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. 😄

And then the Honkai: Star Rail team is producing some of the best plot i have ever seen.

Honkai: Star Rail is getting everything that Genshin players want LOL

X character: Says something relevant
Paimon: Repeats the same sh*t already told by the other character
As much I love some parts of Genshin's lore, the archons quest are such pain in the ass most of the time.

Then boom Sumeru came out with the best story so far 😆

The story itself is very good and interesting, but the structure can be very jarring, from having the traveler not talk for the majority of the game when we know he can, to updates that we have to wait way too long for any progression to things kind of being more rinse and repeat for the traveler to go to a new continent and save the archon basically. There’s still a lot more we don’t know and will be answered soon enough

They did fuck up the story DESPITE making so much money.
They fucked up the story BECAUSE telling it this way makes them the most money.

i bear with the lack of animation and npc diversity only because i'm playing it on mobile but the way they put every plot point into artifact sets and walls of text is inexcusable

Long story short.


Because it's a chinese game.

I'm gonna be real, as a relative outsider to gatcha games, Genshin felt... off from the start.
It really did very little to draw me in, and the start was an absolute slog of cardboard or annoying characters with zero real likeability factor out the gate (plus obvious "twists" like who the masked vigilante was) - It really felt like a game that knew it was made for kids, and didn't want to bother with much outside the base.

Obviously it did grow beyond that, but I still always found a lot of the plot either boring or frustrating, especially the more I learned. Certain characters with incredible power being completely useless or losing it, and the story either excusing or condemning characters for actions that leave it blatant who the "good" and "bad" guys HAVE to be, reguardless of the potential issues with them.

You can argue that the lore is awesome, but it's honestly largely generic and emotionless. The explanations are drawn out, and the delivery is either bad (through in engine recurring cutscenes) or through a wall of text nobody will read. What lore did you read yourself, rather than being told by a friend, or through a video/summary? For 99% of people - not much. That even goes for my friends OBSESSED with genshin and it's lore - thousands of hours and thousands of dollars in.


I found that Star Rail drew me in way faster, way better, and I had a lot more reason to stay. The beginning was a slog too, but it had some draw, and I think keeping the cast relatively contained to only a couple team members for a bit really made it a bit more palatable. There's also just a lot more creativity going on so far, and the designs seem better and a LOT more varied to me. It's clear that there are actually different worlds going on here, rather than just "the snow area that sucks to go through". Further than that, there's a lot of room for the story to grow and move into, and characters everywhere that have a lot of fleshing out to do even if you are already invested in them.

Before people tell me - Yeah. I know. Blah blah, it gets better. Believe me, I've started to play, then stopped playing Genshin semi-regularly about a dozen times at this point. I honestly felt so bored by the story, that for a while I just explored the entire map and maxed my characters rather than going on to the next region. It was that bad sometimes.

Overall, Star Rail isn't perfect by any means, and I won't fanboy, but it seems fairly obvious to me which one is the second creation of the type from the studio.

First 2 months, Trarveler is learning Tervat's language
And the more story progress, traveler talk more cuz he/she getting better at Tervat's Language
Maybe idk, it is my theory
They could make funny characters like main characters in honkai star rail, in star rail, mc talk a lots

Ok so I have no idea if you know this or not but the whole reason why traveler doesn’t talk is because the are still learning the language yes they should have a good grasp on it by now but the whole reason why Paimon talks so much is so traveler can listen to them and learn and also get fed up with them once in a while because Paimon is a huge blabber mouth

And here I am back after playing the Archon quest of 4.0. They definitely have improved the writing here since Inazuma, and even better then Sumeru's storyline

You'd think that with all the people working on this game they'd be able to create the most fleshed out and detailed characters ever. They spend more time on the countries it seems.

You fuckin did it, this is my favourite video essay.

POV: you forgot that Hoyoverse maded this game just to take money from your bank account

Paimon seems to suffer from them wanting to do the "Mostly silent MC with companion that does the talking for them" Trope, think Master Chief & Cortana or The Guardian & our Ghost in Destiny, except those are actually well written characters, and not a floating plot-regurgitator that treats you like a blind, deaf & dumb toddler. Speaking of Destiny, removing story critical content sucks balls, like so much, I like lore diving, but not having to watch a 4 hour video just to start, although destiny does it a 'tiny' bit better by usually telling the important removed bits somewhere if needed.
Also no game, story, or whatever made in the history of storytelling should a fade to black with text saying what they did instead of showing what happens or at bare minimum, have the telling what happened, occur diagetically. Like imagine if in Pacific Rim, instead of a the epic Kaiju fight at the end & throwing the reactor into the portal, it just faded to black and said: "The monsters were repelled, and the portal letting them through sealed using an explosion from Gipsy Danger's reactor core. The End."

I think the reason why paimon exist is because this is a mobile game. And we have 2 characters. You have to download 2 assets of dialogs instead of one if the main character talks. It sucks yeah.

The reason the main character is because they want the player to project themselves onto them (kinda like Link in Legend of Zelda)... Because if the player projects themselves onto the character, it makes the character interactions more... personal. It acts as fuel for their gacha system. There's a reason there's a Traveler x [insert character here] ship for every character in the game.

And the reason the character quests don't tell us anything is because its supposed to be a preview of the character, to get us to want to pull for them... Because ALL of the character's full backstory can be unlocked and read through if you have the character and level up their friendship level. Its once again a tactic to fuel their gacha system (the worst part of Genshin that weasels its way into ruining all of the game's good qualities).

Genshin Impact is a great game that has the unfortunate downside of being a mobile gacha game. I swear, the characters and overall plot (not the way they handled the storytelling, but the plot itself) are really good, and if it was an ACTUAL multi-game series instead of dragging everything out in one single gacha-rampant money grab, then it would wayyyy more popular and get less hate.

I kid you not, every single story interaction is designed to keep you playing long-term. All the dialogue is slow and drawn out, you have to go on lengthy goose chases, and most of the best story quests are locked behind limited time events.

Thank God. I thought I was insane when I realized how tedious and boring the storytelling is, when apparently everybody loved it. Are people just used to the bare minimum or what.

I like the storytelling and feel things left out may come in way later or left up to our own interpretations of it

But I am easy to please so... shrug

I think traveler doesnt talk much because theyre still new to the language of teyvat?

do people even play it for lore

I remember MiHoyo once said that their business is selling love to their fans... and all I have to say is, damn they are so bad at their business if that's the case.

They fixed ALMOST all of the problems that is mention in this vid 🙏🙏

Hoyoverse...i wanted to play Scaramouche with his electro delusion...why did you gave him an anemo vision??

I disagree. But eh, what do I know, my favorite games and anime are Star Ocean 3 and Shinsekai Yori.

Traveler going to a new region is like sora going to a new world in kingdom hearts😂 an organization member(fatui) is revealed to be behind the world's(region's) woes. No one can hel you find your friends(sibling)😂😂😂😂

Just to clarify the most probable reason for the 2 month gap is that Paimon actually taught the traveler the language of Teyvat

Also no one questions Paimon bc of the non existent purpose for such a thing mostly everyone does not know what Paimon is but they choose not to push further since there are MANY weird things in Teyvat

And for the Paimon slander first of since the traveler does not entirely know the language of Teyvat Paimon talks most of the time AND Paimon explains everything because Genshin in NO WAY is supposed to be too hard so it’s better in case you just are too rigid

No way am I about to defend Inazuma but BABY GAME??? I am pretty sure this is pre Fontaine but damm

This is why i feel honkai star rail is the best hoyoverse game, reasons:
no annoying mascot (we love you pom pom)
no npc chores for the main quests
has lip-syncing
has unique animations
characters are able to be in serious danger/killed off
no story quest filler, they just tell it like it is
the mc talks often and has multiple dialogue options that affect what will happen next

Alternate title: Honkai clearly being Hoyoverse's favorite child

Also remember when they reused a cutscene in the chasm and even the players defend it. Hoyoverse has no excuses, they have so much money yet they did that.

Genshin's biggest problem is that it's not Dark Souls and because its world has people in it you can't dedicate time to a few important NPCs. And also that the way its story goes is just far better suited for an anime.

Genshin’s story is amazing, but the problems you listed are very true. I’m a day 1 player and quickly fell in love with the story even in its early days. Fast forward a few years and I find myself putting ENORMOUS amounts of effort to follow the story ingame. Be it dialogues, books, artifacts. It’s scattered everywhere and it’s too much if you experience it first hand instead of like watching a yt video abt it.

Interesting that most of what you said are common sins of the games as a service

Adding a skip option with a short summary would genuinely improve the story experience and the only reason I see them not adding it yet is contempt for the players.

I feel like, if there's going to be the character stories AND a character quest for everyone, they should be linked to prevent redundancy. Because of the gatcha system you can't really lock the character quests behind owning the character and raising their friendship, especially the archons, but it would make sense if the character stories were told to you by the character themselves after they grow to trust you, which would explain why some of the archons backstory is locked behind you finding it out in the main quest first.

It’s a gacha game company that pumps out loads of rushed new not fixing the old or caring about their game just like the rest of the gacha game companies now days ive not seen a single gacha game company that actually gives a shit about the game which is why i hope the gacha system becomes banned eventually gacha system in genshin is pretty alright compared to others I’ve played however they are still earning loads of cash for a game that clearly doesn’t deserve it i find the gameplay loop to get old after awhile and and early game AR grind to progress the story was painfully slow

the fact I can take metal sonic, a character who has LITERALLY NOT TALKED A SINGLE LINE IN YEARS THE GAMES HE APPEARS IN, more seriously as a character than 80% of the genshin cast should say something about my opinion in this game's story

Sometimes i wonder why even traveller va exist if the are not gonna talk in main story, atleast they should have put voicelines for traveller to make the conversation more interesting, instead we get the flying lavender melon talking 😢

To think that it still won the Game Awards is mind boggling to me. It was clearly rigged or hacked. Otherwise, Sonic Frontiers would've gotten it far and square.

bro, you got something interesting to say here in my opinion, but you gotta learn how to say it so people can understand you! You gotta articulate your words better. They all mush together and I can barely understand what you're trying to say at some points. If you can't articulate some words for whatever reason, then you gotta practice slowing down your speech, so the words don't all just fan together.

Paimon is the big elephant in the room. I've been complaining about it forever for the reasons you mentioned in the video.

Mihoyo expects the player to just ignore the gigantic plot hole of "what/who is Paimon?" and pretend it doesn't exist... so they can finally reveal it as a plot twist years from now, and then we are expected to be surprised by it. It's kindergarten level of storytelling.

its its a horrible game in general

I'm already disappointed with Liyue story and you say it's the peak? So I guess I'll quit this game soon.

The tldr to me is just that if i ever decide to care about the lore for this game I should just wait for a 20 hour lore video to come out after this game is finished.

Copium

"Its all on point, from the animation to the voice acting and the music" Plays some other track not even from the same region and mutes the voice acting and music. smh, if youre gonna critique a game so badly at least do it right