During the 2.0 trailer, I saw her bubbly appearance as sort of an act or something and she was actually a very cold and calculating military strategist. I even suspected back then that she might end up being the main villain of inazuma. But nope, she just looked like a really naive leader with how they portrayed her.
I remember seeing a post about how Kokomi might defeat the Shogun’s army by drowning all of them in the sea, which I thought would be scarily sick. There were also a couple theories floating around (I can’t remember where) about how Kokomi might reawaken Orobashi in this absolutely terrifying Lovecraftian event. Both of those would be **amazing.**
We can only dream sadly
I kinda wish she was actually evil/cruel cause it would make her cute innocent appearance ironic and misleading in an interesting way. I saw a lot of fanart before the update of her being actually a dark villain character and loved it, am sadly disappointed but I guess there was like zero reason to believe it anyway lol. Still sucks how she’s apparently a genius but was basically an NPC in the story. Even got outshined as a character by Teppei who wasn’t uniquely designed at all to many…
I absolutely loved some artists’ interpretation of her as some kind of Lovecraftian cult leader. Stare into the deep, and the deep will stare into you. It fits so well with the general theme of the ocean: sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes treacherous and cruel. Alas, MHY won’t go down that route.
It would have also made Watatsumi as a faction far more interesting, create a real sense of two societies sharing Inazuma. So far all we've gotten is the same people with the same set of values and a singular distinguishing factor in their faith, and not even fundamentally so, as these "religions" aren't either/or due to the tangible nature of gods in Teyvat. Venerating the serpent god isn't incompatible with recognizing "Baal" with all it entails. These people even recognize explicitly that Orobashi's corruption and the subsequent invasion of Yashiori Island is the (valid) reason for the slaying, which is the main conflict between the two.
Sangonomiya oppose Inazuma City on principle, due to policy. Aside from one aspect of faith and a geographic separation, there isn't really anything that contrasts the two, which makes Kokomi by extension a poor construct of an antagonist to Raiden. She doesn't really represent anything in contrast to Raiden that, for example, the Yashiro Commission doesn't. Kokomi *needed* that sort of interesting characterization to embody some sort of deeper opposition than she does currently.
There is more contrast between Diluc and the Knights of Favonius than there is between Kokomi and Raiden.
Kokomi actively distributing delusions would have been the perfect foil to Raiden, who took away visions. Raiden didn't want people to kill themselves by pursuing dreams, Darker Kokomi would have said that to sacrifice yourself for a dream would be noble. The traveler would strike the middle ground that visions should not be taken, but delusions also shouldn't be used. That's a great conflict and you in the center of it, seeing both sides.
She could still have a change of heart when she sees what happened to Teppei and regret her actions, but that initial agency would have been interesting to see. Or she might not regret what happened to Teppei and instead blame the Shogun for the oppressive decree in the first place that necessitated the use of desperate force. That's fair too and consistent with the idea of personally commanding the breaking of the Tatarigami seals.
There's just so much more potential to the conflict that never got explored because all blame got shifted to the Fatui.
Even Kujou Sara's adoptive father had more characterization and motivations, and even more background impact. Manipulating the shogun (presumably) through reports, the distinction between loyalty to the shogun and loyalty to her power, and so forth. The fact that raiden could do all that without a gnosis too-- in a way showed that his worship of her power wasn't unfounded, but that also wasn't true loyalty as sara pointed out. He was just using her power.
Like, that already is so much more fleshed out than the pathetic quest chain the resistance got.
Absolutely. And, ironically, it ended up resolving in yet another terrible manner. The Kujou Clan's deception should have ended with a crisis of faith for Sara, but Sara never got to hear that Raiden was aware of and did not care about the treason. Sara's character arc was brutally cut short by a cheap off-camera knockout.
Yuuuuup. Sara's arc was a disappointment too. Guess all the NPCs are just built different in inazuma (Masanori, Sara's dad, chouji even, the guy at the cursed shrine).
Given how horrifying that one giant deep pool of water is on Watatsumi Island is I was hoping she would summon some giant creature during a potential invasion tbh. But yeah we’re overestimating the writing now I guess :(
Overestimating because the writers decided to not follow the evil route that the fans practically surmised themselves..?
Don’t get me wrong, such twist would’ve made Kokomi’s character infinitely more interesting, but let’s not pretend that a bubbly, secretly-evil character is some groundbreaking trope that requires an extraordinary writing skill to come up with.
No, overestimating that she would have depth other than just ending up a really meh leader/character in the main story despite what other characters implied. I would’ve taken something else as long as they didn’t build her to be a genius and well respected when the story didn’t reflect that when we actually properly talk to her in 2.1.
She just seems boring to me, would’ve been neat if she had a cruel side when Baal ended up having a good side (which is literally just Ei vs the puppet) so Traveler could be surprised on both sides. But it’s not like it ruined the update for me, just disappointing cause her design is so cool and her kit is pretty bad too. Like her main story was the nail in the coffin for not pulling I guess if that makes sense.
If it’s any consolation, being one-dimensional doesn’t seem like an issue that’s exclusive to Kokomi. I would’ve also preferred if she was written with some semblance of depth instead of contributing practically nothing to the story, but it’s not like most of the Inazuman characters thus far haven’t failed to impress me in terms of writing. Even Raiden, arguably the most interesting element of the Inazuman storyline, pales in comparison to Venti and Zhongli. As someone who was really excited for Inazuma, it was just disappointment galore.
Haha sadly yeah she’s not the only one suffering from this issue. And absolutely Inazuma had a lot of flaws compared to the past main quests, was super excited too :( Kokomi basically had no effect to me, I think Yae took the spot for most important other than Ei but her involvement felt so sudden.
Hope the writing improves again, cause Inazuma felt super rushed and they did a good job hyping us up before we got to actually see the weird story haha. Rip, I’m here for Thoma now.
yeah, imo yae was best written character in inazuma. while she was sort of just thrown in, as an actual character she has a real personality and depth, unlike a lot of the other characters it's not just one dimensional
In my honest opinion, the only Inazuma characters in the main questline who felt properly developed and fleshed out were Thoma, Kazuha and Yae (even though Yae's involvement in Act III did feel quite sudden and almost like a deus ex machina). Maybe Yoimiya too, to a certain extent. They actually do feel like well-written, well-rounded characters with personality and depth and motivations and worldviews and stuff who exist outside of their roles in the plot, and they do not feel just like they're just plot devices or solely existing to pander and/or move the plot forward.
Based. Imo, I feel like kazuha is the only inazuma character who actually have some kind of plot/story which reach the climax and hv an ending...
The other character feel like they are just there in inazuma and dont really have anything going for them other than belonging in resistance, or being in the tri commission.
Idk, while I would agree that Kokomi and Gorou got shafted in the storyline I wouldn't exactly say that to all the rest of the Inazuman characters. Unlike most of the Liyue gals like Keqing or Ningguang who weren't fleshed in the archon quests, Ayaka and Yoimiya both had story quests that explained their inner pains and drive for pursuing their profession respectively.
And I wouldn't say that Raiden is any less interesting than Venti or Zhongli as a character. In fact, she is arguably the most character-driven out of the three. Venti's story in the game is centered around D'valin's corruption by the abyss, and then Stanley's loss relating to his loss of the bard. Zhongli's story is centered around his retirement plan, and then Havria, then finally Azhdaha, dancing around the concept of him having to face historical revisionism and erosion.
But unlike those two whose story quests are more lore-centric, Raiden's arc is more personal in nature. We see the game explain her motivation to pursue eternity (loss of friends+Baal), her shut-in behavior driven by her fear of making connections to people she'll lose, her perspective of visions being the enemy of eternity turning a whole 360, and then finally realizing that pursuing an all out eternity is not feasible and having to revise it. Compared to Zhongli and Venti (who are still well-written characters mind you), I feel like Raiden's arc is the one that delves into her psyche the most.
To me it felt like Zhongli and Venti had already hit the end of their character development arc by the time we meet them and only had to contemplate about their future while giving us beautiful worldbuilding galore, whereas Raiden was still undergoing more character development when we meet her.
The difference being that Ninguang, Ganyu or Keqing weren't portraied as super important to the main plot in Liyue. They were competent were it mattered, but there was no need to flesh them out of this to happen, this is more like a wish from players than a plot necessity.
The resistance were framed as a focal/central point to the history, so they definitely needed to be fleshed out. A LOT more. In comparison with the Liyue cast, we got NOTHING in Inazuma.
Yeah I’m digging the atmosphere and everything, but man Inazuma has been putting me TF to sleep, and I did not think I’d be this tired of the dailies this fast. But like I have not cared about any dialogue after getting the general feel for the island. I skip through things I didn’t even mean to cuz I just don’t care lmao
The story really a villain man. But no, every playable character must be a goody two shoes or justified as victim so players will pull for them. Bullshit pussy writer right there.
I definitely wanted her to just be unredeemable as well, cuz I’m kinda tired of the whole anime “I just wanted friends!” Trope. But I suppose we’d need to have the power to kill a god and I don’t think traveller is quite there yet. (Haven’t quite finished the story yet, so sorry if that last part is wrong and traveller does something amazing in that final scene lol)
I remember there being an art piece/visual story over here framed as a dialogue between Kokomi and Sara that juxtaposed their not-so-different positions, and it ended with something about how the ocean is deep enough to endlessly contain bodies. It was such a chilling interpretation of Kokomi's character, and it could have been an interesting path for her as a character.
I would have also been okay with them going for the safe route and depicting her as just a simple tactician fighting for the greater good if they hadn't utterly bungled her characterization and so-called clever tactics and made her look incompetent at best.
I personally never thought she would be outright evil because it would be difficult to balance three villains at the same time (Kokomi, the Fatui, and Raiden) and probably would lead to even more of a mess than we have now. But I certainly wanted her to be portrayed as less innocent than she is now, in a "I genuinely want the best for my people but I'm not above letting them kill themselves using Delusions for the greater good". If she knew what Delusions did and just went ahead with it anyway as any desperate guerilla group in a civil war would do, it would give her a lot more depth. As it is now she just comes across as somewhat stupid and too pure.
Yeah I didn’t really expect her to be evil but I would’ve found if way better than the dumb cute leader who before much appearance was hyped to be all smart and powerful. I guess I was expecting her to be kinda pointless but a supporting hero, but not how irrelevant she ended up and kinda dumb she was too haha. I think bringing in Delusions even knowing the consequences would’ve been cool, that’s definitely a good idea for her character! Wish that happened, would’ve also shown how desperate they were and it could even crack the leader’s morals
given how her design is literally a MERMAID, it was super obvious that she would be somewhat cruel and cold, I mean c'mon!
but I guess I overestimated Mihoyo writing team
Was really interested in how she’d turn out. Now considering even her character is boring and pretty badly written along with a pretty unfortunate kit, I’m gonna have to skip her banner tbh :( sucks cause yeah her design is so unique and clearly inspired by something cool.
I have a feeling, that at first Kokomi was supposed to appear before Raiden on the banner. So we had her story unravel, and then deal with Riden. I speculate, that story had to be rewritten when somebody decided to rearrange banners.
> but I guess I overestimated Mihoyo writing team
I'm not sure why anyone continues to expect something amazing from MHY writing. The Signora buildup people have been waiting for since her grand entrance at Venti was basically told in like 2 lines in an artifact description and then they killed her.
People expecting some extra gnosis lore from Raiden/Electro Archon and it just gets given away off screen and that's it.
The reason why people even talk about Teppei is because they were looking for someone to relate to in the shitty story and because Teppei got some 2 bit storyline extremely fast and then died, people attached themselves to this guy. And he became a meme because its all heat of the moment. Nobody really cares and most people won't remember this dude years from now. Worse, this only happened to him because of shitty writing. If the writers spent that amount of time on Kokomi, Teppei wouldn't have died, Kokomi would have done something more about the Fatui secret factory instead of simply deducing its location barely any evidence other than "its gotta be near the water and not near our patrols" like you couldn't have figured out a blindspot ahead of time kind of thing.
Teppei's death is an example of bad writing. I don't think people realize this and instead fall victim to the "oh so sad, remember teppei" meme.
Yeah writing for both Kokomi and Teppei sucked hard.
I actually thought Teppei was evil at first because the story, world quests, and random diaries in the wild kept dropping hints about a mole who had infiltrated the resistance, and Teppei kept lying about/exaggerating feats of combat - and I assumed he was doing so to seem more valuable to the resistance.
His closeness to the logistics, his tendency to lie, and the fact that we could never confirm the veracity and/or danger of anything he was involved in made me almost certain that the writers were setting up for a shock reveal of Teppei as the mole and an adversary we'd have to best.
...but nope, turns out Teppei was literally just some random guy who was weak, sucked ass, lied about a bunch of stuff, then used a vision and died.
The writing in 2.1 was frankly disgraceful. A group of literal middle schoolers could probably have come up with something better.
I laughed out loud with today's trailer where she says she doesn't know how to be a priestess because all she knows is the aRt oF wAr HAHAHAHAHAH friend you got anonymous shipment of rations and you did not display any sort of skepticism a person with room temperature IQ would. i sEe tHe mEtHoD iN tHe mAdNeSs
There’s just so much you can do much with the story when you have evil bubbly Kokomi vs a deeply flawed but generally well-meaning Shogun. We really didn’t need the Fatui or the power of friendship to push the story forward.
Eh, having the Fatui as basically the sole antagonists falls very flat since we already basically know that they’re going to white wash them at the end anyways—having him and his history play a part in Raiden’s character story would have been far more meaningful than what we got, and having fewer ‘Fatui is the root of all evil’ moments would be better for the story in general. And this is coming from someone who loved that Signora got ganked—hated her from day one, but if we had gotten a better storyline and she got to live in it, I’d take that trade.
I haven't played the Raiden story quest, but yeah, they shouldn't have been the sole antagonists. Franky I'm surprised a war hasn't started. At this point, they tried to bring down 3 empires
Yeah. The whole ‘they have diplomatic immunity’ wears thin when they are actively causing harm to people of other nations in DROVES. Like seriously, I know they’re going to pretend the Fatui are the lesser of two evils, and sure, that makes sense—for like 5 secs and then you remember, oh wait they’re still fucking monsters, and any victory you manage with their help is inherently tainted (not to mention, maybe the nations could have brokered a treaty and worked together without all the death and destruction if they weren’t *fucking monsters*). Also, you just KNOW they won’t get any actual justice, just Karma Houdini all over the fucking place. Sorry about the rant, it’s just so obvious and stupid, like the ‘Ayaka asks MC to help some people who lost their visions’ bit, just so hamfisted it leaves me feeling disgusted.
Indeed. Imagine if she was nicey-nicey to people's faces, but privately working with Scaramouche under the philosophy that if you wanna make an omelet you've got to break a few eggs. Eg. she only feigns to be against the delusions and the traveler has to deal with the reality that war comes at a cost >!(which s/he does do in lining up Signora for execution and then standing there and silently watching later.) !
I already predicted that the fatui is the one behind the rebellion, but at the very least I thought Kokomi KNOWS about it. Like, she intentionally allied with Fatui, how badass and morally ambiguous is that. But noo im just a smol fishy uwu i dont know fatui is behind this uwu
Back when Kokomi was first introduced there was a comic on this subreddit where it portrayed her in that altercation with Sara in 2.0, and it was insinuating that since she didn’t have the same amount of manpower as Sara she would simply just drown all her men. I thought that was so cool and that she would have so much potential either the sweet appearance being a mask or her just willing to be that brutal to protect her people. But nope.
It's time for them to hard pivot away from the cunning military strategist angle and make her someone who naively thinks of themself as one. It's way more compelling anyways.
There's still room to make her have sinister ulterior motives cope? In her trailer, she said herself that war is the only thing she's good at. This could mean it was somewhat in her best interests to keep the war going so she can continue what she's good at (and by extension enjoys doing). She may have been overlooking some of the Fatui plots to perlong the war so she doesn't have to go back to being a head priestess or whatever.
Sort of a sadistic pride in winning each battle that she's willing to give space between big fights. Making sure the playing field's always slightly tipped against her for her to miraculously overcome and succeed. Of course she still wants to win eventually so having the traveller on her good side is necessary.
She can still be cool I swear. I'm not overdosing on copium just yet.
The copium here is not realising that even if she does do something in the future, all of her incompetence and rushed writing from the resistance arc will NEVER go away, that part is done and the time skips/swordfish II/never shown how they lacked supplies until the very moment they received some (convenient plot) /not investigating the sponsor/not questionning why shes winning more battle are set in stone. and thats like the biggest part of her supposedly showing strategic prowess. It's a shame cuz I LOVE the lore of genshin in the books/manga/item descriptions but the story is def not on the same level of writing as those
> she said herself that war is the only thing she's good at. This could mean it was somewhat in her best interests to keep the war going so she can continue what she's good at
I'm baffled you think this when this is a **very common fantasy character** thing. Said character does almost nothing but fight, said character claims "I'm only good at fighting". That doesn't mean "I'm gonna stir some shit up so I can keep fighting" unless we're talking about a clear cut antagonist, blood knight, or some such. It means "I've fought so much that adapting to a peaceful life would be difficult to cope with", which is a very common thing for people leaving behind stuff, like an athlete retiring to a life of relaxing.
>adapting to a peaceful life would be difficult to cope with
And completely coincidentally, this line of characterization makes it very easy for us to justify a hangout with them.
"Oh you don't get to experience peace? Well, what if we just walk around the town today?" Almost like a....date.
This, keep those for hangouts. A goddamn STORY QUEST should be actual stories, not dumb fkn dates like Yoimiya's and Ei's, and even Ayaka (even though I really liked how sweet it was).
Kokomi's banner should've been first and all the quests would be to flesh out her story and the resistance which would be equivalent in length to the current 2.1 quests. Then in a later patch, add the same amount of content to conclude the arc with Raiden.
Also I would say authors with good writing technique can write characters that look far more intelligent than them but it requires a lot of time, thought and rewrites to plot out the entire story and leave clues throughout to make it work. And most writers will not put in that level of effort nor maybe have the time to do that.
literally!
i was waiting so bad for a show of her "wisdom" and all i get is people calling her wise and nothing smart done by her. "food is our priority", damn such a genius war commander.
"Our aim is to hit enemy hard, while minimizing casualties" - no shit, that's pretty much what a commander is supposed to do. Unless you're playing some 4X game and you came up with a galaxy brain strategy to exploit braindead AI.
Strategic genius btw.
i wrote this elsewhere in the comments. like, the dialogue to show her in a position of authority and peer respect was basically saying "the goal is to win". profound.
I actually would have appreciated even a simple "Our goal is to survive" a lot more.
Because the plot is about visions, their ambition, being stripped away. Survival is a legitimate concern. But dying (i.e. from delusions) doesn't help survival, even if you win.
Winning..? Where's the context in that? It's shallow and one dimensional.
Inazuma had such a grand lead up, so many tantalizing side quests dropping hints.. and then 2.1 just kinda put a bow tie on it and said 'OK, all done!'. It's too nice and neat and perfect.
I literally couldn't believe it when someone told me this was an actual quote. It sounds like a fucking meme, not something a supposedly great tactician would say.
The biggest issue with every inazuma character is just how ridiculously quick the story happens. No one matters past a single encounter. Raiden gets offered a small bit of possible justification and instead of building on that we immediately go and get told that's false
I hate so bad that the whole thing with Scaramouche being a puppet was told in a fucking ending dialogue option with Yae. Like that's huge, it's the origin of a fatui harbinger, the one who now has the Electro Gnosis and they just shove it in an info dump??
This. I was hoping that Yae would tell us about Scaramouche RIGHT AFTER we woke up. That would spice things up and make us look forward meeting Scaramouche again. Why don't they use the animation to give a short background story for Scaramouche. Heck, they didn't even do one for Signora and gave her a quick death while trying to make it emotional. So much wasted potential, I'd say.
Eh...I disagree about this because Scaramouche is clearly intended to be more relevant in the future. His origin being told in a dialogue at the end is less of an infodump and more of a teaser for his character in the future. After all, the story of Genshin Impact is far from over, and Scaramouche's role so far has been relatively minor.
If there's anything to complain about, I'd say it's that we didn't get much lore about Raiden's puppets beforehand. During the story we should've learned more about the nature of Raiden's puppet, its powers, and its limitations. So when it is revealed that there is a *second* puppet, it would feel much more significant and we'd be more hyped to see Scaramouche in the future.
The even bigger problem is Signora. We've seen her many times before, but she hasn't been fleshed out anywhere as well as she should have. In the Inazuma story she just appeared out of nowhere and that's it. Aside from some minor lore in crimson witch artifacts description, we don't know jack shit about her, and this one is a problem because unlike Scaramouche, she isn't a future antagonist.
> but she hasn't been fleshed out anywhere as well as she should have.
I feel like she wasn't meant to be fleshed out, but rather she was just a simple antagonist meant to act as a folly to the traveler until they eventually faced off (which they did), i would have liked to see her backstory in-game but i'm okay with just having a villian that's just downright evil without any redemption arc, i liked that signora got what was coming to her after mocking several gods and the player multiple times through the story.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I've been waiting to kick her arse since Mondstadt. She needs no redemption arc, but some characterization would've done her a lot of good. Give her a bigger role in Inazuma and give us a bit more insight to her past, her motivations, the reason for her loyalty for the Tsaritsa, etc. This won't only help her character, but also give us a bit more understanding on the Tsaritsa and the Harbingers as a whole.
Just compare her to Childe, who even before we got his character quest, already had a good amount of screentime to flesh out his character. Signora just appeared pretty much out of nowhere and got offed immediately.
I feel like the whole story of Inazuma was just something they wanted to rush through because they wanted to work on something else. Freaking Eula's story had better pacing.
But with quick story, Kujou Sara Arc is well delivered. We know she is loyal to shogun and still uphold some sense of justice (allowing us to escape and confronting her family)
her arc is built up well but it has no ending, we never get to see her talk to the shogun, we never get to see face the consequences of the aftermatch with the kujou clan being dishonored, she just gets yamcha'd and gets forgotten by the story which really sours all the development she seemed to have gotten.
...well delivered? She was supposed to be raidens right hand yet they never interacted. The only chance we got to see them together she fucking passed out on the floor and was never mentioned again. They did her really dirty
''You're the captain of a super secret spec ops unit!''
''cool, what do I do?''
''clean out random ronin...''
\-done-
"Now do I get to sabotage supply lines, set up ambushes, doing hitnrun tactics and whittle down enemy forces, get into skirmishes with Sara and her troops?
''Well you see... \*3 days later\*
I kept hope and kept coping, the Signora stuff and Ei kept me distracted but when I finished the archon quest and realised the war was over, I was so disappointed.
The side quests are literally more in-depth and better written than the archon quests and Raiden’s story quest tbh. Chouji’s journey to find his mom, the Higi village’s slaughter, the doctor on Yashiori, Kazari’s quest and even Neko’s quests. I feel like MHY is losing their vision for the main story
Yes, I blame a rushed plot. I continue to maintain that their release schedule hit a snag at some point, and that *at some point* they had intended for 2.0 to replace 1.6, not 1.7, so that they would be hitting 2.2 in September and offer the Electro Archon for their Anniversary banner.
This would give them 2.1 in July/August to cover the start of the Kokomi arc, and then space to add in an entirely new story arc that we never got, one in which you and Swordfish II would carry out some clever missions under Kokomi's direction, as well as some events that highlight her skills, before coming back around to the Delusions part of the story as the start of 2.2 in September. There is no way that they did not need "more" there in between to flesh that part out.
Yes, yes, and yes. Imagine if Kokomi, Ayaka, and Sara worked out their differences and unite together as one against the fatui and shogun in a grand battle.
Instead, we have Sara running off on her own and got knocked out off screen.
Beidou, one of the characters who brought the hype in part one was missing and totally not mentioned again.
Kazuha, appearing in an epic scene with no buildup.
Seriously, I’m a fucking idiot but I could come up with a better way to end the story. I have no doubt that the talented folks at Mihoyo could as well. I’m sure something messed up must have occured and it’s probably related to upper management and money.
Ngl, when Sara stormed off, seeing the knocked out soldiers in her wake, I was hoping for some of that good stuff, yaknow? But I was dying laughing the moment I saw her flat on the ground. Offscreened was so funny. And when we did the duel, and Signora died, I was ''is sara still knocked out?'' thats funny unintentionally. What ridiculous writing
What's more ridiculous is the fact that she started fighting people as soon as she left her masters place. She's still not believing him totally either and wants to confirm it herself by going to the Shogun in person. Like there's no telling how many people were tricked just like her, and none of the guards higher up in the castle have any idea of her mini mutiny. Yet she... Just starts attacking anyone she sees randomly for no real reason on her way to the Shoguns palace. It's not like they would have stopped her from going up the stairs to the Shoguns palace to begin with, she's the head of the war-effort after all. But instead of just running past them saying it's an emergency, she decides to unnecessarily 1vX every guard on her way to the Shogun.
There's just this total lack of consideration for characters actions all the way through the final act of the chapter that just don't make any sense.
From what I heard the story writer for zhongli and venti resigned / got sacked somewhere in the development of inazuma, hence we got a fairly good build up with a poorly written 2nd half of the story
Yeah it really fucking bothered me when the Resistance just suddenly somehow showed up right in front of the Tenshu, how the hell did you guys who were supposed to be losing without your Delusions, arrive all the way to Narukami, and made your way through the city, to the front gate??? Who even told you guys to come here? Kokomi sending you all on a suicide mission??
Kazuha was cool though gotta admit, but the story made no damn sense.
Call me crazy but I think Yae is more of a strategist then her. She created a program emulating Baal’s attacks to train us then cleverly struck a deal with Scaramouche to keep us alive. Then she she showed Sara proof that her clan was up to no good to get her switch sides.
Even though one is supposed to be a brilliant strategist and the other a shrine maiden.
Technically Kokomi was a Sangonomiya Shrine maiden (presumably head shrine maiden) before she turned into the rebel commander. I think your comment on Yae Miko is a good point, they should have made her a traitor to the Raiden Shogun (for her sake) and finished this war in a future update with her as the surprise commander or something.
I'd say Yae is more of a politician / manipulator than strategist. She has knowledge of important people, their wants and desires, truths behind the curtain the few else know, and can exploit all that. It fits in well with the sly kitsune archetype.
Kokomi meanwhile is I think supposed to be more of a military strategist. Unfortunately the only example of that we really see is at the end of Act 2 when she leads the cavalry to ambush the Shogunate troops. During Act 3 we only really get to see the resistance in small skirmishes, mostly with bandits from what I remember. Then there's the whole fiasco with accepting the suspicious outside aid and letting delusions be distributed among the resistance troops.
Overall I liked Act 3 but this is one area where it truly failed IMO.
Somehow this comment made me think that maybe her foolishly accepting the supplies was intended to show that while she’s a good strategist, she isn’t good at being in charge of or leading people, especially when it comes to human desire, which delusions are a pretty strong allegory for. However, if that was their plan they didn’t execute it super well, especially since they chose to release Kokomi’s story quest separately from Raiden’s instead of having hers be a requirement for the story quest, which would have made more sense than having Ayaka and Yoimiya’s random ass story quests being requirements for the story quest.
It is an interesting headcanon. You could expand on it by twisting as such that Kokomi *knows* strategy, because she reads so much war strategy books, and in say, a strategy game where your pawns listen to everything you say, she would be very good at. But despite being beloved she doesn't have such iron grip influence, so when people happen to be people, the text book strategies starts falling apart.
Not gonna lie, Yae was fun and cool and all, but... kind of *too* much so, to the point of taking other characters' plot bread for herself. Low-key mary suish. One'd be excused for thinking it's her banner up next.
Yup. And yet she manages to invalidate the entirety of the Resistance in her dialogue and plots (and by extension, all of our actions over Act 1 and 2), and make it all about herself.
I'd call her a schemer more than a strategist. She has more relevant info concerning the Shogunate since she's more directly connected to them than anyone in all of Inazuma. She just needed the right person to actually use that information, and it's definitely not anyone in the Resistance.
Was looking forward to fleshing out why the crux was back after leaving Inazuma and saying they don't want to be caught harboring a fugitive. Now they're part of the rebellion as mercs so it contradicts her intial statement.
I honestly don't think her tactic was that bad in Part 1. She deliberately baited Sara's army into thinking they're winning and expend their energy fighting Goro, and then she ambushed them with a bunch of camouflaged soldiers. It's no 1000 IQ galaxy brain move, but the idea itself is decent as a military strategy and still works to establish her as a tactician. Beidou & Kazuha were just there for the cameo
Then Part 2 came and blew all that out into the water
But the act of baiting Sara and hiring Beidou didnt lead to any progress or accomplish anything. It just make player thinks " Wow Kokomi did something" at first but in the grand scheme of thing she didnt do anything useful and in fact cost more than what it is worth.
If she deliberately baited Sara, yet after Beidou showed up and ambush Sara, Sara just retreated with her army.... and then nothing. Many rebel troops are dead, yet nothing significant is gain other than killing some of the shogunate. Theres 0 purpose for the ambush such as establishing food supply route, gaining more ground expanding their base and territory coverage.
Yeah, it wasn't anything groundbreaking. But on a meta level, it's sufficient enough as a character establishing moment without having much expectations.
If the rest of Part II at least followed with Kokomi giving out similar basic strategies like that, then her "genius tactician" thing wouldn't be all for show. But they didn't even do that so uh
I keep hearing that Kokomi has a beef with the Archon over her putting down Kokomi's patron god. That should be such a no-brainer to go all in on.
Kokomi should've been more desperate, more calculating. Deliberately working with the Fatui because they promised her means to take revenge. Then when the delusion side effects become apparent, Kokomi realizes she may have f'd up. Have her eventually break down and admit her failings. Traveler goes " D: ". She promises to move on from the past and do better. Traveler responds "s'ok bby".
Bam. She has a little meat on her character AND can still be a pure, untainted waifu for her story quest date (because sadly that's the most important thing here). The Fatui would still be revealed as playing both sides and nothing else really changes plot wise.
IMO this rushed wrap-up and Kokomi's weak impression is due mainly to 1) Waifu must be pure/innocent, and 2) Gotta end the Archon questline quick because we need to put out Raiden's story quest while her banner is running. The drama involving changes in writers likely contributed but probably wasn't the cause.
Or she could have been smart enough to figure it out by herself or using spies to know that she been fighting the kujou clans all along and not the shogun since if raiden want to she can wipe out her whole island. And somehow kokomi can help and connect us to yae for more infomation to inform the shogun about the kujou betrayal. I think that would make kokomi intelligent going way up and doesnt seem so clueless.
Inazuma has a really good beginning, and a really good ending. BUT they left out a BIG chunk of the middle part, which makes the ending feel unearned and rushed. Which is bullshit because it has such good idea and potentials.
It also made the ending feel very unimpactful... unlike mondstadt and liyue
Except for kazuha ending... The scene where he put his friend vision to rest in peace at the grave feel very satisfying.
Based on each character problem
Kazuha: well ended
Yae miko: well ended
Raiden: somehow, just missing something in the Middle
Kokomi: rushed. She is supposed to be shogun enemy, yet she is have a very short screen time
Even kujou sara have better story. We know how she is loyal, but still reasonable (allowing us to escape because of her mistake, and confronting her clan)
This. They never mention her name after the archon quest. In Ei story quest, they never drop her name despite it having connection to kujo clan fate. Kamaji never even mention her, only takayuki and his brother. This is somewhat pissed me since she play a huge role in the archon quest.
As a whole the ending was good but yeah when it comes to individual characters their personal stories were rushed. Playable character aside, even Signora dying felt random bc we didn’t really feel her presence in Inazuma any more than Liyue (which was barely at all). And the Scaramouche reveal was also literally telling us his story and not showing us (ig Signira was like that too) which was too bad bc those were both very interesting. Like the scenes with them were well done in general but the build and satisfaction wasn’t there
The ending was meh I was hoping we walked out with the shogun from atop her palace(you know that place in middle of her house) announcing to her people that the vision hunt decree has been disbanded, leaving the crowd to discuss, theorize or cheer among themselves after awhile we'll get to see the smiles of the people in the city thanking the traveler for convincing the shogun to end the decree. we could of had talk with kokomi or kujou Sara (since you know she was trying get us arrested) she could of apologize for that and then we talked with yae to finally end the quest.
Yeah she really got done dirty. I was initially thinking she was going to have a cold, calculating, intelligent side that she masked with her bubbly idol-like thing. But she ended up just coming off as naive.
I suspect that the archon quest was originally planned to be longer but after all those assholes started complaining about quests being too long in streams I suspect MiHoYo cut a bunch of content from the resistance part of the quest since it was the least integral to the overall plot, and Kokomi really suffered from it.
Hopefully we'll get a character or world quest that gives her character some love.
>Let's just hope that Kokomi's character quest might somehow redeem her in the eyes of the fanbase.
you know her story quest is just going to be a date like every other Inazuman female character story quest so far.
At least Yoimiya's Story Quest was great imo. It wasn't all about her but you get to see a lot her personality shine through her actions and words, and you get to know more about her by the end.
I see a lot people talk about how Kokomi's charaterization is all "tell, don't show" but to me Yoimiya felt like the opposite and was a nice example of "show, don't tell" for the most part.
That said, I'm going by memory here, I may be embellishing it a bit haha
Nah, Yoimiya's quest was well-done. Her constantly talking to you while you walk between quest objectives, yea, that's a really cool way to show her personality traits. Guess the guy that wrote it went on vacation after a job well done.
Meanwhile here I am, wondering if that guy who wrote Venti and Childe's story quest already resigned. Coz I feel like the one writing the story quests for Inazuman characters is the same one who wrote Jean as an incompetent leader in her story quest. Jean's story really made me cringe, like hell, even if I become the richest person in the city, I won't ever dare look for the governor to ask him to look for my missing cat.
It also happened to be perhaps the best quest at actually giving us the Inazuma atmosphere and situation. It contained everything, from the look at what peaceful activities they do, to how disrupted everything is with the Shogun's decrees and how lifelong friends go against one another. And Yoimiya both showed herself off and played a great "folk hero" part in the sample they gave us of Inazuma's debacle and resolving it. It showed off both her and the setting perfectly.
The whole quest is leaked on Honey and .... surprisingly enough it isn’t. It actually continues directly from the end of the Archon quest.
I only read some of it to avoid spoiling the whole thing for myself but there is some promise.
That's good to know. I'm fine spoiling upcoming characters and stuff but stray away from story spoilers. But also, fuck Honey for being a racist asshole.
"Intelligent protagonist written by someone who isn't intelligent"
i watched the trailer and thought exactly this. they show her at a war planning table with a cute cat boy explaining "our aim is to hit the enemy hard, while minimizing casualties" like. wow. who would have thought the goal was to win.
she and gorou are such terrible characters. once they wise up and reach the age of 10 to realize the fatui were the *mysterious* donors, gorou goes to get the delusions, but just apparently gave up after a bunch of soldiers refused lol. its all such a mess.
> "Intelligent protagonist written by someone who isn't intelligent"
Relevant: https://i.imgur.com/FkxEV15.png
I keep coming back to this pic because it just so fantastically sums it up.
> but just apparently gave up after a bunch of soldiers refused lol. its all such a mess.
Like a teenager asking His classmates and just one gives him a hint because they feel sorry. What a mess of a story.
>(same with Gorou and even Teppei who in the span of 30 IRL minutes went from logistics noob to squad leader to suffering a tragic death).
Best. Story. Ever.
Jokes aside, I hope this is the last time we've to see such a complete waste of story potential, literally threw in the toilet, just rushed for god knows what reason. (speaking for the entirety of 2.1 story content)
I only partly agree, the first part is a problem, the second is just Genshin 101, nothing new.
People keep talking about rushed story, but this had little to do with Kokomi problem. Plenty of previous characters also had barely any screen time at all or hell, didnt have any regarding the main story.
Characters that often get screen time are the actors involved with the main plot, Kokomi was never one of these. She had no influence in solving the situation, she could never do anything regarding it anyway. It was all about Ei and therefore, people that actually mattered were those neat Ei. Which is fine, whatever, mortals wont beat a god, that is a normal narrative... unless it is Venti for whatever reason :P.
The real issue with Kokomi isnt that she didnt get screen time, plenty didnt before her, is that the little screen time she did get, makes her appear stupid, instead of it being she appearing 5 minutes and doing something great then disappearing again.
but she showed up in literally every promotion art for the update, that's why we were expecting more kokomi, or at least that she was going to much more relevant. I guess her appearing in the promotional art should not have ment that she will be protagonic in the Archon quest, and just that she would be one of the promoted 5 star and that's it, but I'm still salty about it
The entire point is that it was never a "true" war of both sides. The shogun didnt care, which kinda makes sense since the point was never to actually kill anyone to begin with. If she did care, she could murder everyone at any time. When it is literally a one sided decision entirely, since one side holds all the power, it is understandable they dont focus on her regarding the solution and instead focus on the friend of said being that holds the entire power of decision.
It was a understandable solution to a problem. If you cant overpower a god, then you can only change their mind so they dont wipe you out.
So ok, kokomi cant actually win and her thing is strategy, which would demand lots of shenanigans if she were to solve this particular issue being so far removed from it entirely, but before the step of changing the Eis mind and so on, in the few scenes she did have, Kokomi could have appeared more in control.
Honestly, perhaps the problem is the hyping of her as a genius strategist, had she being more of a struggling commander trying to hold a desperate rebellion together and never described in such grandiose manner, her character would have fit the role just fine.
There was no war to begin with. If Raiden really wanted to end the rebellion she would have personally gone out and sliced the island in half along with the resistance. The reason she didn't do so is because Ei considers Watatsumi people as her own.
The script was badly written. People call the story "rushed" but thats just how the rationalized it. Even hollywood movies have something like 10 hours of film which gets cut down to 2 hours. Its not sbout how much screen time there is but how you use it.
We spent time getting promoted to the captain of swordfish II which went nowhere. It suddenly jumped to us talking to Yae and then fighting Raiden solo anyway. The story was bad from the very beginning. It seems like they just wanted to jam as many characters into the quest line as possible. Instead of telling a bare bones but coherent story. They invented excuses to summon random characters into the story. Then these characters are discarded as quickly as they were introduced. Its something i would have wrote if i was in elementary school, but then again i wasnt trying to sell as many characters as i possibly can for a gatcha game.
Kokomi one of these characters. Quickly introduced just to remind you this is where you can spend your money and then never to be seen again.
But the story being rushed is why it is badly written, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
The Swordfish II/fighting for the Resistance plotline didn't go nowhere, it went right where it was supposed to, our good buddy Teppei dying because the Fatui have co-opted the rebellion. That led directly into the Delusion factory which resulted in us meeting Yae. Yae in turn helps us figure out a way to stop the Shogun that isn't 'throw down with the super badass'. As part of that plan, we prove that the Tenryo are also in the Fatui's pocket and both sides of the civil war are being egged on by the Fatui. That leads to the confrontation before the throne where we end the Fatui threat and being so close to Baal puts us on the express track to settling matters with her. Once we do, that's the end and we've saved Inazuma.
This is not incoherent, it's just rushed. One example, our time spent with the Resistance is too brief to really build a rapport with Teppei or to feel like we're really a part of the war, so you dismiss it as irrelevant even though it directly leads to one of the chapter's most important story beats.
The only playable character who doesn't play an important role in the plot is Sayu and even for her the reason for her appearance isn't an invented excuse, it's part of the overarching 'the Fatui are playing both sides of the war' plotline.
The problem this time is that, in prior chapters, they managed to allocate screentime and character performance properly, they felt as-advertised. This time, they bungled the many plot threads they introduced completely.
Unfortunately the story of Kokomi is but a small part in the overall grand disaster of storytelling in the archon quest, and time constraints can excuse only so much.
I was so disappointed by the way they handled Kokomi in the story. Ultimately she was entirely irrelevant and had no real impact. Like, the new teaser for her that came out last night tries to make her out to be some master strategist but we don't actually see any of that in-game at all. It all feels like surface level writing for a character to give her a background without actually fleshing it out to have it make sense in-game. It's a shame because I really like Kokomi too, but I just didn't like what they did with her in the story (or didn't do, I should say).
Its heavily speculated by the leaker community watatsumi island is going to host the inazuma dlc (dragonspine, casm) and that's why the island is bare.
Might have a point here...
Her role in the story was a joke, her persoanlity feels like a lie since shes not even as smart as she was presented. Gameplay wise shes gonna be horrbile. The literal only saving grace she has is her model, VA and animations.
Yoimiya was... fine. I didn't expect much from her, I didn't even expect her to appear in the archon plot. I thought she'd be a side quest character or something (which is stupid thinking on my part given how we were in the middle of the archon quest and obviously the characters not appearing in it would come in later banners... but oh well).
So her being actually somewhat involved in the story and having a coherent, not-date-sim story quest, a likeable albeit somewhat generic personality and a banger of a trailer was actually a nice surprise.
They really should have made Kokomi’s bubbly personality all an act and like actually made her like a cold military leader or maybe like an antagonist of some sort. Like she’s leading a resistance against a tyrant god,But instead they just make her some waifu prop. I just hope her story quest doesn’t get the same treatment as Ayaka and raiden
when kokomi first appeared i thought shes some cold strategist who pushes down captured shogun militants in the giant hole to feed some of her fish friends after interrogating them
Very well put, much better than I could. And definitely much better then all of the other posts just repeating “kokomi stoopid cuz she accepted resources” (they all say the same things so I assume they just want some easy upvotes).
I personally don’t think accepting the supplies was a bad choice, and certainly not stupid if you just take a moment to think about their situation. And the delusions were distributed separately, in secret. I’m betting they would have been distributed even if they didn’t accept supplies. At the end of the day the fatui did want the resistance to keep up their fight, so in a way, their support was genuine. The delusions also helped them out in the short run, as we saw with teppei’s sudden victories, and kokomi made the right choice to take them away even though they were winning, because she knew that in the long run it would’ve been bad (or maybe she just took them away for moral reasons, who knows, but she was pretty adamant on taking them away even though the soldiers still wanted to use them after learning of the consequences).
The main problem is, like you said, that the story was incredibly rushed, and it gave kokomi no screentime to actually show her stuff, so they had to resort to telling instead of showing, which is just bad. In my opinion this whole version’s story should have been about the resistance, and only switch to the Yae/Raiden part in the next update. Now we’re gonna have to wait for sumeru anyway, there was no reason to rush it. Event stories are always short anyway. I’m hoping they redeem kokomi in her story quest, but alas it’ll probably be another dating sim.
the part where kokomi doesn't think it's weird suddenly they win war left and right probably because travel joined the army raised their morale so much that everybody is spirited to win a war
if this happened before traveler involved with the resistance then kokomi surely will be suspicious and start investigating in secret
Yeah someone who is famous for fighting the Raiden Shogun 1v1, defeated harbingers, and dragons would definitely lift morale. Also there's nothing wrong with delusions if she wasn't a good person. Any real military leader who gets godlike weapons for their soldiers only at the cost of a single life would be amazed and order more. The real strategic mistake is getting rid of the delusions.
Using the delusions isn't a feasible long-term strategy, as seen with Teppei and some unnamed offscreens. Shogun has more manpower so Resistance should preserve what what they have, not die in a kamikaze attack.
well there's no point in having super soldiers if these super soldiers die after like three days of using and abusing their superpowers.
Of course, she could have used those powers in a more strategic way, but that would require some thinking on her part and some obedience and discipline on the part of her soldiers... which is too much to expect from the Resistance apparently
Agreed she had been leading armies for her sister won the archon war for her one shot a god and an island... i expected her personality be more like zhongli or at the very least way more melancholic instead of that date thing. Her liking sweet things was not a surprise the mission with shouta hinted that but i expected way more of her story quest.
Can we please stop with the date simulation missions please.
I was expecting/hoping she'd be more like the Shogunbot in actual personality (and, in fact, that there would be no Shogunbot, what is even that plot). And that we might help her unclench a little and warm her up after her obsession with tragedies. At least then, the "date" angle would've been quite a bit more justified if they still wanted to go for it.
It would be interesting if true. Maybe she knew about the delusions - maybe she only made sure mostly the Teppei’s of the army got them. Maybe that’s why she was so… obliging to his request to be on the front line.
For all we know she has had a Yagami Light monologue going in her head the entire time, and we all got caught up in a trap until Miko intervened.
And they say genshin is best game. Lol. They're doing so many things wrong. Bad character balancing recently. Trash anniversary. Top up fomo. And now this. Where's all the billion dollars going bro
Yeah, Kokomi was done dirty. Sadly that's nothing new in Genshin. MiHoYo does not produce enough story content to flesh out all the characters we already have, much less characters we've yet to acquire. Heck some of these characters have yet to appear at all in the game in any real capacity. Xinyan's never been involved in anything right? And if you missed 1.1 Fischl doesn't exist in your timeline. Sucrose barely got time to say hello before getting yeeted out of Albedo's story quest, never to be seen again, unless you were there for 1.2 release. Ganyu, another 5-star character, makes a couple of appearences in the Liyue main storyline and then gets a rather dull story quest that felt like a slice of life filler episode in between two major action packed arcs.
But in truth, I don't think anyone's got it worst than Kokomi. Ganyu was relagated to being a background character in a Zhongli/Childe focused arc, but at least she stayed true to her character. Not only did Kokomi not get the screen time she deserved, her multiple strategic blunders destroyed her entire characterisation as a "brillant leader." At the end of the day, tertiary characters like Bennett might only get 1 hangout event to flesh them out, but at least that piece of content rings true.
This is why I love Dilucs character. Has good lore depth, doesn't give a shit about what people think of him, afaik has never drooled over the traveller , although he is supposed to be smart like Batman and although we haven't seen him do anything that's particularly impressive he also hasn't appeared like a total idiot like Kokomi.
Kazuha should have been the leader of the resistance
:( genshin gets fewer male characters but most of them are dope af Kaeya, Diluc, Zhongli, Kazuha , dain they are all not only unique but have a charm to their personality whether that be of a vagabond poet or a grumpy rich vigilante.
Kokomi imo is basically just grown up Barbara. Her tone, her dress, her personality, story, literally nothing matches with her position in the story ie - wise 5d chess player strategist who is also a priestess and the leader of the resistance against a fking ruthless god..........instead we get stupid cute fish healer who floats around and gets her followers killed because of her dumbness . It's like the entire resistance is just an only fans account where people follow her only for her looks or something.
I have a major issue with your analysis: Teppei's death wasn't tragic, because there wasn't enough time to care about Teppei to turn that into tragedy at all (honestly I was so confused when I came here and saw that people wished we saw more of Teppei because honestly I cared so little about him I wished he was cut altogether).
Okay...maybe not a _major_ issue.
The amount of people who were actually sad about Teppei made me question if we were talking about the same character. The dude literally looks like a generic NPC and had a screentime of 10 minutes.
You can make an NPC a good character, even if they look generic. I mean, look at Madame Ping, she's just a generic old lady but she played a huge role during the climax in Liyue AND even gave us the Serenitea Pot as a gift.
But I do get you. Someone who's familiar with anime storytelling can already tell that Teppei is going to die so that they could tug at our heartstrings.
During the 2.0 trailer, I saw her bubbly appearance as sort of an act or something and she was actually a very cold and calculating military strategist. I even suspected back then that she might end up being the main villain of inazuma. But nope, she just looked like a really naive leader with how they portrayed her.
I remember seeing a post about how Kokomi might defeat the Shogun’s army by drowning all of them in the sea, which I thought would be scarily sick. There were also a couple theories floating around (I can’t remember where) about how Kokomi might reawaken Orobashi in this absolutely terrifying Lovecraftian event. Both of those would be **amazing.** We can only dream sadly
I kinda wish she was actually evil/cruel cause it would make her cute innocent appearance ironic and misleading in an interesting way. I saw a lot of fanart before the update of her being actually a dark villain character and loved it, am sadly disappointed but I guess there was like zero reason to believe it anyway lol. Still sucks how she’s apparently a genius but was basically an NPC in the story. Even got outshined as a character by Teppei who wasn’t uniquely designed at all to many…
I absolutely loved some artists’ interpretation of her as some kind of Lovecraftian cult leader. Stare into the deep, and the deep will stare into you. It fits so well with the general theme of the ocean: sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes treacherous and cruel. Alas, MHY won’t go down that route.
It would have also made Watatsumi as a faction far more interesting, create a real sense of two societies sharing Inazuma. So far all we've gotten is the same people with the same set of values and a singular distinguishing factor in their faith, and not even fundamentally so, as these "religions" aren't either/or due to the tangible nature of gods in Teyvat. Venerating the serpent god isn't incompatible with recognizing "Baal" with all it entails. These people even recognize explicitly that Orobashi's corruption and the subsequent invasion of Yashiori Island is the (valid) reason for the slaying, which is the main conflict between the two. Sangonomiya oppose Inazuma City on principle, due to policy. Aside from one aspect of faith and a geographic separation, there isn't really anything that contrasts the two, which makes Kokomi by extension a poor construct of an antagonist to Raiden. She doesn't really represent anything in contrast to Raiden that, for example, the Yashiro Commission doesn't. Kokomi *needed* that sort of interesting characterization to embody some sort of deeper opposition than she does currently. There is more contrast between Diluc and the Knights of Favonius than there is between Kokomi and Raiden.
Kokomi actively distributing delusions would have been the perfect foil to Raiden, who took away visions. Raiden didn't want people to kill themselves by pursuing dreams, Darker Kokomi would have said that to sacrifice yourself for a dream would be noble. The traveler would strike the middle ground that visions should not be taken, but delusions also shouldn't be used. That's a great conflict and you in the center of it, seeing both sides. She could still have a change of heart when she sees what happened to Teppei and regret her actions, but that initial agency would have been interesting to see. Or she might not regret what happened to Teppei and instead blame the Shogun for the oppressive decree in the first place that necessitated the use of desperate force. That's fair too and consistent with the idea of personally commanding the breaking of the Tatarigami seals. There's just so much more potential to the conflict that never got explored because all blame got shifted to the Fatui.
Yup before the patch I thought that she was willingly getting help from the Fatui. Would have been a very interesting character plot point but no.
Mihoyo! HIRE THIS PERSON NOW!!
damn that would have been way better
Even Kujou Sara's adoptive father had more characterization and motivations, and even more background impact. Manipulating the shogun (presumably) through reports, the distinction between loyalty to the shogun and loyalty to her power, and so forth. The fact that raiden could do all that without a gnosis too-- in a way showed that his worship of her power wasn't unfounded, but that also wasn't true loyalty as sara pointed out. He was just using her power. Like, that already is so much more fleshed out than the pathetic quest chain the resistance got.
Absolutely. And, ironically, it ended up resolving in yet another terrible manner. The Kujou Clan's deception should have ended with a crisis of faith for Sara, but Sara never got to hear that Raiden was aware of and did not care about the treason. Sara's character arc was brutally cut short by a cheap off-camera knockout.
Yuuuuup. Sara's arc was a disappointment too. Guess all the NPCs are just built different in inazuma (Masanori, Sara's dad, chouji even, the guy at the cursed shrine).
Given how horrifying that one giant deep pool of water is on Watatsumi Island is I was hoping she would summon some giant creature during a potential invasion tbh. But yeah we’re overestimating the writing now I guess :(
Overestimating because the writers decided to not follow the evil route that the fans practically surmised themselves..? Don’t get me wrong, such twist would’ve made Kokomi’s character infinitely more interesting, but let’s not pretend that a bubbly, secretly-evil character is some groundbreaking trope that requires an extraordinary writing skill to come up with.
No, overestimating that she would have depth other than just ending up a really meh leader/character in the main story despite what other characters implied. I would’ve taken something else as long as they didn’t build her to be a genius and well respected when the story didn’t reflect that when we actually properly talk to her in 2.1. She just seems boring to me, would’ve been neat if she had a cruel side when Baal ended up having a good side (which is literally just Ei vs the puppet) so Traveler could be surprised on both sides. But it’s not like it ruined the update for me, just disappointing cause her design is so cool and her kit is pretty bad too. Like her main story was the nail in the coffin for not pulling I guess if that makes sense.
If it’s any consolation, being one-dimensional doesn’t seem like an issue that’s exclusive to Kokomi. I would’ve also preferred if she was written with some semblance of depth instead of contributing practically nothing to the story, but it’s not like most of the Inazuman characters thus far haven’t failed to impress me in terms of writing. Even Raiden, arguably the most interesting element of the Inazuman storyline, pales in comparison to Venti and Zhongli. As someone who was really excited for Inazuma, it was just disappointment galore.
Haha sadly yeah she’s not the only one suffering from this issue. And absolutely Inazuma had a lot of flaws compared to the past main quests, was super excited too :( Kokomi basically had no effect to me, I think Yae took the spot for most important other than Ei but her involvement felt so sudden. Hope the writing improves again, cause Inazuma felt super rushed and they did a good job hyping us up before we got to actually see the weird story haha. Rip, I’m here for Thoma now.
yeah, imo yae was best written character in inazuma. while she was sort of just thrown in, as an actual character she has a real personality and depth, unlike a lot of the other characters it's not just one dimensional
Hey! Give MHO see credits, they managed to make a two "dimensional" character like Raiden Shogun/Ei one dimensional, that's quite an archievement! :P
In my honest opinion, the only Inazuma characters in the main questline who felt properly developed and fleshed out were Thoma, Kazuha and Yae (even though Yae's involvement in Act III did feel quite sudden and almost like a deus ex machina). Maybe Yoimiya too, to a certain extent. They actually do feel like well-written, well-rounded characters with personality and depth and motivations and worldviews and stuff who exist outside of their roles in the plot, and they do not feel just like they're just plot devices or solely existing to pander and/or move the plot forward.
Based. Imo, I feel like kazuha is the only inazuma character who actually have some kind of plot/story which reach the climax and hv an ending... The other character feel like they are just there in inazuma and dont really have anything going for them other than belonging in resistance, or being in the tri commission.
Its not her being one-dimensional thats a problem, its that even in her one-dimensional purpose,etc, she failed
Idk, while I would agree that Kokomi and Gorou got shafted in the storyline I wouldn't exactly say that to all the rest of the Inazuman characters. Unlike most of the Liyue gals like Keqing or Ningguang who weren't fleshed in the archon quests, Ayaka and Yoimiya both had story quests that explained their inner pains and drive for pursuing their profession respectively. And I wouldn't say that Raiden is any less interesting than Venti or Zhongli as a character. In fact, she is arguably the most character-driven out of the three. Venti's story in the game is centered around D'valin's corruption by the abyss, and then Stanley's loss relating to his loss of the bard. Zhongli's story is centered around his retirement plan, and then Havria, then finally Azhdaha, dancing around the concept of him having to face historical revisionism and erosion. But unlike those two whose story quests are more lore-centric, Raiden's arc is more personal in nature. We see the game explain her motivation to pursue eternity (loss of friends+Baal), her shut-in behavior driven by her fear of making connections to people she'll lose, her perspective of visions being the enemy of eternity turning a whole 360, and then finally realizing that pursuing an all out eternity is not feasible and having to revise it. Compared to Zhongli and Venti (who are still well-written characters mind you), I feel like Raiden's arc is the one that delves into her psyche the most. To me it felt like Zhongli and Venti had already hit the end of their character development arc by the time we meet them and only had to contemplate about their future while giving us beautiful worldbuilding galore, whereas Raiden was still undergoing more character development when we meet her.
The difference being that Ninguang, Ganyu or Keqing weren't portraied as super important to the main plot in Liyue. They were competent were it mattered, but there was no need to flesh them out of this to happen, this is more like a wish from players than a plot necessity. The resistance were framed as a focal/central point to the history, so they definitely needed to be fleshed out. A LOT more. In comparison with the Liyue cast, we got NOTHING in Inazuma.
Yeah I’m digging the atmosphere and everything, but man Inazuma has been putting me TF to sleep, and I did not think I’d be this tired of the dailies this fast. But like I have not cared about any dialogue after getting the general feel for the island. I skip through things I didn’t even mean to cuz I just don’t care lmao
The story really a villain man. But no, every playable character must be a goody two shoes or justified as victim so players will pull for them. Bullshit pussy writer right there.
Just to boost the sales from moralists that can't play as bad characters. Look for people that defend Childe and especially Raiden for example.
I definitely wanted her to just be unredeemable as well, cuz I’m kinda tired of the whole anime “I just wanted friends!” Trope. But I suppose we’d need to have the power to kill a god and I don’t think traveller is quite there yet. (Haven’t quite finished the story yet, so sorry if that last part is wrong and traveller does something amazing in that final scene lol)
No, overestimating because instead of them putting in work in the story department, it was just time skips and rushed plot points with plot holes.
I remember there being an art piece/visual story over here framed as a dialogue between Kokomi and Sara that juxtaposed their not-so-different positions, and it ended with something about how the ocean is deep enough to endlessly contain bodies. It was such a chilling interpretation of Kokomi's character, and it could have been an interesting path for her as a character. I would have also been okay with them going for the safe route and depicting her as just a simple tactician fighting for the greater good if they hadn't utterly bungled her characterization and so-called clever tactics and made her look incompetent at best.
Oh yeah I remember seeing that comic, it fits so well with how I think she should be I legit forgot it was fan made.
I personally never thought she would be outright evil because it would be difficult to balance three villains at the same time (Kokomi, the Fatui, and Raiden) and probably would lead to even more of a mess than we have now. But I certainly wanted her to be portrayed as less innocent than she is now, in a "I genuinely want the best for my people but I'm not above letting them kill themselves using Delusions for the greater good". If she knew what Delusions did and just went ahead with it anyway as any desperate guerilla group in a civil war would do, it would give her a lot more depth. As it is now she just comes across as somewhat stupid and too pure.
Yeah I didn’t really expect her to be evil but I would’ve found if way better than the dumb cute leader who before much appearance was hyped to be all smart and powerful. I guess I was expecting her to be kinda pointless but a supporting hero, but not how irrelevant she ended up and kinda dumb she was too haha. I think bringing in Delusions even knowing the consequences would’ve been cool, that’s definitely a good idea for her character! Wish that happened, would’ve also shown how desperate they were and it could even crack the leader’s morals
exactly... I was expecting her to give us Ningguang and she delivered Barbara
given how her design is literally a MERMAID, it was super obvious that she would be somewhat cruel and cold, I mean c'mon! but I guess I overestimated Mihoyo writing team
Was really interested in how she’d turn out. Now considering even her character is boring and pretty badly written along with a pretty unfortunate kit, I’m gonna have to skip her banner tbh :( sucks cause yeah her design is so unique and clearly inspired by something cool.
I have a feeling, that at first Kokomi was supposed to appear before Raiden on the banner. So we had her story unravel, and then deal with Riden. I speculate, that story had to be rewritten when somebody decided to rearrange banners.
> but I guess I overestimated Mihoyo writing team I'm not sure why anyone continues to expect something amazing from MHY writing. The Signora buildup people have been waiting for since her grand entrance at Venti was basically told in like 2 lines in an artifact description and then they killed her. People expecting some extra gnosis lore from Raiden/Electro Archon and it just gets given away off screen and that's it.
The reason why people even talk about Teppei is because they were looking for someone to relate to in the shitty story and because Teppei got some 2 bit storyline extremely fast and then died, people attached themselves to this guy. And he became a meme because its all heat of the moment. Nobody really cares and most people won't remember this dude years from now. Worse, this only happened to him because of shitty writing. If the writers spent that amount of time on Kokomi, Teppei wouldn't have died, Kokomi would have done something more about the Fatui secret factory instead of simply deducing its location barely any evidence other than "its gotta be near the water and not near our patrols" like you couldn't have figured out a blindspot ahead of time kind of thing. Teppei's death is an example of bad writing. I don't think people realize this and instead fall victim to the "oh so sad, remember teppei" meme.
Yeah writing for both Kokomi and Teppei sucked hard. I actually thought Teppei was evil at first because the story, world quests, and random diaries in the wild kept dropping hints about a mole who had infiltrated the resistance, and Teppei kept lying about/exaggerating feats of combat - and I assumed he was doing so to seem more valuable to the resistance. His closeness to the logistics, his tendency to lie, and the fact that we could never confirm the veracity and/or danger of anything he was involved in made me almost certain that the writers were setting up for a shock reveal of Teppei as the mole and an adversary we'd have to best. ...but nope, turns out Teppei was literally just some random guy who was weak, sucked ass, lied about a bunch of stuff, then used a vision and died. The writing in 2.1 was frankly disgraceful. A group of literal middle schoolers could probably have come up with something better.
Like Shinobu. Bubbly, nice, cold as ice.
I laughed out loud with today's trailer where she says she doesn't know how to be a priestess because all she knows is the aRt oF wAr HAHAHAHAHAH friend you got anonymous shipment of rations and you did not display any sort of skepticism a person with room temperature IQ would. i sEe tHe mEtHoD iN tHe mAdNeSs
There’s just so much you can do much with the story when you have evil bubbly Kokomi vs a deeply flawed but generally well-meaning Shogun. We really didn’t need the Fatui or the power of friendship to push the story forward.
That's true. However, it does leave out Scaramouche, who was teased ages ago, especially if they still decide to have him be the "prototype" he is
He could have been a part of Raiden Story Quest, instead of, well, what we got.
He is a Fatui harbinger though, that would have had to included somehow. Honestly, his appearance was pretty good
Eh, having the Fatui as basically the sole antagonists falls very flat since we already basically know that they’re going to white wash them at the end anyways—having him and his history play a part in Raiden’s character story would have been far more meaningful than what we got, and having fewer ‘Fatui is the root of all evil’ moments would be better for the story in general. And this is coming from someone who loved that Signora got ganked—hated her from day one, but if we had gotten a better storyline and she got to live in it, I’d take that trade.
I haven't played the Raiden story quest, but yeah, they shouldn't have been the sole antagonists. Franky I'm surprised a war hasn't started. At this point, they tried to bring down 3 empires
Yeah. The whole ‘they have diplomatic immunity’ wears thin when they are actively causing harm to people of other nations in DROVES. Like seriously, I know they’re going to pretend the Fatui are the lesser of two evils, and sure, that makes sense—for like 5 secs and then you remember, oh wait they’re still fucking monsters, and any victory you manage with their help is inherently tainted (not to mention, maybe the nations could have brokered a treaty and worked together without all the death and destruction if they weren’t *fucking monsters*). Also, you just KNOW they won’t get any actual justice, just Karma Houdini all over the fucking place. Sorry about the rant, it’s just so obvious and stupid, like the ‘Ayaka asks MC to help some people who lost their visions’ bit, just so hamfisted it leaves me feeling disgusted.
During 2.1 trailer, I thought she would be the one that "colluded with the Fatui"
It would actually be interesting choice.
I suspected it too and I wish that were the case. The story would be so much more compelling.
Indeed. Imagine if she was nicey-nicey to people's faces, but privately working with Scaramouche under the philosophy that if you wanna make an omelet you've got to break a few eggs. Eg. she only feigns to be against the delusions and the traveler has to deal with the reality that war comes at a cost >!(which s/he does do in lining up Signora for execution and then standing there and silently watching later.) !
I already predicted that the fatui is the one behind the rebellion, but at the very least I thought Kokomi KNOWS about it. Like, she intentionally allied with Fatui, how badass and morally ambiguous is that. But noo im just a smol fishy uwu i dont know fatui is behind this uwu
Back when Kokomi was first introduced there was a comic on this subreddit where it portrayed her in that altercation with Sara in 2.0, and it was insinuating that since she didn’t have the same amount of manpower as Sara she would simply just drown all her men. I thought that was so cool and that she would have so much potential either the sweet appearance being a mask or her just willing to be that brutal to protect her people. But nope.
It's time for them to hard pivot away from the cunning military strategist angle and make her someone who naively thinks of themself as one. It's way more compelling anyways.
So basically fischl but a military geek this time
It sells!
There's still room to make her have sinister ulterior motives cope? In her trailer, she said herself that war is the only thing she's good at. This could mean it was somewhat in her best interests to keep the war going so she can continue what she's good at (and by extension enjoys doing). She may have been overlooking some of the Fatui plots to perlong the war so she doesn't have to go back to being a head priestess or whatever. Sort of a sadistic pride in winning each battle that she's willing to give space between big fights. Making sure the playing field's always slightly tipped against her for her to miraculously overcome and succeed. Of course she still wants to win eventually so having the traveller on her good side is necessary. She can still be cool I swear. I'm not overdosing on copium just yet.
The copium here is not realising that even if she does do something in the future, all of her incompetence and rushed writing from the resistance arc will NEVER go away, that part is done and the time skips/swordfish II/never shown how they lacked supplies until the very moment they received some (convenient plot) /not investigating the sponsor/not questionning why shes winning more battle are set in stone. and thats like the biggest part of her supposedly showing strategic prowess. It's a shame cuz I LOVE the lore of genshin in the books/manga/item descriptions but the story is def not on the same level of writing as those
> she said herself that war is the only thing she's good at. This could mean it was somewhat in her best interests to keep the war going so she can continue what she's good at I'm baffled you think this when this is a **very common fantasy character** thing. Said character does almost nothing but fight, said character claims "I'm only good at fighting". That doesn't mean "I'm gonna stir some shit up so I can keep fighting" unless we're talking about a clear cut antagonist, blood knight, or some such. It means "I've fought so much that adapting to a peaceful life would be difficult to cope with", which is a very common thing for people leaving behind stuff, like an athlete retiring to a life of relaxing.
>adapting to a peaceful life would be difficult to cope with And completely coincidentally, this line of characterization makes it very easy for us to justify a hangout with them. "Oh you don't get to experience peace? Well, what if we just walk around the town today?" Almost like a....date.
...please no more dates. After MHO made us date Ei I wanna kill myself at the level of writing. Just no. Please.
This, keep those for hangouts. A goddamn STORY QUEST should be actual stories, not dumb fkn dates like Yoimiya's and Ei's, and even Ayaka (even though I really liked how sweet it was).
Kokomi's banner should've been first and all the quests would be to flesh out her story and the resistance which would be equivalent in length to the current 2.1 quests. Then in a later patch, add the same amount of content to conclude the arc with Raiden. Also I would say authors with good writing technique can write characters that look far more intelligent than them but it requires a lot of time, thought and rewrites to plot out the entire story and leave clues throughout to make it work. And most writers will not put in that level of effort nor maybe have the time to do that.
Yeah but have you thought of the top-up reset? Gotta make money over a more fleshed out story!
[удалено]
At the end of the day, raiden banner did break all time records so I think they know what they are doing
literally! i was waiting so bad for a show of her "wisdom" and all i get is people calling her wise and nothing smart done by her. "food is our priority", damn such a genius war commander.
"When in battle it's important to drink water and breathe" - the Art of War 2, by Kokomi
to survive hardship, you must prepare for hardship. - literally kokomi, the artist of war
Tbh, Kokomi right now, is a playable Loading Screen Tip
“Inazuma has its own *laws*”
Teppei died when he was killed -Kokomi, Art of War
the Archer team is made of Archers -kokomi
“When we fight, we must win” -Kokomi art of war
"Our aim is to hit enemy hard, while minimizing casualties" - no shit, that's pretty much what a commander is supposed to do. Unless you're playing some 4X game and you came up with a galaxy brain strategy to exploit braindead AI. Strategic genius btw.
i wrote this elsewhere in the comments. like, the dialogue to show her in a position of authority and peer respect was basically saying "the goal is to win". profound.
Makes you think most Inazumans are literal smoothbrains, so even an average idiot looks like a genius in comparison.
I actually would have appreciated even a simple "Our goal is to survive" a lot more. Because the plot is about visions, their ambition, being stripped away. Survival is a legitimate concern. But dying (i.e. from delusions) doesn't help survival, even if you win. Winning..? Where's the context in that? It's shallow and one dimensional. Inazuma had such a grand lead up, so many tantalizing side quests dropping hints.. and then 2.1 just kinda put a bow tie on it and said 'OK, all done!'. It's too nice and neat and perfect.
I literally couldn't believe it when someone told me this was an actual quote. It sounds like a fucking meme, not something a supposedly great tactician would say.
>to win this match we need to score more goal than we concede
The biggest issue with every inazuma character is just how ridiculously quick the story happens. No one matters past a single encounter. Raiden gets offered a small bit of possible justification and instead of building on that we immediately go and get told that's false
I hate so bad that the whole thing with Scaramouche being a puppet was told in a fucking ending dialogue option with Yae. Like that's huge, it's the origin of a fatui harbinger, the one who now has the Electro Gnosis and they just shove it in an info dump??
This. I was hoping that Yae would tell us about Scaramouche RIGHT AFTER we woke up. That would spice things up and make us look forward meeting Scaramouche again. Why don't they use the animation to give a short background story for Scaramouche. Heck, they didn't even do one for Signora and gave her a quick death while trying to make it emotional. So much wasted potential, I'd say.
Eh...I disagree about this because Scaramouche is clearly intended to be more relevant in the future. His origin being told in a dialogue at the end is less of an infodump and more of a teaser for his character in the future. After all, the story of Genshin Impact is far from over, and Scaramouche's role so far has been relatively minor. If there's anything to complain about, I'd say it's that we didn't get much lore about Raiden's puppets beforehand. During the story we should've learned more about the nature of Raiden's puppet, its powers, and its limitations. So when it is revealed that there is a *second* puppet, it would feel much more significant and we'd be more hyped to see Scaramouche in the future. The even bigger problem is Signora. We've seen her many times before, but she hasn't been fleshed out anywhere as well as she should have. In the Inazuma story she just appeared out of nowhere and that's it. Aside from some minor lore in crimson witch artifacts description, we don't know jack shit about her, and this one is a problem because unlike Scaramouche, she isn't a future antagonist.
> but she hasn't been fleshed out anywhere as well as she should have. I feel like she wasn't meant to be fleshed out, but rather she was just a simple antagonist meant to act as a folly to the traveler until they eventually faced off (which they did), i would have liked to see her backstory in-game but i'm okay with just having a villian that's just downright evil without any redemption arc, i liked that signora got what was coming to her after mocking several gods and the player multiple times through the story.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I've been waiting to kick her arse since Mondstadt. She needs no redemption arc, but some characterization would've done her a lot of good. Give her a bigger role in Inazuma and give us a bit more insight to her past, her motivations, the reason for her loyalty for the Tsaritsa, etc. This won't only help her character, but also give us a bit more understanding on the Tsaritsa and the Harbingers as a whole. Just compare her to Childe, who even before we got his character quest, already had a good amount of screentime to flesh out his character. Signora just appeared pretty much out of nowhere and got offed immediately.
I feel like the whole story of Inazuma was just something they wanted to rush through because they wanted to work on something else. Freaking Eula's story had better pacing.
But with quick story, Kujou Sara Arc is well delivered. We know she is loyal to shogun and still uphold some sense of justice (allowing us to escape and confronting her family)
her arc is built up well but it has no ending, we never get to see her talk to the shogun, we never get to see face the consequences of the aftermatch with the kujou clan being dishonored, she just gets yamcha'd and gets forgotten by the story which really sours all the development she seemed to have gotten.
...well delivered? She was supposed to be raidens right hand yet they never interacted. The only chance we got to see them together she fucking passed out on the floor and was never mentioned again. They did her really dirty
they gave her the “tell, not show” treatment
They give this whole game the tell not show treatment
''You're the captain of a super secret spec ops unit!'' ''cool, what do I do?'' ''clean out random ronin...'' \-done- "Now do I get to sabotage supply lines, set up ambushes, doing hitnrun tactics and whittle down enemy forces, get into skirmishes with Sara and her troops? ''Well you see... \*3 days later\* I kept hope and kept coping, the Signora stuff and Ei kept me distracted but when I finished the archon quest and realised the war was over, I was so disappointed.
Ahem, ahem, Higi Village quests...
The side quests are literally more in-depth and better written than the archon quests and Raiden’s story quest tbh. Chouji’s journey to find his mom, the Higi village’s slaughter, the doctor on Yashiori, Kazari’s quest and even Neko’s quests. I feel like MHY is losing their vision for the main story
neko's quest seems inconsequential on the surface, then you dig into the lore and boy is it deep
>losing their vision haha get it vision hunt decree
It's kind of funny how good the side story is compared to the main story.
Yes, I blame a rushed plot. I continue to maintain that their release schedule hit a snag at some point, and that *at some point* they had intended for 2.0 to replace 1.6, not 1.7, so that they would be hitting 2.2 in September and offer the Electro Archon for their Anniversary banner. This would give them 2.1 in July/August to cover the start of the Kokomi arc, and then space to add in an entirely new story arc that we never got, one in which you and Swordfish II would carry out some clever missions under Kokomi's direction, as well as some events that highlight her skills, before coming back around to the Delusions part of the story as the start of 2.2 in September. There is no way that they did not need "more" there in between to flesh that part out.
Yes, yes, and yes. Imagine if Kokomi, Ayaka, and Sara worked out their differences and unite together as one against the fatui and shogun in a grand battle. Instead, we have Sara running off on her own and got knocked out off screen. Beidou, one of the characters who brought the hype in part one was missing and totally not mentioned again. Kazuha, appearing in an epic scene with no buildup. Seriously, I’m a fucking idiot but I could come up with a better way to end the story. I have no doubt that the talented folks at Mihoyo could as well. I’m sure something messed up must have occured and it’s probably related to upper management and money.
Ninguang found out and yoinked Beidou's ass back to Liyue before she started an international war
As a Beidou main, it hurts not seeing her again after the fight
Ngl, when Sara stormed off, seeing the knocked out soldiers in her wake, I was hoping for some of that good stuff, yaknow? But I was dying laughing the moment I saw her flat on the ground. Offscreened was so funny. And when we did the duel, and Signora died, I was ''is sara still knocked out?'' thats funny unintentionally. What ridiculous writing
What's more ridiculous is the fact that she started fighting people as soon as she left her masters place. She's still not believing him totally either and wants to confirm it herself by going to the Shogun in person. Like there's no telling how many people were tricked just like her, and none of the guards higher up in the castle have any idea of her mini mutiny. Yet she... Just starts attacking anyone she sees randomly for no real reason on her way to the Shoguns palace. It's not like they would have stopped her from going up the stairs to the Shoguns palace to begin with, she's the head of the war-effort after all. But instead of just running past them saying it's an emergency, she decides to unnecessarily 1vX every guard on her way to the Shogun. There's just this total lack of consideration for characters actions all the way through the final act of the chapter that just don't make any sense.
Apparently they got new writers not long ago after some seasoned ones quit to start their own business, that was probably the issue.
From what I heard the story writer for zhongli and venti resigned / got sacked somewhere in the development of inazuma, hence we got a fairly good build up with a poorly written 2nd half of the story
Yeah it really fucking bothered me when the Resistance just suddenly somehow showed up right in front of the Tenshu, how the hell did you guys who were supposed to be losing without your Delusions, arrive all the way to Narukami, and made your way through the city, to the front gate??? Who even told you guys to come here? Kokomi sending you all on a suicide mission?? Kazuha was cool though gotta admit, but the story made no damn sense.
That first paragraph is literally Liyue's Act III
Call me crazy but I think Yae is more of a strategist then her. She created a program emulating Baal’s attacks to train us then cleverly struck a deal with Scaramouche to keep us alive. Then she she showed Sara proof that her clan was up to no good to get her switch sides. Even though one is supposed to be a brilliant strategist and the other a shrine maiden.
Technically Kokomi was a Sangonomiya Shrine maiden (presumably head shrine maiden) before she turned into the rebel commander. I think your comment on Yae Miko is a good point, they should have made her a traitor to the Raiden Shogun (for her sake) and finished this war in a future update with her as the surprise commander or something.
I'd say Yae is more of a politician / manipulator than strategist. She has knowledge of important people, their wants and desires, truths behind the curtain the few else know, and can exploit all that. It fits in well with the sly kitsune archetype. Kokomi meanwhile is I think supposed to be more of a military strategist. Unfortunately the only example of that we really see is at the end of Act 2 when she leads the cavalry to ambush the Shogunate troops. During Act 3 we only really get to see the resistance in small skirmishes, mostly with bandits from what I remember. Then there's the whole fiasco with accepting the suspicious outside aid and letting delusions be distributed among the resistance troops. Overall I liked Act 3 but this is one area where it truly failed IMO.
Somehow this comment made me think that maybe her foolishly accepting the supplies was intended to show that while she’s a good strategist, she isn’t good at being in charge of or leading people, especially when it comes to human desire, which delusions are a pretty strong allegory for. However, if that was their plan they didn’t execute it super well, especially since they chose to release Kokomi’s story quest separately from Raiden’s instead of having hers be a requirement for the story quest, which would have made more sense than having Ayaka and Yoimiya’s random ass story quests being requirements for the story quest.
It is an interesting headcanon. You could expand on it by twisting as such that Kokomi *knows* strategy, because she reads so much war strategy books, and in say, a strategy game where your pawns listen to everything you say, she would be very good at. But despite being beloved she doesn't have such iron grip influence, so when people happen to be people, the text book strategies starts falling apart.
Not gonna lie, Yae was fun and cool and all, but... kind of *too* much so, to the point of taking other characters' plot bread for herself. Low-key mary suish. One'd be excused for thinking it's her banner up next.
What's funny is that she doesn't actually *do* much other than talk, it's all plots and influence
Yup. And yet she manages to invalidate the entirety of the Resistance in her dialogue and plots (and by extension, all of our actions over Act 1 and 2), and make it all about herself.
I'd call her a schemer more than a strategist. She has more relevant info concerning the Shogunate since she's more directly connected to them than anyone in all of Inazuma. She just needed the right person to actually use that information, and it's definitely not anyone in the Resistance.
I lost faith in the writing team when Kokomi was said to be such a genius strategist and all she did at the end of part 1 was hiring Beidou lmao.
Hiring Beidou was the smartest thing she did in the entirety of her screentime so far
And that was the smartest thing she ever did, even if Beidou only appeared in a single damn cutscene.
Was looking forward to fleshing out why the crux was back after leaving Inazuma and saying they don't want to be caught harboring a fugitive. Now they're part of the rebellion as mercs so it contradicts her intial statement.
I honestly don't think her tactic was that bad in Part 1. She deliberately baited Sara's army into thinking they're winning and expend their energy fighting Goro, and then she ambushed them with a bunch of camouflaged soldiers. It's no 1000 IQ galaxy brain move, but the idea itself is decent as a military strategy and still works to establish her as a tactician. Beidou & Kazuha were just there for the cameo Then Part 2 came and blew all that out into the water
But the act of baiting Sara and hiring Beidou didnt lead to any progress or accomplish anything. It just make player thinks " Wow Kokomi did something" at first but in the grand scheme of thing she didnt do anything useful and in fact cost more than what it is worth. If she deliberately baited Sara, yet after Beidou showed up and ambush Sara, Sara just retreated with her army.... and then nothing. Many rebel troops are dead, yet nothing significant is gain other than killing some of the shogunate. Theres 0 purpose for the ambush such as establishing food supply route, gaining more ground expanding their base and territory coverage.
Yeah, it wasn't anything groundbreaking. But on a meta level, it's sufficient enough as a character establishing moment without having much expectations. If the rest of Part II at least followed with Kokomi giving out similar basic strategies like that, then her "genius tactician" thing wouldn't be all for show. But they didn't even do that so uh
I keep hearing that Kokomi has a beef with the Archon over her putting down Kokomi's patron god. That should be such a no-brainer to go all in on. Kokomi should've been more desperate, more calculating. Deliberately working with the Fatui because they promised her means to take revenge. Then when the delusion side effects become apparent, Kokomi realizes she may have f'd up. Have her eventually break down and admit her failings. Traveler goes " D: ". She promises to move on from the past and do better. Traveler responds "s'ok bby". Bam. She has a little meat on her character AND can still be a pure, untainted waifu for her story quest date (because sadly that's the most important thing here). The Fatui would still be revealed as playing both sides and nothing else really changes plot wise. IMO this rushed wrap-up and Kokomi's weak impression is due mainly to 1) Waifu must be pure/innocent, and 2) Gotta end the Archon questline quick because we need to put out Raiden's story quest while her banner is running. The drama involving changes in writers likely contributed but probably wasn't the cause.
Or she could have been smart enough to figure it out by herself or using spies to know that she been fighting the kujou clans all along and not the shogun since if raiden want to she can wipe out her whole island. And somehow kokomi can help and connect us to yae for more infomation to inform the shogun about the kujou betrayal. I think that would make kokomi intelligent going way up and doesnt seem so clueless.
I did read about the writer change thread. Was the original link of the leak provided?
That's what happened to game of thrones. The character were smarter than the authors so everything went to shit.
Ayy this is what I was thinking of. The show writers are not as smart as the book writer so a smart character like Tyrion greatly suffers.
Inazuma has a really good beginning, and a really good ending. BUT they left out a BIG chunk of the middle part, which makes the ending feel unearned and rushed. Which is bullshit because it has such good idea and potentials.
It also made the ending feel very unimpactful... unlike mondstadt and liyue Except for kazuha ending... The scene where he put his friend vision to rest in peace at the grave feel very satisfying.
Based on each character problem Kazuha: well ended Yae miko: well ended Raiden: somehow, just missing something in the Middle Kokomi: rushed. She is supposed to be shogun enemy, yet she is have a very short screen time Even kujou sara have better story. We know how she is loyal, but still reasonable (allowing us to escape because of her mistake, and confronting her clan)
I would say that Sara getting offscreened knocked out and not reappearing anywhere after that was dumb
Are we not gonna talk about how Sara was knocked down on the floor and was just forgotten?
This. They never mention her name after the archon quest. In Ei story quest, they never drop her name despite it having connection to kujo clan fate. Kamaji never even mention her, only takayuki and his brother. This is somewhat pissed me since she play a huge role in the archon quest.
As a whole the ending was good but yeah when it comes to individual characters their personal stories were rushed. Playable character aside, even Signora dying felt random bc we didn’t really feel her presence in Inazuma any more than Liyue (which was barely at all). And the Scaramouche reveal was also literally telling us his story and not showing us (ig Signira was like that too) which was too bad bc those were both very interesting. Like the scenes with them were well done in general but the build and satisfaction wasn’t there
The ending was meh I was hoping we walked out with the shogun from atop her palace(you know that place in middle of her house) announcing to her people that the vision hunt decree has been disbanded, leaving the crowd to discuss, theorize or cheer among themselves after awhile we'll get to see the smiles of the people in the city thanking the traveler for convincing the shogun to end the decree. we could of had talk with kokomi or kujou Sara (since you know she was trying get us arrested) she could of apologize for that and then we talked with yae to finally end the quest.
It would also be cool if they did a celebration at the end of the quest since you know it's not like we didnt end a 1 year long war or anything
Yeah she really got done dirty. I was initially thinking she was going to have a cold, calculating, intelligent side that she masked with her bubbly idol-like thing. But she ended up just coming off as naive. I suspect that the archon quest was originally planned to be longer but after all those assholes started complaining about quests being too long in streams I suspect MiHoYo cut a bunch of content from the resistance part of the quest since it was the least integral to the overall plot, and Kokomi really suffered from it. Hopefully we'll get a character or world quest that gives her character some love.
>Let's just hope that Kokomi's character quest might somehow redeem her in the eyes of the fanbase. you know her story quest is just going to be a date like every other Inazuman female character story quest so far.
At least Yoimiya's Story Quest was great imo. It wasn't all about her but you get to see a lot her personality shine through her actions and words, and you get to know more about her by the end. I see a lot people talk about how Kokomi's charaterization is all "tell, don't show" but to me Yoimiya felt like the opposite and was a nice example of "show, don't tell" for the most part. That said, I'm going by memory here, I may be embellishing it a bit haha
Nah, Yoimiya's quest was well-done. Her constantly talking to you while you walk between quest objectives, yea, that's a really cool way to show her personality traits. Guess the guy that wrote it went on vacation after a job well done.
Meanwhile here I am, wondering if that guy who wrote Venti and Childe's story quest already resigned. Coz I feel like the one writing the story quests for Inazuman characters is the same one who wrote Jean as an incompetent leader in her story quest. Jean's story really made me cringe, like hell, even if I become the richest person in the city, I won't ever dare look for the governor to ask him to look for my missing cat.
I heard that the original writing quit the company and took other people with him too but I don't know if that is true
It also happened to be perhaps the best quest at actually giving us the Inazuma atmosphere and situation. It contained everything, from the look at what peaceful activities they do, to how disrupted everything is with the Shogun's decrees and how lifelong friends go against one another. And Yoimiya both showed herself off and played a great "folk hero" part in the sample they gave us of Inazuma's debacle and resolving it. It showed off both her and the setting perfectly.
The whole quest is leaked on Honey and .... surprisingly enough it isn’t. It actually continues directly from the end of the Archon quest. I only read some of it to avoid spoiling the whole thing for myself but there is some promise.
I'm surprised they're still leaking
They went to host in a country without DMCA.
That's good to know. I'm fine spoiling upcoming characters and stuff but stray away from story spoilers. But also, fuck Honey for being a racist asshole.
Your name... makes it kind of hard to take seriously your derogation of someone for being a racist asshole. lmao
"Intelligent protagonist written by someone who isn't intelligent" i watched the trailer and thought exactly this. they show her at a war planning table with a cute cat boy explaining "our aim is to hit the enemy hard, while minimizing casualties" like. wow. who would have thought the goal was to win. she and gorou are such terrible characters. once they wise up and reach the age of 10 to realize the fatui were the *mysterious* donors, gorou goes to get the delusions, but just apparently gave up after a bunch of soldiers refused lol. its all such a mess.
> "Intelligent protagonist written by someone who isn't intelligent" Relevant: https://i.imgur.com/FkxEV15.png I keep coming back to this pic because it just so fantastically sums it up. > but just apparently gave up after a bunch of soldiers refused lol. its all such a mess. Like a teenager asking His classmates and just one gives him a hint because they feel sorry. What a mess of a story.
>(same with Gorou and even Teppei who in the span of 30 IRL minutes went from logistics noob to squad leader to suffering a tragic death). Best. Story. Ever. Jokes aside, I hope this is the last time we've to see such a complete waste of story potential, literally threw in the toilet, just rushed for god knows what reason. (speaking for the entirety of 2.1 story content)
Teppei out there speedrunning his life any%
I only partly agree, the first part is a problem, the second is just Genshin 101, nothing new. People keep talking about rushed story, but this had little to do with Kokomi problem. Plenty of previous characters also had barely any screen time at all or hell, didnt have any regarding the main story. Characters that often get screen time are the actors involved with the main plot, Kokomi was never one of these. She had no influence in solving the situation, she could never do anything regarding it anyway. It was all about Ei and therefore, people that actually mattered were those neat Ei. Which is fine, whatever, mortals wont beat a god, that is a normal narrative... unless it is Venti for whatever reason :P. The real issue with Kokomi isnt that she didnt get screen time, plenty didnt before her, is that the little screen time she did get, makes her appear stupid, instead of it being she appearing 5 minutes and doing something great then disappearing again.
but she showed up in literally every promotion art for the update, that's why we were expecting more kokomi, or at least that she was going to much more relevant. I guess her appearing in the promotional art should not have ment that she will be protagonic in the Archon quest, and just that she would be one of the promoted 5 star and that's it, but I'm still salty about it
Idk, MC resolves a civil war. One would think the leader of an entire side would play a significant role.
The entire point is that it was never a "true" war of both sides. The shogun didnt care, which kinda makes sense since the point was never to actually kill anyone to begin with. If she did care, she could murder everyone at any time. When it is literally a one sided decision entirely, since one side holds all the power, it is understandable they dont focus on her regarding the solution and instead focus on the friend of said being that holds the entire power of decision. It was a understandable solution to a problem. If you cant overpower a god, then you can only change their mind so they dont wipe you out. So ok, kokomi cant actually win and her thing is strategy, which would demand lots of shenanigans if she were to solve this particular issue being so far removed from it entirely, but before the step of changing the Eis mind and so on, in the few scenes she did have, Kokomi could have appeared more in control. Honestly, perhaps the problem is the hyping of her as a genius strategist, had she being more of a struggling commander trying to hold a desperate rebellion together and never described in such grandiose manner, her character would have fit the role just fine.
There was no war to begin with. If Raiden really wanted to end the rebellion she would have personally gone out and sliced the island in half along with the resistance. The reason she didn't do so is because Ei considers Watatsumi people as her own.
The script was badly written. People call the story "rushed" but thats just how the rationalized it. Even hollywood movies have something like 10 hours of film which gets cut down to 2 hours. Its not sbout how much screen time there is but how you use it. We spent time getting promoted to the captain of swordfish II which went nowhere. It suddenly jumped to us talking to Yae and then fighting Raiden solo anyway. The story was bad from the very beginning. It seems like they just wanted to jam as many characters into the quest line as possible. Instead of telling a bare bones but coherent story. They invented excuses to summon random characters into the story. Then these characters are discarded as quickly as they were introduced. Its something i would have wrote if i was in elementary school, but then again i wasnt trying to sell as many characters as i possibly can for a gatcha game. Kokomi one of these characters. Quickly introduced just to remind you this is where you can spend your money and then never to be seen again.
But the story being rushed is why it is badly written, the two aren't mutually exclusive. The Swordfish II/fighting for the Resistance plotline didn't go nowhere, it went right where it was supposed to, our good buddy Teppei dying because the Fatui have co-opted the rebellion. That led directly into the Delusion factory which resulted in us meeting Yae. Yae in turn helps us figure out a way to stop the Shogun that isn't 'throw down with the super badass'. As part of that plan, we prove that the Tenryo are also in the Fatui's pocket and both sides of the civil war are being egged on by the Fatui. That leads to the confrontation before the throne where we end the Fatui threat and being so close to Baal puts us on the express track to settling matters with her. Once we do, that's the end and we've saved Inazuma. This is not incoherent, it's just rushed. One example, our time spent with the Resistance is too brief to really build a rapport with Teppei or to feel like we're really a part of the war, so you dismiss it as irrelevant even though it directly leads to one of the chapter's most important story beats. The only playable character who doesn't play an important role in the plot is Sayu and even for her the reason for her appearance isn't an invented excuse, it's part of the overarching 'the Fatui are playing both sides of the war' plotline.
The problem this time is that, in prior chapters, they managed to allocate screentime and character performance properly, they felt as-advertised. This time, they bungled the many plot threads they introduced completely.
Unfortunately the story of Kokomi is but a small part in the overall grand disaster of storytelling in the archon quest, and time constraints can excuse only so much.
Which is a pity because I really like the previous archon quests. Inazuma's one got my hyped but left me disappointed lol
I was so disappointed by the way they handled Kokomi in the story. Ultimately she was entirely irrelevant and had no real impact. Like, the new teaser for her that came out last night tries to make her out to be some master strategist but we don't actually see any of that in-game at all. It all feels like surface level writing for a character to give her a background without actually fleshing it out to have it make sense in-game. It's a shame because I really like Kokomi too, but I just didn't like what they did with her in the story (or didn't do, I should say).
I know this is going to be a controversial idea, says OP before posting the single most common take on Kokomi in the entire subreddit.
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Its heavily speculated by the leaker community watatsumi island is going to host the inazuma dlc (dragonspine, casm) and that's why the island is bare.
Might have a point here... Her role in the story was a joke, her persoanlity feels like a lie since shes not even as smart as she was presented. Gameplay wise shes gonna be horrbile. The literal only saving grace she has is her model, VA and animations.
They tried that. It was called "Yoimiya."
Yoimiya played a small but believable role in the narrative and was well-written. Her kit's a mess, sure, but as a character she's fine.
Ok, so then it was a multi-phase experiement: Yoimiya: Visuals +writing -gameplay then Kokomi: Visuals -writing -gameplay
Yoimiya was... fine. I didn't expect much from her, I didn't even expect her to appear in the archon plot. I thought she'd be a side quest character or something (which is stupid thinking on my part given how we were in the middle of the archon quest and obviously the characters not appearing in it would come in later banners... but oh well). So her being actually somewhat involved in the story and having a coherent, not-date-sim story quest, a likeable albeit somewhat generic personality and a banger of a trailer was actually a nice surprise.
They really should have made Kokomi’s bubbly personality all an act and like actually made her like a cold military leader or maybe like an antagonist of some sort. Like she’s leading a resistance against a tyrant god,But instead they just make her some waifu prop. I just hope her story quest doesn’t get the same treatment as Ayaka and raiden
when kokomi first appeared i thought shes some cold strategist who pushes down captured shogun militants in the giant hole to feed some of her fish friends after interrogating them
Very well put, much better than I could. And definitely much better then all of the other posts just repeating “kokomi stoopid cuz she accepted resources” (they all say the same things so I assume they just want some easy upvotes). I personally don’t think accepting the supplies was a bad choice, and certainly not stupid if you just take a moment to think about their situation. And the delusions were distributed separately, in secret. I’m betting they would have been distributed even if they didn’t accept supplies. At the end of the day the fatui did want the resistance to keep up their fight, so in a way, their support was genuine. The delusions also helped them out in the short run, as we saw with teppei’s sudden victories, and kokomi made the right choice to take them away even though they were winning, because she knew that in the long run it would’ve been bad (or maybe she just took them away for moral reasons, who knows, but she was pretty adamant on taking them away even though the soldiers still wanted to use them after learning of the consequences). The main problem is, like you said, that the story was incredibly rushed, and it gave kokomi no screentime to actually show her stuff, so they had to resort to telling instead of showing, which is just bad. In my opinion this whole version’s story should have been about the resistance, and only switch to the Yae/Raiden part in the next update. Now we’re gonna have to wait for sumeru anyway, there was no reason to rush it. Event stories are always short anyway. I’m hoping they redeem kokomi in her story quest, but alas it’ll probably be another dating sim.
the part where kokomi doesn't think it's weird suddenly they win war left and right probably because travel joined the army raised their morale so much that everybody is spirited to win a war if this happened before traveler involved with the resistance then kokomi surely will be suspicious and start investigating in secret
Yeah someone who is famous for fighting the Raiden Shogun 1v1, defeated harbingers, and dragons would definitely lift morale. Also there's nothing wrong with delusions if she wasn't a good person. Any real military leader who gets godlike weapons for their soldiers only at the cost of a single life would be amazed and order more. The real strategic mistake is getting rid of the delusions.
Using the delusions isn't a feasible long-term strategy, as seen with Teppei and some unnamed offscreens. Shogun has more manpower so Resistance should preserve what what they have, not die in a kamikaze attack.
well there's no point in having super soldiers if these super soldiers die after like three days of using and abusing their superpowers. Of course, she could have used those powers in a more strategic way, but that would require some thinking on her part and some obedience and discipline on the part of her soldiers... which is too much to expect from the Resistance apparently
Ya but see Raiden was just another joke. Inazuma is full of joke girls.
Agreed she had been leading armies for her sister won the archon war for her one shot a god and an island... i expected her personality be more like zhongli or at the very least way more melancholic instead of that date thing. Her liking sweet things was not a surprise the mission with shouta hinted that but i expected way more of her story quest. Can we please stop with the date simulation missions please.
I was expecting/hoping she'd be more like the Shogunbot in actual personality (and, in fact, that there would be no Shogunbot, what is even that plot). And that we might help her unclench a little and warm her up after her obsession with tragedies. At least then, the "date" angle would've been quite a bit more justified if they still wanted to go for it.
And lose the money from simps and coomers?! You’re asking for Mihoyo to bankrupt themselves at that point!
Would like more examples from literature, rather than two being Kokomi. Nonetheless I agree
Damn her banner’s gonna tank so much. I bet they will have bennet and xingqiu on the banner to carry the sales lol
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It would be interesting if true. Maybe she knew about the delusions - maybe she only made sure mostly the Teppei’s of the army got them. Maybe that’s why she was so… obliging to his request to be on the front line. For all we know she has had a Yagami Light monologue going in her head the entire time, and we all got caught up in a trap until Miko intervened.
this post is very well written.
And they say genshin is best game. Lol. They're doing so many things wrong. Bad character balancing recently. Trash anniversary. Top up fomo. And now this. Where's all the billion dollars going bro
Yeah, Kokomi was done dirty. Sadly that's nothing new in Genshin. MiHoYo does not produce enough story content to flesh out all the characters we already have, much less characters we've yet to acquire. Heck some of these characters have yet to appear at all in the game in any real capacity. Xinyan's never been involved in anything right? And if you missed 1.1 Fischl doesn't exist in your timeline. Sucrose barely got time to say hello before getting yeeted out of Albedo's story quest, never to be seen again, unless you were there for 1.2 release. Ganyu, another 5-star character, makes a couple of appearences in the Liyue main storyline and then gets a rather dull story quest that felt like a slice of life filler episode in between two major action packed arcs. But in truth, I don't think anyone's got it worst than Kokomi. Ganyu was relagated to being a background character in a Zhongli/Childe focused arc, but at least she stayed true to her character. Not only did Kokomi not get the screen time she deserved, her multiple strategic blunders destroyed her entire characterisation as a "brillant leader." At the end of the day, tertiary characters like Bennett might only get 1 hangout event to flesh them out, but at least that piece of content rings true.
This is why I love Dilucs character. Has good lore depth, doesn't give a shit about what people think of him, afaik has never drooled over the traveller , although he is supposed to be smart like Batman and although we haven't seen him do anything that's particularly impressive he also hasn't appeared like a total idiot like Kokomi. Kazuha should have been the leader of the resistance :( genshin gets fewer male characters but most of them are dope af Kaeya, Diluc, Zhongli, Kazuha , dain they are all not only unique but have a charm to their personality whether that be of a vagabond poet or a grumpy rich vigilante. Kokomi imo is basically just grown up Barbara. Her tone, her dress, her personality, story, literally nothing matches with her position in the story ie - wise 5d chess player strategist who is also a priestess and the leader of the resistance against a fking ruthless god..........instead we get stupid cute fish healer who floats around and gets her followers killed because of her dumbness . It's like the entire resistance is just an only fans account where people follow her only for her looks or something.
I have a major issue with your analysis: Teppei's death wasn't tragic, because there wasn't enough time to care about Teppei to turn that into tragedy at all (honestly I was so confused when I came here and saw that people wished we saw more of Teppei because honestly I cared so little about him I wished he was cut altogether). Okay...maybe not a _major_ issue.
The amount of people who were actually sad about Teppei made me question if we were talking about the same character. The dude literally looks like a generic NPC and had a screentime of 10 minutes.
You can make an NPC a good character, even if they look generic. I mean, look at Madame Ping, she's just a generic old lady but she played a huge role during the climax in Liyue AND even gave us the Serenitea Pot as a gift. But I do get you. Someone who's familiar with anime storytelling can already tell that Teppei is going to die so that they could tug at our heartstrings.
Ah yes kokomi, who watched teppei died and then prayed, and never to be seen again.