#there was nothing about mavuika I was genuinely interested

[onehellofakathy]

Natlan was bad…but not Inazuma bad… I feel like the journey was worth it, but most of the characters sucked, and the one(s) who didnt fucking died… I liked all the war sections, and I did cry, but this didn’t please or satisfy me the way Fontaine or Sumeru did. It’s going above Inazuma, in second-to-last place for worst Archon quest. Maybe Snezhnaya will be better and BRING BACK THE DOCTOR TURN UPPP

[ajxrn-archive]

Obviously I know (some) of your thoughts on Childe, but what do you think of the other harbingers?

YIPEE I love the harbingers ‼️ I’ll rant under the cut.. I had a huge obsession with the harbingers a few months back and I still do (in fact my brainrot is coming back so this is a perfect time for you to ask this)

Starting off with Pierro. I find him so interesting as a character because when I was diving into the lore of the harbingers I originally thought that he was number one?? Apparently he’s the director because capitano is no. 1.. I think that’s interesting. So what mainly intrigues me about him is the fact that he’s khaenri’ahn. The Tsaritsa has got to be different from the other Archons because of the fact she literally has a Khaenri’ahn man help run her military. I wonder what their relationship is with each other. Is it anything like dainslumi? I can picture it being that way but more cold, you know? The fact he’s based off the commedia dell’arte stock character Pierro (the fool/jester) is really interesting to me too.. they all have their connections to the characters in one way or another so I wonder what exactly his is.

Now onto Capitano. So far I think he is SO fucking cool he might be one of my favorite harbingers atp. Design wise it’s definitely a favorite but also the fact that he has so many similarities to Kaeya? If hyv were to make him related in some way to kaeya that would be so funny to me.. a lot of people do the pierro is kaeya’s dad thing but honesty I think Capitano would be a cooler connection lowkey? Also generally the ragbros situation would be 10x worse if kaeya was related to the fatui in some way, no matter which one it is. Anyways back on capitano, I’m mostly interested to see how his motives lay out and what his relationship with Mavuika is. The fight seen with him and her was so neat like the way they laid it out was so.. idk. I have a thing for fire/ice character relationships (not in a romantic way.) also what interests me even more about him is that The Captain in the commedia dell’arte is described as a ‘braggart’ type of person, so I’m wondering if he would use his ability to “convince people who knew nothing about him beforehand” to try and manipulate people in Natlan to revolt against Mavuika for the current issues and whatnot.

like I wonder how this'll play into his character in game/story wise. I hope he'll be playable sniff sniff.. Anyways, now onto this fucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dottore is one of my favorite harbingers. I am an avid Dottore enjoyer. He’s cunning and genuinely awful and there’s no redeeming his ass he’s going straight to hell 🙏 and that’s what makes him such a GOOD character. He genuinely has zero redeeming qualities about him. He literally uses people and children for his experiments without second thought. He has clones of himself. He possibly killed his girlfriend in his school days. (If the zandik lore is right.) He was literally expelled from the Akademiya because of how awful he was.

I cannot fathom how amazing of a character he is. I think in games we need to have more characters who are just genuinely fucking evil and we don’t just “hate” them for it. I honestly dislike how people hate him JUST because he did bad shit, like have a better reason than that tbh? "He hurt collei/He's the reason crepus died/he gave scara so much trauma" I LOVE ALL THREE OF THOSE GUYS AND DOTTORE</3 Don't hate one character only to love the next. anyways dottore supremacy..

Anywho, onto Columbina. Honestly she intrigues me so much. She's so powerful that not even childe wants to fight her, what is up with that??? I think its also interesting how in the commedia dell'arte her title is technically Little Dove but it’s Damselette in the game. we like,, do not know much about her at all to be honest?? The harbingers voice lines about her interest me so much, especially arle's. It's very. vague??

Arlecchino: "She is a very special Harbinger. Pose her a question, and the answer you receive will be entirely unpredictable, if she sees fit to give a proper answer at all. Regardless, any answer you do receive is sure to be an interesting one."

Childe: "The Fatui Harbingers are ranked by strength, and I have no idea why that girl is No. 3. I'd test my skills with every Harbinger who ranks above me if I had the chance, but when it comes to her... something just doesn't feel right. Anyway, you should be careful around her."

Scara/Wanderer: "Let me ask: what should you do if you were to encounter a "damsel" who is oblivious and innocent at any given time, and unconcerned and unfeeling in any given situation? If it were me, I could at least challenge her to a fight. But if it were you... with your conscience, I would stay away from her."

Judging by voice lines alone, columbina is very, very powerful. she seems to beat around the bush with questions (arles voiceline) and is very mysterious even with the other harbingers. (childe saying something doesn't feel right) I've seen theories that she belongs to the seele race which is honestly pretty cool, but I think i'd need to see her in game or hear more about her first. I'd assume that Arlecchino has a rather close/interesting relationship with columbina. Not purely because of the fact they do in the commedia dell'arte, but because she was the only one out of the three to not tell the traveler to be careful around/stay away from columbina.

Arlecchino herself is a really well written character to me and I notice that a lot of the fandom don't understand her entirely (myself included.) Something i notice the most is how people tend to dumb her down to the Father of the house of the hearth, either portraying her as a wonderful parent (incorrect) or as an awful one (also incorrect.) She's definitely a highly flawed person who does put her children in danger, although she absolutely cares about the children of the hearth. I wouldn't say she's a child abuser/groomer/any other stupid shit the fandom says about her. Her wiki quite literally says that she's flawed but not as awful as Crucabena:

Her (possibly?) being khaenri'ahn is also so interesting because WHY does the tsaritsa keep having connections with khaenri'ah in her military of all things. I have so many questions.

We do not know much about pulcinella at all but I do find it SO intruiging/interesting (can someone give me another word for this HELP) that he's close to childe. he visits childes family for him, iirc, which is suspicious when you read the commedia dell'arte lore.

I do think he's doing this for self gain to be honest. He's a manipulative person, so he could be manipulating childe into relaxing around him to the point of letting pulcinella get near his family, which could end really badly to be honest.

Next up is scaramouche. I feel like the scara stans themselves don't even understand his character that much, because they're too busy yelling at people about raiden/dottore instead of focusing on his character itself. I think he's a LOT more than mommy issues short boy and actually his character is really deep. His name in the commedia dell'arte is also Little Skirmisher (instead of balladeer, though I'm not too sure what that means) and what's most interesting to me about his commedia dell'arte connection is how (IIRC, this could be wrong but i found this out last time i was talking about the harbingers and the commedia dell'arte) scaramouche's "mask" was later removed, which him being removed from irminsul could be a nod to that.

What's also a neat nod to the commedia is how scara "influences the audience to do his bidding." I think in game they referenced this by him influencing/controlling that one woman in sumeru (i forget her name) to be his first follower and do as he says.

Okay so truthfully i don't have many thoughts on sandrone but something that makes me curious about her backstory is the fact that in the commedia she is known as "Peasant.” what else is neat with this is that she looks like that one girl from Fontaine (Mary-Ann) I don’t really know/remember the the lore of her but hm.

What’s even weirder abt the similarities is that Marionette (her title) means Little Mary IIRC? I don’t think she IS Mary Ann since she’s dead but she could have connections to her. Anyway I don’t have many thoughts on her ngl.. </3 genshin give us sandrone lore PLEASEEEE

Next up is my fucking WIFE ‼️‼️ (la signora)

everyone who hates her sucks lowkey she’s such an overlooked character like her lore is so fucking?? sad?? Everyone reduces her to “haha ashes” and it annoys me tbh. Her boss fight was a pain in the fucking ass though ROSALYNE WHY.. it took me 20+ tries

I genuinely love her backstory it makes me so sad honestly. Through her grief and rage she became feared and hated. Idk I wish people would talk about her a little more?? Because she’s so interesting?? She has ties to ancient mondstadt isn’t that sick.

something that interests me the most about her character is how they made her somewhat different from La Signora in commedia dell’arte? She’s continually described as a woman who often cheats on her husband in the commedia, but when you read genshin Signora’s backstory it’s interesting to see how it’s mostly focused around how her loss of her lover threw her into a grief induced rage (basically, it’s centered around her grief and love)

as for her similarities, these two images explain it well:

Honestly I wish we had got to explore her character more than the information we have now. Genshin is so evil for killing her off tbh.

Pantalone I know like NOTHING about. I think he’s a really neat character. A lot of people dumb him down to “evil baizhu” but I do think he has a lot of potential to be a really good character

Basically he’s a capitalist ‼️ kidding but for him, he seems so far to be REALLY similar to Pantalone in the Commedia. I dont have too many thoughts on him either because we don’t know much about him yet </3 pantalone lore when….

and you already know most of my thoughts on Childe so I will save the rant for another day because that would get me fired up (I am losing words this rant sucked the life out of me HELP)

oh wait another thing that is neat about the harbingers entirely is how the trailer for them was called a Winter Night’s Lazzo (I think) but that’s another reference to the commedia dell’arte :)

[ac-liveblogs]

how would you rank natlan AQ acts? (i'm just curious, i'm interested in your thought.)

Man, I feel like I don't have much to say about Natlan… I never got really angry or frustrated with the story or twists outside of a few things. In order of worst to best;

5. Chapter 4

The "war" and invasion of the Abyss. Hated this. Absolutely tedious gameplay, running all over the map just to fight generic enemies without anything interesting happening (no fun boss battles, no real standout character moments, very dull all around.) I was so frustrated to get to the end and have a final big enemy come through... and it was just generic overworld enemies all sparkly and purple. It was kind of sad to run into those on the overworld, much less the climactic enemies in a war arc.

I know a lot of people really liked this for showing the horrors of war, but I find it really difficult to care about irrelevant NPCs. I didn't even really care about Chasca's sister dying because Chasca was the least relevant hero besides Iansan, so I didn't even care about CHASCA.

Given Kachina's arc about wanting to be a hero (but Xilonen being her tribe's hero), or Ajaw's contract with Kinich that activates on Kinich's death, it felt a shame not to show the horrors of war by killing someone that actually mattered before Mavuika was able to activate the revival spell. The heros' actual roles in the story felt really lacklustre too. Just felt very low stakes and low budget. Lame.

I've seen this done better elsewhere.

4. Chapter 3

Hunting down Ororon and Capitano with Citlali. Citlali is one of the more expressive characters in Genshin, and certainly Natlan, but walking around the overworld as an investigation always sucks, and nothing really interesting happened.

The Ororon story arc was... super rushed, for a character we just met. Talk about loredumping your arc and getting your resolution in one cutscene. I don't know this guy, I don't care! And his plan was such a non-starter, nothing even happened! I feel like I wasted my time!

I didn't even get to fight Capitano, after all the hype he got. At least Signora got a fight before she died?!

3. Chapter 5

Our actual time in the Night Kingdom wasn't so bad for the most part - it felt like Genshin was ticking off endgame tropes and running through them so quickly I didn't get the time to feel any impact, but it didn't annoy me or anything. I did think the boss fight was pretty uninspired, but I don't like Genshin's boss design in general. I'm generally frustrated the 6 heroes and Capitano didn't get to do more here.

Capitano's death... sucked? I know a lot of people are mad about how he went out, but I wasn't even super surprised about it. I mean. Look at Signora's death and Arlecchino's non-presence in Fontaine (and what little Childe got). Capitano's narrative ties into his region best of all the Harbingers, but it wasn't utilised very well. But what do you expect?

Mavuika is boring, I didn't mind Citlali's scenes, Natlan really just feels like it lacks any real punch. I never feel like Genshin does, but Natlan is just kinda on cruise-control because nothing really wild (stupid or not) happens either.

This chapter would be ranked higher if not for the infuriating amount of glazing the protag gets! I hate it when everyone fawns all over you for extended periods of time, and I felt like this patch spent more time doing that than anything else! A party AND a celebration at the end? Mavuika's dumb speeches wasting my time?! Ugh.

2. Chapter 2

Saving Kachina in the underworld. I... remember the least about this storyline, except that Mavuika deeply unimpressed me. I at least kind of liked Furina by this point in Fontaine?

Genuinely though, I do think Kachina's storyline fizzled out in a really unsatisfying way. Like, she did technically become a hero by her culture's standards, but narratively it didn't feel like much was accomplished with her.

1. Chapter 1

It's... fine. It's a fine storyline. I didn't dislike Kachina, I didn't dislike her storyline in the Genshin Olympics, or her friendship with Mualani. The scenes with the People of the Springs and Atea were fine too. It was a solidly fine introduction to Natlan, especially by Genshin standards. I just find Natlan a bit... tonally dissonant from the stakes supposedly at play there, and it's a shame about the rest of it.

Natlan's bare bones competence (but being boring) vs Fontaine's pure stupidity and exasperation... I don't know which I prefer. Fontaine gave me more to chew on, at least...

[daybreakrising]

okay, quest thoughts under the cut, but again, i'm not really saying anything other people on my dash haven't already said-

i'm gonna get the negatives out of the way first, bc i like to end things on a positive note. i promise you, i do have positive things to say, but-

genshin peaked at fontaine. i'm sorry, maybe there's a little bias involved there, but i genuinely believe that. i'd accept an argument for sumeru to be included too - the storytelling in both of those regions was amazing.

nothing in this story has grabbed me the way fontaine's did. i had zero emotional connection to any of the characters, most of whom i found to be severely lacking in any distinctive personalities beyond surface level traits. i just had no reason to care about them except that the story was basically telling me to, which... is very bad storytelling. if you want me to care about these people and their stories, then give me a reason to, show me why i should be invested in them and their stories. i had more emotional connection to the saurians than the people. as for the archon... listen, i may not have found raiden all that interesting, personally (in comparison to other archons, that is), but i could still connect with her and her story. mavuika? eh. i'm sorry, but she's just boring to me. yes, she's kind, she's strong, but is that... it ?? for her personality ??? and sure, it's sad that she said goodbye to her family so she could come back in 500 years but to me that's nothing compared to the sacrifices or the losses that other archons have faced. in my tier list of archons, she's at the very bottom with no competition. we'll see if her story quest changes anything, but based solely on what we get in the archo quest? i just don't care. i know some people love her but for me there's just not enough there to care about.

and the story itself... is boring. the idea behind it is interesting, some of the execution of it has been fantastic, but as an overall plot... ehhh. being force-fed "friendship is magic" themes over and over, the constant introduction of frankly pointless interludes that add nothing to the plot, the pacing of the story itself... it made me tune out and skip dialogue (by this i mean: i read the subtitles and skipped the voiced lines once i was done) and it felt like such a drag to get through. i saw this last act described as a 'slog' and honestly.... that's so accurate. it was.

that first half didn't need to be included, or if they had to shove it in there, why wasn't it part of the equally pointless (and very short) interlude quest last patch? it would have made more sense to have the 'post-war downtime' elements in the interlude so you can start off the final act with the actual action. i know i began playing when i was already exhausted, but it isn't the first time i've picked up an archon quest on little to no sleep and i've never before had to put down the controller and take a break because i was bored. nothing pulled me in, nothing gave me the motivation or the drive to finish it (or at least get as far as i could before i had to cave to exhaustion). i literally got to the point of "wait 2 more days" (again) and went: i cannot be fucking bothered with this. it honestly felt like a means of 'padding out' the story for the sake of content, and just frustrated me because i wanted to get to the point of the plot.

side note: i'm getting so tired of the constant "wait x amount of days" quest objectives. you can show the passing of time with a simply cutscene, or even just one of those black screens with text genshin likes to throw at us a lot. that and the "walk three steps, cutscene, walk two steps, cutscene, walk-" elements that are prevalent throughout hyv games but seem to be more frequent in current storylines are just... killing it for me. it's unnecessary and interrupts the pacing of the plot too much.

i have many issues with the storytelling in this region, some i've talked about before, some other people have put into finer words than i can produce right now, but it does come down to: there's no conflict, there's no real consequence, and it's not real enough. "but lauri, 2000 people died in this quest, how is that not a consequence?" - this is one of the positives i have about natlan because yes, we see actual consequence of war but at the same time... that's it. we get one act with consequences and then magically the world is all back to normal. i saw a video that touched on this exact issue: during that act, we saw the region torn apart and contaminated by the abyss, we saw people and saurians dead or dying - but then once we complete that part of the story, there's no follow-up (i do not count that pathetic interlude. it had promise and it failed to deliver imo) - and to prove this isn't entirely based on bias, fontaine did have the same problem. there was a huge ass flood and other than poisson, nowhere needed rebuilding?? there was no lasting damage??? genshin pls we know you can alter the state of the world around us - do better. and as much as i hated the trope of 'dead sister = awakened power', we should have seen more of how that affected chasca after it happened. instead, we got a few lines of dialogue and that was it. and idk if it's gonna come up again in a later quest of some kind but her whole "tainted by the abyss" deal just... never became relevant outside of her briefly losing control in her grief. i honestly expected that to play a part in the archon quest somehow and it... didn't.

because there's no conflict. & i'm not referring to the actual physical conflict of war, but conflict between characters, between elements of the plot, etc. everyone is just perfectly happy buddies that all magically get along and that is just.... not real at all. even when people band together against a common enemy, join forces to fight for their people and their home, you're not going to magically work together perfectly. there will be clashes, opposing opinions on how to move forward, etc. if there's conflict between characters, it makes it more meaningful when they do come together and fight for a common cause, it makes the victory even more impactful because of it. instead it just felt... empty. lacklustre.

i have never before finished an archon quest's story and gone: is that it? i did with this one.

i've rambled enough about the negatives so i'll close on one final thing regarding capitano and his story: there wasn't enough of it. there wasn't enough of him. again, other people have already touched on this with far more eloquence than i can muster at this moment, but as one of the only genuinely interesting characters in this quest, i was very disappointed that he was just... nowhere to be seen until the very end. 'but he didn't have an ancient name, he couldn't help with the final fight' - so wtf was he doing while it went on then? idk man i just think they could have showcased him a little more, especially since he's the first harbinger.

and now for the positives!

natlan as a region has a lot going for it from my perspective. i love the landscape, i love the saurians, i love the music (though it doesn't always fit the tone of the scenes happening in some of the quests), i love the different tribes and the culture of natlan as a whole. i may not like some of the playable character designs but some of the npc designs are fire (pun intended). the lore is fantastic too, and i've really enjoyed the world quests (which makes me sad they aren't voiced, bc i prefer them to the archon quest in this instance)

capitano saying a big fuck you to the lord of death was *chef's kiss*. i'm sad that his character has essentially come to a close now, but it was definitely clearly leading to that and it is a very fitting end to him. i loved that he was nothing like anyone really expected him to be & he's definitely up there amongst my favourite harbingers. the fact he asked to removed from the mission to collect the gnosis was a nice touch - further establishing the honour he upheld (i'm also curious who will be sent instead - given the new area incoming, perhaps dottore again? it's a shame the one i want to see the most canonically doesn't leave snezhnaya-)

and i didn't hate the story entirely, don't get me wrong. i know i've complained a lot about many elements, but that's only because i know they can do better. and some of the small things - vichama's sub-plot & the fact he does eventually get to reunite with his friend at last, people you've helped in the tribes or in world quests coming to your aid, etc - were very nicely done. it had such a good premise that was simply let down by bad storytelling and a lack of investment into making the main characters interesting enough and important enough for you to care about what happens to them. and i'm sure not everyone will feel that way - people will connect to characters for a multitude of reasons and that's very valid, but for me i just. i needed more.

i enjoyed it, but i enjoyed it in the way i enjoy a book with a plot that sounded promising but didn't quite hit the mark: i finished it, but it's not going to a memorable story that i'll come back to. it's gonna sit on the shelf next to inazuma and gather dust, whilst fontaine gets taken down and experienced again and again.

i can only hope snezhnaya brings it back around

[hematomes]

You know,as someone who played Genshin,hsr,zzz and hi3 (not at the same time , I dropped hi3 after a while and I might drop zzz cuz combat wise it's also a hack n slash) ,maybe I'm biased but it feels like Genshin gets the worst ideas ,Like if you put the aspects of each game on a spectrum I feel like most of Genshin's aspects end up on the lower half.

It kinda makes me sad because zzz has some cool stuff, hsr too, HI3 has the excuse of being hoyos golden child so to say I guess, regardless of how well it does financially that game is still a big deal you know, but Genshin feels like it's being weirdly left out of all this cool stuff.

Character kits? Been getting worse tbh, animation probably not,I don't think Genshin's animation has ever went anywhere but up, story wise it's fine, and design wise it depends on the character I guess.

Idk ,maybe I'm talking nonsense but it feels like somewhere a few higher ups decided that Genshin would some sort of scapegoat somehow, but then again why would they do that when they could just as well just rake in the money from all of thier IPs, my thought process feels a bit conspiracy theory like

I'm probably just making a big deal out of nothing though.

i agree that genshin has been getting the short end of the stick in v5. rant incoming but i genuinely can't believe how bad it has become lmao

natlan as a nation is... extremely underwhelming. the archon quest has its moments (the war bit was actually very intense imo), but the characters lack depth for the most part, or at least it's explored in different parts that are mostly hidden.

mavuika is the worst archon by a long shot, because she's not flawed like the rest of them. it still feels uncanny that capitano agreed with her plan in a matter of minutes. she feels very... mary sue-esque? like everyone even outside of her nation blindly trusts her, even the traveler. it negates the traveler's character development from nations like fontaine and inazuma, and makes mavuika boring as hell.

mualani is the classic bubbly girl. cool. xilonen exists as a justification for the modern tech. cool. chasca is supposed to be constantly battling demons and was supposedly raised by literal beasts but it's barely addressed/isn't reflected in her character both design and personality wise, and both of her npc sisters were more interesting than her. citlali was cool until she turned into yet another aether simp (they even gave her a specific romantic moment if you play aether, which never happened with playable characters so far). ororon is the saving grace but also turned into a matchmaker for aether and citlali, which is also boring as fuck, and to top it off he's a 4* despite his importance and involvement in the quest (same thing can be said about kachina, the other interesting character). kinich has potential, but appears for a total of 4 frames to have a funny moment with ajaw and then dips. iansan seems really fun but she's yet another chibi with an ambiguous age (professional trainer? how.).

gameplay wise... mavuika is a let down. the nth pyro main dps, HEAVILY reliant on natlan mechanics and characters, fundamentally unplayable without at least xilonen or citlali. the fact that they're rerunning arlecchino in the same patch when arlecchino is 1k better and more powerful is kind of laughable. it is believed that they're surprisingly running both mavuika and citlali in p1 to damage control their revenue, idk how accurate that could be but im inclined to believe it.

xilonen is a cool addition, and a great buff to some teams. she's the only saving grace of natlan so far imo- citlali has a lame ass shield that layla surpasses with a few constellations, kinich is burn reliant so without emilie he's a bit difficult (clinky gameplay as well in my experience), mualani is HORRID to play but she is in fact neuvi-level, chasca is just.. erm. idk. i miss fontaine and sumeru.

even disregarding the glaring issue of gender ratio (a matter so big that even streamers and casual "waifu" pullers are also complaining about it lmao), natlan is ass. like, genuinely. it is ass. i have been playing genshin for 4 years. i stopped buying the battle pass and the login blessing for the first time in these 4 years.

genshin, imo, is the money maker- they've built their empire on it with how big it became, so now they're comfortable enough to neglect it. it's sad and i hate it bc it was one of my favorite games, but i don't really hold out any hope for snezhnaya anymore.

[tablefourtyone]

Taking a trip down colorism's memory lane after the Natlan teaser, and why I'm not as bothered as I used to be.

I know everyone's got complaints about Natlan's "sunlight challenged" cast rn, but I remembered getting annoyed that Kaeya and Xinyan were the only dark skinned playables ingame before Sumeru dropped, because they were the only dark skinned characters we ever saw in the game, like they were an endangered species whose descendants are constantly under the threat of being whitewashed.

I could've had a similar issue to having (so far) four dark skinned Sumeru natives as playables, but I just loved the lore in Sumeru sm that I didn't care about the number, especially when the Sumeru chapter was so much more ambitious and forward thinking than the previous three. I adore the four well-written peoples with all my heart, and I don't want or will have anything to do with hoyo's colorism problem.

Because it's not the lack of skin color variety or even the climate-related skin pigmentation inaccuracy that actually bothers me. These are nitpicks and pet peeves I have in light of not finding anything genuinely interesting or charming about the game despite its artistic direction as an openworld game with gorgeous music and excellent background lore.

Generally speaking, I've just been so goddamn tired of the filler-y vibe of the first 3 nations before Sumeru - because Liyue is a classic example of writers writing what they know (because China in a Chinese game), Mondstadt stopped being so interesting once Dvalin came to his senses, and the Inazuma chapter was such a huge timewaster I hated with a seething fury that I even disdainfully called it Weeaboo Land.

My Genshin gaming experience before Sumeru was essentially a toxic meringue of mediocrity and lazy writing that I would force myself to sit through, because there were plenty of other characters and lore that kept me riveted, but the creative direction of the game's main story itself was threatening to put me to sleep because things would get dramatic, only to be resolved either by a deus ex machina or by nothing of lasting consequence sticking around long enough to be a genuine cause for concern with the main cast. It was just so...meaningless.

IOW, the colorism in Genshin is the tip of the iceberg for every other thing I find offensive, unreasonable, and unjustifiable about the game.

Sumeru was my first breath of fresh air since we left Mondstadt and Venti.

All I'm trying to say is, to me, the quality of the writing and the atmosphere of the game has improved vastly, and I'll take it and not complain as much as before.

And if Natlan can pull off the same quality of writing skill and world building (and this completely depends on their lead writer for this region), the colorism is no issue for me at all.

I know no one is willing to accept this, but after what I've been through as someone who wants consistent and comprehensible writing to appear more frequently in future updates, I'm just happy for the writing to make sense and have more than just a little bit of fun and non-tonedeaf whimsy, if ever.

I simply don't want to be unhappy as a longtime Genshin player.

I want to enjoy this game and explore it and have fun without hang-ups spoiling the experience.

Understand that, for me, Himeko's Mavuika's fair complexion and the slight shade of dark tanning that doesn't go all the way up in saturation for the new cast, is a very distant second to the writing for Natlan's situation.

And going forward, I hope none of you spoil yours or others' Genshin experience with negativity or snide comments about the colorism issue. You have a problem with it, take it up with Hoyo. Leave the rest of us out of your grievances.