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magicalgirlsirin · 10 months ago

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I should probably say this before anything else, which definitely contributed to my thoughts on elyrealm: I played the entirety of Part 1's story in the span of like, 2 months, and put off playing Elysian Realm until the game herded me to do so, so Elysium Everlasting would make sense. (This is because I completely missed the last few cutscenes at the end of domination that scruff you off there in the first place. That one is absolutely my bad!)

That aside, I was desperately unlocking everything as I went, because the characters almost immediately hooked me. I went in pretty cynical since I had been told the story was a detour, but got blindsided with tons of affection for everyone in the realm. (Well, for the most part. I think Aponia's presentation is pretty poor and comes across as a little desperate for the viewer to find her suffering nun schtick sexy, but maybe that's just because I find her design tacky. But her remembrance vessels are actually quite interesting and offered me some further insight to her nuances, so I can't exactly say I hate her.)

I totally agree that Mihoyo's storytelling can be disastrously bad in some spots, I've become quite fond of Seven Swords lore and... well... it's exclusively from CN text of a cancelled web event. But that's neither here nor there.

My problem with the realm can, at least partially, be explained by the title of the original post up there. It's not poorly written, it's poorly directed. From my understanding, when the previous story director left the hi3 team, they were replaced by the writer who contributed to Thunders Over Nagazora among other earlier parts of the story. So, I know for a fact that this is someone capable of telling a story with good emotional weight... But directing is a different field entirely from just being a writer. As a story director, decisions have to be made about the structure and focus of a story, and the Elysian Realm feels incredibly indulgent while lacking the deeper cuts that I had anticipated and come to expect from hi3's writing, which is why I was disappointed.

The Elysian Realm has a lot of plot threads, but not much weaving them together. I hesitate to call anything a theme, because it's not in service of a wider purpose. Like, yes, Elysia presents herself as a storyteller for a bit, there's stray pieces of things in the realm supporting it (her first encounter dialogue, the popup book item, her backstory being given the tone of a fairy tale) but like... What does Elysia stand for? I mean, she wants humanity to triumph over honkai, but so does every other major character, so why should I care uniquely about her struggles and passions? I want to like Elysia, but the game's writing keeps trying to wriggle out of actually giving her the required depth to do so.

I think that Transcending Finality was actually pretty easy to follow, because I'm someone who enjoys meta-textual fourth wall breaks analyzing the nature of stories and their purpose, but it's definitely well outside of the wheelhouse of hi3 and the way it had been telling its story so far. It blindsided me, and while I was quick to roll with it, I know that my experience is not universal, lol. I think that, if they were going to go that direction anyways, they might as well just go ahead and start on all of that in the Elysian Realm anyways (as seen in my Elysia discussion/rewrite ball bounce thoughts on her character). Ai chan best girl, because her writing was so bullshit it wrapped around to making perfect sense again.

I've gotten a little off topic though, I think I didn't emphasize enough in my posts about how little Mei has to do with the realm outside of just getting the power of origin pawned off to her, which is really sad because she's such a rich character with a lot of unique components to her writing. It's hard for me to offer suggestions on what I think would improve it, just because it would cease being a story about Elysia and the Flame Chasers, which is why I like the arc, as paradoxical as it is. She just doesn't really have a place to go.

There's actually a little part in Transcending Finality where Mei brings up Kalpas, only to immediately go "okay well actually his method of doing things is not helpful here. Whelp." Which feels almost like a joke? But it is played entirely straight. It's one of the few mentions of any Flame Chaser from Mei outside of the realm (iirc) and it just made me step back and realize just how little Mei had actually gained in experience from going through the realm at all.

The Elysian Realm is full of missed opportunities to me, and there's so many things that are just rabbit trails that don't really cross over to a good end point. Despite all my griping, I think about the realm often and I'm going through all the dialogue and text in the realm because I want to write an AU for them, lol. The dedication is real it's just hard for me to not fuss over the flaws, they feel less forgivable just because a vast majority of the story before it is so well done for me.

the elysian realm: well written, poorly directed

NOTE: this post is an elysian realm critical look by a relative newcomer to hi3, i dont really have the grace of having played it as it came out. i enjoy the elysian realm, but in my opinion, its absolutely a mess with regards to storytelling.

Part 1: so no theme?

When I titled this post, I meant it quite literally. There's plenty of stuff within Elysian Realm that is well written, I'm not here to argue that it isn't (with some small caveats). Most characters are interesting and engaging, and have a wealth of available text to further their depth. The real problem here is that all that detail and work isn't in service of anything. There is no theme to the Elysian Realm, no point of narrative, no common through line. Elysia introduces us to the realm, implies there's a point, that the 'unfinished lives' of these 13 trailblazers is going to go somewhere, and then waffles the plot all the way from the initial game mode through Elysium Everlasting, with a final cinematic which I will get to later for my thoughts on why it doesn't work.

The initial game mode that kicks off the story is just oddly paced. The first chapter is relatively fine, just serving as an introduction to the realm and its mechanics both in and out of universe. One of the first questions I had was just "why does kevin have a weird basement paradise with ai copies of his mostly dead friends and then also a version of himself and hua who are still very much alive" and I'm loathe to report that the realm never bothers answering this question or elaborating on why it exists. At risk of sounding like HoC, it really is a meaningless diversion with pointless people existing redundantly.

The second and third chapters, however, are unforgivably bad. I realized upon reflection they were probably heavy focus on Mobius and Aponia respectively because their suits were debuting at the time (or something to that effect) but it feels like such an agonizing detour to focus on them with seemingly no other motive. Learning about the two furthers my understanding of the Flame Chasers as a unit, I Guess, but doesn't illuminate anything about the realm or even Elysia.

I will get back to Elysia.

Part 2: No really, why is Mei here?

Another major problem with the Elysian Realm is that Mei pretty much ceases to be a character. Even though she's the point of view, she barely expresses any of her own opinions, thoughts, or even basic input outside of rebuffing Elysia's attempts to flirt with her. Sure, she still has some snark and sass to her, especially when interacting with Kevin, but outside of that I can barely remember anything important she does. Which is crazy! I could easily describe any other contribution she's made to various chapter sets/arcs within the game, but the Elysian Realm is absolutely dead air.

This ties into the fact that the realm has no theme, there's not a point, so Mei isn't going on a character journey. You could argue that Elysia is influential to Mei's arc for gifting her the power of origin, but that's not really... character growth. Mei becomes origin because she accepts the blessings* and ideals of the Flame Chasers, but because she didn't learn dick or shit in the actual realm, everything kind of just rings hollow. Mei functionally is meant to be a stand in for you, the viewer, to self insert into the realm and imagine that you're the one interacting with everyone, which is such a disservice to Mei.

*I want to briefly sidebar to curb the misconception that Mei was given the power of origin because she collected all the signets, or that the point of the realm was to find someone to collect them all to have that power passed along to them. Mei getting the power is unrelated to the realm's existence as far as I'm concerned, given that Hua says this:

I trust that Hua is telling the truth here, mostly because she has no reason to lie to us. What this does leave us with is, unsurprisingly, still no answer on the purpose of the realm. Vague handwaving of Kevin saying that Mei has earned the right to "seek answers" only for the narrative to do a weird slight of hand where Aponia goes "now you get to know Elysia's secret because you defeated me kyaaaaa" is not the point. I doubt Kevin allows people into his basement for the possibility of finding out some dead chick from 50,000 years ago that no one outside of WS would actually know by name was secretly a herrscher.

Speaking of which.

Part 3: The Elysia was always a herrscher reveal is dumb

I know this is the most contentious part of the discourse™ when it comes to Elysia, but I cannot understate how stupid it is. I can accept retcons of herrscher order, begrudgingly but yes I will concede if the game wants to commit to it. What I cannot concede to is the game saying that Elysia was born a herrscher.

All the Flame Chasers got MANTIS surgery. This is a fact. Elysia received it as well. Don't you think like, I don't know, literally anyone involved in the procedure would have noticed she has honkai radiation off her like a nuclear bomb? This is such a basic hole in logic and it feels like the game almost wants you to forget that this is a thing, but I didn't, I've spent the past 2 months digging through all the realm game mode text to come to this conclusion.

I also have grift with the fact that she was a previous era herrscher with sapience, since a lot of the tragedy of the previous era is because of the loss of humanity. Kevin was fucking devastated by the HoF emergence, because he hesitated. He saw Murata's face and thought she was still in there. But she wasn't. Kalpas lost Emile to the HoD. Mobius lost Klein, not only to her own over-ambition, but to HoL. Sakura lost Rin to HoC. All of these are essential to their stories, and it's because those herrschers were just mindless tools, godproxy emanators of destruction with no higher order thinking skills. Only a will to subjugate humanity.

Oh but actually Elysia is a sweet and special perfect girl who never did anything wrong, she didn't betray anyone, she was always the bestest girl who loved humanity and was a friend to everyone because she's so lovable and you should love her too ❤️❤️❤️

Yeah no I'm not doing that. I want to make it clear that I actually really like Elysia, and it doesn't take much to fix the parts of her story that have no logic or retcon themselves in the span of a chapter. She's very close to being well written, which makes it all the more frustrating that the narrative continually bends around her to make her have less flaws. Elysia is pushy! She's overbearing, and tends to needle at people whenever she notices something. She forces Mobius to try on clothes she likes but Mobi doesn't, she constantly flirts with Mei and calls their hangouts dates even if Mei doesn't seem interested, she's a little selfish and plays pranks, all of this stuff is very endearing! I just can't deal with the other things the game does to try and make me like Ely more.

Part 4: Even if I try to fix it, the realm is broken

I could sit down and outline ways to fix Elysia's writing, the way the realm's story is structured, and it would be fine and dandy in service of smoothing over the stuff I didn't like about it, but you know what it wouldn't fix?

Mei.

Yeah I think we all just keep forgetting about Mei being in here. The thing is that because the Elysian Realm is such a dead weight in canon, you almost can't make Mei go through character development because it wouldn't flow into Transcending Finality in a comprehensible way, and this post isn't about the problems with the final chapter set of Part 1 (although I do promise I have some complaints about the writing choices in there too).

The realm treating Mei as a self insert, and not really serving her arc either, is seen most obviously in "Because of You", the ending cinematic. One that famously doesn't feature Mei at all in the fighting. The ender for this arc is Elysia, because all things start with Elysia. It's Elysia Impact all the way down, except for the part where it has literally no bearing on the main plot.

And that's the problem, isn't it? The only thing the realm really does is augment our understanding of Kevin, and only barely so if you want to split hairs about how Sim!Kevin isn't our Kevin, given that there's a few stray dialogue moments that actually go against Sim!Kevin and most other characters insistence that Kevin is an immovable rock of a man.

So at the end of it all, what do I even say? I love the realm, obsessed to death with it, all the characters are my favorites, well written, absolutely dogshit in terms of story direction. I find this contradiction to be reflective of Elysia, a character who exists only as a vessel for whatever the writer/story director thought would be cool, instead of making it mean anything.

#long post #dazzling nova #sorry to all my followers i have so many hi3 opinions #i also would complain about hare and promie and dr mei's weird personality retcons but that is besides the point

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