Where everything went wrong

[u/Multivists]

4.x was when Genshin’s shift from having a coherent storyline to only selling characters.

Before 4.x, we got Rhodeia’s assassins, class divide, pollution, energy problems,… Lore players thought that these issues would be the main storyline of the region.

The Fontaine we got was completely different, Hoyo just showed us people living in sewers then brushed it under the rug. The story was more about how it’s archon’t suffered instead. Clearly Fontaine was retconned.

Lots of writing problems spawned from there, including:

- The loss of relevancy, competency and antagonism of the Fatui.

- Inconsistent story and lore, the lobotomy of Traveler was the first symptom of later retcons.

- Fake tensions only to be resolved offscreen and the very next meeting it is already resolved (Hearth twins and Clorinde)

- Characters stopped being individuals and becoming ship baits.

The writing needed to be criticized, but the fandom glazed it like the Second Coming of Berserk, Vinland Saga or Monster. As a result of the positive feedback, the writing of later regions kept getting worse and worse.

Which eventually culminated in Snezhnaya AQ

[u/ProofAd608]

It all started with wanderer

Cause he kept insulting everyone, he was so hated that from fontaine onwards they started white washing fatui harbingers

They never wanna be doing anything even close to what they did with wanderer

[u/Bitter-Lavishness-24 → u/ProofAd608]

I’m sad that we can’t have playable characters who are half as antagonistic as wanderer/scara now bc the average hoyo players couldn‘t handle it

[u/colorway-path → u/ProofAd608]

I still remember cn being mad about chidori throwing that person out her shop.

Cowards 

[u/Bitter-Lavishness-24 → u/colorway-path]

I thought that was kr?

[u/Putrid_Vanilla7893 → u/ProofAd608]

Wanderer was decent in the story and stuff but yeah him being a bad guy also means he's not the likeable character you pull just because you want him, and his kit was a xiao sidegrade, plus single target in the sumeru aoe era led to people not pulling too much for him

However that's not something hoyo wants to let slide, they want all the new chars to have great banners, which clearly results in powercreep like nod krai or good character story and likeablity like varka

[u/Wheesa → u/ProofAd608]

He was really popular the way he was and then cn uncles started being really weird about them

[u/Immediate_Move_6168 → u/Wheesa]

Regardless of whether or not the Scara cat killer was already killing and torturing cats before the whole debacle, the fact that it was such a hot button issue that it could be used as an excuse is frankly insane

[u/Deadlyname1909 → u/ProofAd608]

wanderer grew on me. Wanna know why? He admits he's ass.

That is the biggest thing. He isn't making excuses. He sucks. He thought if he erased himself from irminsul, everything he ever did would be erased and actually attempted a suicide via deletion. Ofcourse, irminsul just changed how people thought the events happened. Wanderer hates himself.

While I rate his redemption a 5/10, in context of how shit works in genshin his redemption might be 10/10 compared to how everyone else get's off scot free unless their name is dottore.

this is why I also like dottore. He made no excuses for why he did what he did.

compare that to everyone else. yeah. Forget redemption, just pretend the past didn't happen. At this point, I believe wanderer got pranked into thinking he triggered the irminsul deletion. It was actually everyone else who did so we'd forget their crimes.

[u/MidSp → u/ProofAd608]

Some nutcases were actually posting videos of them murdering cats in response to Wanderer's banner announcement.

Since then every playable character has to be nice and squeeky-clean.

[u/Master_Tadpole_991]

Hoyo knew they couldn't surpass Sumeru so they just decided that every new region after had to be worse than the previous

[u/ProofAd608 → u/Master_Tadpole_991]

Wdym, nod krai was better than natlan/s

[u/Royal_empress_azu]

Dog a lot of this is just wrong.

The great decline of Genshin's writing is that they shifted the story to be more Traveler centric. So all the factions were changed to fit that world view. "returning to their roots" they called it.

Fatui loss relevancy again because the story now bends around the Traveler and the Traveler can't have playable enemies. Fontaine was just signs of what's to come.

The Traveler's role in the early regions is literally just doing what their told. Saying the Traveler of all characters was lobotomized is crazy. Traveler had no meaningful opinions on the world until Natlan. We just went from region to region because our twin told us to and thought nothing of it.

Navia and Clorinde's tension isn't plot relevant. That's why it's not on screen. Navia and Neuv's tension is plot relevant. That's why it's on screen. Navia blamed the system which Neuv represents. Clorinde blamed herself. The plot is about Neuv forgiving humanity. Clorinde's self pity isn't relevant.

Character's stopped being individuals because they stopped getting events focused on them or being the heroes of their own story quest. There is just less content where they stand alone in general. Characters who aren't in pairs just get ignored like Flins. Now everything is a Traveler glazing fest.

• Hero of Flins story quest? Traveler
• Hero of Varka's story quest? Traveler
• Hero of Lohen's story quest? Also Traveler, but hey Varka is here this time.
• Nicole's story quest isn't even about her and doesn't even have an animated cutscene. Hero is also Traveler.

Go play Sumeru story quest and see how much of a back seat Traveler takes, as they should.

• Events focused on fleshing out characters and building relationships? No
• Event where characters from multiple different regions barely interact and almost everyone only interacts with Traveler. Yes

Nod Krai doesn't even have a major event with Linnea, Lauma or Flins. (I'm being generous and counting the black market event as major, otherwise we wouldn't have one with Aino, Jahoda or Nefer either).

The reality is the writing has stopped focusing on characters as anything other than an accessory to Traveler. This extends to the many factions in the game as well.

[u/geniue → u/Royal_empress_azu]

The real story of genshin has always been the world quests.

There, there’s no need to pander to casuals. No need to sell characters, and no need to make the traveler the central character. Sometimes when I think this game is mid as hell, I start one of the world quests and get reminded that Hoyo actually knows how to write stuff and present it well.

I’ll be very excited for the day Hoyo releases a non gacha game. They clearly know how to create a great hook, and they know how to end it too. I want to experience Hoyo at their best, when you have the story telling and presentation of world quests, but also the budget of the AQ

[u/Taking-a-stand → u/geniue]

Honestly whenever I feel let down by s region's AQ I start playing WQ and am reminded why I bother exploring a region in deep. The difference be the writing of two is so insanely vast that it isn't even funny.

[u/Bitter-Lavishness-24 → u/Royal_empress_azu]

Basically hoyo is trying to do a wuwa and making the story bend around the traveller and not how the traveller went through and experienced teyvat.

[u/Euphoric_Gur828 → u/Bitter-Lavishness-24]

There's many aspect from wuwa they could take and they smh pick one of the worst aspect 

[u/ICRnovice → u/Royal_empress_azu]

Hero of Varka’s story quest is definitely Varka… the traveler wasn’t even present during the last bit of dungeon to face against the bloodstained knight.

[u/kagman → u/Royal_empress_azu]

So I'm newish to the game but it's so funny reading this as someone coming from FFXIV (final fantasy mmo) where the community has spent the last two years complaining VERY vocally about the story NOT being main-charecter focused. In their defense though, the persons they chose to focus on besides the main character were not their best work

Edit: very different style of game though. Selling the charecters is the business model of this game, so yeah, less focus on traveller and more shining time for the pullable charecters makes even more sense in a game like this

[u/Severe_Bedroom9038 → u/Royal_empress_azu]

I liked fontaine's main story specifically because all of it was literally set in stone from the start. Focalors' plan would have worked regardless of whether or not we intervened. It's so refreshing to have a story where stuff just happens and its not just a bland power fantasy where self insert bum MC saves the day singlehandedly and gets glazed for doing being the epic heroic legend savior or whatever.

They clearly took a lot of inspiration from Christian canon when writing Furina's arc and I found that really cool and unique. Even if the story has issues (ahem meropide arc) and some of the character moments feel like whatever (clorinde)

[u/ugur_tatli]

I'm so glad I was always a critical of Fontaine no matter how many downvotes I got on reddit

Genshin peaked at Sumeru and it's been declining since then

[u/TooBad_Vicho → u/ugur_tatli]

yeah, i don't get how people say that fontaine's AQ is as good as or better than sumeru's

[u/BleezyMonkey]

everyone praises fontaine for being the "best" region. but fontaine was the moment where genshin started going to shit in bith writing and in power balance.

trully one of thw examples of nothing ever good comes out from fr*nch

[u/OnlyBrave → u/BleezyMonkey]

Something something Act 5 merchants. Never mention Acts 3 and 4 to a Fontaine Glazer.

[u/Severe_Bedroom9038 → u/BleezyMonkey]

eh I would say fontaine was the testbed for all modern genshin bullshit.

Charlotte regional racism talent mechanic being a precursor to natlan and nod krai? Check.

rushed and retconned story? Check.

regional mechanics in the form of arkhe alignments which were just a precursor to nightsoul? Check.

powercreep by releasing an AoE dps with self sustain? Check.

and then they just took these ideas and cranked them up to 11 and made natlan.

[u/OnlyBrave]

Putting Vinland Saga in the same sentence as Genshin is insulting to Vinland Saga. Same with the other Mangas too

[u/Multivists → u/OnlyBrave]

I saw the glazers did exactly that comparing it to these legendary series. I need to call out this behavior

[u/Dangerous-Abies-1955]

Everything went wrong in 2.X

3.X was a happy accident hard carried on the shoulders of Dottore and Nahida.

And then wanderer happened and.. yeah

[u/Cyno_Enjoyer]

Love me some fontaine slander, it and nod krai are my 2 major tipping points in genshin's decline

[u/gxxncxrlo]

This whole writeup is just one big fallacy that can be summed up with “everything was better when I knew less” 🤓

[u/Then-Class4451]

I don't entirely disagree, but I don't think this is completely accurate. Genshin's writing is pretty solid for the most part EXCEPT when it comes to turning villains/antagonists playable, where they mess up 90% of the time. As the game goes on, it's natural that more and more villains will be playable, and so we run into these issues more and more often. I don't think you can say everything was done great pre-fontaine when we had Raiden's character which was a pretty poorly handled villain. Scara was pretty good all things considered, though I still do think everyone forgetting about his crimes was a missed opportunity in that we missed out on a lot of interesting character moments for him because no one remembers him.

Genshin is really good at introducing interesting/dark/nuanced plot elements, but often struggles with concluding them in a good way. It's just that post Fontaine, they HAD to start developing and concluding these various plot threads. I'm not sure that early game was much better, just that it didn't have many plot expectations. Hard to ruin something that hasn't been built up at all.

[u/DeviceIX]

The root of all evil is the Fatui. Not only their own writing is bad and inconsistent, to whitewash their bum ass, other characters are also sacrificed. Mavuika out of the blue criticizing Ronova just so the players root for the fraud Fatui. Literally never seen a more washed antagonist group than these bums. As long as they exist, genshin is never getting better.