Genshin Impact: A Failure in Storytelling

Hey Guys! Glad to see all of you taking an interest in the video! Just to be transparent, this video was made before the release of 3.0. With the exception of Collie I did not include the Sumeru portion of the archon quest with my evaluation. I agree Sumeru has improved the story a little and I will return to it at a later date. 😄

The reason we don't see Teppei's funeral is because Teppei did not really die. He faked his death for the greater good, then retired as an inconspicuous street-food salesman by dying his hair. You will find him everywhere, traveling across Teyvat wearing disguises -- sometimes as a knight of Favonius, sometimes as a Milileth, etc.

one of my biggest issues with genshin is that the characters don't actually exist in that game. they appear in quests, interact with each other probably once or twice in their life and then completely evaporate. they don't walk around the city, you can't see them in their respective work places or homes like imagine going to dawn winery in mondstadt and seeing diluc inside the mansion just sitting there or jean and kaeya in knights of favonious headquarters? how cool would that be? but instead we have the same boring npcs always standing around but the actual characters hoyo wants you to spend money on are nowhere to be found? like where are they?? the only taste of that we got during lantern rite festival where some characters could be spotted in various places of liyue until the end of latern rite event but it should be a norm!

The biggest problem I noticed is that genshin wants to tell a story full of interesting characters, but doesn't know how to make those characters backstories intertwine with the story itself. Teyvat kind of feels like a guided tour full of actors and its all set up for the travelers benefit.

FINALLY SOMEONE ACTUALLY MENTIONED THE RECYCLED ANIMATIONS DURING DIALOGUE. IT'S ANNOYED ME FOR SO LONG I LITERALLY CANNOT TAKE "EMOTIONAL" MOMENTS SERIOUSLY.

Here's a sentence that I hold dear deep in my fucking heart: "Genshin's story is actually good if it is told by someone else instead of experiencing it firsthand." I'd rather hear the story from someone else than listening to Paimonial Expositional.

I think the major problem is that genshin's writing is very childish (as in "minions" or other cartoons aimed at toddlers). And it works for the first two regions because the plot mostly revolves around fantasy tropes and maintains a high fantasy mood. But everything collapses when writers take on more serious topics, such as politics and civil war, with massacres and war crimes, or when they try to play on psychological grounds, retaining the same childish writing.

I’m honestly questioning why Aether wants to meet any more archons at this point. None of them can tell him anything, so why not just talk to Dain? Or better yet, kill abyss monsters until Lumine shows up. Edit: AND NEITHER FURINA NOR NEUVILLETTE COULD TELL US ANYTHING EITHER

y'all know the ol' good rule: if the cutscene doesn't have audio, IT DOESN'T MATTER

Funniest thing to me is how sumeru's new human enemies are more creatively designed AND animated (even just idles) than the NPC's

I love how the point is for the lore to go super deep and be super unexpected, but somehow hoyoverse managed to fuck it up. There’s no mystery to uncover because NO ONE WILL TELL US A DAMN THING! Like Zhongli! Apparently he had dealings with Lumine in the past, but doesn’t even HINT at their history together, just says he can’t tell us! It’s like onion skin, but the onion skin is made of Kevlar.

The biggest gripe I have with this game's story is plot relevance. Genshin does not try to justify anything that happens at all. You, the player, are expected to just go along with it and care about characters you have no reason to care about(as cool as they are I have no reason to get emotionally invested in these characters the writers won't justify it). It's the most egregious kind of railroading, where the writer is more concerned with distracting you with all their cool characters and settings rather than telling a cohesive story. The long drawn out dialogue(seriously a lot of what these characters say can be summarized we don't need a whole essay of dialogue to understand what's going on), the shoehorned characters, useless exposition--it all screams "I am trying to waste your time".

I’m so mad that these limited time events didn’t become ACTUAL PERMANENT STORY QUESTS- I mean! Some of them are sooooo important! Geez Genshin… as a lore lover.. this really hurts me.

I think a strange thing about Genshin is that it can't seem to decide how seriously it's taking itself. The story is so interesting to me, but parts like the whole existence of Paimon or the variety of plot-holes, when juxtaposed against the darker elements of backstory and lore, just don't make sense.

My one issue with Genshin Impact is that despite Teyvat being an entire world, all of the nations seem sectioned off, and the archons and lesser divinities don't interact with each other. The most we got was Venti who healed Xiao's Karmic debt. I'm our real world, nations are intentionally or unintentionally effecting each other all the time. Like a trash island forming in the Pacific, the gulf of Mexico's oil spill, the trans Atlantic slave trade, the spreading of religion all across the world. People in Liyue don't talk about the Anemo Archon, people in Inazuma don't talk about the Geo archon or his Yaksha. In a world where Gods exist and there was a literal war of gods over territory disputes, we don't see the subtle impulses and effects on each other that truly make Teyvat seem like a living world. How cool would it be if some of the mountain tops Barbatos terraformed became islands in Inazuma? Or if Rukkedhevata helped Makoto and Isteroth create the Thunder Sakura tree? One YouTuber, I think Ashikai made a theory that Xiao is originally from Sumeru, that would be cool to explore.

An important note also is that "backstory" is not the same as "storytelling". Good storytelling is when the backstories of the characters influence the action and consequences of their actions throughout the story, as well as how each characters actions influences each other. Imagine if Game of Thrones had every character doing their own thing and they rarely talk to each other. That's Genhin's story. You're in one bubble then moving on to the next, and each individual events doesn't seem to work towards any collective whole. But ultimately, we really can't forget that this is a gacha game made by people who only make gacha games, and the story is just a means to sell banners. Much like League of Legends or Overwatch.

Now that you mention animations half way to the end, Klee used to had a unique walking animation during the beta, and even Rosaria had a unique animation when she draws out her Polearm when selecting "Weapons" in the character menu, Hoyoverse just doesn't likes something that's "Unique"

genshin main story loop: >Traveler arrive on a new region >traveler want to meet archon to ask info about his/her sibbling or his/her wereabout >there are problems in the region >there is a big crisis in the region >traveler do chores >traveler meet new native characters and NPCs >traveler do chores >traveler had bonding quest with certain character >traveler do chores >sometime traveler got manipulated by someone for their benefit >traveler do chores >traveler solve or help other chara solve ppl's problems >traveler solve the big crisis (directly/indirectly) >traveler meet the archon >traveler ask about his/her sibling whereabout >the archon can't tell him/her anything about his/her sibling for some freakin reason >get a message from dainsleif >back to previous region (Mondstadt) >meet dainsleif >do his quest >got main objective progression (info about his/her sibling) >got some lore dump >repeat going to other region become pointless for main character's objective, because everytime we meet archon, there isn't any progress in our main Objective. what make it worse: there isn't any skip or fast foward button, and the dialogue text are painfully slow and goddamn long

I think the fundamental issue, which also affects it’s gameplay loop, is that Genshin is a game with hundreds of hours of content but tries to make you stay around for thousands. And they’re not gonna use up all the good stuff in the beginning only to then drag it’s corpse for another 10 years, so instead it’s spread out for it’s entire lifetime while they pad it out with filler to make it last. It’s somewhat a consequence of it’s gacha model, where their long-term income is dependent on how long they can keep the boat afloat. In fact, I think most of the game’s major flaws are a result of the gacha in one way or another. I do believe though that they are intending to make use of the lore for future quests. We’ve started seeing that being the case with certain quests like the Tsurumi Island one. Ultimately, they simply want the story to go on for like a decade so they can keep business going. And putting out new meaningful content every 6 weeks isn’t particularly easy, so inevitably they end up cutting corners in a lot of areas even if that doesn’t respect the players time very much.

I found the story to be a complete dumpster fire since day 1. The story seemed far too focused on telling, not showing, and backstory over actual development. It also had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Sad to see that never changed.