountain it was different the main world quest deely has ties to the archon quest
They tried at various times and players didn't want it. Inazuma's quests on the first islands (except Enka) were meant to be done together with the Archon Quest, by the time you find Scaramouche you were meant to know he was from there, that delusions used Orobaxi's remains, who Orobaxi was and what Watatsumi's actual motivations were, how the various NPCs felt about Raiden, the VHC and the Sakoku Decree (they didn't care about the VHC too much but the Sakoku decree was starting a famine).
The Chasm Archon Quest was weaven together with the Chasm World Quest, and players complained they had to interact with "boring NPCs and puzzles".
The Khvarena quest, which tells us about the battle that ended Khaenriah and about Egeria's death. It's followed up by the Narzissenkreuz quest, which also weaves perfectly into the Archon Quest as we're slowly discovering the story of a group of occultists who tried to avert the flood and even reached the primordial sea, yet still failed, and the quest even gives us context on the nature of oceanids. The whole thing I felt was critical to understanding the archon quest. The music video End of All really shows it all ties together.
@@ancalymebye WTH where is this from the player complaints? I mean if mihoyo had a skip button maybe that wouldn’t be much of a problem. I personally think, but that sucks 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️. I mean the fan base is 💀. If I was in charge of the genshin team I would not listen to them and put a skip button…
@@dollguts9801 how does skipping the story help at all in this respect?
Going off what you said about the nature of a gacha game harming character development, that's one of the things that really bothers me about Genshin's story.
For example, I like Albedo. I think he's cool, and I like the story set up with him being this genius but also slightly insidious. Rosaria seems to think he's not trustworthy, and there's a chekov's gun set up with Albedo claiming he has the power to destroy Monstatd. He has so many compelling stories that could be told with him as the central focus. But this is a gacha game, and the characters are the product. Albedo has consistently had some of if not the lowest sales of any premium character. Mihoyo isn't likely to spend the significant amount of money to invest in stories surrounding Albedo because he isn't going to make them their money back.
Which leads to his really compelling story being all but dropped. And now I feel more jaded about getting invested in the lore and story of new characters because, unless they're really popular with the community, their stories might just end up pushed to the side for the next new popular character.
Yeah Albedo is a great example! And also one of the perfect examples of the issue with time-limited content - the event stories focusing on him were great, but they're just gone now...
@@raptori So true. It feels like those time limited events shouldn't even be considered when talking about character representation in the story because they're completely missable. If Mihoyo would let us replay those old events then it'd be different, but they're married to the FOMO strategy.
@@strideytidey8665 Yeah exactly, but then if you *don't* consider them then several characters lose like half or more of their backstory... so it sucks either way. It's so stupid, people would still feel the FOMO just for the rewards, even if they could still play the story later on...
He has the carisma of a literal prince more than Aether, he can be a good antagonist and I COMPLETLY forgot about that sentence of him beaing a treat to Mondstad.
But the story hasn't been dropped. We just got confirmation that we going back to durin.
You were spot-on about the lore channels. Whenever I delve into the wiki, I constantly have to check their references (aka which in-game item lore said that). It's not that I don't like reading (my bookshelf is massive and occupies half my bedroom) but it's absurd that approx. 70% of genshin's lore is behind texts upon texts of artifact, weapon and materials descriptions (and all fractured too so you have to be willing to do massive mental gymnastics to piece it all together)
I'm still bitter that HYV put a MASSIVE piece of lore regarding Dain and the Abyss' Sibling behind a *checks note* xbox-themed wiNGED GLIDER?????
Good video. I agree with most of what you said here. When people claim Genshin's story they are praising the worldbuilding not the writing itself. Those are two very different different things.
im one those people who praise the world building (yes i know the difference too dont worry)
I agree the storytelling in Genshin might not be the best but I personally like it, a lot but that's a topic for another day.
But I really like the way Genshin handles its world building and background lore. I don't like being spoon-fed the lore and would rather spend the time collecting the pieces and connecting the dots and making sense of the bigger picture. I feel that Genshin executes this part pretty well. That brings me great joy.
And recent events fucking gutted the world building so I’d say the story is currently in the worst state it’s ever been
Yeah, Genshin story telling is often that of a mediocre anime but the world building and how everything connects is very interesting. The universe does feel alive. Some of the world quest is what really ties the whole thing together eg Ochkanatlan, the Jhett quest and the Melusine with Elynas
@@snailwhale6673 some of the world quests rly impacted me a lot more than the archon quest did
I still remember chouji, that one boy who's collecting inazuma crystal and was the sole survivor of his villlage. That quest rly depicted the horror of inazuma's state as a nation in constant war. Knowing that kid managed to flee at the end rly made me happy
The other quest was also the whole enkanomiya sun chilren lore. That whole place is so tragic and sad it's still my number 1 favorite map. Rven after 100% explorstion i still love going there every now and then just to enjoy the emptiness
yup, the world building is good. character development and writing? eh, not so much.
You addressed the issues I’ve had with Genshin’s storytelling so well 👏
When I started playing, the very first thing that made me side eye was those fade to black cuts that give you a summary of what happened instead of showing you.
I’ve played dozens of visual novel style otome games so it’s not like I don’t like reading. Genshin’s storytelling feels so weak that it’s difficult to stay engaged in the story.
The game likes to tease you with interesting concepts only to nerf the potential it could have had later on once we actually experience the story. Fortress of Meropide and Arlecchino quests in particular come to mind.
There’s also the issue of introducing constantly new NPCs and focusing on them instead of fleshing out playable characters.
These are all issues by design, sadly. There needs to always be the new thing to sell, profit is everything so every corner is cut etc. The price we have to pay for playing a gacha game.
I WANT to absorb all the story, I want to love it, I'm intrigued by so much of the lore, but I swear sometimes it's like I'm actively trying to get absorbed in the story and the game is just daring me to not zone out.
I started the aranara quest line excited and hopeful, by the end of I was spamming the skip dialogue button, I know for a fact there would have been a ton of interesting snippets and lore in there, but the delivery just beat me down over time
I start almost every quest like "ok let's see what this is about i'll actually listen and read and pay attention", but by the end of it I'm aggressively spamming skip like "yesyesyes I understood thank you you said that already let's go goo lord how long will this take...!"
honestly I do that with 90% of the side quests and then just watch lore videos
Your ADHD doesn't mean Genshin's writing isn't good.
Personally, HSR I think is worse with the endless dialogue. I never skip dialogue with Genshin because the story is genuinely engaging but with HSR especially on the Xianzhou, I do. Penacony and Belabog were the only places I haven't done so. Also holy yap in SU.
@ I thought we stopped classifying attention span as adhd. Anyways, if the story is telling itself in a boring way, the writer should do better not the reader, specially when the writer is swimming in cash. Just because hsr is worse doesnt excuse genshin
@@fatuusdottore Cringe.
One change I wish they do is TO MAKE THE TEXT SPEED FASTER. Jesus I played the pokemon games in the past and they're notorious for having a simple plot, bloaty dialogue, and heck, the whole game is unvoiced, unskippable too. But the thing is, I was able to stomach those and still understand what's going on because when they talk, I could just skim their sentences and get the whole gist of what they're saying. Fast enough to hold my attention for a bit to comprehend it
In Genshin, with how SLOW the text speed is, I space out ALL THE TIME, especially if I'm not interested with what they're saying. The text speed is annoyingly slower than our reading speed. Leading us to just spam the mouse button to just get on with it. Not reading anymore
They could also just add a "skip" button. :)
Because I hate clicking through that much text when (1) most of it is irrelevant, (2) most of it is repeated, and (3) the game is just going to tell me where to go next and what to do anyway, so why do I need to listen to all this?
@@John_IIit's one of the core elements of every game with a story so we need to read sometimes. I do agree on the skip button tho. Literally every triple a game I played has it
@@25kuzon True... I wouldn't skip everything either... just quests like the Aranara quest or that one with Jeht in the desert.
@@25kuzon also the auto play button is pathetically slow or sometimes doesn’t even work
@@John_II Jeht's story was mostly fine. It got worse during last part, when I had to listen 'villain reasons' for the several characters, but overal I liked it. Compared to Aranara it was even great :D
Tbh i think it beacuse they HATE making the characters do anything special unless its in a cutscene. When was the last time you saw a character move there legs and arms while talking? When was the lost time you saw a character hold an item instead of levitating it? When was the last time a character use their facial expressions?? Aloy uses her hands and face to portray an emotion. Clenching fists, grinding teeth, soft smile, strenched hands. It shows emotion which genshin cant.
The last time? Natlan, bruh. That was a huge step up in presentation. Characters move a lot and have tons of facial expressions now.
@@supermonstars tons?? bfr
@@gragraboomicespice It's true. Fucking drunk Citlali had more unique animations than the entirety of Monstadt.
That’s one thing mfs don’t question and it confuses me because visuals and acting are just as important if not more to a story than plot or world building. You can have the most interesting and gut wrenching writing but if the visuals are stiff and ugly it will cancel out.
@@supermonstarsI find the problem to be npcs, mostly. Even then, the only character we’ve seen who has consistently expressive dialogue IS Citlali.
Honkai impact incorporates tons of animated shorts into the game
For the life of me I never understood why Genshin and Star rail refuse to put those animated shorts in the game
It's boggling, especially since its the same company that made all 3 games
I thought that game died already.
@ it’s still around it’s just not as popular as their newer games
I'd argue that Genshin has even more storytelling problems than what was stated on the video, including what I think is probably the worst of them all: the main character.
We can't ascertain their motivations anymore, but not because they're deliberately hiding them, but because the writing is just bad and there's no motivation or hook anymore. Looking for the Archons stopped making sense when we found the sibling. Even if they told us to journey across all Teyvat, it doesn't make sense why the traveler does not research more about the Abyss or Khaenri'ah. It's not even a secondary goal. They just doesn't care and when the opportunity comes they just doesn't ask much questions. What caused the cataclysm of Khaenri'ah? Who are the dragons and the usurper? What happened then and there? What's in the abyss? What the hell does the Tsaritsa want? Those are just some of the questions they could have asked already.
With this it comes to the fans to suppose why it's that way. Are they doing their thing off screen, like when they said they were looking into Khaenri'ah without Paimon knowing in the beginning? They just wanna make allies with the Archons? They have a secret goal that we don't know about? But at this point these don't feel like genuine theories, but rather the fans writing the story for the game, because we can see crystal clear why it's that way: Mihoyo just wants us to explore every region and give crumbs of the story so as to retain curiosity in the story for the fans, by not answering all or most of the questions, and keeping the important stuff to the end and drag it all for the most time possible, and they don't even bother trying to give good in universe reasons for that. When a story doesn't even have a primary hook or motivation for the main character anymore (or doesn't act on it at all), the story suffers greatly. There's barely any believable reason as to why we should look out for the development of the story, there's no natural flow to the narrative. Instead of questions being explored naturally by the protagonist's efforts, we are given them at the random whims of Mihoyo.
I think Hoyo has that lack of a hook in every game. I agree with your Genshin take - and I love exploration in Genshin - there's just not reason to explore Teyvat... why bother? We couldn't have thought our sibling was in the Fortress of Meropide or King Deshret's Tomb (two areas I loved exploring... but big picture? why the f**k are there? )
In HSR - I can think of no discernible reason why the Express goes to any planet. I really liked the story on Belobog - it's actually great. But then with each new planet, I cannot find a reason why we're there. Okay, fine there's that space cancer called a Stellaron on this planet or that planet... but it's a weak hook. The express crew is five people + Pom Pom. They clearly don't think they're going to find and cleanse every stellaron in the universe. So, what's the real hook? We got a glimpse from Kafka when we captured her... maybe our destiny is to fight the Aeons, maybe our final battle is against Nanook the Destruction... but there's no trail leading us there.
In ZZZ - I have no idea what is even happening. Hoyo is so afraid to answer ANYTHING in the story (which was good upt o Chapter, which was in version 1.0). But I was mad at the end of 1.2 when the story felt like filler. Like really we go all the way to the Outer Rim to get Perlman... and then the story actually forgets about him at the end.
Look, I don't always need the BEST story; I love Diablo III which barely has one. But Diablo III at least gives you a reason to be anywhere or do the next thing. You never feel dragged along, it's like: go find Deckard Cain... cool, game starts. GO find the fallen star... cool, that's the original story. Time to hunt down the Lesser Evil Belial (that's Act II). Azmodan is invading Sanctuary, you gotta deal with that.... that's Act III. We went to Heaven to stop Diablo in Act IV (which is the entire plot of Act IV). But all of it makes sense in context. Yeah, I summarized the plot of a 10-20 hour game in 3 sentences... I told you the story is bare bones.
Hoyo's games don't actually even have that. I get that we're supposed to go all the nations and I like it, but I won't pretend for one second that it makes any sense to go to all the nations the way we do. Why did we go to Inazuma? Just so Yae Miko could tell us to go to Sumeru? Sumeru was right next to Liyue... we could have just gone to Sumeru. At least in Sumeru we learned about the larger plot... but still. Why did we go to Fontaine? What was even there for us? Why not go to Natlan first? The same "no reason" is waiting for us there too.
Again, I love the exploration, music and world of Genshin. I have my favorite characters, but the overall story... my god, maybe put a little more effort in, Hoyo.
I think a lot of the problems with traveler stem from hoyo going for them being a mix of a self-insert and their own standalone character when it just doesn't work
THIS YESS, when I first saw the abyss twin reveal in the story and it is revealed that they are with them, sure it gives this good angst of "oh no, I found my twin but now we are in separated side" but then, what's next? Traveller's goal and the story's premise since the beginning is "Finding my lost twin by taking journey across Teyvat", worried for their fate. But then we found them, alive and well before the story even ends so then what? It just makes the story confusing and really lowered down the stakes and the unknown of the situation.
@@aerialfishuu Agreed. I think maybe the real plot ought to have been what we saw in the animated shorted: the Road Not Taken. When I saw that anime short (which is absolutely beautiful by the way) I shed some tears.
If you haven't watched it:
th-cam.com/video/T5-YMslEmxw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Kn21tJKmipsB_M4R
And then afterwards, I remember thinking: why wasn't that IN THE GAME? Like that's the whole story! You're going on the same journey your sibling did 500 years ago with Dainsleif, you're walking where they walked and they ended up joining the Abyss... is that our fate? What did they see that made them switch over? Maybe 500 years later with Paimon at our side, it will be different for us? What an incredible hook!
Because that is Genshin's best story. Never mind the lore with the Usurper, dragons, etc. that's all window dressing. Main point: we're stuck in a world with a false sky, Teyvat, and so is our sibling (apparently for 500 years). How do we even escape? Must we join the Abyss? How will we ever beat the Heavenly Principles and escape? Even if we reunite with our sibling, will things ever be the same?
Come on, Hoyo! You've already done the work, just let that story be front and centre!
EXACTLY! Also I feel like the story isn’t even about the mc anymore if that makes sense, like they just keep centering it around these other characters. Ngl I cant say if this is true because I’ve been skipping almost all of the dialogue in the recent archon quests but I feel like it’s so boring and all they talk about is a whole lot of nothing 😭 wish we could go back to figuring out situations with the fatui and stuff like that, hopefully next regions will be better?
My biggest gripe is adding mysteries then answering years later when we already put the pieces on our own and it is no longer satisfying
And is even worse then the pieces don't even show up to begin with. Like Paimon. We know as much of Paimon back in 1.0 as we know about her now. Let that sink in.
@otherface I could go on a whole rant about paimon’s “secret” identity
But that's exactly what's great about it.
@@Otherface she is phanes
@@avej99OOH PLS DO!
The time-gated lore is the main reason as to why i hate Genshin's storytelling. I took a break from 2.3 to 4.4, and my god i missed waaay too much lore.
Reading is one of the most fundamental parts of Genshin, both in lore an gameplay. However, in this case, is not a "reading issue". Is a "you came here a bit too late issue". Which is, as you probably know, the main problem with live service games: punishing players for arriving late. Before it was gameplay parts. And now is lore?!
You know, something I love about Star Rail has to be the permanent events. Sure, the rewards are minuscular compared to when these arrived, but the simple fact that i can learn about said events without an external website makes it worth enough. Huohuo is my favorite character in the game, and i'm so glad i could meet her for the first time months after her first release.
Now imagine being an Albedo fan in Genshin.
Honestly the limited time event would have been better off as his story quest, as the quest was a pretty empty experience, there wasn't nearly anything important or memorable enough about his lore or character. For a story quest that's quite sad. And what you said about permanent events is true. HSR does a much better job at keeping the events available to play through even after they end. I wish they could incorporate those events into the base game for Genshin even without any rewards (or like 60 primos for the whole thing at best), but alas
@@DeadVoxel or only having the unique weapons would be enough incentive, I've seen so much people suffering because they didn't have festering desire nor Cinnabar Spindle because they were from events in the first patches
@@edgieststalker8141 exactly. Well, at least they added a craftable DEF sword, so it's better than nothing. But heck, even HSR just recently added event weapons to the Simulated Universe shop. Why not add them to the Imaginarium Theater? Make a new shop option or something. We already have an NPC to talk to that allows us to buy poses, why not implement a store when talking to him as well?
If we can't replay events or get limited time event weapons from them, then why not give us a chance to buy them?
It’s because of fomo. It’s by design. To keep you playing every day, to keep you giving them money.
I'm sorry but that's on you buddy. No live-service game's obligated to give you a crash course on what happened based on how much you missed out. On top of that, whether it's TLDRing or quick recap watching, you'll have to take out time to do your lore revision anyways, which'll take time based on how much you missed.
So basically, if you come back in the middle and care about the world of the game you're playing, there's no escaping lore revision.
the storyline is just really all over the place. i really liked the early game, but natlan is just so different from the rest and it really seems like finding the sibling isn’t really the focus anymore. there’s also the fact random important lore details are just forgotten or hidden in a random note in the middle of absolutely nowhere. i wish it was more story-driven and not money-driven.
The fact that Fontaine opened the door to the dragon sovereign vs archon and then Natlan the nation with dragons juts completely went in the other direction pissed me off
Realizing I've lost interest in a cutscene, have been skimming/not paying attention, and suddenly require Paimon to repeat most of what she just said was very humbling. But also annoying. I don't have this problem in other story-heavy games!!! GI dialogue overstays its welcome something terrible!!!
Fontaine's lack of consequences felt super weird to play thru, too. Personally thought the impacts on characters werent even enough - the trial is never discussed again, nor does Furina ever speak of her divine self. Those ppl who saw Furina revealed as "fake" Archon - what did they do?? Did they tell anyone?? Like?? Heaps of stuff feels brushed over. Dont even get me started on Meropide as a whole lol
If you go talk to those people they tell you their reactions towards Furina no longer being an archon... it's present in the surrounding NPCs, Story Quests, and other genshin character About dialogue
As far as dialogues go, some NPCs genuinely think that Furina used up all her archonhood to stop the prophecy. Neuvi helping oit Furina also helped to ease people's minds, and even tho she may not have been a goddess, Furina is still considered a very old legendary star with amazing acting and scriptwriting abilities, so a lot of Fontainians still hold her in high regard
I got hooked into Genshin because at first their cultural and mythological references were top tier. I truly thought that the writers were some kabbalah of passionate visionaries that had an important message to tell. Boy was I wrong lol.
Same..I started playing like 1 month ago, still think it's top tier for the mythological references and just the overall world building/lore because it's really REALLY good, remind me a lot of Dark Souls lore, but then I look at the main story and god what a missed opportunity, the first three regions had some of the worst storytelling I have seen in any media, it gets better at Sumeru but even then it's not anywhere close to being perfect in term of storytelling, the side quests are far too interesting for what the main ones offers, and it's not even voiced. Since I learned that this game is going to have an anime made by ufotable I'm really hoping that they don't waste the game's lore and world building and animate it, that would be a really weird marketing decision for the game if they don't.
I got into it a year ago when I found out that there was a diverse selection of countries to choose from as well as finding the character designs to be pretty interesting. Boy, were my expectations ruined
Hoyo really change after HI3
I will never understand why instead of using random NPCs that nobody cares about in world quests… they don’t just use one of the 80+ playable characters…? That would make it way easier to characterize some of the ones with less screen time and wiggle them into the narrative somehow.
They also seem to have the problem of making all pullable characters "good". Like, people will still pull on someone who is evil if their design and kit is good.
I've been thinking about that too. Then I suppose that it's because if you use several playable characters to tell the world quest story, they'd have to be voiced in the 4 different languages of the game, which is very expensive...
I completely agree. Though I feel like its gotten a lot better in the past year? Like since Baizhu's story quest most of the story quests have other playable characters appear when it makes sense for them to
@@TuningAnApple THANK YOU!!!!!! I’ve been thinking about this soooo often and it kind of ruins certain characters for me. Arlechinno should’ve been more malicious than they ended up writing her, it’s a bit disappointing. I will say though I really liked scaramouches “redemption”
@@JLATS they don’t have to be voiced at all, if it’s a character the players know and love they will gladly just read the lines
Im tired of hearing people say „Fontaine was so peak-„ and only talk about Furina and or Focalor. It just shows that they only remember the emotionally investing part in the story at the end of the whole quest, which is great cause it shows how a story should be written to keep the people emotionally invested. But saying Fontaine‘s archon quest overall, is just wrong when many flaws like uneven character screening time and half assed development were added. If they gave a little less for example to the twins and more to Chlorinde or Wriothesley it could have been well, or less of Arlecchino and more to skirk since that part was also not complete.
The interesting part could have been Arlecchino or the meropide, perhaps even skirk but these scenes were barely fully flushed or written well. Everyone seems to only be remembering the Furina part but nothing other than that, which once more proves how boring and or irrelevant everything else was.
Thank god I'm not "people"
Cuz when I think Fontaine was peak I think about multiple Acts
I was extremely hooked especially during Act I and II because we were uncovering about Vacher and the Primordial Water through investigation and logical thinking and I love it when the story makes you think like that!
I feel like people also blank out the entiriry of 4.3 which was very painful as a lot of it was a lot of busy work to learn a single plot point
Fotanie high points were good but I would say Sumeru is much better overall in terms of consistent quality
What about Navia's arc? What about fortress of meropide crushing, industrial prison enviroment? I loved all my time spend on AQ in Fontaine
Nah in genshin its better than any other archon quest
i want Genshin to do more showing rather than telling, less people are likely to skip if they see the characters move and actually interact with the environment rather than reuse animations for when a character wants to express something but then why work more when you can work less and make more money?
if only they summarized the yapping/filler to get to the point, not have Paimon repeat everything she hears and other characters throwing words i bet 80% of people playing Genshin never heard of or don't know about.
I hope that Japan will give Genshin anime a good writers and producers who understand all these issues and know how to fix it
im glad you mention the little things that also feel so major and offputting but are just very little like the lack of follow up to major events when little things based on preexisting mechanics (such as withering zones) that could easily make the narrative flow out better!!!!!! yapfest incoming
i personally feel this kind of dissonance with npc models!!!
theyre very generic even when comparing to other games npc models, the quality is ridiculously crappy, and the game constantly CONSTANTLY wants you to get emotionally involved in them when the very pretty playable or otherwise important characters are standing right there, i bet people are still saying signora will be playable due to how rare it is to get a truly unique model and just not be monetized thru gacha
mhy is DROWNING in money and they cant even smooth out these models and i just refuse to feel anything for them, at least chascas sister did look a little better (mentioning her in a quality complaint.. girl deserved a cutscene for a certain moment of the 5.1 quest oh my god) but when you start saying "at least" about a game making this much money you have identified a problem. amen mihoyo at LEAST make their faces consistent with the playable characters i feel like the npcs are designed for comic relief only and forced to act serious and it doesnt work
i always feel like im nitpicking about this detail but i cant get invested in so many important story moments, even things my friends and other people have been deeply affected by like cariberts quest and the dain chasm quest (fair enough the genshin burnout was getting me but the khaenrian npcs were my LAST STRAWWW) or honestly even dunyarzad for the first quest or two. i just felt pissed as hell watching mhy try to make me get attached to npcs like they were playable characters and it makes me mad how stingy they are with giving characters detailed design (which is what makes me hate the npcs instead of giving their writing a fair chance rather than me immediately thinking their lack of design implies a lack of depth in general)
in other words: Oh My God The NPC Eyes Are Horrendous!!!
Not to mention how the youkai in that one event were literally just standard child npc models with masks on their faces 😬
@@raptori oh my god i forgot about those guys. i just looked at them on the wiki to see if i remembered and the kappa one is killing me
honestly the stark contrast between npcs vs playable characters is, without exaggeration, so immersion breaking. sometimes it feels like the characters don't belong in the same world. i know the "main" characters are supposed to stand out but nearly all of them look like they're cosplayers compared to others in teyvat. i stopped playing genshin a longgg time ago but the difference was always so jarring to me. that said i've been playing zzz since launch and never had the same problem. for any criticism i've seen of the agents having "boring" designs, i think they're excellent. the characters actually feel like they're regular citizens of new eridu. and the npcs - while still using some presets - look actually NORMAL, their designs are sometimes as interesting as the playable characters'. i didn't expect something like that from a hoyo game but i was pleasantly surprised
My problem with the gacha aspects harming characters and their development it's that every single playable character has to be portrayed in a way players may want to pull for them. That makes it so the very few characters that are actually flawed their flaws are incredible superficial, in addition to the game having next to none unabbiguously antagonistic characters or making extremely forced and undeserved "redention arcs" like what happaned to Scaramouche. I was always like "wow so Childe is the bad guy? Ah no, he is not" "Raiden is defenitely the antagonist- Ah no, there is an explanation to that" "Hey at least signora is certainly evil... oh, they already killed her off" "Well this time Scaramouche is CLEARLY an antagonistic character, right? RIGHT?" And althought gray characters are always interesting, not having clear antagonistic figures in my opinion hurts the narrative a lot.
In the end all of this makes the roster of characters suffer a reverse cheerleader effect in which even if characters individually feel cool and deep when looking at the full picture Genshin Impact has a very shallow and generic roster of charcaters. Like I played through liyue and thought "wow Zhongli is a very interesting character. 3 years later after finishing Fountaine I was like "wow, they really did a good job with Neuvilette, what a cool character". Then I thought a bit about it and realized those two are essentially the same character even if they involvement on the narrative is different.
Yeah, I think it would be more bold if they were willing to actually make a pullable character a villain. And have more well written villains. Not whatever they did to Arlecchino. Even if she turned out evil, people would have pulled for her. Hell, people are still waiting on Signora's return.
What I've been thinking about lately is Genshin's characters and characterization, which is an important element of storytelling. Xilonen is the character that made me start thinking about this. In the story (Archon quests and tribal chronicles), she's presented as a crafts-person. She's an artisan who takes her work very seriously, but also needs to take frequent breaks to replenish. (I think many people who do creative work can recognize that). But in gameplay, she's presented as a musician--not just any musician, but a DJ (Yun Jin and Xinyan are both musicians, but types of musicians that aren't extremely popular these days). Those two things, being an artisan and being a musician, are totally unrelated, and in fact there's absolutely nothing in the story that mentions that she even has any interest in music. There's ONE story in her Profile that tries to excuse it, but it feels like a pretty lame and arbitrary insertion into an otherwise coherent character story. It's hard not to think that what happened was the marketing department decided that an artisan wasn't cool or sexy enough for mass appeal, and told the gameplay designers to ignore everything the writers put so much careful thought into. This feels like a change from most Genshin characters up to now, whose gameplay has usually had some relation to their personalities.
(Edit: I'm not saying it's impossible to believe that someone could be both an artisan and a musician. I'm saying it's impossible to believe that Xilonen could be both, given how much time she needs for naps.)
She also create flying guns in her spear time.... lol
i don't know if she's also responsible for the Archon Bike but i cannot imagine what contrived explanation they will have for that monstrosity.
(they probably won't even bother since those who are lapping it up won't mind)
@@binsarm9026 Ha! I bet there will be a mention of the bike being one of her inventions. What the explanation should probably say is “Wuthering Waves has motorcycles and we are afraid of losing customers.”
Say thanks to natlan
@@callimas they literally haven’t lost that many and even if they did. Those people were already not playing the game anymore. Not sure why some people think a bike is impossible to exist when Cloud retainer has made one before.
I've been going through a lot of different videos on "why genshin / hsr / wuwa sucks", and almost all of them miss the mark from a critical standpoint... except for a few, and your videos are among those exceptions. This is a really thorough and thoughtful analysis on the subject.
Great video 🙏
I think the main reason why more complicated changes to the overworld aren't implemented is just because of the rapid pace of Genshin's content. Like, the fact that there are new patches every 6 weeks and new areas at least every 12 weeks with very few delays is kinda amazing, but also limits what they can actually do. Games like RDR2 or BG3 took years to make and so they were able to add more depth and interactability to the overworld. I think if Genshin tried to do that they would have to considerably slow down their pace of releases which would frustrate a lot of fans.
i also think it because of limitations for mobile users.
I did the ixlel dragonlord side quest in Natlan and it was the most compelling non-dialogue quest I have experienced thus far. Apart from talking with the dragonlord for a few moments, there weren’t any big cutscenes and I barely noticed that a compelling plot was being inserted into my regular overworld exploration-it felt like I was the one exploring a cave, not watching someone else do it. I guess it only took four years for them to start cutting down on the lengthy cutscenes and adding non-cutscene dialogue mechanics!
All the scattered notes also gave a very Lovecraft survival horror vibe too which I liked, but the ultimate reveal could have been scarier to match it
The problem is, Genshin is not doing world building but nation building. When they introduced the concept of fake memories, I lost trust in the story (the unknown god encounter could be fake)
Traveller does not get affected by fake memories or memory loss , where you even paying attention to the story
@ahmedmubarak751 girl bye u gagged
@@ahmedmubarak751yes they do??? The caribert quest… SPOILERS
Caribert literally wiped their memory and they couldn’t remember their reunion with their twin. Even though he put a picture in their pocket at the end of the quest, the traveler was most likely clueless on how they even met their twin.
@@ahmedmubarak751The traveler's memories cannot be trusted, this has been said and shown before in the story. The traveler has missing memories of their own, the blinding headaches they get remember?
@@sky-t3imore so of the fact that the other twin is somehow native to Tevyat by the fact that it is recorded in the Irminsul and not one of the descenders. Perhaps the Traveler has false memories or something.
"Hoyo's writing style often makes me wonder if the writers are paid per word." You're an icon for that. I've been having a hard time enjoying Genshin as time goes on mostly because of the dialog bloat and that statement perfectly sums in up lol. Loved the video, this was a great watch~!
The comparison with Arcane is right on the money. The Fleuve and Meropide felt very underwhelming.
The dual city set up was something that got me REALLY excited when we first landed in Fonaine, and I was sos ure it wuld paly a big part in the Archon quest, so I think that's why I'm doubly disappointed that didn't happen 😔
@@saurusnessit's too bad too because they used the class divide in those Fontaine locations in world quests, a few story quests, and as backstory for several characters, but this never was brought forward in the archon quest. I have a suspicion that this partly because focusing too much on class divide would be uncomfortable for some rich/whale players and turn them off? It's the only thing that makes sense because they spent a lot of time on it and weaving it into a lot of the key Fontainian characters' history.
The more I think about it the more I'm sure that's really what it is and it's like gacha and mobile concession issues rear their ugly heads again ..
@@saurusness I cannot agree less. There is no reason to touch on that story point because the story is not about that? The class divide was utilized in world quests, backstories... What do y'all even mean? Does every story about metropolies have to be about the divide between rich and poor? Does justice as a concept always come down to material wealth? Can't you explore other things?
Meropide felt like a children’s daycare
@@StigerPLThats the thing right? The class divide doesn’t exist outside world quests. It’s not something miniscule I can see getting excluded from the main storyline, it’s something that affects everyone in Fontaine. Thing is we don’t need it or want it like you’re saying. Not every story needs a wealth divide. But the devs put it in so we’re wondering why they then decided to ignore it. Or why put it in at all if this was the direction they were going to go.
i loged in genshin today after 10 months of hiatus
i decided to explore a little and unlock some waypoint
colour me surprised an automatic event playing and some random NPC i dont care about talking about something irelevant, and it continues into some random flashback that i never wanted to part of
you know what i did after clicking ruthlessly while roling my eyes?
ALT+F4, thats what i did.
they wanted us to care for their random ass story that doesnt have anything to do with the whole main narative, by forcing us to read such bloated nonsense of long text, with minimum coreography, i dont have time for such bullsht unfortunately, nor the patience, it was ran out earlier this year
Yeah, I feel the same. I love the world and think it's really beautiful but the unskippable bloated slow dialog is like a cage I can't get out of when playing the game. It's legit a block for me, last time I tried to play Genshin Chenyu vale just came out and I couldn't bear the dialogues anymore and just kind of quit for good. I played Witcher 3 recently and was shocked to see how cutscenes and dialogues felt interesting and funny, and I actually liked watching them. It opened my eyes to how robotic and bland Genshin sounds.
@@sanxxxx Chenyu Vale is what made you quit? I thought it was one of the better side regions, beautiful landscape and interesting local stories. Maybe you just don't like the game as a whole and needed to convince yourself of that
What's really funny is you missed so much new choreography and new content, and great story in Natlan, but you only spent a tiny bit of time in there.
Genshin's lore legit could have led to a story in the same league as RDR2, Horizon, etc... such a shame that it's been a miss so far. Really curious how it'll come across in the anime!
the potential is there!
potential is there but not that far, they had potential but after 4 years and a lot of burnout i lost hope, and the game seems to follow the lighter side formula maybe after the 4 year difference between the first mention of fake sky and the newest one it will lead somewhere but who knows
The anime has been put aside for priority over the anime studio, they won't take the risk. It will be complete when ready... that is a trouble for us, they are taking too much years and Hoyo played the Marvel card "Show prior before ready and not probably soon (so whats the point then?)"
@@albepaidman the anime will be horrible but we all know genshin fans will say it's the best.
Genshin lore is all over the place half of it doesn't even make sense, no where near Rdr2 level.
I think every time Genshin WAS subtle it went unnoticed
Yeha they dont trust us but it shows they are capable because they are subtle in world quests
Well said, very thoughtful.
I completely agree with the Fontaine take. I was so excited when I saw the over-world / under-world dichotomy. It's like Arcane, FFVII, and it's a tried tested and true trope: how does the other half live? That should have been part of the story. Nah let's just go to Court for 45 minutes straight (and if you exit you have to repeat it all... yeah that happened to me). I think Fontaine was wasted in Court. Instead of wondering how the rich/poor of Fontaine live and how does that square with "justice" would have been a much better way to work in the Court. Show poor people not doing well in life, so they steal, so they go to Court, get convicted and go to Meropide. I know that's a little too much like real life, but it's a better story than what we got. Hoyo didn't have to change that much.
Then the story in 4.1 could have had us follow some of the same convicted in prison and see how life is going (apparently Meropide isn't all that bad and the people get a second chance at life). That way the 5.1 story could have been relevant to the larger plot beyond and "then Tartaglia escaped, I guess we're here for nothing" and "oh no the primordial see is spilling out... oh wait, Neuvillette took care of it for us". 4.1 didn't need to be a filler patch, you could have seen Wrio and Neuvi being the two rehabilitators of Fontaine... maybe you don't always get the result you want in court, but you get the second chance in Meropide, and when you come out, you're free and maybe even forgiven.
But instead, we had to sit through 3 too long trials. 2 didn't matter at all, and 1 was actually great. I think the trial of Furina (4.2) was great, maybe I even cried a little. It's the perfect way to expose her fraud, but not cheapening her contributions to Focalors's plan. But Lyney's and Navia's trials (4.0) were complete wastes of time. Nothing we did mattered. Lyney (and Lynette and Freminet) can come and go from the Fortress of Meropide any time they want (see 4.1).
Catching that weirdo who was dissolving women meant nothing to Fontaine at all - seriously, life just went on. Fine, Navia got some closure, but her father is already dead and we didn't know him and we didn't get to see him and Navia. We can only see that people miss him. How cool would it have been to actually see the duel with Clorinde? To know he was innocent, couldn't prove it, and would rather die than let Navia be shamed? How cool would it have been to see Navia take up her father's burden at the head of the Rosula in the hour of her grief? Her father's body wouldn't even be cold and people would be clamoring to her for answers instead of grieving with her... Navia would be even better as a character.
And I say all this not to take a dump on Fontaine's story, but to explain (1) how poorly it was told and (2) how some simple tweaks would have made it better with the world they build and the tools they already had. I absolutely hated seeing everyone gush over "how good" Fontaine's story was. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I just kept saying "I cannot be the only one who thinks it was mediocre at best". All I saw was missed opportunities, plots that went nowhere and glimpses of what could have been and should have been a far more compelling story to build up what Fontaine actually was.
Two more points: could you imagine if the Research institute blew up when we were in Fontaine? Can you imagine how cool it would have been to see the map change? What if we had a part in it - helping a scientist who was trying to save Fontaine from the primordial sea's return, only have him/her blow up half the country on the brink of that life-saving discovery. Now imagine if that scientist was one of the parents of a playable character who finds out Traveller had a hand in that disaster? How would they trust us? How would they ever get closure. Maybe we'd find a way to seal the primordial see in 5.1 ourselves, so we'd have some agency in the story ... but that's what I mean. Hoyo is always "this close" to something genuinely good, and then the story takes zero risks, and just has repetition, boring plots that go nowhere, and it feels like a waste of time.
Hoyo clearly had no trouble exploring, trauma, death and the lies we tell ourselves in 4.0-4.2 (very mature themes for a kids game, or even for an adult game), there was no reason they couldn't make Traveller a better part of it and engaged us more as players instead of just dropping line after line of dialogue (or text) on us to the point where my eyes glazed over.
And that's just my take on what is generally considered to be Genshin's "best" story/archon quest, 4.0-4.2. I could write a book on how to fix Natlan or Inazuma, but I'll leave it there. I think Hoyo really needs to lean into the great world it built and let the Traveller be part of that development of the world instead of just passing through only to help here and there.
For me I liked Natlan way better than Inazuma and would go on my way to ignore Inazuma for Natlan. As for Inazuma…
I must say if it wasn’t that the Shogun is pretty, people wouldn’t care much for Raiden. Cause all I could think was “What the hell is wrong with her?” And wishing we could’ve kept her sister.
Although I do have my criticisms of Natlan. Like why isn’t our buddy’s story voicelined when many parts were very much interesting compared to the archon quest. Why did they sideline Kacchina so fast for Xilonen? I wish we had kachina be our active player much like Amber, diluc and Kaeya was on the monstad one. Why the heck we have to care for the dumb dragon who’s with kinnich? Or how Citlali has been alive for so many years despite immortality not being a thing as she was present and not somewhere away from
Dude is expecting Hollywood level story from a gachaa game 💀💀
I am just a simple man... sumeru and fontaine is good according to my point.... yeah they have flaws but if you think about it.... every story has flaws and plot holes.... not everyone will view the story like that....calm down
"I hate how everyone praises the fontaine story" bro they don't view the story like you.... your criticism is just "I have expected that but it didn't work out like that".....
@@Supreme_Bargainer LOL - if only Hoyo could deliver Hollywood. :P
To summarize my actual criticism: It's more about missed opportunities. Some small tweaks with what Hoyo already had built would have made the story a lot better. Version 4 was brimming with unused potential. Like Hoyo already wrote the back-story for Navia and Clorinde - the duel with Navia's father that changed both their lives and their relationship forever. But I kept wondering: why wasn't THAT the actual story? Hoyo already wrote it! It was in the game already!
They just didn't put it front and centre where it should / could have been. Did we really have to play D&D with Clorinde and make macarons with Navia when we could have had that drama with the duel?
Why Fontaine 4.2 story was basically great was because a lot of us figured out Furina was a fraud / impostor and there was a real Archon somewhere in Fontaine, but it's not her. All of Fontaine oozes that duality / deception: pneuma / ousia, rich / poor, just / unjust, truth / lies. Lyney and Lynette sell you on deception, Furina is clearly trying to deceive everyone about something. Nothing is as it seems in Fontaine. Arlecchino saw the secret, others probably knew or suspected. The walls were closing in for a couple of patches and we got the climax Hoyo had built.
I can agree to disagree with anyone on this - but my main criticism is that Hoyo can write better stories and they do write better stories in the same game in the same patch. It's just weird that so often the story they put front and centre isn't even the best one they wrote (and the best story they wrote is sidelined or reduced to lore).
@@dcscruz2970 I agree Natlan is miles better than Inazuma. My critique of Inazuma is the same as yours: Raiden Shogun is basically a sociopath and we're supposed to forget it / understand why she is that way and make peace with it. No... she has to earn her forgiveness and she doesn't even try. Shame... Raiden is one of my favorite kits in the game too.
Natlan's story is both too short and too long. It's too long in the sense that in e.g. 5.1, we spent 2-3 hours listening to Citlali scold Ororon, which was a waste of time. It's too short because the war felt rushed. That war - done better - should have been the whole patch. I was getting Mass Effect 3 vibes from it. I saw the potential but it was squandered. There should have clean-up/mourning after it was done. Such wasted potential.
I could say the same thing for Kinich's quest and that tainted dragon. We kill that same boss every week. Is this really a story beat? I wouldn't have made a story around the Pyro Regisvine... so why this boss? By the end of that quest I just wanted to kill the stupid dragon so we would stop talking about it. That quest was pure filler.
Meanwhile we got too short an intro to Mualani's tribe and life in Natlan. The contrast was good: by day we have hot springs, but at night the Abyss attacks. What an amazing concept! I would taken that to the bank! Can you imagine how cool Natlan would be if there were more enemies at night? Abyss attacks all over the map? Time-limited events / open world events about Abyss invasions? So much wasted potential.
@John_II You are just hating at this point....the first acts were character development for navia and clorinde.... they did a good job with that.... why are you so complaining just because what you expect didn't happen...??
I see Genshin as a Light Novel presented in a video game format and In order to love Genshin's story and lore u have to be patient like the world building of this game is insanely good but all of that is locked behind these long world quests and other in-game materials that u have to actively find and experience for urself.
Someone that understands the lore will have a vastly different experience than someone that just plays the Archon quests and that's it...But yeah when U said that genshin has bloated dialogues I completely agree tho Natlan actually feels as a great improvement like I don't remember anything being bloated like I did in Fontane every single WQ and AQ has been incredible so far and I have yet to touch the new 5.2 WQs..!!!
nah fr tho, genshin is very dialogue heavy and i can see why that's not to everyone's taste. But it's weird for me because i hardly relate to any of these complaints because im always a 100% enganged and interested. Maybe I just like reading walls of text 😅
But being dialogue heavy is not a problem i ahve played some vn so in good vn the dialogues are actually well written i don't think genshin should spoon feed every little thing about the story rather than let us explore
that is just not right at all, if you read good light novel that is. Trying reading stuff like spice and wolf and then go back to Genshin you wouldn't even think hoyo writer ever wrote a story before
the story itself its so good, but the way they do it is really annoying. 70% of the dialogues are random stuff who doesn't contribute to the lore, neither the imersion of the world.
I’m only in the sumeru archon quest rn but so glad I’ve finally gotten there lol, there were obviously elements of the story that felt compelling before this point but ngl a lot of it felt so boring, badly written, etc. sort of like they just want to waste time :/
That's what it feels like!
the Samsara was a real pain for me that i ended up disliking Nahida so much.
i won the 50/50 for her but "kept her imprisoned in Surasthana" !!
i must have gone two weeks before i finally used her !! 😂
@@binsarm9026 omg samsara is to this day in m opinion the worst story quest experience in the game! I absolutely adore and love Nahida more than any other character but that quest will forever haunt me. When my alt account got to that point I had to mentally prep myself and organise plenty of other distractions to get through it for the second time 😂
@saurusness when we were first faced with the deduction process i thought it would be very engaging but it got so sloppy in the logic setup that it wasn't really possible to deduce things and it became just a brute force exercise of going thru the options.
my antipathy stemmed from her saying she respected her people but then proceeds to coerce them with mental manipulation.
@@saurusness Hell nah, fontaine archon quest act 3 was and is still is for me, the worst archon quest act, the only good thing that came out of it were arlecchino's introduction. I think the samsara loop is one of the best acts for me because it serves the purpose of the plot and gave light towards many mysteries that we were questioning throughout the act.
Only just starting the video, but I'll say that I absolutely hated Mondstadt through Inazuma and it isn't until Natlan that I've actually 'liked' the storytelling and not just the themes. Sumeru and Fontaine are both steps up from the first 3 regions, but they still feel bloated in the moment, which leads to me just wanting them to wrap it up whenever going through them. Natlan has been the first time in the main story where I'm fine locking in and paying attention throughout because the pacing is tolerable now.
Part of the problem is the incredibly low quality cutscene direction. The storytelling in this game is 90% the characters standing in a circle and yapping at each other, which is boring and is frustrating when you know how much money MHY actually has but budget titles made by exponentially less devs and availability to resources put in the work.
Also, like with how I feel about Dark Souls, 'lore' is not story. The sidequests also being largely unrelated to the main story makes them feel pretty pointless as well, as they won't matter to the actual narrative for the most part.
Edit: Glad to see Fontaine's ending show up, because I felt largely the same for the same reason. I also did not give 2 craps about Folcalors because literally who? If the game wanted me to actually feel bad, they'd have had the stones to kill Furina, but since the only people that actually suffered permanent losses were NPCs (RIP to some real ones though), it further enforces the idea that, as long as a character is playable, they are under no risk of a serious consequence in their story, so the story putting them in situations that should be risky ring hollow.
Edit Edit: I saw a clip of Tectone about that Arlecchino animated video, actually! I don't follow him, but he brought up specifically how annoying it was that they released the Arlecchino vid before Arlecchino actually dropped, so the entirety of her subquest is a complete waste of time if you've already seen it because you already know and the ingame version does nothing with that information to make it interesting otherwise.
well, yeah. Mondstadt and liyue has been exists since 1.0, which mean they're beginning part of the game and it's understandable they're not good.
Inazuma... Uh, let's say it's so bad that Genshin decide to stop cramming their story artc into 3 parts
@@Renteka-Bond yea I personally didn’t really care about rukkhadevata and focalor’s deaths but how those deaths would impact nahida and furina two characters we actually know and give a shit about not 2 randos we knew a grand total of 5 minutes and we never even met Focalors it was literally only Neuvillette who got to meet her not us the traveler
they've been comfortable with the "don't show just tell" narratives, prime example is Furina and Nahida's story where if you literally spamming space to speed up the dialogue, you'll most likely be confused on what the heck's going on when suddenly presented with what supposed to be a "heartbreaking" cinematic cutscene.
Yes, the story has much more potential that sadly often goes unused and unexplored.
Instead we get slop quests with padded or uninteresting stories and dialogues.
Truly the definition of wasted potential.
"I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards." Might as well be a quote from the Genshin writing team.
Writing this comment before I actually finish the video, so if some of these things are mentioned already, that's why!
My biggest issue with HYV stories, as an avid hater of them (depending on the case), is 100% presentation--I'm really glad you highlighted that first thing. I have ADHD, so I find it INSANELY hard to stay interested when the portrayal of the story, no matter how intriguing, is SO. DAMN. BORING. It's really disappointing, because I WANT to love Genshin. I WANT to be excited for every new archon quest. I really, really do. But I just can't, because it'll always feel like a 5 hour sit-down-and-stare-at-a-screen-with-paint-drying-on-it session rather than... playing an enjoyable game.
The only times this game has been able to keep my attention well were during Childe's story quest (since that one was more concise), the Sabzeruz Festival from the Sumeru archon quest (people usually dislike this one, which surprised me), the trials of Fontaine's archon quest, and Kaveh's hangout (mainly because he's my favorite and I relate to him in every single way). And even then, I feel like my draw to those stories should be the expectation; it just makes me more bored and disappointed with every other story. And that's not even MENTIONING just how frustrated I am with HYV for having amazingly written character lore and just... Not using it. The story we play through in game almost NEVER touches on Diluc and Kaeya's relationship outside of lore hidden away from the actual gameplay or little lines barely hinting at it. A story about what actually happened between them--a look into the past--would have been SO much more impactful. Yet, we don't have that. This is why I privilege fan content FAR above the actual game. Because the fans actually care about these aspects.
My biggest gripe was with Inazuma, mainly because the first hour or so of it got me thinking that it was going to be a metaphor for mental illness because of the way people get their visions taken away. Only for it to be used as an additional plot device rather than an overarching theme (it's also inconsequential, considering that in Itto's trailer, when he goes to retrieve his vision, he's completely fine). I could be wrong about that having (barely) any connection to the themes of Inazuma, but I also didn't feel the impact of its use in the story if that's the case--which is an even BIGGER problem. When your audience can't feel connected to your story and the points that build up the theme to be as strong as it could be, you've failed.
I love the characters in Genshin, their designs, the world building, and at times, the story. But I will never be able to enjoy how the story is presented. I cannot stress enough just how much I feel like I'm watching paint dry while playing through archon quests. And the only reason I do it just because I don't want to fall behind. I'm really glad I'm laying off the game more recently, because it's been... so nice to just NOT deal with that boredom. But I still play Star Rail and have similar issues there. The only difference is that the stories in Star Rail have a lot more structure and get me at least mildly focused compared to Genshin (sometimes, even highly invested. If Penacony's story wasn't 8 HOURS LONG, it definitely would have impressed me).
Anyway, I'm gonna unpause the video now! I really appreciate it so far. Those sentiments you shared right at the start about loving fiction struck a chord so hard with me--never let that go!
Edit: YES. THEMES. THEEEEMES. Themes are the most important part of ANY story. They're my FAVORITE part of any story. They're WHY I consume stories!!!! They're why I WRITE stories!!! AND GENSHIN FLOPS ON THEM SO HARD!!!! GHHHHHHHH!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MENTIONING THEM BECAUSE.... GHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Thank you for this it was a pleasure to read 💜🥰
"They're why I WRITE stories!!! AND GENSHIN FLOPS ON THEM SO HARD!!!!"
Lol. Write a story better than the baizhu or Jeht quests. I'll read it.
WE'RE MATCHING ENERGIES ABOUT THIS SO HARD RN. I HAVE HIGH FUNCTIONING ADHD TOO, AND I AGREEEEEEEEEE🗣
One thing, I do think the writers would benefit from movie inspiration when it comes to their writing. Theres the 'show, don't tell' aspect that they miss so much, and they did bridge that a bit in Fontaine, but then it goes away to yap and yap yap yap yknow?
they might do good with more time and consultants on their pacing, thats one of my biggest problems with genshins writing as well. It is OCEAN DEEP with potential we never see :( as someone who loves writing it makes me sad
edit: also i agree with you, they keep adding more and more characters we do NOT need and then others get neglected.
Example of characters insanely important to the story but are missing screentime (NOT limited events mind you) or do not have dedicated storylines that flesh them out
:
Albedo, Venti, Lisa, Kaeya, Alice, Ningguang, Dain (yes!), raiden ei pops up every now and then, and the entire natlan cast as of now...at least thats my opinion. I would like to know what others think
I love the worldbuilding. I hate the writing. SO MANY CUTSCENES
Storytelling, Hell they can't do characters right. Ganyu might be the worst written character I ever seen.
Let's not forget Nilou
My one big thing, HOW DOES A PLATEAU FLOOD?? Genshin and plot holes are like besties and i'm sick of it, yet I still play this game in hopes that it'll get better.
My own hc to explain the flood was that Fontaine's whole floating area sank, and when they showed us water level coming down its actually just fontaine rising onto the sky once more
@@bubblesparks That doesn't make sense. Why would it sink when it's a Plateau? If it did, it's the same thing of a tectonic earthquake that would have created a tsunami to areas around it. Guess Yilong Wharf to Chenyu Vale would have gotten flooded.
No clue, just as how the people of Fontaine in the sewers should have died from getting stuck under debris of everything in the city before Neuvilette "saved" them in his cleansing. So many plot holes.
@@diahprasetianingtyas6822 i mean, teyvat has its own logic lol
Even their sky breaks so why couldnt fontaine be able to sink 🤷♀️
At least it makes more sense to me that way than wondering where the flood flowed down from
Also i forgot abt the existence of chenyu vale ngl. But what supports my hc was the shells found in the desert cave on our way to the tp near fontaine's big harbor. I assumed fontaine was on equal lvl with the desert before it eventually separated and rise a bit higher
@@bubblesparks That it does. I personally hate that Hoyo just avoids consequences of hazards created by post explosion/nature catastrophies. For me who does study to prevent/lessen casualties/injuries from happening in the first place is so irratating.
Even the simple fact that Liyue was in one piece after Ningguang made a tsunami impact with her Jade Chamber that would have destroyed at minimal the lower section of the harbor. Could have explained it with adapti tech that shielded the city or something, but nope. Nothing.
Fontaine has been aware of a "prophecy the nation will sink" since hundreds of years. No mention of even a simple safety drill? Zilch. Zero. What you have is ppl like the fatui and Wriothesly being more prepared than even those governing the main Fontaine.
Fontaine story looks cool om the surface, but even I can't defend a lot of things with "Teyvat has its own laws." Those people in the sewers surviving? Unlikely, they would have sunk being crushed by the mixing of debris of crushed housing, etc. that was in the sewers before Neuvilette came back from the Narwhal battle.
It's why I'm just like in Natlan people are now caring that people are dying? Really? That's only we felt/seen the numbers of ppl dying. There was a civil war in Inazuma, did ppl even care? Nope. Cuz Hoyo showed us nothing. All tell, no show. Lazy storytelling as its finest.
I think genshin really took inspiration from deltarune’s theme “your actions don’t matter”
The dialogue is literally the same options or something they don’t even affect how the characters think or treat us
Some dialogue don’t even try hiding the theme 🤡
“Are you okay?”
“Are you alright?”
if this was their intention i wish they honed in on it as much as deltarune does, but in genshin it feels inconsequential and uninteresting…. in deltarune its like a cool 4th wall break and its like the opposite of undertale where out choices DID matter, genshin its 2 of the same dialogue and if u pick either its the same reaction and nothing else
Yeah hoyo could never 💀
Most NPC’s responses to our dialogue choice answer BOTH options even if the options were slightly different anyway
“Haha just cook paimon”
“Idk about cooking”
Their response
“lol”
“Paimon come here let me cook you”
It basically fits both if that makes sense
Sometimes it feels that everything interesting happened hundreds of years ago and nothing of note was happening in the recent history.
The worst offender being the Cataclysm and everything else that happened 500 years ago.
To be fair, "everything intersting happened hundreds of years ago" is a trope that's present in like 99% of fantasy pieces of media and frankly I can understand why- complex world-building makes the world feel richer and alive.
Also, in Genshin specifically, there is a reason why the story is set now and not hundreds of years ago. The Gods' Age is at an end, the intersting stories are but just legends and humans are ready to progress, but they are unable to bc of Heavenly Principles. Celestia's fall will be a culmination of all that happened before and a mark of a new age, that's why it's worth setting the story here in the timeline
Also, I would like challenge that "nothing of note is happening now". The Tsaritsa's plan, Rex Lapis' "death", Vision Hunt and Sakkoku decree, Akademiya building a god, Fontaine's prophecy, Natlan fighting the Abyss are all the events that are happening now in the timeline. They're not comparable to the scale of the Archon War or Doom of Khaenrri'ah but they are not supposed to be.
That said , the reason why it might seem that nothing of note is happening now is that these events lack gravitas and usually are not talked about outside the nation that it happened in. That's definately a failure of the writing :/
Hoyo will talk about the cataclysm when they have characters to sell
This was a really good watch. I like how well you articulated so many of your opinions and I do agree with most them. However, one thing that I find a bit surprising whenever I watch a critical think piece about Genshin's story, is that there never seems to be a discussion that tries to evaluate Genshin’s storytelling in relation to the massive technical and logistical scope of the game. I’m no game dev, but I would think Genshin’s live service and open world nature has to have a direct effect on the quality of the story and content that can be properly written, fleshed out, approved, storyboarded, animated, localized and dubbed in time before the release each new patch. Especially when considering the 45 day windows between each version.
One could make the argument that a company that makes billions could simply throw money to hire more people and make it work, but I think there’s a limit to how much time one can buy even with unlimited resources given how aggressive their deadlines are.
Now, I don’t think what I’m trying to say invalidates your criticisms, but I’d love to see if you had any opinions on this.
I've always felt like Genshin being a live service game was ignored in certain conversations. Not referencing this video in particular. I truly wonder what Hoyoverse had planned prior to Genshin's release in June of 2020.
How much of the story did they have figured out?
What characters did they have planned?
How were they planning on building up the world?
It seems like Hoyoverse was just making it up as they go, from how the storytelling has been going, thus far. Like, only as recent as 2022 in Sumeru did they seem to have a more clear idea of what they wanted. The way I would've done it was have certain stories written and voiced a year or two prior to its release. So, in theory, production of the game's story, at least for mondstadt, should have started in 2016-2018. I feel like that could left time to do Liyue and flesh it out properly.
@@Hesgot_apoint definitely agree with the first two paragraphs. I remember a video where one of the devs was talking about how during initial development of the game, even the most inconsequential graphical update would break the game's engine because the team had no experience with games of that scale. So yeah, I'm sure Genshin's team had to make several compromises just so they could get Mondstadt and Liyue ready for launch.
I would even argue that Inazuma was significantly cut down in scope when you consider that its production most likely took place as early as 2020 during peak pandemic and continued into the launch of the game. Which could explain the strange pacing of that particular archon quest.
Now, while I do think Sumeru marks the point where Hoyo's approach to storytelling became a lot less convoluted, I don't think Hoyo was making the story up as they went prior to Sumeru.
I think that the lack of density in Mondstadt and Liyue's AQs were a deliberate choice to encourage players to focus more on exploration and to make the basic story concepts a lot more digestible + ease of development. Same with Liyue - although I do think Liyue's AQ felt directionless in comparison, so I definitely agree with the idea they could've benefitted from having extra time to cook.
Natlan avoiding showing consequences of what you didn't do is just not true lol. During the war part of the aq you went to the areas you at first chose to not go to and saw the dead bodies that were the consequence of your actions, after the arcong quest is done there literally are multiple npc's missing some of which you regularly interacted with before the acron quest as they were involved in daily commissions. You saw the consequences of you failing to save people (the optional objectives in each location during war part) at the end before mavuica blasted the abyss goysosomething in the sky like the mother of that one guy that asks you to look for her dying. There literally is a memorial of people that died during the war. There were actual consequences of our actions in this one. Ofcaurse it doesn't come close to proper rpg's etc but genshin is a liveservice gacha game
i cant even finish the natlan archon quest at this point 😭😭 all that dialogue in this game i went through after playing for 3 years makes me just just uninterested in any story they want to present
Yeah, I literally stopped the Natlan Archon Quest right after Kachina defeated Mualani.
same, as well with HSR.
What is Teyvat. That is the question keeping me going and almost fully answered, me seeing a landmass right behind the moon/sun got me going at launch. Everything else was just a bonus
The only thing keeping me going in the seeing how they decide to design certain regions landscape and architecture. Mainly just for taking photos.
"Yall got any executions?"
"We got something conceptually interesting."
"Damn..."
Unfortunately some players do seem to need the repeated dialogue- otherwise they get confused. Genshin is an interesting case because it is trying to appeal to such a wide audience. That audience includes people who only half pay attention to the story and lore and so I think they don't want to make Archon Quests with a lot of missable subtext lest those players become completely confused. But a lot of the world quests do have some great subtext which is cool
Great video- summed up a majority of my issues with Genshin's writing and execution. I would consider myself "in the middle" of the argument as well. I think a lot of us fans get so heated about this topic because all the pieces that make up Genshin are *potentially* great or even amazing. By pieces I mean its worldbuilding, it's environment and its characters.
Everything is there, it just needs to be executed properly. Sadly Genshin's quality of execution is always so...Spotty. Cutscenes are an easy example where they tend to mess up on a lot. There are improvements (animated cut scenes have become better over time) but Genshin still resorts to the stale "have the characters stand there and move awkwardly as they talk" cut scenes that take up 80% of the quests.
That and for some reason in these same scenes, they don't show actions that require the characters making contact with another character or an object. Like how they don't show Mavuika and Capitano's fist bump or Citlali punching Ororan. Or in Xilonen's tribal quest, they don't even animate an NPC *knocking on a door.* As much as I want to give Genshin's dev team a lot of "benefit of the doubt", whoever animates these cut scenes really needs to talk to the ZZZ or HSR dev team and get some tips.
And this is just one of the things I am critical about. I really do see Genshin getting better in the coming years but I can't help but be peeved by the mistakes they're still making up till now.
What do you mean talk to the HSR dev team? HSR is much, much worse in that regard.
Hsr's cutscenes are not that good, and the character movements are also stale here. But i agree heavily on zzz tho
One of my main gripes with the story is still the Unknown god stuff because she hasn’t been mentioned since the first cutscene ever since she just been kinda in the background doing nothing until her eventual return which might be the end of sneznaya i feel but we still should actually get something small done with her at least ya know?
theyre probably saving her for latetw natlan AQ or snezhnaya and khaenriah
@Periton yeah probably will see her a little bit after natlan but i bet will see her in sneznaya though my idea was always after aether and lumine are back together after being seperated for so long thats when the unknown god appears
well in sumeru it kinda answered that the the HP seems quiet for 500 years and countin.
I don't fully agree with the lack of environmental storytelling - I think Dragonspine, Enkanomiya, Sumeru desert (the big closed underground door with a one Mourning Flower growing there, along with the achievement name? good stuff) and some places in Fontaine do a great job with that (probably there's many more, just can't thing of the examples atm). Especially when you're a lore player and know what to look for.
Anyway, the rest of the video is my exact thoughts. Genshin manga came to my mind as another external content example that works in a weird way - you don't really need to read it but it explains Kaeya and Diluc relationship, Diluc's hatred for the KoF, or why Cyno took care of Collei, even though in game he's a General and there's not much sense about it.
The biggest problem with genshin's story is the fact that other than poor storytelling, it's world building is far better than what we actually need to play in the main AQ, i don't give a fuck about the main story except if it reveals something about the lore, Genshin's lore is proof that Hoyo can write really good stories, but they don't with the AQ's, it gives a really bad impression l, it's like you are playing a Disney show with how tame the main story is, obviously except when it comes to the side quests.
Disagree with the AQs being tame. No world quest had anything more fucked up than Nahida gaslighting that random woman into becoming a terrorist and then letting her rot when Dottore caught her.
@supermonstars I didn't like that gaslighting part.. but i also didn't mind it that much in a way because Nahida herself said she didn't want to do it, not because she's a gaslighter, also even if this is supposed to be ironic, where does the Terrorist part comes from?
I actually did not watch the short but was not confused by arlechino, things started snapping into place as soon as the ghost girl started saying things that didn’t correlate to current time
The only time that I actually paid more attention to a side quests' dialog is when I was in Tsurumi Island and the Ochard of Pairidaeza( aka. Ruu's and Jetch's story quests)
Each quests involves an entire region themselves which reenforce the immersion as you progress.
We need more attention to these issues. I'm glad you decided to speak on it, even if I don't necessarily absolutely agree to every single argument provided (for the most part I do, but some I would argue differently).
I think the main thing I differ in perspective and argumentation would be regarding the storytelling bit. The way I see it - Genshin Impact has a relatively exquisite and amazing worldbuilding, which is completely let down by /some/ of the storytelling. Whether because of insight behind developmental processes, or assumptions (be they correct or incorrect), I find myself convinced that there are plenty of talented folk working on the game, including with some forms of storytelling (via the world, the music, the game design and others), which get purposefully and completely intentionally blocked and sidelined to the less relevant parts of the game by decisions, likely coming from the higher-ups, which would rather the game be or not be a certain way in the aspects that see most exposition and are designed for the "mainstream". Now, I know this might seem a bit cynical, but I've thought about it plenty and it's one of the main reasons why I started playing - to analyze the game and what it does well & what it does poorly - how and why? And this is the conclusion I've come to after close to a year.
In short, it's most likely also due to completely different teams. I'm sure that the folks who've developed the wider world's lore, or certain tropes and ideas that we can see and optionally explore are not the same folks who decide how much Paimon's gonna yap or what'll be said in the archon quest, or the trailers. And the English localization team also plays a significant part in the notable degradation of quality, bringing in absolute dissonance in tone and genre, using different styles and methodologies haphazardly, breaking any sense of consistency in regards to what the story of the entire game is about - or sometimes even smaller, individual stories. This is, of course, the antithesis of immersion and lends itself to preventing the reflection of story elements and aspects, and that is by no means an intentional thing, as some sort of nod to the world being fake. It's an interesting thing to cope about, which I often lean back on as a comforting thought, but in truth - it simply is due to arbitrary limitations, imposed due to reasons that have nothing to do with the world/story itself, but rather the game as a product.
All in all, one of the main questions I used to ask myself is - if I recommend someone to look into the world of GI, is it better for them to have played the game or not? And frankly - I'm conflicted, still. In many ways - yes, absolutely it is better to have played it - there are many things, which are assumed to be known that you'd be challenged to assume, without having played it. But there are also unavoidable aspects of how the game can thoroughly sour your opinion of the world and story, even if those are actually quite fine, apart from the main presentation within the game itself. It's something I generally just leave aside, as whether someone should play the game tends to be up to a bunch of other more important factors, but I still continue considering the answer to this question.
Anyhow, if you've read this - thanks for reading and feel free to let me know what you think ^^
TL:DR There are different kinds of storytelling and different teams behind them - and they're not all bad. While the worldbuilding is great - arbitrary limitations and choices are made that thoroughly hinder the world and story of the game, creating this dissonant experience.
"Paid by Words"
You may be on to something... I've always assumed it was to let voice actors talk as much as possible (regardless if playable or NPC), which explains why some side quest story that are not voiced, tends to be the best. It is short and quick to the point, delivering the message rather than stretching out where you forget the message.
natlan is the first region where i’ve actually just skipped through dialogue in the archon quest. the dialogue has always been shit but it often ends up paying off with the climax. natlan however ? while the war section of the archon quest was interesting you could not pay me to sit through that first half with citlali. this was NOT helped but the horrific audio quality of the english dub btw. i almost turned off my volume.
19:58 I agree with your point but sky being fake was mentioned again in Sumeru archon quest in conversation between Nahida and Dottore.
putting ayato's sq in the background while talking about subtext.... yeah. yeah that says enough LMAO
his quests are one of the VERY few that I didn't mind being an npc quest, because I think the idea was that he was pulling strings from the back to make things go in his favor, but.... wow did they botch that LOL. a little rewriting and a little more subtlety would have saved that questline
Honestly I really like how Genshin handle its information between archon quests and world quests.
In archon quests, they’ll give the most basic form of that said event. But in the world quests they’ll give you the what, when, why in which scattered throughout the quest. Sometimes in chronological order and some don’t. And sometimes it’s all connected like Sumeru with Fontaine or Enka with everything. It really makes us feel like an outlander who doesn’t belong to this world. And really feel like we work as an adventurer.
Visual key in Genshin is okay but with all of the situations in Teyvat combines it’s just impossible. They tried their best. Like around the war zone in Kannazuka there are bunch of rouges and sword hilt. Near every dead dragon corpses there are mutant monsters. How much ruin guard in the desert( Khaenri’ah door is right below ) etc.
But I must say how they treated dual city in Fontaine is just abysmal 😅.
As for character contents. I see characters story quest as how they integrated into the world and if you really want to know them you just have to go to character profile. This is a game with so many after all there is no way all of them could’ve a role in the main story. AND PLS HOYO MAKE THEM STAND AROUND THEIR CITY.
Genshin is suffers from having to much stories to be told in their world 😂.
As for limited event quest. HOYO PLS GO HSR route. I don’t care if summer event gonna cost me a terabyte of space.
Yeah, I do have problems because the story is somewhat convoluted and confusing that all of the plots from each nation gets convoluted. I’m hoping that by Genshin part two I hope they could take cues from Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Regarding subtlety (or lack thereof), though... It needs to be said that brevity isn't easy compared to long-form yapping just because it's shorter, it's the other way around. With yapping, speaking is easier, freer, with no room for misinterpretation. But with brevity, it needs to be interpreted and communicated thoughtfully. This is why even the famous Blaise Pascal once famously said, "I didn't have time for brevity" when he wrote a long letter.
Genshin's live-service business-model has no room for brevity for this reason. It needs to be a content-generating machine. Therefore, so long as things pass the first couple of drafts, it's good to go. From that perspective, there's no need to give it intricate ties to environments and other details, nor go through severe editing phase to cut off the chafe or repetition, because a simple rule triumphs here:
High-quality slop will always be better and more profitable than a low-quality magnum opus. (And you're right about slop and repetition, so that becomes a justification.)
Although, a more cohesive creative vision can somewhat overcome that, and it's not something merely expending resources to brainstorm on region ideas and concepts can fix.
I want to give Genshin some credit here. While the points in this video are valid (repeated dialogues, lackluster cinematography, not delving into lore while having it), comparing it to AAA video games or franchise shows and movies is not very fair. If you compare Genshin to MMO’s or gacha games that came before and even after, its storytelling through constantly evolving contents is stellar, especially at the rate of their rapid update schedule. Many games find it very challenging to even be consistent through times and multiple languages. (Like Eowyn’s ‘do you not know’ moment can be misinterpreted so horribly) Also the game can’t really afford changing landscapes and provide different experiences. People shouldn’t have been disappointed that Inazuma story didn’t end up in a civil war with more casualties because it would destroy all the development done in that region and character developments no matter who won the war.
Another point was about the time-limited stories and hidden lores, and I think this is where the devs trust the community for sharing. Their core business model is FOMO, so somethings have to be lost in time, but by enabling free discussion and hiding things strategically, they can still be uncovered and they can thrive together with CCs. I recently subscribed to you because you analyze overlooked aspects about the game really well. I wish I had time to look and find out for myself but I dont have enough tjme. So thank you for all your videos and please keep up the good work!
Remember when Genhin won GOTY? Yeah, I feel like if it was even considered in the race against AAA video games, then it's justifiable to hold it to the same expectations when it comes to it storytelling. I'm not trying to be rude, btw. I know my typing may come across as rude, but not my intention. 👍
@@Hesgot_apoint True and Hoyo made BILLIONS with Genshin, they could have hired more people to the dev team or gotten better writers.
Even now they still have the ability to do that, they just refuse to.
@@Hesgot_apoint Well, I think Genshin only won the awards in mobile categories, but maybe I'm missing something. Anyhow, why I don't think these comparisons are fair is that all the examples used in this video had years of preparation, and for the movies and tv shows, their success criteria are on the storytelling alone. And I don't think the company spending more money alone can fix this issue because it needs time and different focus. As an ongoing game, if it had any dramatic changes, like main characters dying or settling with their loved ones, or saving the entire world from a big baddie, they will be pretty tough to follow in the next patch and sell characters.
What I want to say to everyone reading my writing is, (thank you btw) I think we're all fans here and some of us may even want the game to be one of the all time greats like the examples, but there are hard constraints for us to consider, so having the appropriate expectations could help us appreciate the game better. Even though the developers try to listen to us, there just may be some things they cannot do, and we shouldn't feel too bad as if our feedbacks weren't even considered. Btw, I may look like I'm defending Genshin here, but you could say I'm actually more pessimistic than saurusness, who shared their hope for Genshin's future quite elaborately at the end of the video.
@@powguma I believe I understand what you're saying. I've long since lowered my expectations for the game. It's hard for me not to imagine what could have been, though. It's also a little fun.
Hope all is well.
16:54There are a few NPCs that have disappeared after 5.1AQ, such as the legendary Scout who appeared in AQ, with only his accessories and a memorial bouquet remaining
20:27Armored Core 6 also has external story issues, and the protagonist's colleagues are only explained in the trailer, and there is almost no mention in the story. But Armored Core 6 has some good subtext
Natlan has been mostly great, but some of it has felt very half-baked to me. Most recently, the Flower-Feather Clan Tribal Chronicles are really odd in that they introduce really interesting tension between progress and tradition, create a confict in the tribe that could have serious consequences, and then kinda just go "so this modern thing actually turns out to be really immoral and this person that made it is evil, let's get rid of her" and everything goes back to how it was before.
I was also disappointed by Kinich's story, or rather basically the lack of it. There's SO MUCH that they could do with his and Ajaw's characters, but there's just... nothing. A few texts and voicelines, maybe. And he (along with other Natlan characters) doesn't even get any development in a Story Quest, since Tribal Chronicles focus more on the tribes as a whole.
Fwiw, a lot of quests also explore this theme. It really balances some of the other regions like Liyue and Inazuma which only frame progress as a good thing. @malevolentmoose
You spoke what’s been in the back of my mind during my genshin tenure
Genshin's poor storytelling can be summarized in 4 main problems.
1. Shitty main character no matter how you look at it.
2. Lack of an overarching story that ties together the very episodic nature of the nation's quests.
3. Lack of good villains, and the Fatui organization as a whole making very little sense.
4. Paimon's existance.
Bruh, Genshin does have an overarching story which is to find the meaning to this world and why the twin is doing what they are doing.
@@itsmewhoknows Is it though? Can you tell me why the Traveler cares about it? Can you tell me why us the players should care about it? Like, you ever notice how we know nothing about the main character or it's twin? How literally none of their supposed friends ever ask them personal questions about themselves or their twin?
@@TheElizander Because the sibling told the traveler to walk the same path they did and see why they turned to the abyss and started leading the order. The Traveler clearly wants to get back with their twin but they know they need to understand them in order to even stand a chance. Also if you actually did the story and not skip like you braindead animals do, you would know that the travelers background has been revealed a little by little, from not knowing anything at all to now knowing he was one of the descenders
Aside from the story telling itself, can we all agree that the dialogs we choose during convos are pointless? Like we get this super long dialog then we have to click on like one dialog option just to progress... Like, I hate that paimon talks waaay to much (she also has a tendency to repeat sentences, like when a character explains their plans or stuff, paimon just resays everything differently) and would prefer our mc speaks. Also why the heck are event npc dialogs so dang long... Most are not even lore or anything, they're just chatting and we're the awkward third person trying to fit in the convo... (imo lol)
So much of this is true I want to add more tho… genshin has so many great concepts but the execution sucks I feel like had the story been given to writers who actually care rather than money grabbers it could of been amazing the stories pacing is awful, the character development is bad for pretty much all characters most are cliche or boring, the story just fails to invoke emotion, and of course there is many plot holes and many questions left unanswered and things left unexplained…
I feel like another issue is the game isn’t immersive none of the gameplay matches with the story so we have no idea how the fights actually go down for example when we fight dvalin how did Jean diluc etc actually fight? Or how difficult was it for them? That’s just a small example.
SO glad to hear that others have issues with this as well. It's not unreasonable to wish that we got more meaningful story content and worldbuilding that's not just locked in books and never addressed outside of them! This company definitely has the means to employ many of the things that would make the game's story more enjoyable. I sincerely hope that they put forth the effort to improve upon the game. Environmental storytelling is so important, but we only ever see it in little world quests. I want more things we can CHANGE! Things that we impact! We know that the world itself isn't an illusion or fake- it's only the shell/firmament/sky surrounding it. I wish they'd make that more CLEAR. I want more people to understand and enjoy the story
I think the game being way TOO verbose and bloated dialogue-wise for its own good is a very noticeable side effect from the game being translated from chinese. I otherwise agree with your points - I really wanted to enjoy the story and the lore behind it, but the presentation makes it fall flat on its face to me. I stopped caring about it when Scaramouche became the Wanderer (the only character I still genuinely like a LOT, along with Neuvillette and Nahida, like no wonder he's so popular, he's just very interesting and well done!!!), and now most of Natlan's content makes me go "hey. this is cool. i guess."
I only hope the game gets better over time regarding this, since we still got the rest of Natlan and Snezhnaya to go.
I don't fully believe that it's wordy and bloated with unnecessary dialogue because of translations. Zenless Zone Zero is also translated from Chinese but the quests are much more digestible in wording, plot and just overall because they're split up better and give us a chance to breathe and process what's happening
@@ClockiePizza I haven't played ZZZ so idk how different the flow of the game is but if that's the case, then that sucks.
Honestly... Traveler deserved way better like Jesus, Trailblazer in HSR and Wise and Belle in ZZZ got way better treatment in their stories than Traveler in Genshin
Great video. Been giving this some more thought, and I think one of the main problems with Genshin's story is that the main story/thread with the sibling is sort of cast aside, when it should be the thing that holds it all together. I point to the animated shorted: the Road Not Taken. When I saw that anime short (which is absolutely beautiful by the way) I shed some tears.
If you haven't watched it, please do: th-cam.com/video/T5-YMslEmxw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Kn21tJKmipsB_M4R
I remember thinking: why wasn't that IN THE GAME? Like that's the whole story! You're going on the same journey your sibling did 500 years ago with Dainsleif, you're walking where they walked and they ended up joining the Abyss... is that our fate? What did they see that made them switch over? Maybe 500 years later with Paimon at our side, it will be different for us? What an incredible hook!
Because that sibling plot is Genshin's best story. Never mind the lore with the Usurper, dragons, Khaenriah, etc. that's all window dressing. Main point: we're stuck in a world with a false sky, Teyvat, and so is our sibling (apparently for 500 years). How do we even escape? Must we join the Abyss? Is there no other way? How will we ever beat the Heavenly Principles and escape? Even if we reunite with our sibling, will things ever be the same?
One thing Genshin does well is help us get lost in Teyvat, you enjoy it there. Why would you want to leave? But maybe that's the whole trap of the gods. :)
Come on, Hoyo! You've already done the work, just let that story be front and centre! I know it's later in the game, but no time like the present to bring it back.
Ugh yeah 100%! Honestly I kinda dismiss the "lost sibling" story as uninteresting ...but thinking about it that's entirely because of how they've presented it. We've seen so little of them together, and Traveler really doesn't seem to care... so why would we? That short is a perfect example of the kind of thing which should've been integrated into the story for sure, since it'd make it feel like it means something.
Genshin was so big of an edging experience i started pursuing art again because even scribbling away ugly bishounen was more rewarding. Dunno what instant gratification and illusion of accomplishment they talk about, didnt see any of it lol
I think Genshin has an amazing worldbuilding but an unremarkable storytelling.
The change I wish they do is to lean more to organic storytelling; The characters are interacting naturally and they develop themselves. There are instances of organic storytelling but I wish they do more. The Traveler and Paimon are way too nosy in everyone's business. I know, they're the witness, but Genshin is leaning way too much to it that characters don't have meaningful stories, relationships and development because they're tethered to the Traveler and Paimon's existence. Basically, The devs are doing a solipsist approach where characters don't exist unless the Traveler is in the vicinity.
In all honesty, I kinda get why they do things like this because they have to sell characters. That's why it's kind of hard to find genuine good storytelling in gacha games.
Yeah I always find it weird to have the traveler and paimon directly present and involved in everyone's business. HSR, on the other hand, does well in this regard.
@@jeongyunkim6360 A bit late but I wholeheartedly agree. HSR and ZZZ did it best by providing organic storytelling to each character, making them more compelling. I say this especially after finish hsr 2.7 quest.
I believe genshin's targeted to a very young demographic, which makes it a lot harder for them to create more subtle or complex narratives, also, there's the silly silent protagonist trope, I believe it started as a sort of homage to old jrpgs but the way they handle the story begs for the Traveler to talk, the reliance on Paimon to act as both the protagonist's voice and herself feels clunky now, even tough Paimon's VA improved a lot since launch it's a double edged sword that also brings everything down a bit
Since it's a gacha I'd be surprised if it was - the real money is in targeting people with disposable income, so I'd expect the real target to be early 20s' or older 👀
@@raptoriYou'd be surprised at the amount of children that play this game. A few days ago, I overheard a 9 year old talk about it with his friend at my workplace.
@@PeruvianPotato True, but they're much less likely to have a spare few hundred dollars to drop on banners, so I'd be surprised if Genshin is targeting them with their gacha system 😜
why was natlan such a downgrade? what changed between fontaine and natlan?
I think an issue with having any quest affect the world in a material way is that if it can harm side quest progress then it just can't happen. This is less a technical issue and more a business decision. If you can't complete a world quest you started because of a decision in the archon quest, people would complain because of the lost primos gems. Its why every time there's a quest with multiple outcomes you get an achievement with different text but the same primos no matter what even if one of them is "bad". They would have to account for possible states of your quest progress and provide alternates (like moving a chest or puzzle, something they already have done in the past)
Looking at the coms, it's really interesting to see so many people despise natlan overall story while Mrs Saurus over here praise it for being more and more inclined towards pretty good world building story.
On a side note, what did you think of the 5.1 story Mrs Saurusness? For me it is probably, objectively speaking the best worldbuilding story of genshin so far, but I guess people really like constant bloated dialogue with wriothesley in fontaine act 3 just because bro got that jojo character model🤨
my boyfriend saw that i always skip the genshin dialogues so he doesnt understand why i like the game (LOL), i really really liked sumeru and fontaine’s archon quests, i wish most of the game was like that
12:20 this!! Its why i always feel like lore videos are more interesting than the game lore itself. They present it so much better
YOO i loved Baizhus quest, I liked him so much more after doing it.
I remember in 1.1, I was having fun with the game but wasn't very interested in the story. Then i explored dragonspine and learned about all this hidden lore about a civilization that once stood here, a mountain turned into a snowy hellscape by a giant nail sent from the heavens. That paired with the reveals of the infamous 1.1 falling stars event, and I was HOOKED. This idyllic world is a lie? Gods orchestrating everything? Fallen civilizations swept under the rug? I gotta see where this goes.
And now its been 4 years that I've stuck with this game. All this void war stuff with Natlan that they're hyping up, stuff that I would otherwise be super excited for, I just feel kind of empty about. There's no stakes, characters dont stick around long enough for me to get attached to anyone, and none of that lore really mattered. This vid helped me understand a little more as to why I feel this way.
A love-hate relationship with this kind of game is rough. At this point I'm only driven by FOMO.
As someone trudging through Sumeru, it feels like someone saw the worst part of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Endless Eight) and mixed it with a TV soap.
All I want is to find Aether, Dansleif or Best Girl Amber to progress the story, not this...
I think if anything it's inconsistent, Furina has an amazing story, Nahida got done dirty with hers before it, Raiden's starts great but at best is one big missed opportunity and Venti... I mean, it sure was a story I suppose.
Meanwhile Brother dude (the actual story) is so absent the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale may sentence him to start paying sibling support.
Though the characters suffer the same way too, Some of them have great stories like how Furina has a follow up "aftermath" type of story, while others like Ei simply give us a slice of life story completely detached from the main one aside from simply mentioning it briefly.
I like the game, but I'm purely here for the gameplay and a handful of characters, most notably Best Girl Amber, Furina, Amber, the siblings(eventually), Amber, etc. The story ain't it.
You missed it cuz you started with ver 2 but the first Golden Apple Archipelago event was also an excellent example of environmental storytelling done right. As you unlocked more islands, you come across wall paintings depicting the lives of the people who used to live in the archipelago, the crashed ships of the Inazuman pirates and by the end of the exploration path, you find out through the environment that the trapped people of the islands and the pirates eventually worked together to find a way out of the mist and escape the archipelago. It was really cool to experience unfortunately, as you've mentioned, the event being time limited means no new players can experience it
I hope you make a video about Ochakanatlan. That whole map was such an immersive experience to behold.
17:55 And the insan thing is that we have a thing Like that in Liyue, we can help a guy build a little shrine to the memory of an Adeptus and at the end of it you can find Xiao and during the Lantern Rite he can be found there paying his respects, is a small touch and yet it's so rare to see
Honestly I can't get on board with the praise genshin gets for its lore when the overwhelming majority or it is delivered terribly. There's a lot of world building tucked away in long quest lines associated with certain regions like the Jinni sidequest and Pari sidequest, the former of which is okay at times and the latter of which is an unbearable slog from start to finish. The fact that these quests suffer from the same bloated dialogue as everything else in the game but none of them are voiced just compounds how laborious it feels to get through them. As a result, what could have been an enriching experience that adds color to the world of teyvat that Hoyo's spent so much time crafting just feel like set dressing meant to take up space and occupy your time while you wait for better things to come out
i find with genshin you just have to watch lore videos to get invested in the story because the lore ccs break it down to its bare bones and then connect it to the rest of the story and broader hoyoverse through lore bits, game mechanics, etc.
To be honest I'm fine with the story. What annoys me the most is the sheer amount of absolutely irrelevant smalltalk you have to sit through every. single. damn. time. Especially in the unvoiced quests. I find myself telling myself "get to the point already" so often it's exhausting. I noticed that again in the current Citlali/Ororon Event Quest. The first five minutes speaking to Ororon were revolving around vegetables and "I've read people liked being praised so I'll praise you ten times in a row now". Some people find it endearing and I do too to some extend but Genshin just goes ALL IN on the irrelevant nonsense WAY to often. And don't get me started on the "Someone makes a joke, someone else get's annoyed and suddenly the next ten conversation boxes revolves around "Haha, Whoopsie doodle!" about that joke before things get back on track.
One of my gripes is that it feels like there's more lore in the wikis than in the actual game. Like the first and 2nd civilizations. Unless I'm missing something, it felt like they reference it once in a great while but only the wikis have the full story.