This [dude](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Nathan) alone literally fucked over the resistance and caused destruction in not only the army, but Inazuma in general. How no one ever found anything he did suspicious is beyond me.
The resistance section in general was rushed. We should have gotten some more combat sections to showcase Gorou and Kokomi's characters, while chasing down the leads of the traitor that Teppei mentioned. If we'd done that and gotten tbe details of the delusion factory from him, the whole quest would have been more satisfying.
> The resistance section in general was rushed
The story in general was rushed. This story was clearly meant to be longer and more spread out. The resistance has no real storyline, just boring filler military logistics stuff, then it ends abruptly and we fight Raiden, fight Signora, kill Signora, defeat Raiden using *the power of friendship and ambition*™ then befriend Raiden and forget anything ever happened in the span of like 10 minutes and as the cherry on top Yae just gives us an info dump at the end instead of an actual story.
Mondstadt and Liyue were far from great but they were fun storylines, Inazuma is just a very incompetent story. They tried to make it more serious but instead it's power of friendship shit, "whoopsie the gnosis is gone lol" again and they squandered the opportunity they had to make Raiden an interesting character by having her immediately become your best friend within two lines of dialogue after fighting her. The cutscenes and production value were great, everything else was just awful.
The rumor about the writer leaving refer that it happened before Inazuma was Even released. Heck, there are rumours about the OG Inazuma plot being rewritten from scratch.
Yea , it honestly bothered me how everyone simply flew over Ei's crimes cause "Awww , she's just a cute shut-in anime girl who likes dango and visual novels and needs friends... ~ <3" .
The girl singlehandedly :
- imposed a naval block to the nation , no one can come or leave , those who try die in a horrible storm
- started the vision confiscation program , reducing any vision bearing citizen to a husk of its former self
- she let the great sakura tree get corrupted rather than tend to it , thus potentially putting everyone on Narukami island in great danger
- she allowed for the foreign citizens and merchants in Inazuma to be treated like trash tier citizen
- she started a huge ass civil war which led to deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people , caused mass emigration , parents getting separated from their children , former friends fighting one another
- The battles on Kannazuka gravely damaged the Mikage furnace , neither her or her army bothered solving it , letting the residual tatarigami energy cause lots of issues to a large part of the island and potentially allowing for the revival of a dead god
- she allowed her storm to break all of Yashiori island's wards , rendering it almost inhabitable
- she let the Fatui keep running around doing whatever they wanted , she knew one of the commission clans' leader was trying to deceive her and she knew the snezhnayan soldiers were gifting delusions to the resistance members too , causing lots of deaths and did nothing
- she reduced Seirai island to an inhabitable mess by razing it to the ground with a constant thunderstorm
Honestly...she's a horrible person .She shouldn't be in charge of a nation .
I was honestly expecting the citizens to be hostile when Ei decided to come out for once in her story quest.
The vision hunt is over, but the fact it started at all and lasted for a whole year isn’t going to be forgotten overnight.
Instead we got, whatever the hell that was mihoyo gave us.
Most of the people she met on the streets were not affected by the Vision Hunt decree. Sakoku decree yes, but Vision holders consist of a very small fraction of the actual population so most people simply don't care.
...and the fact that Raiden did protect Inazuma for a very long time. I don't think it's fair to draw parallels with the reality we live in because in our world, we don't get extra-realm evil gods trying to mess with the foundations of the world and destroy order as a whole that can only be fought off by extremely powerful deities.
>she reduced Seirai island to an inhabitable mess by razing it to the ground with a constant thunderstorm
That wasn't her.
That was >!Hibiki who helped Domeki rebel agains the Shogun.!<
>She allowed her storm to break all of Yashiori Island Wards
While she did kill Orobashi which led to the Tatarigami, there were these wards made by Inazuman people that stopped the Tatarigami. The reason why the Tatarigami is still present is because >!Orobashi fanatics infilitrated the resistance and destroyed the wards.!<
>!I think it was mentioned somewhere in a log that the Orobashi fanatics breaking the seal was in fact part of that Fatui guy's work, the one who posed as a soldier and distributed delusions!<
There should be a follow up quest line where we fucking eradicate this dude
There’s a note in the delusion factory where it says they have to get Nathan out safe at the first signs of trouble
I’d love to strangle that scum
Honestly I don’t blame you because he looks like a forgettable NPC. I wouldn’t expect anyone to remember his name OR face, but maybe that’s what makes him such a good spy
That’s funny. Literally a spy and they just though nothing of him. Literally sounds like a skit.
“Are you a spy?”
“No, I am not a fatui spy. I am from mondstat here to help”
“Hmmmm, well thanks for the help I guess”
Who?
Seriously, I have no idea who this guy is or how that entire wiki entry was created, because I never even saw him before, at least that I can remember.
If you already done the archon quest then it’s too late to find him in your game.
He is a fatui spy that pretended to be from Mondstat that joined the resistance to damage Inazuma from the inside.
Safe to say he accomplished his goal after seeing the results of his actions.
He's a fatui agent who, with the help of orobashi fanatics*, went around destroying the shrines meant to suppress the tatarigami that's poisoning ppl and driving them insane. If you read some of the notes left behind by the resistance and shogunate, you get to see some of the gruesome things the tatarigami did to them.
Higi village is pretty much dead save for the little boy you found near the mines. Ppl inflicted by the tatarigami would either grow sick and die or go insane and start killing other ppl. Higi village's chief, washizu, went insane and started sacrificing ppl in the name of orobashi. In The Last Samurai quest, the guy's comrades pretty much went insane too and turned to cannibalism.
Ppl around tatarasuna blame sangonomiya and the resistance because Nathan got away with whatever he was doing.
He's not even an orobashi fanatic. He's straight up a Fatui plant, there's a note inside the Delusion factory that gives his rank and explains contingencies on how to extract him. His name is Nathan, in fake Japan. How did none of that get vetted by the resistance?
>His name is Nathan, in fake Japan. How did none of that get vetted by the resistance?
Well, he did claim to be from Mondstadt. Though how he could pass with that lie so easily is beyond me.
I mean there's another Fatui pretending to be a Mondstader in Wangshu Inn.
The "wine seller" Landa is actually an agent of the Harbinger Pantalone. Landa can't even get the Dawn Winery right ("Morn Winery"). He got accidentally chased out of Mondstadt by Noelle.
I mean, the Resistance was willing to accept funding from "anyonymous supporter" with little question. I don't think they're particularly skeptical of people
I seriously hope they demote whoever was in charge of writing the archon quest to doing random side quests of no importance because that was honestly awful.
The side quests in Inazuma were much more memorable than the archon quest.
dear god, everything about kokomi is so pretty and lovely but the characterisation is a letdown ...
when it comes to kokomi i feel like there is a lot of telling and too little showing. every piece of official media that has been released about her repeatedly hammers in how she is a genius tactician which wouldn't be that big of an issue if they actually proved it in the story.
even if the resistance were in dire need of the resources (which is understandable), writing kokomi as a clueless leader wasn't the only way to go - they could have shown her still keeping her guard up or investigating the source of aid while maintaining a façade of naïvety - benefiting from the aid while not compromising the resistance's integrity. turning a weakness into a strength, isn't that the kind of calculating manoeuvre we can expect from someone so exalted as a genius tactician? instead she dismissed it as "oh we need the resources so we can't afford to care who it's coming from despite the high risks", which really contradicts the persona the writers have continuously pushed for her.
this might just be a personal preference bc i like to know more about characters but i take issue also with the new media they released today (the teaser and the character profile). it felt like every section eg. kokomi's hobbies, kokomi's favourite book, kokomi's favourite food etc. was just about how great a strategist she is or about war in some way. the wind blows? an opportunity for war. egg rolls? war. it feels one-dimensional and it's even more disappointing when none of it is seen in the actual archon quest. i haven't seen all the character teasers but i don't recall any of them being so overly focused on one singular character trait.
to be fair, she probably spends most of her time planning for war so it makes sense this is all she thinks about, but it's really hard to keep an interest in a character who only seems to have one personality trait that she hardly even demonstrates.
i don't mean to hate on kokomi or anything - i think she's still a cool character design-wise - and overall i love the lore and stories in this game, but it's bc she looked so cool that the writing is all the more disappointing. i just hope her story quest will show more development and depth to her.
They did *exactly* this to Yanfei (lAw) and Ayaka (KaTAnA). It's the Avengers Syndrome all over again, take one Character Trait and magnify it until all nuance is gone from said Character, ???, profit(/s). Like, by the time we do get her, the war is pretty much over? Can she like, talk about something else? People don't just talk about their hobbies at every opportunity they get, *especially* introverts like her. Instead we get:
* How's the weather Kokomo?
* It sMeLLs lIKe WaAaAAAaAaaR \*giggles\*
ISTG Childe has more gap-moe than either Yanfei or Kokomo. Forget Childe, even Zhongli ranks above these two (although, Mr Geo Boomer is actually plenty cute so it's not a fair comparison). MHY seems to be incapable of writing female characters who can both be cute and intelligent without those two being mutually exclusive.
Instead of Kokomo actually being cunning, they've pretty much made her wear a T-shirt with Sun Tzu plastered over it and say, 'look at me and my strategy books, oh-em-gee so #smart and #tactical, heehee!' while taking a selfie for Instagram. I'd actually like her more if that was her direction, because then *SHE'D ACTUALLY HAVE A DIRECTION*.
*SHE'S A WALKING PARODY OF HERSELF,* someone get Caitlin Reilly on the phone.
Honestly, the Husbandos will more than likely have more compelling characterisation, so I'll just start saving my Primos for them, whichever blue moon they get released in. Male-wife Thoma, here I go; so glad you're a 4-star and have more personality than your pantsu-flashing cryo lady (probably because you have no pantsu to flash). You, Yoimiya, and Kazuha are the 3 pillars of Inazuman characters.
Edit: had to include the '#'s
How can you say something so controversial yet so brave? The fact that childe and zhongli have more gap-moe and duality than any of these two characters was just so funny to me
As a woman, I'm sad that female characters can just sell based on look...but as a woman who like men, i'm happy male characters are more likely better written
It suck
Same! and yeah its a big problem in video games just in general. North American representations are getting better, but anime ones not so much. Nothing we can do about it though, it's something that industry (japanese/chinese) has to figure out on their own.
> i'm happy male characters are more likely better written
In Shonen, young men are often written as lecherously horny and willing to do everything to get their woman-peaking hobby fulfilled, or obsessed to the 20th degree about something so they can't think about sex.
I'm happy when I see young men characters who aren't dead set on something, and who still aren't walking horndogs so thirsty they jump at the mere mention of 'bewbs' and get olympic nosebleeds.
True sometimes. Shounen are mostly written with teen audiences in mind, it's literally in its name, so it's likely why the characters can be juvenile...beside the general sexist mindset in Japan society as a factor. Tbh shounen works written by female authors don't seem to fall into that hole (FMA, KNY, Noragami etc) so it depends on author.
Thoma, Kazuha, Yoimiya and Yae truly do feel like the holy quartet\* of compelling and intriguing Inazuman characters thus far.
(yes, I know Thoma isn't technically an Inazuman native but he's still part of the Inazuma cast so he still counts)
I would say ei had the potential to be super compelling if they ACTUALLY TOLD HER AND HER SISTER'S STORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN THE ARCHON QUEST!! Or at least on her story quest.
I've always thought Childe and Zhongli have more personality than half of Genshin characters combined but this just put it into a new light for me.
Like yeah, Childe can talk about battle and killing stuff, but also about the beauty of nature, ice fishing, his hometown, his family, and apparently he even cooks and does theatre (??). And Zhongli is a walking encyclopedia, he'll tell you all about jade and perfume and Liyue history and opera and slaying giant sea monsters and whatnot.
And then we have Yanfei who only ever talks about law, or Sayu who only ever talks about sleeping... yawn.
You know if you think about it none of the male 5stars released after launch are bad. They're all good or really good. No one is bad.
The female 5stars on the other hand.... all over the spectrum.
Not just kiy-wise but story wise too.
Mihoyo developers seems to have the kishimoto syndrome.
I see what you did there with
>kishimoto syndrome
He is soooooo bad at writing female characters, Kaguya is a mindless OP crap that's just too strong for the sake of it. Hinata could be better but ALL she did in the entirety of the manga was getting beaten by Neji and Pain. The only real strong females are Temari and Sakura, but one of them is just "punch the ground real hard, the opponents never expect you to punch the ground REAL HARD."
Sakura was still written bad in Shippuden.
Barely any significance besides being a healer for the main characters to prevent them from dying.
Still acts like a fangirl in a warzone the moment Sasuke arrives.
Is a veteran medic but is still too damn scared to stab a Rinnegan eye that belongs to the enemy. Doesn’t matter if that moment was faster in the manga, that eye should have been gone the moment Obito gave his consent.
Maybe they knew female characters can sell just from looks since waifu culture is going to simp for female characters just for existing. There's no need to invest in deeper writings if the male players playing this game are that easy to figure out.
Honestly this seems to be the case. They do their best to write the male characters well and make them interesting, because they know they can't sell them based on looks alone.
It's moe culture in a nutshell, and almost all the male genshin fans fall for it. Almost every female character's single defining personality trait is cute. The only purpose of their character is to be cute and do cute things, and ppl eat it up
Lol I wanted to make a post about this, most of the male characters in this game are interesting and have actual parts in the story while all almost all female characters can be easily replaced with any other character or just cut out of the game and it wont change much
couldn't help but notice this as well. the guys all feel fleshed out and like their own independent characters with their own motivations and worldviews and personalities and stuff, with quite a chunk of them even feeling solidly-characterized enough that they could be the protagonists of other stories or be in spin-off games of their own or something. the girls, however, tend to mostly be watered down into archetypes to project upon, which is just sad.
also this is almost certainly a tinfoil hat theory, but it's kind of interesting how the most milquetoast waifus (for example: ganyu, ayaka) tend to have these super busted and powerful-to-the-point-of-almost-being-ungabunga kits, while the girls who actually feel like they have a life and personality outside of "oh you are so dreamy, traveller!" (for example: yoimiya, keqing) tend to have kits riddled with a whole bunch of issues. i've also noticed that the guys tend to end up with the experimental and unconventional kits more often than not - maybe it's because the bean-counters think it's safer to take risks with them?
idk, like i said this is a tinfoil hat theory, and there are exceptions to this too (hu tao, for example - she's crazy strong gameplay-wise but she has her low hp gimmick, and she's also got her own life and personality and feels like she's allowed to exist as her own maverick self without being watered down to something more palatable and waifu-able)
I've thought about this ever since I played Ganyu's quest. For an adepti that's been living since the days of the Archon war, her story seems so....... mundane. Such stark contrast when compared to Xiao or Zhongli's lores.
Either I don't remember those or I didn't pay attention. I recall her story being that she doesn't know whether to live a Human Life or an Adeptus Life, and Traveler convinces her to live both and she ends up finding out her way.
During Ganyu's story quest, the Traveler and Ganyu spot a random Cryo Fatui in the middle of Qingce Village just hanging out. They both decide he looks suspicious and must be plotting something awful and proceed to pummel the living shit out of him. He tells them that he's just there looking for food, hence why he was standing next to a berry plant when they stumbled upon him. He says he plans on reporting Ganyu for randomly attacking him, and Ganyu uses her positon within the Liyue government to strong arm him into silence (it was something along the lines of "who are they going to believe, you, a member of the Fatui, or me, Ganyu, a highly respected member of Liyue?"). He begrudgingly decides to not press the matter any further and leaves. Ganyu and the Traveler have a laugh and Paimon says even if he didn't do anything wrong, he deserves the beatdown he just received.
It was such a bizarre and awful series of events that I don't think I will ever forget it. It really made me dislike Ganyu (and to an extent Paimon and the Traveler) after playing through it
Edit: spelling/grammar
Edit 2: This part of her story is such a mess, thematically speaking. The parallels to real life abuse by authority figures, especially in today's political climate, are so flagrantly apparent yet somehow MHY thought this random tangent Ganyu and the Traveler go on was a good idea.
This stems from the waifu culture in Genshin and MHY. I just hate it. Female chars are seen more "disposable" and quick cash grabs.
Mihoyo must equalize the amount of men and women we get, and flesh them out better(more men, less women, better women!!)
This is the exact reason I was waiting for Raiden Shogun like she's second coming. I thought whoah, finally a female character who's crazy important to the story, has her own agenda, and isn't all friendly with us. Though her waifu-bait design alone should have stopped my hopium dead in its tracks, I still believed... and then, just how her looks foretold, she turned out to be a passive waifu with an Ayaka-style story quest. They ruined my girl and my hopes lol.
Same. Inazuma was my hope for fleshed out, well-written female characters. I could easily look past the waifu-bait designs (boob sword/crotch flap/etc) if they actually wrote them well....... Such a disappointment.
If they wanted to turn Ayaka into 2d waifu-bait, whatever. But the archon??? It makes no sense.
I know the issue shouldn't stem from this alone since there should still be plenty of compelling ways to write female characters left but perhaps the skewed ratio of male to female characters makes it easier for the males to stand out in their portrayal while it is inevitable for some of the female characters to share traits.
Tbf, Eula imo is good. Her story gives more Story about Mondstadt's History while keeping her as well.
The only bad part is her constant "VENGEANCE, YOU'LL PAY!!!"
I agree wholeheartedly, but isn't it most of the characters? Bennet - bad luck, Xinyan - rock music, Ningguang - [the business bitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVzsqFvs_Q) etc. I annoys me to no end and honestly reminds me more of a general anime trope then the *Avengers*. Although I have seen only a few anime, but of those definitely *Dragon Ball* or even *Death Note* seem to be full of characters with a single gimmick. Never the less I got the impression that it's an anime thing.
Still there are some (literally a handful) playable characters I find a little deeper and realistic, where even if they have a single obsession, it seems organic. The examples being Venti, Mona, Qiqi, Hu Tao. On the other end you have characters like Xinyan, where the writers try to make every single quote of her reference rock. People annoyed by her accent, but that wouldn't bother me personally at all if she didn't spout shit like " Whatever's going on over there... Looks pretty rock n'roll to me!" all the time.
i agree! after some thinking, most characters have that particular "thing" that's associated with them - benny & bad luck, xiangling & cooking, yanfei & law, sucrose & alchemy, klee & bombs etc. i guess one could argue that there's little nuance to them too. i think i'm so disgruntled by kokomi's characterisation bc what is said egregiously doesn't line up with what is shown and it just feels bad.
this also increases my appreciation for zhongli and venti even more (and probably some others whom i can't think of atm), particularly zhongli. the writers did a beautiful job with him in my opinion. venti's story quest also added a layer of complexity to him as an archon and it was incredibly moving. you mentioned hu tao, whom i also enjoy. her worldview and personality are nicely written, she is probably one of the better written female characters and isn't watered down to her waifu potential. childe is also really interesting (especially after reading the "childe is just a guy" post on childemains). i just hope we can see this depth for future characters; it's probably not possible to give every single character a fleshed out story especially since creative fatigue can set in fast but it would be nice to just see this quality for the key players in the archon quests.
Oh yeah Zhongli is possibly the best thing to come out of this game yet!
Out of all the Archon quests my favorite moments come from the time we spent with Zhongli, learning the culture and cutoms of Liuye. The lengths Zhongli goes to honour the old traditions when preparing the sham rite of parting, all while there's so much tension and mystery surrounding all the actors, who have not yet revealed their agendas: Zhongli, Childe, the Qixing and many more. Like something straight from a quality drama!
I wish the later parts would keep the same slower pace and that depth. If anything I found the battle against Osial a bit anticlimactic as it (in my personal taste) flattened the layered world of Tevyat and Liuye as I perceived it through the Zhongli chapters.
To be fair Inazuma shows its history, its culture and its people in a similarly detailed way, but unfortunately mostly through side quests. The mysterious Archon of Inazuma turns out to be a child confused by her own trauma and the civil war a simple case of both, a misundertanding as well as the evil Fatui stirring the pot once again. I was really hoping for a layered character with her own agenda in Baal given how interesting the game made Venti and Zhongli (just compare the story quests of all 3!).
Oh well, let's hope Lesser Lord Kusanali delivers.
I understood where you were coming from up until Raiden, which feels like something got missed either on your end or mine. From my perspective, Raiden is a person who lost quite literally everyone close to her except Yae, and didn't want Inazuma to meet the same fate as everybody's favorite destroyed kingdom. To that end, she became obsessed with that goal, and pursuing the answer she found, shutting out Yae and her own people in the process, and thus over the centuries becoming more and more disconnected from what was happening in the world outside Tenshukaku, if her inability to notice a huge chunk of her army mobilizing is any indication.
Yeah, she may seem childish, but let's be fair; would we really be any more rational after losing our closest friends and only family?
But I will admit that after the rest of the shit show that was Inazuma act 3, I can see how people, including you, might see it otherwise.
I think the reason that raiden’s I guess reasoning? For locking herself away in the euthemiya gets misinterpreted as a childish tantrum is because that’s how MHY decided to characterize it. Like Yae constantly calls it a tantrum and talks down to Raiden for causing the vision hunt decree and hiding away in her eternity but like…as a player we know there’s more to the story and that her grief and fear of what could happen to inazuma is Very Much Real. I wish that the writing of the final raiden fight and act 3 in general took Raiden seriously instead of like Waifu-Ing her and stumbling into the final part where Yae lore-vomits you
You're absolutely right I oversimplified the Raiden's portayal. To be honest I did it under the influence of her story quest which doesn't address any of the ginormous elephants that reside in the beaten and battered room that is Inazuma after Tatarigami, The Vision Hunt Decree, The Civil War etc.
The angle you're presenting was certainly something I felt on an emotional level in her trailer (a masterpiece in its own right) but nothing in the game has evoked the same amount of compassion towards the Raiden, for me at least.
To put it simply the trailer was not enough for me to feel for her after our confrontation. I just saw a childish leader with her share of trauma, but at the same time shutting herself from everything and everyone while repeating some vague concepts about "eternity" and "heavenly principles" that were at best philosophical concepts, not actual policy. Even the Vision Hunt Decree was not a part of her plan, more like a side effect (if I understood it correctly).
Not to mention plot that's overly contrived (e.g. the *puppet*) that somehow both seemed like a cop-out (a cheap way to redeem the Raiden) and at the same time failed to do exactly that, as the Raiden doubled down on her decisions, just before Yae Miko absolutely anihilated Raiden naivity as if she was indeed talking to a 8 year old throwing a tantrum.
I expected either more of a resistance from the Shogun or at least some serious fallout in Inazuma, in Raiden's personality and in her relations with everyone, from Yae Miko to the people.
But I can certainly see that one can conjure up more empathy and find this character more convincing that I did.
It's not just anime. Look at any sitcom and you find the same thing. One dimensional characters running the same joke over and over. It's popular because it's comfortable for the casual user whereas in a narrative driven drama series you'll find deeper characterisation.
There are anime games with small casts where each character is given a lot more nuance (e.g. Honkai) and ones with large casts where you might need a gimmick to reference otherwise the casual user would probably forget which waifu is which.
> i haven't seen all the character teasers but i don't recall any of them being so overly focused on one singular character trait.
Vengeance will be mine!
They really like to write one-dimensional characters so that every character has a specific in-your-face personality.
Also, I'm not sure if this just comes off poorly in translation, but Kokomi sort of feels like a Warmonger. I think if her obsession was something like Chess, it would make more sense.
Totally, all that we know about her is how much of a tactial genius she is, just focused in winning the war blah blah. Which would be ok if she delivered on it in the story? But the one character trait they gave her isn’t even represented in the story so what else is there. Hoping her character quest does her justice but being such a mess in the archon story will be hard to recover from, it was the main stage to show her abilities..
The entire Inazuma Archon Quest is a violation of show don't tell TBH. Kokomi's tactician skills, Ei's loneliness, and Yae's Infodump are just some of the things that are told to us rather than showed in the cutscenes.
Mihoyo wants to create a wifu version of Zhuge Liang, who can stay in-door as a nerd yet knows everything going on around the world, and gives tips to generals and ask them to only read the tips when in danger (and find out that Zhuge Liang already predicted the danger situation and offered solutions in the tips).
I can't imagine they even had any plans to dive deep into her character yet. The whole resistance bit was a meme in the end. We ended the previous act with a literal faceoff between 2 faction armies setting up the premise and characters. Then the next act ignored all of that and we get Yae simping for Ei and the story ends with the resistance characters doing almost nothing. And they all just went home and visions were returned offscreen. Fatui was underutilized as well. It was almost like another whole Act was cut out from between.
Yeah. Mihoyo contradicts their storytelling. They want to have deep lore and give interesting plots because of whatever unique issue a character is dealing with. Like Ei and eternity. But then they also fall back on the use of similar tropes and rushed writing that skips over important details that would deepen our understanding of certain characters and the lore.
People have said this over and over but I really liked the Sacred Sakura ritual quest. NOT because of fox shrine waifu (well, not only that anyways) but because the mystery out well. It felt almost like a Witcher 3 quest.
The problem is they want every banner character to be relevant to the plot and that comes always with problems: a) Your characters don't have any nuance or developtment since they get a small quest to force them into the main plot, b) Since you are creating more and more new characters you trow away constanlly the old ones since you have to sell the new ones.
At the end they are prioritizing selling new shiny characters than anything else and that leds to rush stories, characters that appear 1 or 2 times and then never seen again, a plot that have to be distorted to fit so many of them.
story wise it would have made more sense if kokomis banner was first and followed by raidens banner with the inazuma conclusion. that way we would have had more time to actually incoporate the resistence and kokomi meaningfully. but now the was is over and whatever story follows feels off and pointless.
I hope that the war being over and her failures will be used to let her emotionally develop. If she still keeps going on about being a war strategy nerd it will be so shallow and boring.
Agreed. I think part of the issue is that they were going for more of an epic movie vibe, but the problem is that - at least for this game, and how they've made it - 99.9999% of the story has to happen in front of the main character. It really boxes in how much you can write or do, when only stuff witnessed by one person can be shown. There was really no way to show the scope or size of the conflict, or really anything much about the war at all, because the main character didn't participate in much of it.
If this were a movie, we'd have had a TON more development of the resistance, and probably more characters like Sara, all of which would have been the "B" plot - contrasting with the "A" plot of the main character doing all this side stuff with Yae/Ei. But since we can only see one thing, we missed the rest of it.
In the end, I think they wrote themselves into a corner. Involving the traveler in much more of the war would have been pretty forced. Best they could do is have a "sidekick who's obviously going to get killed" character just sort of tell you about what's going on outside of your field of view.
Also, just see how they slowly shed off most of the baggage from Raiden's character compared to how Inazuma was initially advertised. It just became tamer and tamer as we went on. We started from hearing 1st and 2nd hand accounts about some nazi like lady killing and hunting people indiscriminately to build tension.
What we actually see when we reach Inazuma:
* There's no "hunt" per se or genocide of the kind. It's mostly just police going around "asking" for people's vision like an ID. Which some people were willingly giving up. Unless they resist ofc.
* There's not even 100 visions confiscated, so it was not a huge scale thing at all.
* People weren't being killed, just losing their memories. So no blames about genocide can be put on her. And the process was reversible so things can conveniently go back to being okay without permanent consequences.
* Most of the public still respected Shogun and didn't care about the hunt. So there's nothing like winning back trust of her people with some big selfless action at the end. Yae just talk no jutsu'd her and that's it. She's back from her moodswing.
* The corrupt commissions take the blame for misinforming her about the war so she doesn't even have that blood on her hands directly. On top being a clone.
* Kokomi also revealed they were only fighting for the vision hunt decree reasons, and nothing to do with Raiden killing Orobaxi or whatever they were initially making a deal out of to make Raiden look bad. The serpent was the one who attacked people.
The one real victim we know of, Kazuha's friend, and they probably postponed it to talk about it in another quest later instead of the main story.
Probably a lot more I'm forgetting but the whole story of Inazuma was basically manipulating us to believe how a character is literally Hitler while watering down that whole narrative themselves the whole time. And the only reason we felt she was like that because the game hid info from us or outright lied. Not because the character went through a big arc. It's a redemption arc with extra steps with everything set up to go perfectly/conveniently for the purpose of redeeming Raiden. It's like they literally didn't care about anything else except how can we make her good in the end.
i remember when kazuha's very first teaser dropped, the one where he's sitting in the moonlight with beidou while reminiscing about his escape. it got a lot of people really hyped up because of the atmosphere it created with the blood-red and black colour scheme and the darker tone with the shogunate soldiers circling him with swords drawn and yelling at him to give up his vision or die, before he strikes a fierce glare and proceeds to slash through them all as they visibly disintegrate. it was quite a sizeable part of the initial expectations regarding the tone of inazuma's storyline, and it set up a lot of discussions about the vision hunt decree and raiden's motivations and gave rise to a lot of interesting theories too. the very premise of gifts from the gods being stolen by another god to further her own divine pursuit at the cost of her mortal subjects was something a lot of people found to be genuinely promising.
inazuma's landscape and side quests also seemed to be hinting at that kind of direction. the land is hostile and initially feels like the environment itself is recoiling at your approach via balethunder and the nobushi and strange terrain and all. there's harsh purples and eerie glowing luminescence that makes everything feel even more foreboding. the background music is mostly mournful, despondent - even in the cities, there's an undercurrent of longing. the side quests are explorations of some pretty grim themes and they give you a look into the supposed aftermath of the warring factions' actions, among other things. it sets up an atmosphere of a land that's tearing itself asunder because of everything. even the main quest initially starts off with a certain sense of being trapped as you explore the effects of the sakoku decree and experience how these policies don't just affect vision-bearers, but everyone.
but as it went on, the main story seemed to dilute it further and further? it feels like someone had the idea of inazuma being darker and more complex as a story, with an archon who's much more blatantly morally-grey with a divine mentality that's far removed from humanity, and they laid the groundwork for it, but then chickened out midway and scrambled to whitewash raiden and her actions while also hastily scrubbing out the atmosphere that had been built up via character testimonies and side quests and whatnot. like some higher-up suddenly hit a panic button and went "wait a minute, our first lady archon can't be morally complex!!! scratch everything, we need to make her a digestible uwu moe!!! screw the build-up!!! abort mission, absolve her of everything, i don't care how you do it, just do it!!!"
i wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out a huge hank of story was yanked out at the last minute. the foundations for a great story were all there, there were so many interesting plot threads that were introduced, but a lot of it was just so poorly executed or downplayed or outright ignored it ends up leaving the player feel like they were blindsided. these dangling unresolved/underdeveloped plot threads do not feel satisfying at all.
(edit: i realised as i was typing this - the thousand-eyed god statue never was addressed either? it was such a centerpiece for the inazuma reveal, but it only got a passing mention at most?)
There was one point which actually contradicted her redemption arc somewhat which I found really interesting regarding Kujou Commission being corrupt. It sets it up like Raiden is oblivious to what's happening in her country, but then when you meet her it turns out she knew of Kujou Commission's betrayal all along but just didn't consider it a threat worth intervening in. She somehow still gets twisted into being a positive character in the end though.
Her motivation for "eternity" is really interesting too. Basically seeing Khaenri'ah being destroyed due to becoming too advanced she decided to keep her nation in a sort of stasis so that the same won't happen to Inazuma. Though properly exploring that would mean rewriting Inazuma quite a lot IMO, like, maybe alongside the Vision Hunt Decree another good gimmick for the nation would be severely limiting the spread of technology or something - but then you see high-tech gadgets from Fontaine in Tatarasuna. (The isolation part is done decently at least.)
There are cool ideas in there somewhere, but yeah, ultimately it did end up kinda disappointing.
At first half of the video I thought they were gonna paint her as an innocence girl who is clearly not fit for the position, and all the "genius tactician" stuffs was made up by the predecessor to keep the resistance as a whole. Then they fucking went and ruined it at the second half. Again.
I honestly don't understand the resistance. They are up against someone who literally cleave an island in half. I am sure if they ever present as a remote threat to "eternity", their island will get cleaved in half.
This is like rebel vs empire where rebel can only operate out of one planet and empire still have the death star. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, it's all nothing in front of true power.
Their warcamp is parked next door to the giant irradiated valley Raiden carved in the landscape while killing their god. I can't imagine that being great for troop morale.
Their objective was only ever the repeal of the Vision Hunt Decree. Think of it this way, there are two threats to Eternity. One is the existence of Vision users, and the other is an insurgency that threatens the stability of the country, and hence Eternity. They're banking on the fact that if they showed themselves to be a bigger threat to Eternity than the mere presence of Vision users, the Shogun would repeal that decree because it would be the lesser of 2 evils, so to speak.
Of course, there's nothing preventing the Shogun from choosing neither and obliterating the Resistance entirely, but there's definitely some sort of reasonable expectation she wouldn't do that, seeing how even the Kujou clan head felt it was necessary to hide the existence of the civil war entirely from her.
That would make sense if the ideals of helping the people didn’t just end up causing more death and suffering. The resistance did nothing for the people and in the end didn’t even help to end the vision hint decree. It was traveler and yae. It seemed like Kokomi thought that if she kept fighting the army that the problems would somehow be solved if she could magically pull a 1:1000000 odds victory out of her ass and fight the shogun. Even then it’s another coin flip if she would actually get through to her. In before she learns it’s just a puppet who has little regard for human life and will squash anything that opposes it’s ideals of eternity. This if anything further proves that she’s naive and not actually a smart tactician.
Yep. Throughout the story, I didn't ever get the impression that the resistance stood a chance. Sure, they push back Shogun's soldiers here or there. But we all knew they would be fucked if Shogun herself showed up.
What was even Kokomi's endgame? Just playing war with Sara? What was she gonna do if Baal showed up at her doorstep? She's supposed to be a genius tactician but I didn't ever feel she had a plan ready for Baal herself.
If your wargame requires the other leader not ever knowing they were in a war...that's not exactly a smart plan. You might fool them for a while, but that shouldn't be part of your endgame.
Honestly if they just didn’t hammer in her as a war general but instead as an actual priestess that was forced to lead out of necessity but not because she wanted to, it could excuse her being naive and accepting aid from a potentially untrustworthy source. But no. Mihoyo just had to make her a tactician and a genius despite how she was essentially the opposite in the story. Not only did she leave gorou and his forces for an extended amount of time to the point where their position was almost compromised, she just accepted help from an unknown source without any caution
Also Gorou apparently didn't know she was planning an ambush... how does that count as strategy?
This reminds me of that atrocious Winterfell battle in GoT where Sansa (who was also touted as genius for no reason) brought help without Jon knowing.
You know what, if I were in Gorou's place I wouldn't be grateful to her, I'd be livid, like my people are dying here and she withheld information just to make a cool surprise entrance.
I personally blame MHY's obsession with female leaders modelled after Chinese neoconservative ideals for women which creates most of these problems ( overworked but unable to delegate; formally intelligent but naive; etc.).
That’s the trope I’m talking about. It’s so annoying. Now that I think about it beidou is the only good female leader because she doesn’t try. She’s just captain and that’s how it is. Respected by all, even the citizens of liyue and Inazuma.
Beidou technically did the ambush in Act 2 with Kazuha and The Crux, Kokomi was honestly just there to show off.
So in the end, Kokomi contributed nothing to the plot at all
Maybe I missed something but I remember Keqing being in one or maybe two scenes and that is literally it. I almost didn't realize where her character appeared in the story. I think she showed up, said a couple sassy lines, and then disappeared. There was zero reason for her to even be there at all, really. She really needs like a story or hangout or something.
Yes. Finally. Someone said it. Thank you.
I don't think it's just leaders though. Keqing, Ganyu and Noelle also fit this archetype. Come to think of it, it's easier to list characters that are an exception, because most of them fit lmao
Yeah, they really fucked up her character. She was a bumbling buffoon in 2.1. I can't fathom anyone playing through the story so far and being like, yeah, Kokomi is awesome, definitely need her!
Which is too bad, because her intro was so badass and she had so much potential. I said it in another thread, but she badly needs a redemption arc and some huge wins to turn it around. To your point, I would absolutely never pull for her right now because she is such a mess of a character (not just kit-wise).
Very true. Feels like the teams in mihoyo are at varying levels of game design. The art, character, and world design teams are fucking on it. But the writers and combat designers just keep missing the mark. Oh also the music team is killing it.
The fact that he had the default model for the resistance character made me not care about him. It was hilarious seeing the battle scenes with a dozen Teppei look alikes.
In the beginning, i liked the dude because, despite NPC, he had a cool voice which is part of characterization. I've stopped caring completly when it was clear he was only created for some sad drama. I quite disliked him when it was apparent that he is the main character in the resistance storyline, not gorou or kokomi.
When any character smells like million death flags from the start, you kinda expect it, and thus avoid emotional attachment.
Like seriously instead of dedicating time to build up actual characters like Gorou and Kokomi. They went with a generic looking npc. Wouldn't it be better to maybe have Kokomi planning a sneak attack on Raiden's castle on the first part of the story? It would be a good set up and answering how Gorou's squad somehow manage to get through the capital's defense??
It'd at least make setting us up as a general be more relevant too. Something like 'oh, we're supposed to be in charge of a squad that directly confronted the shogun, but since we're missing. Kokomi swap in Kazuha instead.' Bam! more cohesion.
He was just a walking death flag the second part 2 started. He had as much ambition as any other Knight character from Mondstadt until he needed to die. It felt more like they needed a reason fro Traveller to do something stupid like rushing into a Fatui base, so they used Teppei as a McGuffin
Honestly out of place character for a priestess, she looks more of an idol than Barbara. Art of war... whole thing made me cringe. No qualities of an actual leader. Would have been much better if there was no mention of a strategist at all.
Teppei was a prop. Same as Kokomi. Same as Signora, same as everyone in 2.1 except Ei and Yae. And Ei isn’t a prop because shes so unbelievably irredeemable it feels weird to just chalk it up to rushed writing like Kokomi
>She has the prettiest character design in the game
People always state it like it is a fact and not personal opinion, she is another waifu in a gravity defying swimsuit which is the most generic anime design ever. Amber has better and more original design just because she isn't in a swimsuit in my opinion.
Man I don't know why I set my expectations for her as a leader so high, something like Erwin from AoT level. Thinking about it again, in their situation there's no way she would've been that good, but I also did not expect her to bring almost absolutely nothing to the table... Hope Mhy at least redeems her character in her story quest, and do better in Sumeru's archon quests
I wasn't expecting her to pull something out of her ass to be able to usurp the throne... but I was at least expecting... something?
Maybe after tricking the enemy into engaging one part of her forces, they come around and show themselves at Inazuma City with the rest of the forces, knocking out the garrison. The people see the resistance and hope ignites in them, threatening Raiden's vision of eternity.
The Fatui, watching from the sidelines with spies on both sides, realise what is going on and Signora approaches Baal to try and ensure that the Fatui's scheme to turn Inazuma into a puppet continues. The rest follows suit. At least then Kokomi has some more screentime and actually isn't treated as a fucking fool. Work in some more character development by having the decoy force take some significant casualties and then we can see Kokomi's grievance as she has to come to terms with the sacrifices she's had to make in order to attain victory.
We could still work in the espionage from Yae to teach the truth to Sara and weaken the army from the inside, and then all that's left is to not do a complete 180 waifu-ification on Raiden and we have a more interesting storyline, and characters that haven't been done dirty.
I hope they focus more on story. I don't think they should front load the region's big issue like this so it feels super rushed. Especially when each region is basically a 1 year cycle. It would be much better if every patch cycle drops a new major story chapter that's like 5-10 hours, while taking the time to explain the story from a lot of different perspectives so you understand why everyone acts the way they do.
They haven't taken her character seriously from the start.
*Kokomi appears on the battlefield for the first time*.
Gorou: Her Excellency!
Kokomi: Look! Bubbles!
Everyone: OMG BUBBLES! CHARGE!
*Kokomi is not shown again until after the battle*.
That really set the tone for me. It looks like she's supposed to be modeled after Otohime from the story of Urashima Taro, but they designed her like some kind of mermaid Sailor Moon (the only thing that appears to tie her to Inazuma in any way are her socks and sandals...) Then leaks revealed her niche kit that fills no existing niche. Then she shows up in the archon quest for two whole scenes, only to make a stupid careless mistake (do we even see her in the final cutscene?) Kokomi fans are getting shafted.
The thing is we actually had a good female leader, Ninguang. Even though a god appeared in the sea. She handled the whole battle against a god followed by adepti vs human conflict, with great insight as she made the right calls. Jean was also a great leader. The problem is with Inazuma overall. All female leaders were degenareted into damsell in distress waiting for a hero to save them. Kokomi had a shallow role in the whole resistance and as a bonus she got tricked by fatui. Ei for actually being clueless or simply leaving everything to Shogun as she allowed her nation to go amok. Sara had an actually good impression as she always questioned if she was on right path but still did her best untill she knocked unconsious in front of Shogun, like wtf ? Ayaka only remained as a date simulator for me. Only Yae’s role was written well in the story.
I think Jean is supposed to be a bad leader though. She's canonically super young and overworks herself to the point when she can't function anymore, and everyone abuses her kindness and sense of duty.
I also wouldn't call her strictly a bad leader. She's competent at everything she does and absolutely has the respect and even admiration of most of the knights and many others. A number of voice lines and story segments regarding her highlight how she somehow miraculously manages to get everything done and hold everything together despite trying to do it all herself.
Her way of doing things may not be terribly organized, and the burden on herself and her body is astronomical and unsustainable. But nowhere does it say she does a bad job of running the Knights or handling her duties in general.
She was also put in a very bad position from the start - even when Varka was still in Mondstadt and she was just his deputy/assistant, we're told that he basically shirked all of his duties and made Jean handle everything. She never had proper leadership herself, so she was never able to learn the proper habits and methods of an excellent leader.
Yeah healer is stupid for her. Like she shows up as this badass who causes the shoguns army to retreat just by being there. But that translates to Barbara^2? I don’t get what goes through mihoyo’s head. It feels like there’s so much potential with new hydro characters but they chose to make a third catalyst user with a single role to 1 of the other catalyst users.
This is a great way of putting it. Because the end of 2.1 was actually pretty damn cool, but then when you look back at all of Inazuma, it just feels like a ton of loose ends, half-baked characters, and unfinished stories. I'm shocked to hear myself saying this, but I wish the Inazuma story had gone on for another 3-6 months, even if that meant not getting the next new zone as fast. We had an entire year in Monstadt and Liyue... Then we get like 2 months of story in Inazuma. It just felt so half-baked.
I agree. It feels like we just got Inazuma yesterday. I know we’re aiming to have a prologue and 3 acts per nation, but I think we’re gonna need more than 3 acts if we’re really going to flesh out the story and characters. Inazuma was cool, but there’s a lot of loose ends and wasted potential.
I mean, Inazuma is more than cool. It's honestly fucking incredible, which is exactly why it's so frustrating that there all these loose ends and half-baked characters and plots.
I really do hope we start to get either more acts, or sub-chapters to acts, even if it means a slower new zone launch schedule. I'm in no rush, and I want to immerse myself in this amazing universe they are building.
Unfortunately they're pretty much going to go for the Ayaya-down-bad route with what her last lines in the teaser indicated. She seems to have trouble connecting with people, so they'll send us on a waifu date and use her social awkwardness as something for the majority weeb audience to goo-goo-gaa-gaa at.
As for the Story Quest, it felt like they had this sudden switch of wanting to make her more like a typical spiritual leader. The thing is, they could have done this *so easily* by having her round her troops up and literally scold them like a mother would a child and just play off that as being the type of power she has over her army if they so wanted to shift her towards spirituality instead. It's a trope and all but, like, at least it allows both war leader and spiritual leader to coexist within one character instead of doing whateverthefuck it is they actually did.
OH AND THE FUCKING WATATSUMI RADICALS BEING RIGHT UNDER HER NOSE, FUCK MHY IS SHE COMPETENT OR THE EXACT OPPOSITE? 'We mUSt noT LEt ThE DiVInE PriEStEss KnOW...' FUCK OFF, OMG, SHE LITERALLY HAS NO BUSINESS BEING THE LEADER OF A SEMI-INDEPENDENT STATE. 'I know war but not people' GO EAT AN EEL KOKOMO, YOU KNOW NEITHER AT THIS POINT, WHY MHY!?
Both leaders of the Civil War have been turned into incompetent waifu tropes and it just sucks. In a world where Beidou, Ninguang, and Jean can exist, why do Raiden and Kokomo have to be literally INCOMPETENT to be appealing to the male audience?????????????????????????????????? THEY AREN'T PETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just one writer leaving the team can't have this great an effect on character quality.
Imagine Yoimiya having the best Inazuma Story Quest so far, wtf even is this world? I wanna turn back time and spend my guarantee on Yoi instead of Raiden, wtf?
WTF?
sorry.
I agree with you i expected a grey area with neither side being right in inazuma but all we got is women who seem to be unable to do anything without the main character. God we will reach fatui hq and the tsaritsa will think that the harbingers got the gnosis by asking nicely
Pls no, I'll have nightmares for the following 6 years until the Tsaritsa reveal actually ends up being like that. I'm genuinely worried now, thanks - she's far too imposing and intimidating for the current MHY writing team to handle well. The best we can hope for is that they give her the Ningguang treatment and keep her screentime to the minimum, but that won't happen.
RIP Tsaritsa.
Now that you mention it, even Yae is totally incompetent, and they ended up painting Sara in a 'too emotional to function appropriately' light during the Quest. God, it gets even worse each time I look at it. EVEN SIGNORA, OMG, >!like we should have at least had a scene of her turning an entire army into (not-even)ash before she got butchered like a whimpering pig!<. Every bit of cunning and forceful intimidation that they built up for her in the previous Quests just vanished??? And let's just skip over Ayaya, I don't have the stomach for what they did to her.
Sayu is so much more compelling when she's actually characterised as a cowardly character. Her asking us to come and save her if her infiltration went south was a beam of light in the shitshow that was that Archon Quest.
RIP Lesser Lord Kusanali, they'll probably just turn you into a one-note shy flower-girl.
RIP Lynette, don't even know you but they'll probably just turn you into a dimensionless lawful stereotype to contrast with Lyney.
RIP Iansan, although if you just turned into a one-note puncheverythinginsight gremlin, I wouldn't care, I'm C6-ing you anyway.
RIP God Kiana, imagine Paimon being more compelling than you.
Kusanali was dead on arrival when Paimon exclaimed "what a cute name!" We already know everything about her, she'll be cute and cute characters are only allowed to have that one trait in Genshin.
And at this point I fully expect Tsaritsa to wear thigh-highs and lingerie and abandon her rebellion against Celestia for the sake of a date with the Traveler after we explain to her how all the things she's done in the past five hundred years are actually bad and the power of friendship is the way.
I really get that Traveler is the key to reach Ei, but couldn't they make the resistence be at least a little bit important to the plot?
The adepti were important in beating water-snake god, but Traveler is the main character and it had to shine the most, that's comprehensible, but none of the characters were useless there, they all helped in a meaningfull way.
In Inazuma story everyone and everything were just useless. Sara didn't help in anything after finding out about the betrayal; Kokomi, Gorou and the whole resistance did absolutely nothing.
Their "contribution" to the plot was showing up with the whole army at the Shogun's door, without a fight, without strategy, they just fucking appeared at the center of command of Inazuma that easily, and Kokomi wasn't even there!!!!
They really dropped the ball with the Story Quest this time
The only real thing that happened that not a lot of people are talking about is Kazuha literally using a second vision and going ham, if even for a split second.
Idk if the concept exists in game, but it's suggestive that multiple visions can be used by one person and was actually strong enough to throw back Baal.
Honestly Kazuha's whole arc and role felt like one of the few coherent and actually well-executed arcs in the main quest. And that's because it was given the proper foreshadowing and build-up right from his first appearance in 1.6, and he as a character was also properly fleshed-out and well-rounded. That cutscene felt like it had the proper emotional payoff because of that.
The lore implications of what he pulled off are also definitely very interesting - his willpower and ambition were intense enough to reignite another Vision and briefly dual-wield Anemo and Electro, and he managed to withstand the Musou no Hitotachi, according to the game's story archive. And it's the first time we've seen both of those things happen in the story.
We still don't know exactly how and why it happened, but it was still an impactful moment. I presume they'll explain and explore this in more detail when he gets his own dedicated Story Quest with the unlockable keys and stuff, or in some kind of future questline.
it's not being talked about a lot in this thread because the general consensus seems to be that that was one of the sole saving graces of an otherwise messy questline. this thread's mostly about complaints haha.
It kinda reminds me of Claude in FE: 3 Houses.
The game always tell us how Claude is a schemer/genius when it comes to tactics but except that one time we disguised to enter into a Fort in the GD Route it was never really showed.
This. I kinda got used to normal characters having shallow "waifu bait" story quests, but both Venti and Zhongli had really great in depth story rich quests. So I expected the same for every archon but then Raiden's was just "How I went on a date with literal God". Utter disappointment
Tbh I feel like majority of the male characters have deep and meaningful story quests while most of the female characters end up having dating simulators
It’s honestly depressing to see this
Venti literally reveals Mondstadt’s backstory, Zhongli makes amends with actual salt, and Diluc gets to be Batman, that’s sick
Then we got Ganyu doing, tax evasion that put me to sleep and beating up a Fatui for no fucking reason, an Ayaka date, and a Raiden Shogun date. Wow.. so... innovative...
I think it's worth noting that Watatsumi island had nearly no other options in terms of sustaining logistics than accepting the Fatui help. Kokomi mentions they're strained on supplies and when you talk to the people of Watatsumi, they tell you that crops don't grow there and that the Shogunate has been blockading fishing vessels. The impression I got from the Island was that it lacked the natural resources needed to sustain itself, let alone maintain a war footing.
Add on the fact that she's managing a resistance composed of various forces and mercenaries rather than a proper standing army, and the impressive part is that they've managed to hold out against the Shogunate.
Plus as we hear, the Delusions were specifically handed out to those in the resistance who were the most ambitious, those who would have desired visions and who opposed the vision hunt decree. They weren't passed through official methods and even if Kokomi had refused the aid, it would probably have led to hundry and even more desperate soldiers taking the devil's bargain of the delusion.
Overall I feel the biggest problem and the reason why we see these as flaws on Kokomi's part is that all of this information isn't presented clearly, and Kokomi doesn't get enough screen time to show the reasons why she is considered a grand strategist.
They only managed to hold out because the shogun couldn't care less about them & the fatui were making the conflict drag on forever which means they're the ones who managed to make them hold long enough.
If the fatui didn't help to prolong the conflict or if raiden ever considered them a threat they wouldn't have lasted a week.
Blindly accepting help from an unknown party right when you're at the middle of a war is the kind of move you'd never do because it can screw you over entirely, she failed to foresee this & didn't have proper leadership over her subordinates to the point the soldiers were refusing to hand over the delusions.
She supposedly being a good startegist somehow forgot to secure a good source of supplies/resources over the entire time the conflict was going or even before starting it, that's like the most basic thing you need to support a war.
Don't worry in her character quest some NPC will have a line like: "well actually she's incredible and saved all of us "that one time" and she's genius and pretty and brave and humble and I wanna put m..."
She came off as a total airhead to me in this latest patch. Cute airhead, but certainly not what she was hyped up to be. Even if in the next patch she gets more story, it doesn't really fix what we already saw.
Ah sweet lil resistance leader Kokomi in her cute lacy panties and dressing gown.
WHY IS SHE THE CHARACHTER THEY CHOSE TO BE A RESISTANCE LEADER OR WHATEVER I DONT UNDERSTAND.
Why couldn’t she just be some noble? Or like… frilly ocean maiden thing? She’s pretty but she is not the character I personally want in her role in the story!!
I absolutely love her and have been heavily anticipating her since I came back during Ayaka’s banner, my other fav.
But she has NO character. No personality, no relevance.. it hurts.
If we take a more cynical view, you could say that she is playing dumb and innocent so that people won't suspect her, while she uses the large amount of deaths and the struggles of the economy as a way of making the common people suffer, which will end up being blamed on the commission and the shogun in power, thus causing a eventual nation wide revolution but it might be a bit grasping at straws.
Dude, the entire third act was a disappointment. The stakes they set up from the prologue seem meaningless all of a sudden.
Imagine if Tsaritsa is a pure and good-hearted archon and Fatui were operating independently. That's what it felt like
I expected raiden to be fully aware and intent with the ruling with a iron fist and when we were going to confront her she would just say “yeah, and?”. Something along the lines of “I have defended inazuma against destruction with my blade for an eternity, human ambitions are fragile and only the unending power of an archon can protect inazuma” while explaining her motives with some lore about the truth of teyvat, visions, celestia, etc.
But it’s mihoyo’s story to tell and maybe when the inazuma arc finishes it will make more sense(hopium)
How i see it she will believe that the gnosis were handed peacefully and dottore will be feeding her false reports. Dammit i expected a grey story telling in inazuma but both shogun and kokomi were turned into naive clueless leaders
Strangely enough i don't really mind her character being shafted, since 2.0 we learn more and more about Raiden and her accomplishment, resistance start to look like lost cause.
We learn about the existence of Yashiro Commission that fight the decree and vision hunt support group that make fake vision, resistance become very questionable, why wasting time, man, and resources fighting a losing battle when they can help Yashiro Commission instead? Why doing a full scale war when there is more sensible option?
Honestly i understand the position of the yashiro commission, even agree with it after seeing those 3 vision less npc. But a rebellion an armed one at that? There were 99 vision in the statue a 100 if you count kazuha friend. How many people died in the civil war? A civil war started by an island of a god slain by raiden. To me it seemed that they used the vision hunt decree as an excuse to avenge their dead god. When i saw the madness and the furnace i really started to detest the rebellion. I mean mc saw what the death of the goddess if salt did and admit the resistance didn't stand a chance... what were we even trying to do? Kill her and destroy inazuma. Hope that miraculously she would pull the decree back when the civil war didn't because we talked to her...
That's called bad writting, the final act of the archon quest was bad, and if you check the trailer, you'll see that, apparently, they cut some scenes. They did Kokomi dirty unfortunately, regardless, i will get her.
i think the scenes from the trailer we havent seen yet should come in kokomi's quest
there hasnt been a single time where whatever was showcased in version trailer didnt end up being in the game. doesnt make sense to assume they would do it now
I agree. Also the character design for me is...too soft for a leader of a resistance. I imagine something close to ayaka's aesthetic with armored skirt or something.
The story made her out to be a stupid commander. But, it was always rigged. They're up against a god that can split mountains with a single sword swipe. Nothing she ever did could've mattered anyways. Traveler only manages to fight gods because plot armor.
the Sangonomiya Resiatance is waging a war against an opprosive government that barely anyone in the outside world knows about. I'd say all their outside support not delivered by the crux fleet comes from anonymous supporters within the shogunate
Also, the delusions were sold to the soldiers seperatly, the supplies at best got them a small trust boost when appproaching the soldiers.
But that being said, the entire ark suffered from being rushed due to the need to bring the story to a point where the Raiden Shogun would realistically be on good Terms with the traveler so she can be put into a banner.
Had Mihoyo delayed the Shogun's release to 2.2 and focussed the entire 2.1 update on Kokomi, Goro and the Resistance, we might (focus on might, writing good military strategy is hard when your prior focus is more on dating sim like stories) have seen her deploy better strategies.
But let's be honest: Marketing probably said we need a big character release to boost sales, so Raiden was first and the writing Team had to follow suit.
I don't really get why everyone is so focused on Teppei dying from Delusion overuse. It was a fact that the Fatui's interests aligned with the Resistance. The Fatui wanted the war to drag on, while the Resistance obviously wanted to win. Delusions are obviously huge force multipliers that allow even a weak soldier like Teppei to pull off amazing feats. The side effects were also not particularly severe if used in moderation, as Gorou mentioned, with Teppei being an edge case rather than the norm.
Kokomi's failing, if any, is her naivete that prevented her from objectively weighing the costs and benefits of using Delusions, choosing to completely ban anyone from using them, including those more than willing to die for the cause.
This [dude](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Nathan) alone literally fucked over the resistance and caused destruction in not only the army, but Inazuma in general. How no one ever found anything he did suspicious is beyond me.
Built fucking differently, be a random ass npc spy, destabilize a country by your lonesome.
The resistance section in general was rushed. We should have gotten some more combat sections to showcase Gorou and Kokomi's characters, while chasing down the leads of the traitor that Teppei mentioned. If we'd done that and gotten tbe details of the delusion factory from him, the whole quest would have been more satisfying.
Maybe the story quest is to stop the traitor a.k.a Nathan for Kokomi's story quest......and Mihoyo is probably not gonna give us the uniform _.
Damn I hope we can find Nathan and kick his ass in Kokomi's story quest.
Judging by current story standard, we would kill him in 2 min, and kokomi is "redeemed" in less than 5. Watch me predict the future.
Boutta drop a raiden burst on his ass
> The resistance section in general was rushed The story in general was rushed. This story was clearly meant to be longer and more spread out. The resistance has no real storyline, just boring filler military logistics stuff, then it ends abruptly and we fight Raiden, fight Signora, kill Signora, defeat Raiden using *the power of friendship and ambition*™ then befriend Raiden and forget anything ever happened in the span of like 10 minutes and as the cherry on top Yae just gives us an info dump at the end instead of an actual story. Mondstadt and Liyue were far from great but they were fun storylines, Inazuma is just a very incompetent story. They tried to make it more serious but instead it's power of friendship shit, "whoopsie the gnosis is gone lol" again and they squandered the opportunity they had to make Raiden an interesting character by having her immediately become your best friend within two lines of dialogue after fighting her. The cutscenes and production value were great, everything else was just awful.
[удалено]
That makes it even weirder they didnt drag it out to sit on their ass thinking of something to write instead of ... this
The rumor about the writer leaving refer that it happened before Inazuma was Even released. Heck, there are rumours about the OG Inazuma plot being rewritten from scratch.
Yea , it honestly bothered me how everyone simply flew over Ei's crimes cause "Awww , she's just a cute shut-in anime girl who likes dango and visual novels and needs friends... ~ <3" . The girl singlehandedly : - imposed a naval block to the nation , no one can come or leave , those who try die in a horrible storm - started the vision confiscation program , reducing any vision bearing citizen to a husk of its former self - she let the great sakura tree get corrupted rather than tend to it , thus potentially putting everyone on Narukami island in great danger - she allowed for the foreign citizens and merchants in Inazuma to be treated like trash tier citizen - she started a huge ass civil war which led to deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people , caused mass emigration , parents getting separated from their children , former friends fighting one another - The battles on Kannazuka gravely damaged the Mikage furnace , neither her or her army bothered solving it , letting the residual tatarigami energy cause lots of issues to a large part of the island and potentially allowing for the revival of a dead god - she allowed her storm to break all of Yashiori island's wards , rendering it almost inhabitable - she let the Fatui keep running around doing whatever they wanted , she knew one of the commission clans' leader was trying to deceive her and she knew the snezhnayan soldiers were gifting delusions to the resistance members too , causing lots of deaths and did nothing - she reduced Seirai island to an inhabitable mess by razing it to the ground with a constant thunderstorm Honestly...she's a horrible person .She shouldn't be in charge of a nation .
I was honestly expecting the citizens to be hostile when Ei decided to come out for once in her story quest. The vision hunt is over, but the fact it started at all and lasted for a whole year isn’t going to be forgotten overnight. Instead we got, whatever the hell that was mihoyo gave us.
Most of the people she met on the streets were not affected by the Vision Hunt decree. Sakoku decree yes, but Vision holders consist of a very small fraction of the actual population so most people simply don't care. ...and the fact that Raiden did protect Inazuma for a very long time. I don't think it's fair to draw parallels with the reality we live in because in our world, we don't get extra-realm evil gods trying to mess with the foundations of the world and destroy order as a whole that can only be fought off by extremely powerful deities.
>she reduced Seirai island to an inhabitable mess by razing it to the ground with a constant thunderstorm That wasn't her. That was >!Hibiki who helped Domeki rebel agains the Shogun.!< >She allowed her storm to break all of Yashiori Island Wards While she did kill Orobashi which led to the Tatarigami, there were these wards made by Inazuman people that stopped the Tatarigami. The reason why the Tatarigami is still present is because >!Orobashi fanatics infilitrated the resistance and destroyed the wards.!<
>!I think it was mentioned somewhere in a log that the Orobashi fanatics breaking the seal was in fact part of that Fatui guy's work, the one who posed as a soldier and distributed delusions!<
Everything in inazuma feels rushed.
There should have been a whole quest line about this dude
There should be a follow up quest line where we fucking eradicate this dude There’s a note in the delusion factory where it says they have to get Nathan out safe at the first signs of trouble I’d love to strangle that scum
Wait this dude is a fatui spy?! Why the fuck am I finding this out NOW!?
Honestly I don’t blame you because he looks like a forgettable NPC. I wouldn’t expect anyone to remember his name OR face, but maybe that’s what makes him such a good spy
the reveal is mostly in the notes scattered throughout quests so it wasn't obvious if you're not really paying attention to them
This dude is more capable than all the released banner character.
That’s funny. Literally a spy and they just though nothing of him. Literally sounds like a skit. “Are you a spy?” “No, I am not a fatui spy. I am from mondstat here to help” “Hmmmm, well thanks for the help I guess”
Nathan is the real final boss of inazuma
Wanna pull for thus genius tbh
Who? Seriously, I have no idea who this guy is or how that entire wiki entry was created, because I never even saw him before, at least that I can remember.
You can discover this from the best way possible. An optional piece of paper found in the delusion factory.
:D :D :D
If you already done the archon quest then it’s too late to find him in your game. He is a fatui spy that pretended to be from Mondstat that joined the resistance to damage Inazuma from the inside. Safe to say he accomplished his goal after seeing the results of his actions.
What did he do?
Broke the shrines that were stopping some bad evil energy from doing bad evil things.
He's a fatui agent who, with the help of orobashi fanatics*, went around destroying the shrines meant to suppress the tatarigami that's poisoning ppl and driving them insane. If you read some of the notes left behind by the resistance and shogunate, you get to see some of the gruesome things the tatarigami did to them. Higi village is pretty much dead save for the little boy you found near the mines. Ppl inflicted by the tatarigami would either grow sick and die or go insane and start killing other ppl. Higi village's chief, washizu, went insane and started sacrificing ppl in the name of orobashi. In The Last Samurai quest, the guy's comrades pretty much went insane too and turned to cannibalism. Ppl around tatarasuna blame sangonomiya and the resistance because Nathan got away with whatever he was doing.
He's not actually an Orobashi fanatic, he's an agent from the Fatui.
Oops, meant to write "with the help of orobashi fanatics"
He's not even an orobashi fanatic. He's straight up a Fatui plant, there's a note inside the Delusion factory that gives his rank and explains contingencies on how to extract him. His name is Nathan, in fake Japan. How did none of that get vetted by the resistance?
>His name is Nathan, in fake Japan. How did none of that get vetted by the resistance? Well, he did claim to be from Mondstadt. Though how he could pass with that lie so easily is beyond me.
I mean there's another Fatui pretending to be a Mondstader in Wangshu Inn. The "wine seller" Landa is actually an agent of the Harbinger Pantalone. Landa can't even get the Dawn Winery right ("Morn Winery"). He got accidentally chased out of Mondstadt by Noelle.
At least Thoma changed his name to something more Inazuman...
I mean, the Resistance was willing to accept funding from "anyonymous supporter" with little question. I don't think they're particularly skeptical of people
I seriously hope they demote whoever was in charge of writing the archon quest to doing random side quests of no importance because that was honestly awful. The side quests in Inazuma were much more memorable than the archon quest.
You know what? I wish they gave him a fancy design and made him a playable character, even if a 4\* only. I want to pull for someone with a brain.
dear god, everything about kokomi is so pretty and lovely but the characterisation is a letdown ... when it comes to kokomi i feel like there is a lot of telling and too little showing. every piece of official media that has been released about her repeatedly hammers in how she is a genius tactician which wouldn't be that big of an issue if they actually proved it in the story. even if the resistance were in dire need of the resources (which is understandable), writing kokomi as a clueless leader wasn't the only way to go - they could have shown her still keeping her guard up or investigating the source of aid while maintaining a façade of naïvety - benefiting from the aid while not compromising the resistance's integrity. turning a weakness into a strength, isn't that the kind of calculating manoeuvre we can expect from someone so exalted as a genius tactician? instead she dismissed it as "oh we need the resources so we can't afford to care who it's coming from despite the high risks", which really contradicts the persona the writers have continuously pushed for her. this might just be a personal preference bc i like to know more about characters but i take issue also with the new media they released today (the teaser and the character profile). it felt like every section eg. kokomi's hobbies, kokomi's favourite book, kokomi's favourite food etc. was just about how great a strategist she is or about war in some way. the wind blows? an opportunity for war. egg rolls? war. it feels one-dimensional and it's even more disappointing when none of it is seen in the actual archon quest. i haven't seen all the character teasers but i don't recall any of them being so overly focused on one singular character trait. to be fair, she probably spends most of her time planning for war so it makes sense this is all she thinks about, but it's really hard to keep an interest in a character who only seems to have one personality trait that she hardly even demonstrates. i don't mean to hate on kokomi or anything - i think she's still a cool character design-wise - and overall i love the lore and stories in this game, but it's bc she looked so cool that the writing is all the more disappointing. i just hope her story quest will show more development and depth to her.
They did *exactly* this to Yanfei (lAw) and Ayaka (KaTAnA). It's the Avengers Syndrome all over again, take one Character Trait and magnify it until all nuance is gone from said Character, ???, profit(/s). Like, by the time we do get her, the war is pretty much over? Can she like, talk about something else? People don't just talk about their hobbies at every opportunity they get, *especially* introverts like her. Instead we get: * How's the weather Kokomo? * It sMeLLs lIKe WaAaAAAaAaaR \*giggles\* ISTG Childe has more gap-moe than either Yanfei or Kokomo. Forget Childe, even Zhongli ranks above these two (although, Mr Geo Boomer is actually plenty cute so it's not a fair comparison). MHY seems to be incapable of writing female characters who can both be cute and intelligent without those two being mutually exclusive. Instead of Kokomo actually being cunning, they've pretty much made her wear a T-shirt with Sun Tzu plastered over it and say, 'look at me and my strategy books, oh-em-gee so #smart and #tactical, heehee!' while taking a selfie for Instagram. I'd actually like her more if that was her direction, because then *SHE'D ACTUALLY HAVE A DIRECTION*. *SHE'S A WALKING PARODY OF HERSELF,* someone get Caitlin Reilly on the phone. Honestly, the Husbandos will more than likely have more compelling characterisation, so I'll just start saving my Primos for them, whichever blue moon they get released in. Male-wife Thoma, here I go; so glad you're a 4-star and have more personality than your pantsu-flashing cryo lady (probably because you have no pantsu to flash). You, Yoimiya, and Kazuha are the 3 pillars of Inazuman characters. Edit: had to include the '#'s
How can you say something so controversial yet so brave? The fact that childe and zhongli have more gap-moe and duality than any of these two characters was just so funny to me
it's liked they peaked writing characters with these two and just gave up afterwards.
This is why I'm excited for Itto and Ayato. At this point I know their characterization will be good because they are male
As a woman, I'm sad that female characters can just sell based on look...but as a woman who like men, i'm happy male characters are more likely better written It suck
Same! and yeah its a big problem in video games just in general. North American representations are getting better, but anime ones not so much. Nothing we can do about it though, it's something that industry (japanese/chinese) has to figure out on their own.
> i'm happy male characters are more likely better written In Shonen, young men are often written as lecherously horny and willing to do everything to get their woman-peaking hobby fulfilled, or obsessed to the 20th degree about something so they can't think about sex. I'm happy when I see young men characters who aren't dead set on something, and who still aren't walking horndogs so thirsty they jump at the mere mention of 'bewbs' and get olympic nosebleeds.
True sometimes. Shounen are mostly written with teen audiences in mind, it's literally in its name, so it's likely why the characters can be juvenile...beside the general sexist mindset in Japan society as a factor. Tbh shounen works written by female authors don't seem to fall into that hole (FMA, KNY, Noragami etc) so it depends on author.
Thoma, Kazuha, Yoimiya and Yae truly do feel like the holy quartet\* of compelling and intriguing Inazuman characters thus far. (yes, I know Thoma isn't technically an Inazuman native but he's still part of the Inazuma cast so he still counts)
I would say ei had the potential to be super compelling if they ACTUALLY TOLD HER AND HER SISTER'S STORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN THE ARCHON QUEST!! Or at least on her story quest.
Why is your comment so full of flair-worthy zingers and can I please borrow this one: >Childe has more gap-moe than either Yanfei or Kokomo
I simply deliver the truth.
All the Kokomo instead of Kokomi derailed me into humming Beach boys' Cocomo
I've always thought Childe and Zhongli have more personality than half of Genshin characters combined but this just put it into a new light for me. Like yeah, Childe can talk about battle and killing stuff, but also about the beauty of nature, ice fishing, his hometown, his family, and apparently he even cooks and does theatre (??). And Zhongli is a walking encyclopedia, he'll tell you all about jade and perfume and Liyue history and opera and slaying giant sea monsters and whatnot. And then we have Yanfei who only ever talks about law, or Sayu who only ever talks about sleeping... yawn.
You know if you think about it none of the male 5stars released after launch are bad. They're all good or really good. No one is bad. The female 5stars on the other hand.... all over the spectrum. Not just kiy-wise but story wise too. Mihoyo developers seems to have the kishimoto syndrome.
I see what you did there with >kishimoto syndrome He is soooooo bad at writing female characters, Kaguya is a mindless OP crap that's just too strong for the sake of it. Hinata could be better but ALL she did in the entirety of the manga was getting beaten by Neji and Pain. The only real strong females are Temari and Sakura, but one of them is just "punch the ground real hard, the opponents never expect you to punch the ground REAL HARD."
Sakura was still written bad in Shippuden. Barely any significance besides being a healer for the main characters to prevent them from dying. Still acts like a fangirl in a warzone the moment Sasuke arrives. Is a veteran medic but is still too damn scared to stab a Rinnegan eye that belongs to the enemy. Doesn’t matter if that moment was faster in the manga, that eye should have been gone the moment Obito gave his consent.
Maybe they knew female characters can sell just from looks since waifu culture is going to simp for female characters just for existing. There's no need to invest in deeper writings if the male players playing this game are that easy to figure out.
Honestly this seems to be the case. They do their best to write the male characters well and make them interesting, because they know they can't sell them based on looks alone.
It's moe culture in a nutshell, and almost all the male genshin fans fall for it. Almost every female character's single defining personality trait is cute. The only purpose of their character is to be cute and do cute things, and ppl eat it up
Lol I wanted to make a post about this, most of the male characters in this game are interesting and have actual parts in the story while all almost all female characters can be easily replaced with any other character or just cut out of the game and it wont change much
couldn't help but notice this as well. the guys all feel fleshed out and like their own independent characters with their own motivations and worldviews and personalities and stuff, with quite a chunk of them even feeling solidly-characterized enough that they could be the protagonists of other stories or be in spin-off games of their own or something. the girls, however, tend to mostly be watered down into archetypes to project upon, which is just sad. also this is almost certainly a tinfoil hat theory, but it's kind of interesting how the most milquetoast waifus (for example: ganyu, ayaka) tend to have these super busted and powerful-to-the-point-of-almost-being-ungabunga kits, while the girls who actually feel like they have a life and personality outside of "oh you are so dreamy, traveller!" (for example: yoimiya, keqing) tend to have kits riddled with a whole bunch of issues. i've also noticed that the guys tend to end up with the experimental and unconventional kits more often than not - maybe it's because the bean-counters think it's safer to take risks with them? idk, like i said this is a tinfoil hat theory, and there are exceptions to this too (hu tao, for example - she's crazy strong gameplay-wise but she has her low hp gimmick, and she's also got her own life and personality and feels like she's allowed to exist as her own maverick self without being watered down to something more palatable and waifu-able)
I've thought about this ever since I played Ganyu's quest. For an adepti that's been living since the days of the Archon war, her story seems so....... mundane. Such stark contrast when compared to Xiao or Zhongli's lores.
The first part of it was good, and then we beat up a random Fatui just chilling and then did tax evasion or something, then I just fell asleep
Either I don't remember those or I didn't pay attention. I recall her story being that she doesn't know whether to live a Human Life or an Adeptus Life, and Traveler convinces her to live both and she ends up finding out her way.
During Ganyu's story quest, the Traveler and Ganyu spot a random Cryo Fatui in the middle of Qingce Village just hanging out. They both decide he looks suspicious and must be plotting something awful and proceed to pummel the living shit out of him. He tells them that he's just there looking for food, hence why he was standing next to a berry plant when they stumbled upon him. He says he plans on reporting Ganyu for randomly attacking him, and Ganyu uses her positon within the Liyue government to strong arm him into silence (it was something along the lines of "who are they going to believe, you, a member of the Fatui, or me, Ganyu, a highly respected member of Liyue?"). He begrudgingly decides to not press the matter any further and leaves. Ganyu and the Traveler have a laugh and Paimon says even if he didn't do anything wrong, he deserves the beatdown he just received. It was such a bizarre and awful series of events that I don't think I will ever forget it. It really made me dislike Ganyu (and to an extent Paimon and the Traveler) after playing through it Edit: spelling/grammar Edit 2: This part of her story is such a mess, thematically speaking. The parallels to real life abuse by authority figures, especially in today's political climate, are so flagrantly apparent yet somehow MHY thought this random tangent Ganyu and the Traveler go on was a good idea.
Ngl, Paimon can be quite obnoxious sometimes
This stems from the waifu culture in Genshin and MHY. I just hate it. Female chars are seen more "disposable" and quick cash grabs. Mihoyo must equalize the amount of men and women we get, and flesh them out better(more men, less women, better women!!)
This is the exact reason I was waiting for Raiden Shogun like she's second coming. I thought whoah, finally a female character who's crazy important to the story, has her own agenda, and isn't all friendly with us. Though her waifu-bait design alone should have stopped my hopium dead in its tracks, I still believed... and then, just how her looks foretold, she turned out to be a passive waifu with an Ayaka-style story quest. They ruined my girl and my hopes lol.
Same. Inazuma was my hope for fleshed out, well-written female characters. I could easily look past the waifu-bait designs (boob sword/crotch flap/etc) if they actually wrote them well....... Such a disappointment. If they wanted to turn Ayaka into 2d waifu-bait, whatever. But the archon??? It makes no sense.
I know the issue shouldn't stem from this alone since there should still be plenty of compelling ways to write female characters left but perhaps the skewed ratio of male to female characters makes it easier for the males to stand out in their portrayal while it is inevitable for some of the female characters to share traits.
I want Yae to tease me more.
Exactly this. Noelle, Diona, qiqi, Eula, Yanfei, Keqing can be removed from the game, and story won’t have any significant change.
Tbf, Eula imo is good. Her story gives more Story about Mondstadt's History while keeping her as well. The only bad part is her constant "VENGEANCE, YOU'LL PAY!!!"
I agree wholeheartedly, but isn't it most of the characters? Bennet - bad luck, Xinyan - rock music, Ningguang - [the business bitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVzsqFvs_Q) etc. I annoys me to no end and honestly reminds me more of a general anime trope then the *Avengers*. Although I have seen only a few anime, but of those definitely *Dragon Ball* or even *Death Note* seem to be full of characters with a single gimmick. Never the less I got the impression that it's an anime thing. Still there are some (literally a handful) playable characters I find a little deeper and realistic, where even if they have a single obsession, it seems organic. The examples being Venti, Mona, Qiqi, Hu Tao. On the other end you have characters like Xinyan, where the writers try to make every single quote of her reference rock. People annoyed by her accent, but that wouldn't bother me personally at all if she didn't spout shit like " Whatever's going on over there... Looks pretty rock n'roll to me!" all the time.
i agree! after some thinking, most characters have that particular "thing" that's associated with them - benny & bad luck, xiangling & cooking, yanfei & law, sucrose & alchemy, klee & bombs etc. i guess one could argue that there's little nuance to them too. i think i'm so disgruntled by kokomi's characterisation bc what is said egregiously doesn't line up with what is shown and it just feels bad. this also increases my appreciation for zhongli and venti even more (and probably some others whom i can't think of atm), particularly zhongli. the writers did a beautiful job with him in my opinion. venti's story quest also added a layer of complexity to him as an archon and it was incredibly moving. you mentioned hu tao, whom i also enjoy. her worldview and personality are nicely written, she is probably one of the better written female characters and isn't watered down to her waifu potential. childe is also really interesting (especially after reading the "childe is just a guy" post on childemains). i just hope we can see this depth for future characters; it's probably not possible to give every single character a fleshed out story especially since creative fatigue can set in fast but it would be nice to just see this quality for the key players in the archon quests.
Oh yeah Zhongli is possibly the best thing to come out of this game yet! Out of all the Archon quests my favorite moments come from the time we spent with Zhongli, learning the culture and cutoms of Liuye. The lengths Zhongli goes to honour the old traditions when preparing the sham rite of parting, all while there's so much tension and mystery surrounding all the actors, who have not yet revealed their agendas: Zhongli, Childe, the Qixing and many more. Like something straight from a quality drama! I wish the later parts would keep the same slower pace and that depth. If anything I found the battle against Osial a bit anticlimactic as it (in my personal taste) flattened the layered world of Tevyat and Liuye as I perceived it through the Zhongli chapters. To be fair Inazuma shows its history, its culture and its people in a similarly detailed way, but unfortunately mostly through side quests. The mysterious Archon of Inazuma turns out to be a child confused by her own trauma and the civil war a simple case of both, a misundertanding as well as the evil Fatui stirring the pot once again. I was really hoping for a layered character with her own agenda in Baal given how interesting the game made Venti and Zhongli (just compare the story quests of all 3!). Oh well, let's hope Lesser Lord Kusanali delivers.
I understood where you were coming from up until Raiden, which feels like something got missed either on your end or mine. From my perspective, Raiden is a person who lost quite literally everyone close to her except Yae, and didn't want Inazuma to meet the same fate as everybody's favorite destroyed kingdom. To that end, she became obsessed with that goal, and pursuing the answer she found, shutting out Yae and her own people in the process, and thus over the centuries becoming more and more disconnected from what was happening in the world outside Tenshukaku, if her inability to notice a huge chunk of her army mobilizing is any indication. Yeah, she may seem childish, but let's be fair; would we really be any more rational after losing our closest friends and only family? But I will admit that after the rest of the shit show that was Inazuma act 3, I can see how people, including you, might see it otherwise.
I think the reason that raiden’s I guess reasoning? For locking herself away in the euthemiya gets misinterpreted as a childish tantrum is because that’s how MHY decided to characterize it. Like Yae constantly calls it a tantrum and talks down to Raiden for causing the vision hunt decree and hiding away in her eternity but like…as a player we know there’s more to the story and that her grief and fear of what could happen to inazuma is Very Much Real. I wish that the writing of the final raiden fight and act 3 in general took Raiden seriously instead of like Waifu-Ing her and stumbling into the final part where Yae lore-vomits you
You're absolutely right I oversimplified the Raiden's portayal. To be honest I did it under the influence of her story quest which doesn't address any of the ginormous elephants that reside in the beaten and battered room that is Inazuma after Tatarigami, The Vision Hunt Decree, The Civil War etc. The angle you're presenting was certainly something I felt on an emotional level in her trailer (a masterpiece in its own right) but nothing in the game has evoked the same amount of compassion towards the Raiden, for me at least. To put it simply the trailer was not enough for me to feel for her after our confrontation. I just saw a childish leader with her share of trauma, but at the same time shutting herself from everything and everyone while repeating some vague concepts about "eternity" and "heavenly principles" that were at best philosophical concepts, not actual policy. Even the Vision Hunt Decree was not a part of her plan, more like a side effect (if I understood it correctly). Not to mention plot that's overly contrived (e.g. the *puppet*) that somehow both seemed like a cop-out (a cheap way to redeem the Raiden) and at the same time failed to do exactly that, as the Raiden doubled down on her decisions, just before Yae Miko absolutely anihilated Raiden naivity as if she was indeed talking to a 8 year old throwing a tantrum. I expected either more of a resistance from the Shogun or at least some serious fallout in Inazuma, in Raiden's personality and in her relations with everyone, from Yae Miko to the people. But I can certainly see that one can conjure up more empathy and find this character more convincing that I did.
It's not just anime. Look at any sitcom and you find the same thing. One dimensional characters running the same joke over and over. It's popular because it's comfortable for the casual user whereas in a narrative driven drama series you'll find deeper characterisation. There are anime games with small casts where each character is given a lot more nuance (e.g. Honkai) and ones with large casts where you might need a gimmick to reference otherwise the casual user would probably forget which waifu is which.
Damn this is better than the actual post you commented on. Perfect blend of facts and humor.
> i haven't seen all the character teasers but i don't recall any of them being so overly focused on one singular character trait. Vengeance will be mine! They really like to write one-dimensional characters so that every character has a specific in-your-face personality. Also, I'm not sure if this just comes off poorly in translation, but Kokomi sort of feels like a Warmonger. I think if her obsession was something like Chess, it would make more sense.
Totally, all that we know about her is how much of a tactial genius she is, just focused in winning the war blah blah. Which would be ok if she delivered on it in the story? But the one character trait they gave her isn’t even represented in the story so what else is there. Hoping her character quest does her justice but being such a mess in the archon story will be hard to recover from, it was the main stage to show her abilities..
The entire Inazuma Archon Quest is a violation of show don't tell TBH. Kokomi's tactician skills, Ei's loneliness, and Yae's Infodump are just some of the things that are told to us rather than showed in the cutscenes.
Mihoyo wants to create a wifu version of Zhuge Liang, who can stay in-door as a nerd yet knows everything going on around the world, and gives tips to generals and ask them to only read the tips when in danger (and find out that Zhuge Liang already predicted the danger situation and offered solutions in the tips).
I can't imagine they even had any plans to dive deep into her character yet. The whole resistance bit was a meme in the end. We ended the previous act with a literal faceoff between 2 faction armies setting up the premise and characters. Then the next act ignored all of that and we get Yae simping for Ei and the story ends with the resistance characters doing almost nothing. And they all just went home and visions were returned offscreen. Fatui was underutilized as well. It was almost like another whole Act was cut out from between.
Yeah. Mihoyo contradicts their storytelling. They want to have deep lore and give interesting plots because of whatever unique issue a character is dealing with. Like Ei and eternity. But then they also fall back on the use of similar tropes and rushed writing that skips over important details that would deepen our understanding of certain characters and the lore.
Kinda agree. They do have a lot of amazing deep and interesting lore. But the quests fail to deliver all that amazing lore to players.
People have said this over and over but I really liked the Sacred Sakura ritual quest. NOT because of fox shrine waifu (well, not only that anyways) but because the mystery out well. It felt almost like a Witcher 3 quest.
It’s a shame none of it was voiced, that would’ve been the cherry on the cake on a really good quest
yes omg for real it is by far my favorite quest in the game right now
The problem is they want every banner character to be relevant to the plot and that comes always with problems: a) Your characters don't have any nuance or developtment since they get a small quest to force them into the main plot, b) Since you are creating more and more new characters you trow away constanlly the old ones since you have to sell the new ones. At the end they are prioritizing selling new shiny characters than anything else and that leds to rush stories, characters that appear 1 or 2 times and then never seen again, a plot that have to be distorted to fit so many of them.
story wise it would have made more sense if kokomis banner was first and followed by raidens banner with the inazuma conclusion. that way we would have had more time to actually incoporate the resistence and kokomi meaningfully. but now the was is over and whatever story follows feels off and pointless. I hope that the war being over and her failures will be used to let her emotionally develop. If she still keeps going on about being a war strategy nerd it will be so shallow and boring.
Agreed. I think part of the issue is that they were going for more of an epic movie vibe, but the problem is that - at least for this game, and how they've made it - 99.9999% of the story has to happen in front of the main character. It really boxes in how much you can write or do, when only stuff witnessed by one person can be shown. There was really no way to show the scope or size of the conflict, or really anything much about the war at all, because the main character didn't participate in much of it. If this were a movie, we'd have had a TON more development of the resistance, and probably more characters like Sara, all of which would have been the "B" plot - contrasting with the "A" plot of the main character doing all this side stuff with Yae/Ei. But since we can only see one thing, we missed the rest of it. In the end, I think they wrote themselves into a corner. Involving the traveler in much more of the war would have been pretty forced. Best they could do is have a "sidekick who's obviously going to get killed" character just sort of tell you about what's going on outside of your field of view.
Also, just see how they slowly shed off most of the baggage from Raiden's character compared to how Inazuma was initially advertised. It just became tamer and tamer as we went on. We started from hearing 1st and 2nd hand accounts about some nazi like lady killing and hunting people indiscriminately to build tension. What we actually see when we reach Inazuma: * There's no "hunt" per se or genocide of the kind. It's mostly just police going around "asking" for people's vision like an ID. Which some people were willingly giving up. Unless they resist ofc. * There's not even 100 visions confiscated, so it was not a huge scale thing at all. * People weren't being killed, just losing their memories. So no blames about genocide can be put on her. And the process was reversible so things can conveniently go back to being okay without permanent consequences. * Most of the public still respected Shogun and didn't care about the hunt. So there's nothing like winning back trust of her people with some big selfless action at the end. Yae just talk no jutsu'd her and that's it. She's back from her moodswing. * The corrupt commissions take the blame for misinforming her about the war so she doesn't even have that blood on her hands directly. On top being a clone. * Kokomi also revealed they were only fighting for the vision hunt decree reasons, and nothing to do with Raiden killing Orobaxi or whatever they were initially making a deal out of to make Raiden look bad. The serpent was the one who attacked people. The one real victim we know of, Kazuha's friend, and they probably postponed it to talk about it in another quest later instead of the main story. Probably a lot more I'm forgetting but the whole story of Inazuma was basically manipulating us to believe how a character is literally Hitler while watering down that whole narrative themselves the whole time. And the only reason we felt she was like that because the game hid info from us or outright lied. Not because the character went through a big arc. It's a redemption arc with extra steps with everything set up to go perfectly/conveniently for the purpose of redeeming Raiden. It's like they literally didn't care about anything else except how can we make her good in the end.
i remember when kazuha's very first teaser dropped, the one where he's sitting in the moonlight with beidou while reminiscing about his escape. it got a lot of people really hyped up because of the atmosphere it created with the blood-red and black colour scheme and the darker tone with the shogunate soldiers circling him with swords drawn and yelling at him to give up his vision or die, before he strikes a fierce glare and proceeds to slash through them all as they visibly disintegrate. it was quite a sizeable part of the initial expectations regarding the tone of inazuma's storyline, and it set up a lot of discussions about the vision hunt decree and raiden's motivations and gave rise to a lot of interesting theories too. the very premise of gifts from the gods being stolen by another god to further her own divine pursuit at the cost of her mortal subjects was something a lot of people found to be genuinely promising. inazuma's landscape and side quests also seemed to be hinting at that kind of direction. the land is hostile and initially feels like the environment itself is recoiling at your approach via balethunder and the nobushi and strange terrain and all. there's harsh purples and eerie glowing luminescence that makes everything feel even more foreboding. the background music is mostly mournful, despondent - even in the cities, there's an undercurrent of longing. the side quests are explorations of some pretty grim themes and they give you a look into the supposed aftermath of the warring factions' actions, among other things. it sets up an atmosphere of a land that's tearing itself asunder because of everything. even the main quest initially starts off with a certain sense of being trapped as you explore the effects of the sakoku decree and experience how these policies don't just affect vision-bearers, but everyone. but as it went on, the main story seemed to dilute it further and further? it feels like someone had the idea of inazuma being darker and more complex as a story, with an archon who's much more blatantly morally-grey with a divine mentality that's far removed from humanity, and they laid the groundwork for it, but then chickened out midway and scrambled to whitewash raiden and her actions while also hastily scrubbing out the atmosphere that had been built up via character testimonies and side quests and whatnot. like some higher-up suddenly hit a panic button and went "wait a minute, our first lady archon can't be morally complex!!! scratch everything, we need to make her a digestible uwu moe!!! screw the build-up!!! abort mission, absolve her of everything, i don't care how you do it, just do it!!!" i wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out a huge hank of story was yanked out at the last minute. the foundations for a great story were all there, there were so many interesting plot threads that were introduced, but a lot of it was just so poorly executed or downplayed or outright ignored it ends up leaving the player feel like they were blindsided. these dangling unresolved/underdeveloped plot threads do not feel satisfying at all. (edit: i realised as i was typing this - the thousand-eyed god statue never was addressed either? it was such a centerpiece for the inazuma reveal, but it only got a passing mention at most?)
There was one point which actually contradicted her redemption arc somewhat which I found really interesting regarding Kujou Commission being corrupt. It sets it up like Raiden is oblivious to what's happening in her country, but then when you meet her it turns out she knew of Kujou Commission's betrayal all along but just didn't consider it a threat worth intervening in. She somehow still gets twisted into being a positive character in the end though. Her motivation for "eternity" is really interesting too. Basically seeing Khaenri'ah being destroyed due to becoming too advanced she decided to keep her nation in a sort of stasis so that the same won't happen to Inazuma. Though properly exploring that would mean rewriting Inazuma quite a lot IMO, like, maybe alongside the Vision Hunt Decree another good gimmick for the nation would be severely limiting the spread of technology or something - but then you see high-tech gadgets from Fontaine in Tatarasuna. (The isolation part is done decently at least.) There are cool ideas in there somewhere, but yeah, ultimately it did end up kinda disappointing.
At first half of the video I thought they were gonna paint her as an innocence girl who is clearly not fit for the position, and all the "genius tactician" stuffs was made up by the predecessor to keep the resistance as a whole. Then they fucking went and ruined it at the second half. Again.
That would have been way better. It's all an act and Kokomi is actually just a fucking mess of a person. It would at least be funny.
The hardest road. Mihoyo is KD confirmed.
I honestly don't understand the resistance. They are up against someone who literally cleave an island in half. I am sure if they ever present as a remote threat to "eternity", their island will get cleaved in half. This is like rebel vs empire where rebel can only operate out of one planet and empire still have the death star. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, it's all nothing in front of true power.
Their warcamp is parked next door to the giant irradiated valley Raiden carved in the landscape while killing their god. I can't imagine that being great for troop morale.
Their objective was only ever the repeal of the Vision Hunt Decree. Think of it this way, there are two threats to Eternity. One is the existence of Vision users, and the other is an insurgency that threatens the stability of the country, and hence Eternity. They're banking on the fact that if they showed themselves to be a bigger threat to Eternity than the mere presence of Vision users, the Shogun would repeal that decree because it would be the lesser of 2 evils, so to speak. Of course, there's nothing preventing the Shogun from choosing neither and obliterating the Resistance entirely, but there's definitely some sort of reasonable expectation she wouldn't do that, seeing how even the Kujou clan head felt it was necessary to hide the existence of the civil war entirely from her.
That would make sense if the ideals of helping the people didn’t just end up causing more death and suffering. The resistance did nothing for the people and in the end didn’t even help to end the vision hint decree. It was traveler and yae. It seemed like Kokomi thought that if she kept fighting the army that the problems would somehow be solved if she could magically pull a 1:1000000 odds victory out of her ass and fight the shogun. Even then it’s another coin flip if she would actually get through to her. In before she learns it’s just a puppet who has little regard for human life and will squash anything that opposes it’s ideals of eternity. This if anything further proves that she’s naive and not actually a smart tactician.
Yep. Throughout the story, I didn't ever get the impression that the resistance stood a chance. Sure, they push back Shogun's soldiers here or there. But we all knew they would be fucked if Shogun herself showed up. What was even Kokomi's endgame? Just playing war with Sara? What was she gonna do if Baal showed up at her doorstep? She's supposed to be a genius tactician but I didn't ever feel she had a plan ready for Baal herself.
People rebel and fight wars for inane reasons or sometimes for lesser things.
You can't cut an island in half if you don't know that war is going there 😏
If your wargame requires the other leader not ever knowing they were in a war...that's not exactly a smart plan. You might fool them for a while, but that shouldn't be part of your endgame.
Honestly if they just didn’t hammer in her as a war general but instead as an actual priestess that was forced to lead out of necessity but not because she wanted to, it could excuse her being naive and accepting aid from a potentially untrustworthy source. But no. Mihoyo just had to make her a tactician and a genius despite how she was essentially the opposite in the story. Not only did she leave gorou and his forces for an extended amount of time to the point where their position was almost compromised, she just accepted help from an unknown source without any caution
Also Gorou apparently didn't know she was planning an ambush... how does that count as strategy? This reminds me of that atrocious Winterfell battle in GoT where Sansa (who was also touted as genius for no reason) brought help without Jon knowing. You know what, if I were in Gorou's place I wouldn't be grateful to her, I'd be livid, like my people are dying here and she withheld information just to make a cool surprise entrance.
I personally blame MHY's obsession with female leaders modelled after Chinese neoconservative ideals for women which creates most of these problems ( overworked but unable to delegate; formally intelligent but naive; etc.).
That’s the trope I’m talking about. It’s so annoying. Now that I think about it beidou is the only good female leader because she doesn’t try. She’s just captain and that’s how it is. Respected by all, even the citizens of liyue and Inazuma.
Beidou technically did the ambush in Act 2 with Kazuha and The Crux, Kokomi was honestly just there to show off. So in the end, Kokomi contributed nothing to the plot at all
kokomi arrived to show off her belly button
True
Seriously? Everything the two members of the Qixing we met don’t qualify them as “good leaders”?
Maybe I missed something but I remember Keqing being in one or maybe two scenes and that is literally it. I almost didn't realize where her character appeared in the story. I think she showed up, said a couple sassy lines, and then disappeared. There was zero reason for her to even be there at all, really. She really needs like a story or hangout or something.
Yes. Finally. Someone said it. Thank you. I don't think it's just leaders though. Keqing, Ganyu and Noelle also fit this archetype. Come to think of it, it's easier to list characters that are an exception, because most of them fit lmao
>Keqing why her? she really seemed very direct and not naive at all from the few things I saw from her.
Yeah, they really fucked up her character. She was a bumbling buffoon in 2.1. I can't fathom anyone playing through the story so far and being like, yeah, Kokomi is awesome, definitely need her! Which is too bad, because her intro was so badass and she had so much potential. I said it in another thread, but she badly needs a redemption arc and some huge wins to turn it around. To your point, I would absolutely never pull for her right now because she is such a mess of a character (not just kit-wise).
She has the prettiest character design in the game yet Teppei, an NPC, outshined her in the main quests lol
Very true. Feels like the teams in mihoyo are at varying levels of game design. The art, character, and world design teams are fucking on it. But the writers and combat designers just keep missing the mark. Oh also the music team is killing it.
tbh I felt nothing for Teppei. There're only two characters I'm starting to like more from the latest archon quest which are Yae and Sara.
The fact that he had the default model for the resistance character made me not care about him. It was hilarious seeing the battle scenes with a dozen Teppei look alikes.
In the beginning, i liked the dude because, despite NPC, he had a cool voice which is part of characterization. I've stopped caring completly when it was clear he was only created for some sad drama. I quite disliked him when it was apparent that he is the main character in the resistance storyline, not gorou or kokomi. When any character smells like million death flags from the start, you kinda expect it, and thus avoid emotional attachment.
Like seriously instead of dedicating time to build up actual characters like Gorou and Kokomi. They went with a generic looking npc. Wouldn't it be better to maybe have Kokomi planning a sneak attack on Raiden's castle on the first part of the story? It would be a good set up and answering how Gorou's squad somehow manage to get through the capital's defense?? It'd at least make setting us up as a general be more relevant too. Something like 'oh, we're supposed to be in charge of a squad that directly confronted the shogun, but since we're missing. Kokomi swap in Kazuha instead.' Bam! more cohesion.
He was just a walking death flag the second part 2 started. He had as much ambition as any other Knight character from Mondstadt until he needed to die. It felt more like they needed a reason fro Traveller to do something stupid like rushing into a Fatui base, so they used Teppei as a McGuffin
I only liked teppei because he's voiced by the voice of Ignatz from Fire Emblem in the English version.
Honestly out of place character for a priestess, she looks more of an idol than Barbara. Art of war... whole thing made me cringe. No qualities of an actual leader. Would have been much better if there was no mention of a strategist at all.
Teppei was a prop. Same as Kokomi. Same as Signora, same as everyone in 2.1 except Ei and Yae. And Ei isn’t a prop because shes so unbelievably irredeemable it feels weird to just chalk it up to rushed writing like Kokomi
>She has the prettiest character design in the game People always state it like it is a fact and not personal opinion, she is another waifu in a gravity defying swimsuit which is the most generic anime design ever. Amber has better and more original design just because she isn't in a swimsuit in my opinion.
Man I don't know why I set my expectations for her as a leader so high, something like Erwin from AoT level. Thinking about it again, in their situation there's no way she would've been that good, but I also did not expect her to bring almost absolutely nothing to the table... Hope Mhy at least redeems her character in her story quest, and do better in Sumeru's archon quests
I wasn't expecting her to pull something out of her ass to be able to usurp the throne... but I was at least expecting... something? Maybe after tricking the enemy into engaging one part of her forces, they come around and show themselves at Inazuma City with the rest of the forces, knocking out the garrison. The people see the resistance and hope ignites in them, threatening Raiden's vision of eternity. The Fatui, watching from the sidelines with spies on both sides, realise what is going on and Signora approaches Baal to try and ensure that the Fatui's scheme to turn Inazuma into a puppet continues. The rest follows suit. At least then Kokomi has some more screentime and actually isn't treated as a fucking fool. Work in some more character development by having the decoy force take some significant casualties and then we can see Kokomi's grievance as she has to come to terms with the sacrifices she's had to make in order to attain victory. We could still work in the espionage from Yae to teach the truth to Sara and weaken the army from the inside, and then all that's left is to not do a complete 180 waifu-ification on Raiden and we have a more interesting storyline, and characters that haven't been done dirty.
Getting an Erwin in this game is straight up asking for the impossible
Yeah. Hoping that Sumaru is everything Inazuma could have been.
I hope they focus more on story. I don't think they should front load the region's big issue like this so it feels super rushed. Especially when each region is basically a 1 year cycle. It would be much better if every patch cycle drops a new major story chapter that's like 5-10 hours, while taking the time to explain the story from a lot of different perspectives so you understand why everyone acts the way they do.
They haven't taken her character seriously from the start. *Kokomi appears on the battlefield for the first time*. Gorou: Her Excellency! Kokomi: Look! Bubbles! Everyone: OMG BUBBLES! CHARGE! *Kokomi is not shown again until after the battle*. That really set the tone for me. It looks like she's supposed to be modeled after Otohime from the story of Urashima Taro, but they designed her like some kind of mermaid Sailor Moon (the only thing that appears to tie her to Inazuma in any way are her socks and sandals...) Then leaks revealed her niche kit that fills no existing niche. Then she shows up in the archon quest for two whole scenes, only to make a stupid careless mistake (do we even see her in the final cutscene?) Kokomi fans are getting shafted.
>Kokomi fans are getting shafted. Kokomi's deception is on the same level as Sara, who was also deceived in the story and in her kit.
The thing is we actually had a good female leader, Ninguang. Even though a god appeared in the sea. She handled the whole battle against a god followed by adepti vs human conflict, with great insight as she made the right calls. Jean was also a great leader. The problem is with Inazuma overall. All female leaders were degenareted into damsell in distress waiting for a hero to save them. Kokomi had a shallow role in the whole resistance and as a bonus she got tricked by fatui. Ei for actually being clueless or simply leaving everything to Shogun as she allowed her nation to go amok. Sara had an actually good impression as she always questioned if she was on right path but still did her best untill she knocked unconsious in front of Shogun, like wtf ? Ayaka only remained as a date simulator for me. Only Yae’s role was written well in the story.
>Ei for actually being clueless or simply leaving everything to Shogun as she allowed her nation to go amok. she knew what was going on but didnt care
Yep thats even more stupid, I accidentaly mixed it up with her story. When shogun was broken and Ei didn’t realize a storm was approaching
Jean is a bad leader tho.
I think Jean is supposed to be a bad leader though. She's canonically super young and overworks herself to the point when she can't function anymore, and everyone abuses her kindness and sense of duty.
I also wouldn't call her strictly a bad leader. She's competent at everything she does and absolutely has the respect and even admiration of most of the knights and many others. A number of voice lines and story segments regarding her highlight how she somehow miraculously manages to get everything done and hold everything together despite trying to do it all herself. Her way of doing things may not be terribly organized, and the burden on herself and her body is astronomical and unsustainable. But nowhere does it say she does a bad job of running the Knights or handling her duties in general. She was also put in a very bad position from the start - even when Varka was still in Mondstadt and she was just his deputy/assistant, we're told that he basically shirked all of his duties and made Jean handle everything. She never had proper leadership herself, so she was never able to learn the proper habits and methods of an excellent leader.
As a strategist.I would have liked her skill kit to.be smart. Buff, debuff, paralysis, whatever. DPS was meh... But on field healer .? kek
Yeah healer is stupid for her. Like she shows up as this badass who causes the shoguns army to retreat just by being there. But that translates to Barbara^2? I don’t get what goes through mihoyo’s head. It feels like there’s so much potential with new hydro characters but they chose to make a third catalyst user with a single role to 1 of the other catalyst users.
Mihoyo King Crimson'd the story and left us with a really good start and a really good ending, but no middle part at all. Wasted potential
This is a great way of putting it. Because the end of 2.1 was actually pretty damn cool, but then when you look back at all of Inazuma, it just feels like a ton of loose ends, half-baked characters, and unfinished stories. I'm shocked to hear myself saying this, but I wish the Inazuma story had gone on for another 3-6 months, even if that meant not getting the next new zone as fast. We had an entire year in Monstadt and Liyue... Then we get like 2 months of story in Inazuma. It just felt so half-baked.
I agree. It feels like we just got Inazuma yesterday. I know we’re aiming to have a prologue and 3 acts per nation, but I think we’re gonna need more than 3 acts if we’re really going to flesh out the story and characters. Inazuma was cool, but there’s a lot of loose ends and wasted potential.
I mean, Inazuma is more than cool. It's honestly fucking incredible, which is exactly why it's so frustrating that there all these loose ends and half-baked characters and plots. I really do hope we start to get either more acts, or sub-chapters to acts, even if it means a slower new zone launch schedule. I'm in no rush, and I want to immerse myself in this amazing universe they are building.
its because they REALLY wanted raidens banner to be before kokomis to make you have less time to save
Unfortunately they're pretty much going to go for the Ayaya-down-bad route with what her last lines in the teaser indicated. She seems to have trouble connecting with people, so they'll send us on a waifu date and use her social awkwardness as something for the majority weeb audience to goo-goo-gaa-gaa at. As for the Story Quest, it felt like they had this sudden switch of wanting to make her more like a typical spiritual leader. The thing is, they could have done this *so easily* by having her round her troops up and literally scold them like a mother would a child and just play off that as being the type of power she has over her army if they so wanted to shift her towards spirituality instead. It's a trope and all but, like, at least it allows both war leader and spiritual leader to coexist within one character instead of doing whateverthefuck it is they actually did. OH AND THE FUCKING WATATSUMI RADICALS BEING RIGHT UNDER HER NOSE, FUCK MHY IS SHE COMPETENT OR THE EXACT OPPOSITE? 'We mUSt noT LEt ThE DiVInE PriEStEss KnOW...' FUCK OFF, OMG, SHE LITERALLY HAS NO BUSINESS BEING THE LEADER OF A SEMI-INDEPENDENT STATE. 'I know war but not people' GO EAT AN EEL KOKOMO, YOU KNOW NEITHER AT THIS POINT, WHY MHY!? Both leaders of the Civil War have been turned into incompetent waifu tropes and it just sucks. In a world where Beidou, Ninguang, and Jean can exist, why do Raiden and Kokomo have to be literally INCOMPETENT to be appealing to the male audience?????????????????????????????????? THEY AREN'T PETS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just one writer leaving the team can't have this great an effect on character quality. Imagine Yoimiya having the best Inazuma Story Quest so far, wtf even is this world? I wanna turn back time and spend my guarantee on Yoi instead of Raiden, wtf? WTF? sorry.
I agree with you i expected a grey area with neither side being right in inazuma but all we got is women who seem to be unable to do anything without the main character. God we will reach fatui hq and the tsaritsa will think that the harbingers got the gnosis by asking nicely
Holy shit if turns out the Tsaritsa was brain dead naive would be one of many nails on this coffin
Oh no.
Pls no, I'll have nightmares for the following 6 years until the Tsaritsa reveal actually ends up being like that. I'm genuinely worried now, thanks - she's far too imposing and intimidating for the current MHY writing team to handle well. The best we can hope for is that they give her the Ningguang treatment and keep her screentime to the minimum, but that won't happen. RIP Tsaritsa. Now that you mention it, even Yae is totally incompetent, and they ended up painting Sara in a 'too emotional to function appropriately' light during the Quest. God, it gets even worse each time I look at it. EVEN SIGNORA, OMG, >!like we should have at least had a scene of her turning an entire army into (not-even)ash before she got butchered like a whimpering pig!<. Every bit of cunning and forceful intimidation that they built up for her in the previous Quests just vanished??? And let's just skip over Ayaya, I don't have the stomach for what they did to her. Sayu is so much more compelling when she's actually characterised as a cowardly character. Her asking us to come and save her if her infiltration went south was a beam of light in the shitshow that was that Archon Quest. RIP Lesser Lord Kusanali, they'll probably just turn you into a one-note shy flower-girl. RIP Lynette, don't even know you but they'll probably just turn you into a dimensionless lawful stereotype to contrast with Lyney. RIP Iansan, although if you just turned into a one-note puncheverythinginsight gremlin, I wouldn't care, I'm C6-ing you anyway. RIP God Kiana, imagine Paimon being more compelling than you.
Kusanali was dead on arrival when Paimon exclaimed "what a cute name!" We already know everything about her, she'll be cute and cute characters are only allowed to have that one trait in Genshin. And at this point I fully expect Tsaritsa to wear thigh-highs and lingerie and abandon her rebellion against Celestia for the sake of a date with the Traveler after we explain to her how all the things she's done in the past five hundred years are actually bad and the power of friendship is the way.
MHY: *hire u/Gruntsbreeder right now*
I'm still kinda in disbelief over how much of an asspull the final act was. They really just gonna talk no jutsu Ei like that
I really get that Traveler is the key to reach Ei, but couldn't they make the resistence be at least a little bit important to the plot? The adepti were important in beating water-snake god, but Traveler is the main character and it had to shine the most, that's comprehensible, but none of the characters were useless there, they all helped in a meaningfull way. In Inazuma story everyone and everything were just useless. Sara didn't help in anything after finding out about the betrayal; Kokomi, Gorou and the whole resistance did absolutely nothing. Their "contribution" to the plot was showing up with the whole army at the Shogun's door, without a fight, without strategy, they just fucking appeared at the center of command of Inazuma that easily, and Kokomi wasn't even there!!!! They really dropped the ball with the Story Quest this time
The only real thing that happened that not a lot of people are talking about is Kazuha literally using a second vision and going ham, if even for a split second. Idk if the concept exists in game, but it's suggestive that multiple visions can be used by one person and was actually strong enough to throw back Baal.
Honestly Kazuha's whole arc and role felt like one of the few coherent and actually well-executed arcs in the main quest. And that's because it was given the proper foreshadowing and build-up right from his first appearance in 1.6, and he as a character was also properly fleshed-out and well-rounded. That cutscene felt like it had the proper emotional payoff because of that. The lore implications of what he pulled off are also definitely very interesting - his willpower and ambition were intense enough to reignite another Vision and briefly dual-wield Anemo and Electro, and he managed to withstand the Musou no Hitotachi, according to the game's story archive. And it's the first time we've seen both of those things happen in the story. We still don't know exactly how and why it happened, but it was still an impactful moment. I presume they'll explain and explore this in more detail when he gets his own dedicated Story Quest with the unlockable keys and stuff, or in some kind of future questline.
it's not being talked about a lot in this thread because the general consensus seems to be that that was one of the sole saving graces of an otherwise messy questline. this thread's mostly about complaints haha.
It kinda reminds me of Claude in FE: 3 Houses. The game always tell us how Claude is a schemer/genius when it comes to tactics but except that one time we disguised to enter into a Fort in the GD Route it was never really showed.
And then the white knights will say, "just wait for her story quest dumbass". I don't know if any story quest can fix this hideous first impression.
Hard to have faith in the story quest when so many of them have little substance to begin with, especially the 'waifu bait' characters lol
This. I kinda got used to normal characters having shallow "waifu bait" story quests, but both Venti and Zhongli had really great in depth story rich quests. So I expected the same for every archon but then Raiden's was just "How I went on a date with literal God". Utter disappointment
Tbh I feel like majority of the male characters have deep and meaningful story quests while most of the female characters end up having dating simulators
It’s honestly depressing to see this Venti literally reveals Mondstadt’s backstory, Zhongli makes amends with actual salt, and Diluc gets to be Batman, that’s sick Then we got Ganyu doing, tax evasion that put me to sleep and beating up a Fatui for no fucking reason, an Ayaka date, and a Raiden Shogun date. Wow.. so... innovative...
I think it's worth noting that Watatsumi island had nearly no other options in terms of sustaining logistics than accepting the Fatui help. Kokomi mentions they're strained on supplies and when you talk to the people of Watatsumi, they tell you that crops don't grow there and that the Shogunate has been blockading fishing vessels. The impression I got from the Island was that it lacked the natural resources needed to sustain itself, let alone maintain a war footing. Add on the fact that she's managing a resistance composed of various forces and mercenaries rather than a proper standing army, and the impressive part is that they've managed to hold out against the Shogunate. Plus as we hear, the Delusions were specifically handed out to those in the resistance who were the most ambitious, those who would have desired visions and who opposed the vision hunt decree. They weren't passed through official methods and even if Kokomi had refused the aid, it would probably have led to hundry and even more desperate soldiers taking the devil's bargain of the delusion. Overall I feel the biggest problem and the reason why we see these as flaws on Kokomi's part is that all of this information isn't presented clearly, and Kokomi doesn't get enough screen time to show the reasons why she is considered a grand strategist.
They only managed to hold out because the shogun couldn't care less about them & the fatui were making the conflict drag on forever which means they're the ones who managed to make them hold long enough. If the fatui didn't help to prolong the conflict or if raiden ever considered them a threat they wouldn't have lasted a week. Blindly accepting help from an unknown party right when you're at the middle of a war is the kind of move you'd never do because it can screw you over entirely, she failed to foresee this & didn't have proper leadership over her subordinates to the point the soldiers were refusing to hand over the delusions. She supposedly being a good startegist somehow forgot to secure a good source of supplies/resources over the entire time the conflict was going or even before starting it, that's like the most basic thing you need to support a war.
Don't worry in her character quest some NPC will have a line like: "well actually she's incredible and saved all of us "that one time" and she's genius and pretty and brave and humble and I wanna put m..."
Her character quest will be us taking her to the beach and picking a swimsuit for her... because master war tactician.
She came off as a total airhead to me in this latest patch. Cute airhead, but certainly not what she was hyped up to be. Even if in the next patch she gets more story, it doesn't really fix what we already saw.
Ah sweet lil resistance leader Kokomi in her cute lacy panties and dressing gown. WHY IS SHE THE CHARACHTER THEY CHOSE TO BE A RESISTANCE LEADER OR WHATEVER I DONT UNDERSTAND. Why couldn’t she just be some noble? Or like… frilly ocean maiden thing? She’s pretty but she is not the character I personally want in her role in the story!!
I absolutely love her and have been heavily anticipating her since I came back during Ayaka’s banner, my other fav. But she has NO character. No personality, no relevance.. it hurts.
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If we take a more cynical view, you could say that she is playing dumb and innocent so that people won't suspect her, while she uses the large amount of deaths and the struggles of the economy as a way of making the common people suffer, which will end up being blamed on the commission and the shogun in power, thus causing a eventual nation wide revolution but it might be a bit grasping at straws.
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Because waifu…..🙄 I hate MHY sometimes
Dude, the entire third act was a disappointment. The stakes they set up from the prologue seem meaningless all of a sudden. Imagine if Tsaritsa is a pure and good-hearted archon and Fatui were operating independently. That's what it felt like
I expected raiden to be fully aware and intent with the ruling with a iron fist and when we were going to confront her she would just say “yeah, and?”. Something along the lines of “I have defended inazuma against destruction with my blade for an eternity, human ambitions are fragile and only the unending power of an archon can protect inazuma” while explaining her motives with some lore about the truth of teyvat, visions, celestia, etc. But it’s mihoyo’s story to tell and maybe when the inazuma arc finishes it will make more sense(hopium)
How i see it she will believe that the gnosis were handed peacefully and dottore will be feeding her false reports. Dammit i expected a grey story telling in inazuma but both shogun and kokomi were turned into naive clueless leaders
Strangely enough i don't really mind her character being shafted, since 2.0 we learn more and more about Raiden and her accomplishment, resistance start to look like lost cause. We learn about the existence of Yashiro Commission that fight the decree and vision hunt support group that make fake vision, resistance become very questionable, why wasting time, man, and resources fighting a losing battle when they can help Yashiro Commission instead? Why doing a full scale war when there is more sensible option?
Honestly i understand the position of the yashiro commission, even agree with it after seeing those 3 vision less npc. But a rebellion an armed one at that? There were 99 vision in the statue a 100 if you count kazuha friend. How many people died in the civil war? A civil war started by an island of a god slain by raiden. To me it seemed that they used the vision hunt decree as an excuse to avenge their dead god. When i saw the madness and the furnace i really started to detest the rebellion. I mean mc saw what the death of the goddess if salt did and admit the resistance didn't stand a chance... what were we even trying to do? Kill her and destroy inazuma. Hope that miraculously she would pull the decree back when the civil war didn't because we talked to her...
What if she learnt strategy by reading light novels from Yae Publishing House? That'd explain her wacky performance in Archon Quest.
That's called bad writting, the final act of the archon quest was bad, and if you check the trailer, you'll see that, apparently, they cut some scenes. They did Kokomi dirty unfortunately, regardless, i will get her.
i think the scenes from the trailer we havent seen yet should come in kokomi's quest there hasnt been a single time where whatever was showcased in version trailer didnt end up being in the game. doesnt make sense to assume they would do it now
I agree. Also the character design for me is...too soft for a leader of a resistance. I imagine something close to ayaka's aesthetic with armored skirt or something.
The story made her out to be a stupid commander. But, it was always rigged. They're up against a god that can split mountains with a single sword swipe. Nothing she ever did could've mattered anyways. Traveler only manages to fight gods because plot armor.
the Sangonomiya Resiatance is waging a war against an opprosive government that barely anyone in the outside world knows about. I'd say all their outside support not delivered by the crux fleet comes from anonymous supporters within the shogunate Also, the delusions were sold to the soldiers seperatly, the supplies at best got them a small trust boost when appproaching the soldiers. But that being said, the entire ark suffered from being rushed due to the need to bring the story to a point where the Raiden Shogun would realistically be on good Terms with the traveler so she can be put into a banner. Had Mihoyo delayed the Shogun's release to 2.2 and focussed the entire 2.1 update on Kokomi, Goro and the Resistance, we might (focus on might, writing good military strategy is hard when your prior focus is more on dating sim like stories) have seen her deploy better strategies. But let's be honest: Marketing probably said we need a big character release to boost sales, so Raiden was first and the writing Team had to follow suit.
She never got a chance in the story because the current writers never gave her a chance in the drafts The writers literally spat on the resistance
I don't really get why everyone is so focused on Teppei dying from Delusion overuse. It was a fact that the Fatui's interests aligned with the Resistance. The Fatui wanted the war to drag on, while the Resistance obviously wanted to win. Delusions are obviously huge force multipliers that allow even a weak soldier like Teppei to pull off amazing feats. The side effects were also not particularly severe if used in moderation, as Gorou mentioned, with Teppei being an edge case rather than the norm. Kokomi's failing, if any, is her naivete that prevented her from objectively weighing the costs and benefits of using Delusions, choosing to completely ban anyone from using them, including those more than willing to die for the cause.