#they grabbed a bunch of cool story ideas‚ mashed them together‚ and developed none of them. feels slapdash

[moon-song-and-star]

I've figured out why Natlan's stories feel so weak to me:

First off, this is the first time there's been NO human vs human conflict in a archon quest AT ALL. Liyue had the us on the lam, Inazuma had its civil war, Sumeru's got the akademiya sage scheme, Fontaine's quest was half a legal battle, and even Mondstadt's simple "beat the dragon" quest involved us stealing the lyre. Additionally, The Fatui have been a constant battle since the beginning, and even when we were working together, there were still plots and at least a little nefariousness going on where we couldn't see. The Fatui have always been a big part of the worry throughout the story. However, in Natlan, at literally no point was the Captain any kind of threat. The mystery stuff at the beginning excluded, Capitano was just giving us a thumbs up the whole time.

Two, for a plot about collecting a group of people to save the world, this story was not at all about the people in Natlan. This story was focused 100% on the Abyss the entire time. I like Natlan's characters because they're fun to play, but none of them have any meaningful internal conflict brought about through the stories in Natlan. The only thing that happened for them was "hey traveler, You can do it, I promise. The abyss is here and bad." Kinich had no conflict, just annoyed by ajaw. Mualani was literally just confident the whole time. Xilonen was offscreen 90% of the time. The list goes on. I have no reason to care about what's going on for them. They're cute and all but they seem shallow and flat, like they have one character trait and that's it. Additionally, none of their personal stories or traits contributed to the archon quest. The side quests were just "hey forget about the abyss for a hot sec, I have this completely unrelated thing going on." Same for the world quests. Il Capitano's fight with Death was boring bc there was NO build up for it. "Oh, he hates death, oh he beat her with a loophole right now he didn't introduce until a second ago. Cool i guess"

Natlan was advertised as a Nation of War, and i was excited to see war. I was hoping for different tribes fighting against each other, needing to be united against an evil, perhaps by a new archon (to draw in the purpose of the archon system). I would have even had the fatui join them after a bit. However, the was no interesting emotional conflict at all. The bad guys were completely unfeeling and definitely in the wrong, which makes for boring story.