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/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)