#but the way that the structure of the game informs story and backstory is *chef's kiss*

[shallow-between-stars]

Tired: You can't swim in this game because your character can't swim.

Wired: You can't swim in this game because even though your character -can- swim, there's something in the water that prevents you from swimming.

Inspired: You can't swim in this game because you never learnt how to swim because of an intergenerational curse placed on your family by an evil psychic that means water actively wants to kill you and will drown you on purpose if you try to swim.

[guiltycorp]

Playing Genshin for a couple of weeks now and I have some thoughts about Mondstadt, its seeming prosperity, and criminal elements!! Also dunking on Diluc a little bit lol. I'm not even going to touch hilichurls, they're probably the one issue I expect the game to come back to in time! They seem to be an intelligent race that was cursed and so we might get some sad backstory and realize that we've been assholes to them, not 100% sure but hopefully. Other than hilichurls and the Fatui (and yeahhh so fun to make russians into villains, im guessing it's for attracting the american audience or something... at least the characters are interesting enough), there are also Treasure Hoarders, who in the archive are mainly described as workers who lost their jobs or some other manner of poor people who turned to looting and crime out of desperation. And yet the angle is that 'thieving is always morally wrong'. Somebody didn't read Les Mis, I guess! Another note, there seems to be a weird gameplay and story segregation where we as the Traveler do lots of looting and treasure hunting ourselves only to be commended for it. But I digress. My actual point is that interestingly enough those elements of worldbuilding come together pretty well when you look at the city itself!   In Mondstadt it is most difficult to become a small business owner, made all the more obvious when compared to Liyue's wealth of shops, services, and traveling traders (Liyue has its own baggage of problems which tbh seem more serious to me but that's another topic). It's just not the most profitable occupation! Almost everyone we see out on the streets does their own resource supply, production, and service. Naturally, this means that those people don't earn enough to hire their own workers. In turn, that means that there are no jobs to be found in those places. So, where are all the jobs? For that we have the Dawn Winery, the Knights of Favonius, and the option to leave for Springvale to become a hunter or go to a different country altogether. The winery is described as the city's most powerful industry both for local consumption and export, but how does it actually treat its workers? Well, for example there's Patton who accidentally broke a bottle of expensive wine and is now basically an indentured servant to Diluc. He says that even if he worked without any breaks he still would need 48 years to pay off his debt. We can meet his daughter near Venti's statue who has to play by herself because her father is always working. Does that really seem like freedom to you? There's also Guy's father who works at the winery itself and can't afford to rest even when he is heavily sick and old. These are the worst examples for sure but others also have their own smaller problems like Charles who confides in us that he often feels tired and only takes nights off when Diluc is in a mood to tend the bar himself etc.  It is kind of telling that we don't have the option of engaging with their problems and we can't really talk to Diluc about it either. For all that he defends the city each night, he shows no interest in defending his own workers from his business's predatory tactics. To say nothing of the great damage he does to the adult populace of the city, always supplying alcohol and tempting people with deals and sales when there are already too many drunkards even among the named characters. When the opposing tavern (which also only has Diona for a bartender even when her own father has alcohol dependence) chose to present a non-alcoholic beverage during the holiday Angel’s Share doubled down on alcohol. And it doesn't even have snacks? This one bit was probably just for joke purposes, but tbh it's pretty dangerous to drink without any snacks at all, it makes sense why people get so heavily drunk in the first place. Note that Diluc himself doesn’t drink, showing good judgment when it comes to himself. Meanwhile the only person Diluc seemingly has no problem cutting off is Kaeya and it’s not obvious whether that’s out of concern or pettiness. Nobody is cutting off Nimrod who is ruined by his addiction! Now this is probably the core reason why Nimrod turned to crime, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he and his wife are dependant on Kaeya who at the very least knows to appreciate his informants. Kaeya himself is also a gleeful enabler, by the way, which makes sense considering his uh.. everything. And his upbringing at the Dawn Winery didn’t hurt, no surprise why he’s so keen on wine himself. He might be shrewd and oh so clever when it comes to getting information in taverns, but his story details and voice lines confirm that there actually is a problem even if we don’t know the full scope of it.  Now, the Knights of Favonius? Aside from being corrupt in the past they happen to hire minors (we can read that in their handbook) whom they don't even pay. What's that, free labor for the simplest of tasks? Makes sense why some of the adult knights laze about if all the work gets done by minors or the more focused and accomplished senior knights with Visions. That's a wonky structure for sure. Guy tells us that he became a squire at 16 and still has the boring job of guarding the back gates despite repeatedly showing signs of great dissatisfaction. I wouldn't be surprised if he betrays us later or something, honestly. Maybe Kaeya is preparing him for double agent work, who knows. Right now he has no opportunities for climbing the career ladder to take better care of his sick father, stuck in a pointless job for months. And that's a talented and focused young man! what about regular folk? Well. In the end, regular people have several options. They can give up and overwork themselves while spending nights looking for coins in the wishing fountain to try and scrape enough for their sister’s medicine. They can go to the Adventurers' Guild which has highly dangerous commissions with the most profitable ones taken on by Fischl and other professionals, hardly a dependant job for a regular person. There’s also Church which we know very little about. Likely it's dependant on taxes and donations and it’s the one organization that cares about the orphans of the city (no, keeping Klee in solitary doesn’t count as caring, Knights of Favonius!). There’s Springvale for hunters, farmers and chefs, a difficult lifestyle to maintain when the hunting grounds are in one of the Four Winds’ domains with strangely intelligent wolves.  And then there’s the other more accessible and obvious option! You guessed it, it’s crime!!  And there it is, the reason why there's such a big problem with bandits and overworked people in Mondstadt :)  Honestly after writing all that down, if I were to RP a normal person in Mondstadt I’d try to get into the Treasure Hoarders guild at like 5 years old I think. Better than standing around watching random people kill my pigeons anyway. Tbh this is less of a 'makes you think huh!!' take and more of a commendation towards the writers of the game. They obviously have a more conservative outlook if they're so keen on condemning the thieves who have to steal in order to survive, but the world itself makes a lot of sense. It makes the game a lot of fun to explore.