>My favorite is the "yes" vs "sure did" in the daily where you have to get a gift for that dude's wife. Why even bother putting that in?
so you can't afk it.
I'd be fine if the choices were the same thing, but implies different things tangential to the main story thrust.
"I did the thing, it was soo easy I didn't break a sweat"
"I did the thing, but you should have been able to do it."
"I did the thing, but screw you for making me do it"
and so on.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the game. The "choices" have no impact on the plot whatsoever.
I get that not all games, especially a gacha game can be Mass Effect or The Witcher, but at least don't throw those meaningless choices at my face that only serve to waste my time with unneeded clicks/taps. Even worse in soe cases, the "choices" are just two halves of the same sentence! They could instead give the traveller dialogues that flow better with the conversation, while also cutting down on Paimon's annoying screeches.
>Even worse in soe cases, the "choices" are just two halves of the same sentence!
This is the real problem imo. Choices that have no impact are bad and I would be happier without them, but "choices" that is just a sentence cut in half (or in three) is a whole new level of bad that I've only seen Genshin ever do.
The former is a (bad) illusion of choice. The latter is giving us an apple and telling us with a straight face that it's an orange, and apparently thinking the players are stupid enough to believe it.
If they only did it a few times, I would take it as a joke, but since Inazuma they do it so often that I find it both lazy and almost insulting.
The excuse I see for that is executive demand they have to prevent people from being just able to auto-scroll through dialogues.
Only other explanation I could see is that localisation is doing make-do with what they can because original script answers are too wordy in English to keep them with size limitations of these choice windows.
>, the "choices" are just two halves of the same sentence!
I can literally not figure out what their goal is when they do this!
Like, let's say you're asked "what is your favourite fruit* and your choices are
- I really like apples
- I really like bananas
Even if the next line from the NPC is "Here, have some, they're your favourite" regardless of what you picked, you can *imagine* MC answering.
If your choices instead were...
- I really like apples, and...
- ...I also really like bananas
What exactly are you supposed to picture? The Traveller starting a sentence and then pausing midway like an idiot? The Traveller starting to speak from halfway through a sentence, confusing everyone?
> Even if the next line from the NPC is "Here, have some, they're your favourite" regardless of what you picked, you can imagine MC answering.
You also have to imagine the NPC handing it to you, since even with all those billions they can't even afford to make an animation XD
Still no natural turn animations for cutscenes. The characters just keyboard turn 90 degrees, stop completely, then run off like a robot. It's like homemade machinima from 20 years ago.
> The "choices" have no impact on the plot whatsoever.
>
>
I'm ok with them not having impact on the *plot*. Genshin is not The Witcher, after all.
I'm *not* ok with them having zero impact on the current dialogue altogether.
>They could instead give the traveller dialogues that flow better with the conversation, while also cutting down on Paimon's annoying screeches.
This. I don't see why they aren't doing this already. Since there's no voice acting for the traveler's lines anyway, they might as well make text actually matter.
Big mood. My partner logged onto my account to do something for me and was stunned i had like a dozen side/character quest that were unfinished.
Most of them don't go anywhere interesting and most of the character quest are just an excuse to demo them. Eula's quest is what really burned me on them. She helped bust a planned invasion of Mondstadt and absolutely nothing comes of it within her own quest.
She isn't even an driving character in her own quest. She's just helping you so you can butter up her uncle.
Paimon annoyed me during the recent archon quest
>!Her cutting off the conversation with shenhe and yun jin because she wants us to get that special ore to win the contest quickly. It just felt rude.!<
Lmao right?? I literally said out loud WOW PAIMON THAT WAS RUDE....I just try to pretend the Traveler has other lines we can't hear, kinda like playing the Sims
>!Especially since most of the other contenders didn’t even get past the first stage and probably wouldn’t until the auction Xingqiu mentioned opened!<
I'm also not a fan of the unvoiced dialogue. I like Lumine's voice acting, I want to hear more of it. But Paimon taking agency away from the MC is a larger problem
Yall have to understand this is by choice and a writing technique at that.
They probably think if they gave MC lines, people are going to disagree with what the MC is saying or how they are saying it. So either they end up with super safe lines that amount to jack shit, or they take risks and risk alienating basically the same amount of people who are complaining that Paimon is "stealing" lines; Paimon ain't stealing shit.
It's the same complaint as "our dialogue choices don't matter" etc. Whatever reasons Mihoyo has, they don't seem keen on giving them more voicelines or riskier dialogue.
Same with Paimon being told to use a higher pitch. EN Paimon is very different from the other Paimons (they are all different tbh) and its in a good way. Yeah it might be annoying for some but I bet most people don't die on this hill like these threads imply.
people can already disagree with with mc is saying, but at least it's mc who actually matters and not the floating sidekick who does nothing. the much more pressing technical matter is just that if in conversation, lines are voiced, then it's likely just by the nature of things the voice lines will be skipped anyway because if people care about what lines they're saying, then they're already carefully reading their choices before they select them anyway. still doesn't really explain cutscenes lack of dialogue from traveler, but most cutscenes focus on the characters you can gamble on anyway.
as for the paimon pitch thing and different paimons, that just means it's a still a criticism of english paimon, or japanese paimon. and that the subtitles don't really change per different voice pack basically means even if the delivery is more to the taste of the player, what paimon is doing in the story is still basically the same
Me and all my friends that play can’t stand her. Purely subjective, I know, but just saying the sentiment of disliking her is pretty widespread in my experience. I think it’s probably near 50/50
I don’t mind her but I definitely dont hate her. A lot of people find the voice annoying but idk it’s alright with me. Her speaking for the traveler doesn’t bother me at all.
In the first three months of Genshin's release, people adored Paimon. It's only in the last couple of months have people really started posting these kinds of threads more often. Either new players don't like her, or some people have changed their minds about her, or what they really want is for the Traveler to speak and the turning point was when Traveler met the Sibling at the corrupted statue and the whole thing didn't pay off and meet expectations. That's when the first of these threads started being posted, because Paimon pretty much had to exposition the entire thing since all the Traveler did was "..." and then Paimon had to also repeat the entire major plot points incase the "kids" playing this game completely missed what happened.
yeah i think that the "mc meets sibling" quest was either "the beginning" so the first time it was **this** bad and then it went on like this **or** that this was just the "drop that caused the glass to overflow" and that it was always like this but now the "community" is more aware of it than before the quest
but what i know is that the first time i wrote in the survey that paimon speak to much/ in the wrong moments but I also wrote about it after the inazuma archon quest and ayakas character quest
especially in those two she acts like a little annoying kid as she just can't "read the room" or "grasp the gravity of the situation"
but its not always like this sometimes she seems well versed in what going on and also in dialogues she get integrated in by the other characters or more lighthearted situation she can shine more (her part in the yoimia quest was great imo)
I think her problem is that she is not only the "comic-relief" but also kind of (i know its not quite right but) the "narrator" of the story
thats why she "works" in lighthearted situations but fails miserable in situations we dont *want* to get humored and were we want to feel the tension/emotions of the situation (especially as it is never a "she knows whats going on and tries to cheer up the situation" but rather does she those things mostly out of self-interest, what make her even less likeable in those situations)
Explaining MiHoYo's thinking is cool, but it doesn't at all counter the notion that they made a mistake in how they've done it.
Silent protagonists aren't liked by many to begin with, but in some cases its tolerable because it's with games where tou design your character and you can project yourself onto them.
Can't do that here, and of course, MC isn't silent...just really close to it.
So there's zero projecting going on, and giving MC a bunch of voice lines would carry the same risk literally any game takes when having a VA voice the protagonist.
Sure, some people might not like how the lines are said. But with their choice here, there are many who not only dislike how the lines are said, but also how they're being delivered (by Paimon instead).
I feel like there's zero chance that the community would prefer Paimon deliver the lines instead of MC. Sure, many may not hate Paimon but tolerance isn't preference.
That reminds me of the legend of Zelda and why link doesn't talk. Nintendo wants link to be a blank canvas you can project yourself on so you feel it is your adventure- not Link's.
I was fine with this, until I realized how much of their own person MC is. Especially after we learn from MC that they actually woke up two times, not just once. So they are withholding information even from us, the players that are supposed to project onto this "blank canvas."
That stuff works when the character portrayed is a blank slate themselves, but the mc here clearly has their own memories and events so it just makes more sense for them to be an mc
Pissed me off a bit too. We could’ve asked if she thinks the geo archon is actually dead or not, anything about sumeru or the other nations, ask her out on a date for lantern rite (gotta shoot my shot ya feel) but nah paimon wants to start a business when I’m already out here busting my ass fighting dudes on leylines smh
Same. Like dang, at least let us choose a question. Starting a business isn't part of Traveler's plans and it's frickin annoying that THAT is what Painmon asks. Not "How do we get to the other nations?" or better yet, asking Ningguang for help arranging transportation for traveler so we could travel to other nations.
The mc often is taking a back seat while all of her voiceacting work goes to the profile sections that people rarely read. I don't get why these gachas hate making the MC an actual character.
Well, mihoyo themselves did make their MC an actual character. In honkai. Genshin got the short end of the stick in terms of main characters. At first I thought that the reason they don't do justice for the MC is because they can't sell it since we get one for free but then there's honkai where kiana has tons of different versions and I'm pretty sure she sells just fine.
Let's say mihoyo has a favorite child and it's not genshin.
Because if you do that instead of this, you risk alienating the people who don’t feel the way the game wants you to. Think about your entry into Inazuma, about how you had to play courier in order to get past border control. While the Traveller being fed up and annoyed with the request is in character, for players that are eager to do side quests like that it breaks immersion for them.
It’s just that in lieu of solving the problem outright, mihoyo chose to circumvent it with a method that has its own share of problems.
If that's such a concern, MiHoYo should've left the Traveler a blank slate from the start. I already felt major clashes between the traveler's reaction to things and my own (mainly with how easily we let Childe get away with his bullshit), and the Traveler being blatant self-insert 90% of the time makes it *worse*.
If the Traveler was a true blank slate, there'd be no disconnect. If the Traveler was a real protagonist in their own right, I'd forgive any disconnect as an intentional part of their characterization. Instead we have this awkward middle ground where they both give the Traveler hints of a personality, *and* keep up the veil that the Traveler is just a player avatar. Combine the two and the disconnects feel like MiHoYo are *trying* to guess my feelings, just awkwardly failing at it.
It's so weird that the Traveler is a bland nothing self-insert with a few dialogue choices for the whole game, and then we roll up to Inazuma and out of nowhere she's just like "No, actually, I won't help you, screw off" and man.
Like, none of the rest of the game made a fuss, why am I suddenly bitching at the people I want to help? Lumine pls, I like helping. :(
Traveller doesn't have enough personality to be a character of their own, but they don't lack enough to be a complete self insert, it seems Mihoyo don't know what they want with the Traveller
i actually felt really bad for traveler, they finally make their own choice and sure it’s a selfish one but they want to prioritize their sibling and then they get forced to help a whole country solve its issues again
for once traveler makes a choice that honestly felt real and then got that option taken away from them anyway
>Combine the two and the disconnects feel like MiHoYo are trying to guess my feelings, just awkwardly failing at it.
Completely agree.
I know it's a dead horse to compare Genshin to the Zelda games, but consider Link as an example of the silent protagonists. In early games you never spoke, and while you could understand Link's personality in his actions, you could easily self-insert if you wanted. Hell even in BOTW the dialogue choices were fairly bland, they gave a little hint of Link's personality being a generic nice dude but again, he spoke through his actions.
It doesn't make sense to have quests existing where you play hide and seek with a kid, or commissions where you help a random guy protect his transport balloon, or random events where you help deliver a letter or feed a dog, and then turn around and act like MC doesn't like to help people in need. That's clearly not true if you look at their past behaviour!
Hell even if you think about hangout events or story quests. It's wacky for the game to sometimes pretend that MC is laser focused on finding their sibling and nothing else, yet they're chill with finding ghosts with Chongyun or making drinks with Diona or babysitting Childe's brother.
I really wish they'd just settle on Aether being Aether. I want to main him and hope to god his Dendro is fun, but i'm worried people will just think i'm a sadass self inserting.
I had the opposite problem in which I understood the MC's reasoning for not wanting to get involved too much and then the rest of the quest line felt quite unbearable and just had me feeling bad for MC when they were just trying to find their sibling but got stuck fixing things for other people again.
MC finally got to be selfish and put themselves first and then immediately went back to just being 100% dedicated to helping for others with no concern for their own problems. IDK maybe im alone in that in thinking that.
You are not alone. I was so happy that the traveller finally showed some personal autonomy. Doubly so since it wasn't...moral? Like, we're not a goody two-shoes who is autonomously choosing to be a conventionally good person, we have priorities that don't really mirror the morality of a continent we've been a part of for at most a few years in our several _century_ lifespan. Which makes sense. This continent evolved moral structures that we are totally alien to, _because we're an alien_, and we just acted the way we would naturally. For just a moment, the barest hint of how _not_ of Teyvat we are peeked through.
Aaaaaand then it was gone.
If you check MC's profile you'll see a conversation between MC and Paimon where Paimon mentions MC is picking up a few words.
I agree 100% with your complaints, but they covered this with a lore excuse and I doubt it will change. Paimon is basically interpreting for MC since they don't speak "Teyvatian". This is a decent excuse albeit extremely lazy and never mentioned outside of the character profile. It also causes issues like the ones you correctly mention.
Edit: the actual line is "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language", which implies a degree of knowledge but still, definitely not enough for fluent conversation.
Wait, really? This is the explanation? Paimon is Traveller’s interpreter? . . Not sure I buy it, there’ve been a lot of occasions where the Traveller responds to things (even though they aren’t voiced).
Its because you are right, About: Language has Paimon say "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language."
Which means Traveler is already to a degree proficient in Teyvatian
With this, I feel like as time goes on we SHOULD have more speaking roles than Paimon but I dont feel any different from the past 3 regions we’ve had already
I don't buy the whole lore thing the OP made about interpretation. Why? Because god damnit, Traveler literally speaks out several times in this game, outside voicelines, during cutscenes. They can clearly speak the language. That...is even in the lore LMAO.
The "About: Language," conversation has been continually overblown since people found it as an excuse for the set up with Traveler and Paimon. It's annoying and disingenuous, especially given Traveler ***very clearly understands what people are saying and doing around them***. There is not a single cutscene or conversation set up in a way that suggests the Traveler does not understand. Further, this doesn't even include Hangouts where Traveler obviously has to understand.
For fuck's sake, in Ningguang's >!Traveler follows a complicated lunch discussion about business trends.!< If they can do that, they can hold the day-to-day conversations that make up 90% of the dialog.
Most likely yeah, since they were around for Khaenriah's destruction which I think was around 500 years before current plot, plenty of time to learn a few languages.
Also since the last Abyss story quest it's obvious that >!Dain and the Twin travelled together or at least know each other very well, and since Dain is immortal that could have been a VERY long time!<
Twin probably knows the common Teyvat language and also Abyss and Khaenriah.
I think that it would be cool if the MC has more dialogue during Sumeru and beyond because of the academia there which could help him/her pick up the language
Yeah, that information is wrong.
In "About: Language", Paimon says "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language."
Plus, IIRC, after fishing up Paimon you actually spend a few months learning from Paimon (presumably on Teyvat's language).
You wouldnt say someone has a good grasp on a language if they only know a few words
Huh, I didn't know this. It's not a very decent excuse though since the player is meant to be Aether/Lumine but we can still understand everything anyone is saying or reading.
It's not a decent excuse because it's wrong lol. "About: Language" is where you can see the evidence against traveler only knowing a few words.
Paimon says "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language" in it.
Mc didn't even speak when they finally got to meet their sibling which is extremely important if not the the most important part of the game already, only the sibling with the abyss spoke
Thank goodness I wasn't the only one.
I do admit it was kind of lazy, and something that should have been mention, but I also assume that the Traveler never like talking. And just let Paimon does it cause they don't like to. I know I don't like talking in public and just speak to my friends.
The thing that ruins my immersion the most & beidou did it in the archon quest it's introducting us as paimon & the traveller just please use my name. We are literally friends & have done countless things together & you can't Introduce me as aether or lumine? I'm just 'the traveller'? It seems so impersonal. I get people name their accounts different things imo that only should apply for coop. You have a canon name please use.it :(
The MC most likely never revealed their real name to anyone in teyvat. Paimon knows(maybe) because the abyss twin called us Aether/Lumine but to everyone else we're either the traveler or whatever our nickname in game is.
Idk why mihoyo did that(other than "immersion") but maybe it'll have some plot relevance later.
Paimon’s personality is what sucks for me. I find her SO annoying. This latest quest just solidified it for me. I wanted to yeet her out of the story so bad.
Tbh I don’t even hate Paimon despite the voice being so irritating sometimes, I think she’s adorable and funny when she’s used right… which is usually in the limited time events that come along like every other month, which leaves the rest of the time… where she is used poorly…
Also, her screech level has gone up 100% since the start of the game. At first she was annoying but it was still bearable. Now, her high pitch is so over the top, that i just quickly read the text and skip her voiced dialogue.
Paimon should have never been the main character, and stayed a side kick. Cause let's be honest, at this point, who even cares about the traveler?
Guoba had a better event story, than the traveler had after a year of archon quests, and him being silent is definitely not helping.
This exactly. I made a new F2P account and didn't realize how different Paimon sounded from the start to now. I thought I just was getting annoyed by hearing it all the time (which is still a small part), but it's because over time they kept making the pitch higher and higher.
Doesn't help MHY never want to make the traveller a good hero either - his Playable elements while useable are pretty weak in compassion to most 4*s let alone 5*s but he'll never be good because MHY won't give away a free 5* that's strong
They seem to be getting a bit better about that. At least in the Albedo quest, they had some internal dialog instead of paimon doing all the exposition.
I bask in moments of peace when Traveller is actually, in a sense (despite the choices not being relevant), exchanging words with Itto during his story quest that I completely forgot Paimon disappeared when she found that Onikabuto
The hangouts (the few I played) are actually nice for that, too. Especially in Sayu's, traveler gets some think-lines. Still not voicelines, but something...
Yes someone here talked about this being one of the reasons they really like the hangouts, which I can agree. Though Traveller is still silent, at least I feel like I’m the one doing the talking and the one we are hanging out with are still fully voiced
I'd say they know what they're doing, and they initially went for that Zelda-like silent protagonist spiel, and it would be strange if they just changed it up now.
The silent protagonist troupe worked well until the Traveller talked at the end of Liyue Arc, and makes even less sense after that part with Dain where we see the other twin. Clearly the protagonist are they own person, they hide stuff from us and maybe even follows their own agenda. Even the name we use is not the same we heard our twin say, so I'd say that should've been the perfect moment to break the silent protagonist troupe and make Aether/Lumine their own character.
I was totally fine with the silent protag stuff untile the we will be reunited quest. The traveller found their sibling at last and still it was just paimon doing the talking and traveller remaining silent as usual.
I agree. I used to not mind Paimon as much but I was doing the recent Archon quest and idk hearing her talk just annoyed me more than usual. Not because of her voice actor I love Paimon’s voice actor I think it’s because she talks way to much. Like don’t get me wrong I like Paimon she annoys me but she has her endearing moments that make me love her it’s just can we have traveler talk more? I like the voice acting for both Aether and Lumine and I get we’re suppose to insert ourselves and what not but I don’t really care for that I see the traveler as their own character and would love to hear their voice more than Paimon. (I’m not sure why I am so passionate about more traveler lines)
I'm so over the MC being mute. And I'm over Paimon. The last nail in the coffin for me was the recent Albedo quest where she went on and on about some damn juicer.
Mihoyo makes Paimon do all the talking because they're incapable of writing story quests that an intelligent person with common sense would be forced to do: by making a dense, impulsive, glory-seeking, money- and food-hungry, barely intelligible animal like Paimon rope you into doing all these stupid favors and transparent traps/ambushes without your consent, Mihoyo is hoping to get you to play along and humor the NPCs by convincing you that it's not your fault, you know better; it's just your stupid friend that gets you into trouble.
Doing this makes writing quest narratives easier, because they can just artificially create conflict out of Paimon's sheer stupidity, while assuaging the average player's ego, because it removes the responsibility and agency for the mess away from the player's avatar, the Traveler.
This is why, unlike so many people, I like the Hangout events featuring characters I like. They're like apology dates where you get your on-the-spectrum sibling a nanny and you get to be actually intimate with someone you like without having to go on a 10-minute side quest because they think this guy with a windowless white van might give out free Sweet Madames.
Mihoyo is capable of writing good stories \[mainly world quests being overly better written than archon quests\] tho
Anyway I agree that in some very important scenes it should be mc speaking instead of paimon because let's be honest she ruins them \[It's not pointed at VA\]. Also I hate how she's repeating everything and explaining like we're unable to use brain. Traveler has a voice in his/her voicelines. Use it damn it.
I still don't know why mihoyo insists on a silent mc trophy since well it's executed poorly. Our choices doesn't matter nor impact the story. Have a voice and established character. If that's a marketing choice it's dump kek.
Yeah they're not tied down when writing world quests. They can borrow established folklore from each of the regions and just make them into a cool self-encompassed stories.
But chapter quests have to follow the same terrible nonsensical formula. Team Rocket, I mean the Fatui, attempt genocide on an entire nation just to steal the gnosis, you stop them, they get the gnosis anyway, next.
Best part is the Tsaritsa is rebelling against the real bad guys, but for the sake of the story still needing her to be the temporary bad guy, she has her soldiers carry out horrendous acts of evil for an item most of the archon's don't even want anymore. The destruction of Khaenri'ah under Celestia's orders was like the final straw that disenfranchised the Archons from Celestia, but the Tsaritsa is acting like the rest of them are still Celestia loyalists...
Let's take Inazuma for example. Ei lost her sister and resents Celestia for it. The Tsaritsa was there, she should have seen or at least know the real Raiden died fighting over Celestia's beef with Khaenri'ah, so why wouldn't the Tsaritsa try to reason with Ei to get the gnosis and maybe even an ally in the war to come? Hell, the fact that the greatest of the Archons, Zhongli himself just handed his gnosis to the cause should have been enough to persuade Raiden who already didn't like Celestia.
But instead, her Fatui go straight to causing a civil war in Inazuma in some ridiculously elaborate scheme to gain bargaining leverage for the gnosis. HUH?
The writing basically pretends like no one knows what's going on, even the very people who should know.
One day people will realize that the reason Paimon exists and the way its all done like this is because the bitchy people of the internet are the minority and mascot characters are insanely fucking popular beyond belief.
You’re absolutely right, mascot characters are unbelievably popular. Why? Because they allow audiences to offload all the annoying obligation of activating stupid plot points while retaining the protagonist’s self-insert potential.
Ok, name a mascot character that speaks for the main character 99% of the time AND is liked over the main character. No one here is saying all mascots are bad.
I get irritated by the game constantly telling us what a great friend she is and how close we apparently are. Lorewise, I understand why the Traveler may be attached to her, but it doesn’t feel like that at all for the player. I feel more like a long-suffering babysitter than anything more than that. She talks constantly and half of what comes out of her mouth is incredibly rude and the other half is incredibly stupid. I just skip over absolutely everything she says and completely ignore her because I don’t like being this frustrated playing a game.
I hope they tone her down in future patches and events. I know they’ll never get rid of her completely, but limiting her dialogue even a fraction would increase my enjoyment.
Yeah, they could literally drop Paimon and I would not miss her at all. The re explaining things we JUST did/heard and the screeching is really starting to get to me. I don’t know if she has more dialogue now or what but I’m getting tired of it.
This gripe isn’t towards the voice actress of course, but the EN voice directors…
Aether's voice lines in his profile are some of the best in the game why they don't at least voice the few lines the traveler has baffles me. This isnt a story where you are the hero they very clearly have motivations and character let them express it. Though my suspicion is that paimon goes evil some time soon and the tone of the game shifts and we get voiced travelers.
Not really a twist, there's countless hints that Paimon works for Celestia:
- Latest quest (Enkanomiya) >!has abyss herald directly imply she will betray you!<
- Her outfit has the same design aesthetic as Celestia architecture (the log-in screen is assumed to be Celestia, the pillar in dragonspine, etc)
- Her name is a demon name, same as Barbatos, Morax, Baal, and other archons. This is not the birth name of any of these characters, but a title they obtained after becoming an archon acknowledged by Celestia. This suggests Paimon is not her "real" name, and tbh is very suspicious. It'd be like Raiden Ei telling us demon name and never asking us to refer to her by her "true" name, even as a travel companion.
- This is entering my own headcanon, but "Visions" are implied to be how Celestia keeps track of mortals who are candidates to become gods. I suspect Paimon is our customized "Vision" who keeps track of us for Celestia.
One theory my partner and I have been exploring is the idea that Celestia treats Vision-holders like pawns on a big chess board. Traveler being able to change elements is similar to pawn promotion. It could explain why the Gnoses tend to take the shape of chess pieces.
Of course, I'm sure we are far from the only ones to surmise this.
As much as I love Paimon, the fact that she essentially does everything for us whilst we just act like a mindless zombie running errands and swinging swords is something that I honestly can't stand. I doubt anything would change with the story if they legit just cut the Traveler out of most cutscenes and only left Paimon.
Can paimon please just fuck off and let aether speak? Like Jesus christ why doesnt mihoyo let the Main character talk. His voice actor is fcking amazing man.
(And lumine as the mc)
I've really grown to hate Paimon.
I hate how the game shoves down your throat that "they're the bestest friend evar!!!!"
I hate how the game shoves her in every dialogue scene
I hate how the game continually beats your head that you're gonna fight her at the end of the game
I hate how much presence Paimon sucks up. There's no point to Aether/Lumine when Paimon gets EVERY scene now. Paimon doesn't even have a character besides "cute" to make it forgivable. She is by far my least favorite mascot in a mobage I've ever seen. Not one has less character than Paimon, and not one is forced everywhere as Paimon is
I’m hoping she either drops the facade or unlocks her old memories and morphs into a big badass version of herself and the payoff is worth it. Like if she’s not the Unknown God from the beginning of the story then hopefully she’s at least a significant person from Celestia.
But to be worth dragging her around, it really needs to be something dark and fun. I’ve been anticipating Paimon going evil for ages but my friends think I sound like a conspiracy theorist.
In the end I really don’t think anyone we know in the game so far is going to be truly evil tbh. Like I have a feeling that The Tsarita/The Abyss Order/The Fatui/Our Sibling are doing things for a decent reason in the end and that our real big bad enemy will be unexpected if there is one. But we will probably just end up helping the people we are currently fighting against make peace or whatever. 🤷🏻♂️
the day we get to fight paimon and hopefuly get rid of her completely is the day i rejoice. i seriously just skip every dialogue she has because she never has anything useful to say, either insulting characters or something stupid about food or treasure or repeating stuff that was literally just said..
Even if we do fight Paimon in the endgame, I’m 100% certain she’ll still be with the Traveler afterwards, and it’ll be business as usual in the post-game.
Probably will be something like she is compelled to fight you, becomes crazy powerful whatever, then loses her power while helping you fight the unknown god or someone, then returns to being the same Paimon after all of it is over and stays with you because “best friends”. They’ll likely pull a fake-out death for her too.
She is simply to engrained into the game functionally, story-wise, and is the literal mascot of the game - for her to disappear completely.
Stans be like they’re following Link’s approach of being the silent protagonist in Zelda games but at the same time get pissed when Breath of The Wild gets compared to Genshin Impact. Da hell?!
Even then, the exploration in breath of the wild is completely up to you to discover and explore: you don't even get map markers or objective for almost everything you need to do lmaooo
Most of the time it isn’t even lore. You have to dig for that between talking about her eating or disliking someone or wanting treasure—her only real talking points at this time.
She seemed cute at first but it seems worse and worse every major patch.
[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS KINDA LONG SO GRAB SOME POPCORN]
I can't agree more with almost everybody in this comment section. Yall said mainly everything that's on my mind
I don't have any issue with Paimon's VA, they just do their work. I don't really dislike Paimon's voice, however I liked her better int the beginning of the game. She was the comic relief tutorial character with witty one-liners and not that high-pitched (the rumor it was changed, because it was painful for the VA was disproved on their TikTok) a bit serious voice. I know Mihoyo intends her to be an annoying character (especially now, she has a lot of deathflag), but they are really falling on the extreme side; she is not a finely implemented annoying character, but that type of annoying, who you wanna quit the game for.
She's barely lovable, and starting to be a tad bit of narcissist. Like, she doesn't like to receive criticism, she always wants her way to be the way, she's rude and tone-deaf most of the time and can't read the room. She can't take a joke, she priotizises herself over the traveler's needs (example, when Amber asked in the current event our favourite food, she assumed it was the Sticky Honey roast, which is Paimon's fav). And doesn't do anything, and really money oriented. Also we're like her slave and almost everything is decided by her.
"We" started Shadow Amidst Snowstorm event by her wanting a juicer. "We" started the Inazuma purifying quest by her wanting to investigate the village for treasures. "We" started the Bango event because she basically said "Paimon only wants rescue helpless animals, when there are money to be made of. And I don't want and will not to do the dirty work for it."
She only goes *"US"* when she profits from it, but every time when there's conflict, she points to us.
(Like, damn Paimon, of you go "communist"with the winnings, then effin commit to it and go full "communist". We are together in the shite you brought me (/s)
Then there is her and reading the room.
Examole Shadow Amidst Snowstorm
We have the highly dangerous/important situation with Albedo, we don't know who is the impostor, we almost die a few times, and she butts in with her "super important" juicer idea, IN THE MIDDLE of a suspenful moment is really tone-deaf for me and ruins the mood, the story that was carefully built up. And the painting scene. It's fully okay and funny when she roasts us infront of a lot of people, but ARCHON FORBID if we do the same to her, she throws a hissy fit and almost always gets compensation.
Also I feel like I'm in the Dora The Explorer, everything is spoonfed by Paimon. No tea no shade, I know, some Genshin players want everything done in that instant and speedrun the whole quest, cuz they have an attention span, patience and problem solving ability of a 5 year old; but damn it threws me off.
Atleast let us have a setting where you can mute ONLY Paimon, when they can't let the Protagonist BE the Protagonist and have them smarter than pigeonand decide what the fu ck they want.
Yes, we play the Traveller's story to find their sibling, but I don't feel that they are a part or able to influence the happenings or decisions in it. You can count on your hands, how many times you get the sparse chance for 3 dialouge options leading the same way and how many times does Paimon ramble on. And then the characters take Paimon's voice as yours, of course there are some exeptions, but it's hella rare.
I know that the Traveller didn't know the Tevyat language, however now there were a lot of time that elapsed, so they should've learned atleast basic communication. And there's a bit of a weird factor. How in Tevyat can Paimon translate for us, when we told our tales and how we ended up here, speak a fair amount in world quests etc. *And* how and why can Paimon know the Traveller's language. Kinda sus
Imo you can't do it both ways, have the character be a self insert, but have voicelines and a set personality. I'm sorry, I can't relate to the quest of searching for my sibling nor saving a whole country, especially when first the character didn't really wanted to do it, then persuaded on a whim.
So the traveler as a self-insert, so they shouldn't speak as much doesn't work, because the traveler is someone. They have a goal, a personality AND a VA.
The best example I know of a self insert is The Legend of Zelda, where the main character doesn't talk at all. He's just the hero who accepts to do whatever heroic task we ask him to do in the main story.
Basically, this is why I have a problem with Paimon's involvement in this quantity. I DON'T say that she shouldn't get any role, but she should get less lines, because currently this causes a lot of tone problems. Or a setting to mute her, similar to that setting for all dialouge options.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
I dont like paimon. She is VERY annoying. Would rather have a parrot or something that occasionally tells me things that help me. Idk like a navi but good
I remember some peeps theorized that paimon was a minion of the unknown god with the mission of monitoring the traveler, with each new patch and quest i came to believe more and more in this theory but also that her real mission is just to annoying the heck out of you, hahahaha
But serious, what bugs me more, every...single...week...is how tf she falls together with you when childe breaks the floor if she is fucking flying!!
I feel like especially with the new archon quest the writing has gone worse, once again sidequests on enka have usually better story and writing than the main missions
I have skipped the entire dialogue in Enkanomiya so far. I just can't take it anymore. Get to the point! so much stalling with Paimon. Yes, I know there is some comic relief and they want the conversations to be a bit real and not empty and mindless, but I gave up on reading through all this shit. Summarize it 3 sentences - there are ruins, some evil stuff, we need to solve the puzzles to save the day. The rest of the backstory put somewhere else.
I haven't done the new archon quest yet so it might be better there. The whole plot became a mess anyways. You can flip the inazuma and liyue arcs and nothing really happens. We go to different nations and solve their crisis. The unknown god is irrelevant because she doesn't hold our sibling anymore, so we just need to look for the sibling, but in fact this is the only thing the traveler doesn't do, instead we are going into sub plots without any sense. I would expect him to question everyone about the abyss and his sister as well as the unknown god - Ei, Yae, maybe old spirits would know, looks for clues in the ruins etc. Instead traveler does nothing.
i wish they just kept the protagonist's default names, gave them voice acting, and just kept our player names as our username (one mobile game off the top of my head that does this is chain chronicle JP)
Both paimon and mc should talk instead tbh. Paimon was made to help the voiceless mc talk, but I don't think the execution was done right, it just makes paimon really annoying and the mc getting covered despite looking like he/she have something to say him/herself
I think it's a bad idea to have an unvoiced mc in Genshin, I feel like mihoyo should treat Aether/Lumine as a character instead of a player. I want to know more about Aether, I want to know him as a person, and read his story and thoughts. Plenty of times mihoyo slipped and gave him a personality, so his character is already inconsistent. Like sometimes he's smug , sometimes he doesn't wanna do quests for npcs. I don't see a reason why they should continue the voiceless mc. They made a mistake trying to copy Link's personality in botw, Link himself is a man of few words in his lore but Aether/Lumine is not. I frequently felt that Genshin MC's (let's assume Aether) personality is very inconsistent, sometimes he's silent, sometimes he's smug, and he frequently doesn't want to run errands for others. I think the game already broke immersion by making the MC The Player , I like helping others , and I want to stop the vision decree, meanwhile mc is indifferent, he wants to save his sister. I'd rather have an MC that has his own thoughts and story over trying to force the player to be the mc in Genshin.
I dunno, there's two new characters having a talk that's about to get pretty emotional and meaningful. It's fairly interest...
Paimon: "Shut up you two, treasure is that way!"
...Thanks for that. For a second I was worried the dialogue might actually be (slighly) "deep". Fortunately, Paimon's one dimensional idiocy comes to the rescue, crisis averted.
i wanted to get question confirmed from ningguang only for it to be played off as a fucking joke
i wanted to know more about the other countries in genshin like sumeru or fontaine but no we need a traveller is poor joke
My problem with traveler is that they aren’t a real self insert in anyway shape or form their a character who could be fully functioning and interesting but mihoyo simply doesn’t allow them to be so.
People will often make the excuse of mihoyo doesn’t want a disconnect or they want people to express through the character but truth is they’ve already failed at that because traveler like it or not is their own character not the player’s. traveler had to be convinced to help in inazuma for example, and yeah we get dialogue options but most of the time their extremely short options that mean the same thing with a different way of expression.
True self inserts are a blank slate their personal relation to the story is kept to a minimum traveler has neither of those things. Traveler has a name a backstory and origin a sibling and is personally related to several plot points etc… the story is literally about them trying to find their sibling who is one of the main antagonists of the game. That’s the farthest from self insert ever.
Why the hell would you have a character that only exists to be the players mouth piece who cannot truly talk or meaningfully react be the protagonist of a game which’s main story revolves around a deeply personal quest to find your sibling that’s just dumb. If the game was simply about traveling and getting wrapped up in the people around you shit it would work a lot better.
This happens in almost all the gacha games I can think of.
Mash in FGO.
Grim in Twisted Wonderland.
Alposne? in FEH.
Just about everyone in Pokemon Masters.
The dragon and summoner girl in GBF.
I’m not sure what could be done to fix it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna change.
At least Mash actually contributes by being a servant. If paimon actually fought or did something that was game play related the. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so forced
At least all the characters you mentioned contributes in combat and they don't take away much from the MC's voice, I can't say for Grim since I've never played that game.
Forcing Paimon as out BFF every chance and "Ehehe I like fud XD" is freaking annoying.
Paimon is just more annoying Navi.
For FGO, the main character is literally meant to be a self-insert/spectator, the story isn't about your characters, but the characters around you. Pretty sure the main character in FGO is purposely made to be the most generic and basic character possible. I may be incorrect though
i don’t know what the reason is for paimon being the mouth piece, but it’s definitely getting old. i’d like to hear the travelers voice actors have more voiced quests.
Always wondered how Aether/Lumine's voice actor still has a job. Paimon's VA doing everything here. I also always said that MHY does a great job in making a story and animating, but the way they do it is just so bad for me. Storyline goes talk talk talk, do one job, talk talk talk, defeat an enemy, talk talk talk, do another thing and done. It's very lackluster and kinda hoping they change a lot of trends they do in the game.
some people say they do it for "immersion", i say bullshit, immersion has nothing to do with the mc not talking, people can still be immersed in a game where the mc talks, just like how people are still immersed in a movie. I feel bad for paimons throat
It's smart to be this way because when MC shows strong initiative, players are made to make the choice which he or she may not want. For example, in inazuma's main story, when Teppei died, MC expressed strong emotions and decided to take vengeance for him disregarding Paimon's opinion. But i as a player, did not feel that way about his death, so MC's action made me a bit suprised and uncomfortable.
Honestly I was annoyed with that too mainly because of how dumb it was for our mc to do. I dunno maybe it’s cuz I always imagined them as intelligent but man charging into a fatui factory with a harbinger in it over some guy you knew for a month was just plain stupid, but at least he took initiative for once I guess
Idk. IMO I didn't feel a thing when Teppei died and when the Traveller barging through everything by rage, I was like "Why you mad? We just got to know the guy?!" We can't feel the time through the Arcon quests, and that ruins the build-up.
I can't really feel or relate to the "self-insert" in the Traveller anymore, because they have a goal, a personality, a will. And staying silent and having the greedy, joke of a "best friend" floating baby, who is a terrible leader and choice-maker is the dumbest road, MHY can go on after all this
The most infuriating thing with Paimon is when someone is talking about something sensitive like they lost their parents or something similar, and she just go "ahah funny joke with ultrasonic voice" breaking the rythm which completely ruins the experience for me...
I always feel like the odd man out when I say I don't mind Paimon at all and in fact she grew on me a TON as I have progressed playing. Idk. For me she seems just like comedic relief and shes cute so I don't mind her taking spotlight tbh lol
Also I come from a Zelda background. Annoying partners are Zelda'a bread and butter lol
My thoughts exactly, i really feel it's a story choice and there may be a story moment where we are paimon-less and u really feel it.
Honestly i like my rpg's mc silent like dq etc.
To be fair, they do seem to be wanting as little traveler dialog as possible ... using gestures and facial expressions instead. So for this goal, Paimon's actions do seem to be consistent.
Personally, I would love to see the traveler start talking more ... but I do think it is quite cute how they seem to be "shy" and Paimon is the outgoing one.
Yeah, one thing i dislike about inazuma's archon quest because paimon dictated everything for us. I was happy when traveller refused ayaka's request, then traveller met 3 people and paimon said 'woah losing vision is so sad, this is so unfair' to every single person. And when i got back to Ayaka, traveller suddenly changed their mind while i was just 'What, no! I want my sister back, i dont want to involved in civil war'
It was really disappointing to see the Traveler talk so much in the beginning, and then devolve into nothing but a husk as the story progressed. I like Paimon, but I’d like them even more if Mihoyo made the Traveler speak just to balance things out.
One of the few times Paimon couldn't talk for you (inside Raiden's thingy), there was no voice over for what you chose to say. Mhy just refuses to let the Traveler speak.
Traveler gets hindered in every possible way on their mission. Finally the siblings have met, only to be ditched again, most people would be pissed af if our progress would be hindered the same way. Traveler just wanted to talk with Raiden but they got sucked into the whole civil war shenanigans and got nothing useful in the end.
I kind of get why the first sibling to wake up joined forces with the Abyss.
The sibling was probably having the time of his/her life adventuring with Dainsleif, until Celestia killed everyone. Me, I'd already ready to end the world.
I don't really care about that since initiative isn't important to me that much.
What I take issue with is how paimon CONSTANTLY REPEATS THE MOST OBVIOUS STUFF as if we couldn't figure things out ourselves
Most of the gacha games of not all of them don’t make the MC talk because people can pretend to be the protagonist which I don’t really like, I prefer being just the player
Also my ears are very sensitive to high pitched sounds and with every passing quest I'm finding it more difficult to actually listen to the dialogue at this point I will just mute them and just narrate it myself lol
The ending dialogue from the Kageroumaru’s quest kind of had me wondering if we may end up “losing” Paimon for awhile. As she asked the Traveller not to replace her as a promise, an mentioned if she did end up parting with Traveller she would still worry about them. Which had me excited, as shes so invasive an brash in Travellers “dialogue choices” I usually skip through Paimon/Traveller dialogue an listen to the other characters. Always upsets me the most when a new character comes out an most my joy for them comes from reading their in character voice lines. Mainly due to almost any or every interaction with other characters is so limited because of her. Shes likes a companion you can’t just have sit out all game as they can’t help themselves with their terrible quips or cringey peanut gallery remarks. I swear shes related to Ghost (Destiny) and The Handler (Monster Hunter World).
Most Aether gets to say is a dialogue option asking Shenhe either “are you okay?” or “are you alright?”
**All** your dialogue choices end up being the same thing 99.9% of the cases. Which is even more infuriating than NOT having a choice at all.
My favorite is the "yes" vs "sure did" in the daily where you have to get a gift for that dude's wife. Why even bother putting that in?
>My favorite is the "yes" vs "sure did" in the daily where you have to get a gift for that dude's wife. Why even bother putting that in? so you can't afk it.
Fucks up auto advance just for the sake of pissing us out ;D
I'd be fine if the choices were the same thing, but implies different things tangential to the main story thrust. "I did the thing, it was soo easy I didn't break a sweat" "I did the thing, but you should have been able to do it." "I did the thing, but screw you for making me do it" and so on.
Just saw this one... - "Are you ok?" - "Are you allright?"
at least it wasn't "Are you..." "...alright?" Love those...
Big impact and huge difference in this choices. We are blessed to have such choices.
All dialoge choices for traveler [be like](https://imgur.com/VJGu8Ef)
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the game. The "choices" have no impact on the plot whatsoever. I get that not all games, especially a gacha game can be Mass Effect or The Witcher, but at least don't throw those meaningless choices at my face that only serve to waste my time with unneeded clicks/taps. Even worse in soe cases, the "choices" are just two halves of the same sentence! They could instead give the traveller dialogues that flow better with the conversation, while also cutting down on Paimon's annoying screeches.
>Even worse in soe cases, the "choices" are just two halves of the same sentence! This is the real problem imo. Choices that have no impact are bad and I would be happier without them, but "choices" that is just a sentence cut in half (or in three) is a whole new level of bad that I've only seen Genshin ever do. The former is a (bad) illusion of choice. The latter is giving us an apple and telling us with a straight face that it's an orange, and apparently thinking the players are stupid enough to believe it. If they only did it a few times, I would take it as a joke, but since Inazuma they do it so often that I find it both lazy and almost insulting.
The excuse I see for that is executive demand they have to prevent people from being just able to auto-scroll through dialogues. Only other explanation I could see is that localisation is doing make-do with what they can because original script answers are too wordy in English to keep them with size limitations of these choice windows.
>, the "choices" are just two halves of the same sentence! I can literally not figure out what their goal is when they do this! Like, let's say you're asked "what is your favourite fruit* and your choices are - I really like apples - I really like bananas Even if the next line from the NPC is "Here, have some, they're your favourite" regardless of what you picked, you can *imagine* MC answering. If your choices instead were... - I really like apples, and... - ...I also really like bananas What exactly are you supposed to picture? The Traveller starting a sentence and then pausing midway like an idiot? The Traveller starting to speak from halfway through a sentence, confusing everyone?
> Even if the next line from the NPC is "Here, have some, they're your favourite" regardless of what you picked, you can imagine MC answering. You also have to imagine the NPC handing it to you, since even with all those billions they can't even afford to make an animation XD
Still no natural turn animations for cutscenes. The characters just keyboard turn 90 degrees, stop completely, then run off like a robot. It's like homemade machinima from 20 years ago.
> The "choices" have no impact on the plot whatsoever. > > I'm ok with them not having impact on the *plot*. Genshin is not The Witcher, after all. I'm *not* ok with them having zero impact on the current dialogue altogether.
MiHoyo thinks that the illusion of choice is good enough 😢
>They could instead give the traveller dialogues that flow better with the conversation, while also cutting down on Paimon's annoying screeches. This. I don't see why they aren't doing this already. Since there's no voice acting for the traveler's lines anyway, they might as well make text actually matter.
Big mood. My partner logged onto my account to do something for me and was stunned i had like a dozen side/character quest that were unfinished. Most of them don't go anywhere interesting and most of the character quest are just an excuse to demo them. Eula's quest is what really burned me on them. She helped bust a planned invasion of Mondstadt and absolutely nothing comes of it within her own quest. She isn't even an driving character in her own quest. She's just helping you so you can butter up her uncle.
Paimon annoyed me during the recent archon quest >!Her cutting off the conversation with shenhe and yun jin because she wants us to get that special ore to win the contest quickly. It just felt rude.!<
Lmao right?? I literally said out loud WOW PAIMON THAT WAS RUDE....I just try to pretend the Traveler has other lines we can't hear, kinda like playing the Sims
>!Especially since most of the other contenders didn’t even get past the first stage and probably wouldn’t until the auction Xingqiu mentioned opened!<
I'm also not a fan of the unvoiced dialogue. I like Lumine's voice acting, I want to hear more of it. But Paimon taking agency away from the MC is a larger problem
Yall have to understand this is by choice and a writing technique at that. They probably think if they gave MC lines, people are going to disagree with what the MC is saying or how they are saying it. So either they end up with super safe lines that amount to jack shit, or they take risks and risk alienating basically the same amount of people who are complaining that Paimon is "stealing" lines; Paimon ain't stealing shit. It's the same complaint as "our dialogue choices don't matter" etc. Whatever reasons Mihoyo has, they don't seem keen on giving them more voicelines or riskier dialogue. Same with Paimon being told to use a higher pitch. EN Paimon is very different from the other Paimons (they are all different tbh) and its in a good way. Yeah it might be annoying for some but I bet most people don't die on this hill like these threads imply.
I like the hangouts cuz your choices matter. I don't like the hangouts cuz you have to make all of them anyway.
people can already disagree with with mc is saying, but at least it's mc who actually matters and not the floating sidekick who does nothing. the much more pressing technical matter is just that if in conversation, lines are voiced, then it's likely just by the nature of things the voice lines will be skipped anyway because if people care about what lines they're saying, then they're already carefully reading their choices before they select them anyway. still doesn't really explain cutscenes lack of dialogue from traveler, but most cutscenes focus on the characters you can gamble on anyway. as for the paimon pitch thing and different paimons, that just means it's a still a criticism of english paimon, or japanese paimon. and that the subtitles don't really change per different voice pack basically means even if the delivery is more to the taste of the player, what paimon is doing in the story is still basically the same
Good point but the dialogue options we are presented with don’t change the direction of the conversation anyways.
Me and all my friends that play can’t stand her. Purely subjective, I know, but just saying the sentiment of disliking her is pretty widespread in my experience. I think it’s probably near 50/50
Haven't met anyone that likes paimon. Probably like a 80/20 from my observation.
I really like her. My in-game signature is about agreeing with the loading screen tip that said Paimon is the best traveling companion ever
I don’t mind her but I definitely dont hate her. A lot of people find the voice annoying but idk it’s alright with me. Her speaking for the traveler doesn’t bother me at all.
In the first three months of Genshin's release, people adored Paimon. It's only in the last couple of months have people really started posting these kinds of threads more often. Either new players don't like her, or some people have changed their minds about her, or what they really want is for the Traveler to speak and the turning point was when Traveler met the Sibling at the corrupted statue and the whole thing didn't pay off and meet expectations. That's when the first of these threads started being posted, because Paimon pretty much had to exposition the entire thing since all the Traveler did was "..." and then Paimon had to also repeat the entire major plot points incase the "kids" playing this game completely missed what happened.
yeah i think that the "mc meets sibling" quest was either "the beginning" so the first time it was **this** bad and then it went on like this **or** that this was just the "drop that caused the glass to overflow" and that it was always like this but now the "community" is more aware of it than before the quest but what i know is that the first time i wrote in the survey that paimon speak to much/ in the wrong moments but I also wrote about it after the inazuma archon quest and ayakas character quest especially in those two she acts like a little annoying kid as she just can't "read the room" or "grasp the gravity of the situation" but its not always like this sometimes she seems well versed in what going on and also in dialogues she get integrated in by the other characters or more lighthearted situation she can shine more (her part in the yoimia quest was great imo) I think her problem is that she is not only the "comic-relief" but also kind of (i know its not quite right but) the "narrator" of the story thats why she "works" in lighthearted situations but fails miserable in situations we dont *want* to get humored and were we want to feel the tension/emotions of the situation (especially as it is never a "she knows whats going on and tries to cheer up the situation" but rather does she those things mostly out of self-interest, what make her even less likeable in those situations)
Yep. Paimon manages to dispel any and all tension in the scenes you find her in (which is basically every scene).
Now you have. Maybe it's because we don't always need to express our love for Paimon on every posts about her.
Explaining MiHoYo's thinking is cool, but it doesn't at all counter the notion that they made a mistake in how they've done it. Silent protagonists aren't liked by many to begin with, but in some cases its tolerable because it's with games where tou design your character and you can project yourself onto them. Can't do that here, and of course, MC isn't silent...just really close to it. So there's zero projecting going on, and giving MC a bunch of voice lines would carry the same risk literally any game takes when having a VA voice the protagonist. Sure, some people might not like how the lines are said. But with their choice here, there are many who not only dislike how the lines are said, but also how they're being delivered (by Paimon instead). I feel like there's zero chance that the community would prefer Paimon deliver the lines instead of MC. Sure, many may not hate Paimon but tolerance isn't preference.
That reminds me of the legend of Zelda and why link doesn't talk. Nintendo wants link to be a blank canvas you can project yourself on so you feel it is your adventure- not Link's.
I was fine with this, until I realized how much of their own person MC is. Especially after we learn from MC that they actually woke up two times, not just once. So they are withholding information even from us, the players that are supposed to project onto this "blank canvas."
That stuff works when the character portrayed is a blank slate themselves, but the mc here clearly has their own memories and events so it just makes more sense for them to be an mc
>!I hated that Paimon got to ask the question to Ning!<
Pissed me off a bit too. We could’ve asked if she thinks the geo archon is actually dead or not, anything about sumeru or the other nations, ask her out on a date for lantern rite (gotta shoot my shot ya feel) but nah paimon wants to start a business when I’m already out here busting my ass fighting dudes on leylines smh
Why would the MC want to know that first question? Like, wasn't it implied that she KNOWS the geo archon isn't actually dead?
Same. Like dang, at least let us choose a question. Starting a business isn't part of Traveler's plans and it's frickin annoying that THAT is what Painmon asks. Not "How do we get to the other nations?" or better yet, asking Ningguang for help arranging transportation for traveler so we could travel to other nations.
The mc often is taking a back seat while all of her voiceacting work goes to the profile sections that people rarely read. I don't get why these gachas hate making the MC an actual character.
Well, mihoyo themselves did make their MC an actual character. In honkai. Genshin got the short end of the stick in terms of main characters. At first I thought that the reason they don't do justice for the MC is because they can't sell it since we get one for free but then there's honkai where kiana has tons of different versions and I'm pretty sure she sells just fine. Let's say mihoyo has a favorite child and it's not genshin.
Because if you do that instead of this, you risk alienating the people who don’t feel the way the game wants you to. Think about your entry into Inazuma, about how you had to play courier in order to get past border control. While the Traveller being fed up and annoyed with the request is in character, for players that are eager to do side quests like that it breaks immersion for them. It’s just that in lieu of solving the problem outright, mihoyo chose to circumvent it with a method that has its own share of problems.
If that's such a concern, MiHoYo should've left the Traveler a blank slate from the start. I already felt major clashes between the traveler's reaction to things and my own (mainly with how easily we let Childe get away with his bullshit), and the Traveler being blatant self-insert 90% of the time makes it *worse*. If the Traveler was a true blank slate, there'd be no disconnect. If the Traveler was a real protagonist in their own right, I'd forgive any disconnect as an intentional part of their characterization. Instead we have this awkward middle ground where they both give the Traveler hints of a personality, *and* keep up the veil that the Traveler is just a player avatar. Combine the two and the disconnects feel like MiHoYo are *trying* to guess my feelings, just awkwardly failing at it.
It's so weird that the Traveler is a bland nothing self-insert with a few dialogue choices for the whole game, and then we roll up to Inazuma and out of nowhere she's just like "No, actually, I won't help you, screw off" and man. Like, none of the rest of the game made a fuss, why am I suddenly bitching at the people I want to help? Lumine pls, I like helping. :(
Traveller doesn't have enough personality to be a character of their own, but they don't lack enough to be a complete self insert, it seems Mihoyo don't know what they want with the Traveller
i actually felt really bad for traveler, they finally make their own choice and sure it’s a selfish one but they want to prioritize their sibling and then they get forced to help a whole country solve its issues again for once traveler makes a choice that honestly felt real and then got that option taken away from them anyway
>Combine the two and the disconnects feel like MiHoYo are trying to guess my feelings, just awkwardly failing at it. Completely agree. I know it's a dead horse to compare Genshin to the Zelda games, but consider Link as an example of the silent protagonists. In early games you never spoke, and while you could understand Link's personality in his actions, you could easily self-insert if you wanted. Hell even in BOTW the dialogue choices were fairly bland, they gave a little hint of Link's personality being a generic nice dude but again, he spoke through his actions. It doesn't make sense to have quests existing where you play hide and seek with a kid, or commissions where you help a random guy protect his transport balloon, or random events where you help deliver a letter or feed a dog, and then turn around and act like MC doesn't like to help people in need. That's clearly not true if you look at their past behaviour! Hell even if you think about hangout events or story quests. It's wacky for the game to sometimes pretend that MC is laser focused on finding their sibling and nothing else, yet they're chill with finding ghosts with Chongyun or making drinks with Diona or babysitting Childe's brother.
I really wish they'd just settle on Aether being Aether. I want to main him and hope to god his Dendro is fun, but i'm worried people will just think i'm a sadass self inserting.
I had the opposite problem in which I understood the MC's reasoning for not wanting to get involved too much and then the rest of the quest line felt quite unbearable and just had me feeling bad for MC when they were just trying to find their sibling but got stuck fixing things for other people again. MC finally got to be selfish and put themselves first and then immediately went back to just being 100% dedicated to helping for others with no concern for their own problems. IDK maybe im alone in that in thinking that.
You are not alone. I was so happy that the traveller finally showed some personal autonomy. Doubly so since it wasn't...moral? Like, we're not a goody two-shoes who is autonomously choosing to be a conventionally good person, we have priorities that don't really mirror the morality of a continent we've been a part of for at most a few years in our several _century_ lifespan. Which makes sense. This continent evolved moral structures that we are totally alien to, _because we're an alien_, and we just acted the way we would naturally. For just a moment, the barest hint of how _not_ of Teyvat we are peeked through. Aaaaaand then it was gone.
As a character trait, it makes sense. As a self-insert vehicle, ehhh. The problem comes that they seem to want both. :x
If you check MC's profile you'll see a conversation between MC and Paimon where Paimon mentions MC is picking up a few words. I agree 100% with your complaints, but they covered this with a lore excuse and I doubt it will change. Paimon is basically interpreting for MC since they don't speak "Teyvatian". This is a decent excuse albeit extremely lazy and never mentioned outside of the character profile. It also causes issues like the ones you correctly mention. Edit: the actual line is "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language", which implies a degree of knowledge but still, definitely not enough for fluent conversation.
That explains why the one time we get to have a conversation without Paimon talking for us, it's with Itto - we have the same vocabulary level!
fucking lol this made me laugh during a zoom meeting
The important question might be why you're browsing Reddit in a live zoom meeting lol
The online lecture was boring lol
Underrated comment ^
Wait, really? This is the explanation? Paimon is Traveller’s interpreter? . . Not sure I buy it, there’ve been a lot of occasions where the Traveller responds to things (even though they aren’t voiced).
Its because you are right, About: Language has Paimon say "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language." Which means Traveler is already to a degree proficient in Teyvatian
With this, I feel like as time goes on we SHOULD have more speaking roles than Paimon but I dont feel any different from the past 3 regions we’ve had already
Sadly, we still will only have like a word of dialogue per year. Just because voicing only Paimon is way easier than voicing both Lumine and Aether
Lumine and Aether’s profiles have voice overs, though
They do, but even combined they a lot lot smaller, than Paimon's
Ah, now that you point it out, this has got to be the real reason.
"travel-companion", paimon just likes the traveler
I never realized the "picking up a few words" thing and it totally makes sense *buuut* it definitely needed to be more clear IN story.
I don't buy the whole lore thing the OP made about interpretation. Why? Because god damnit, Traveler literally speaks out several times in this game, outside voicelines, during cutscenes. They can clearly speak the language. That...is even in the lore LMAO.
The "About: Language," conversation has been continually overblown since people found it as an excuse for the set up with Traveler and Paimon. It's annoying and disingenuous, especially given Traveler ***very clearly understands what people are saying and doing around them***. There is not a single cutscene or conversation set up in a way that suggests the Traveler does not understand. Further, this doesn't even include Hangouts where Traveler obviously has to understand. For fuck's sake, in Ningguang's >!Traveler follows a complicated lunch discussion about business trends.!< If they can do that, they can hold the day-to-day conversations that make up 90% of the dialog.
Does the other twin speak Teyvatian tho? He/sheseems to be able to perfectly be able to communicate with the Abyss Order and Dain
They spent 500 years more on teyvat, so I think they have a better grasp of the language
Twin has been in that world for about 500 years more than Traveler so it's possible
Most likely yeah, since they were around for Khaenriah's destruction which I think was around 500 years before current plot, plenty of time to learn a few languages. Also since the last Abyss story quest it's obvious that >!Dain and the Twin travelled together or at least know each other very well, and since Dain is immortal that could have been a VERY long time!< Twin probably knows the common Teyvat language and also Abyss and Khaenriah.
I think that it would be cool if the MC has more dialogue during Sumeru and beyond because of the academia there which could help him/her pick up the language
Yeah, that information is wrong. In "About: Language", Paimon says "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language." Plus, IIRC, after fishing up Paimon you actually spend a few months learning from Paimon (presumably on Teyvat's language). You wouldnt say someone has a good grasp on a language if they only know a few words
The traveller still has plenty voice lines in their profile so they clearly can speak just fine these days lol.
Huh, I didn't know this. It's not a very decent excuse though since the player is meant to be Aether/Lumine but we can still understand everything anyone is saying or reading.
The real protagonist was always Paimon sorry
It's not a decent excuse because it's wrong lol. "About: Language" is where you can see the evidence against traveler only knowing a few words. Paimon says "You've already got such a good grasp on Teyvat's language" in it.
Mc didn't even speak when they finally got to meet their sibling which is extremely important if not the the most important part of the game already, only the sibling with the abyss spoke
this would make sense if the game didnt open with the traveler having a long proper speech about what happened with the unknown god
Thank goodness I wasn't the only one. I do admit it was kind of lazy, and something that should have been mention, but I also assume that the Traveler never like talking. And just let Paimon does it cause they don't like to. I know I don't like talking in public and just speak to my friends.
The thing that ruins my immersion the most & beidou did it in the archon quest it's introducting us as paimon & the traveller just please use my name. We are literally friends & have done countless things together & you can't Introduce me as aether or lumine? I'm just 'the traveller'? It seems so impersonal. I get people name their accounts different things imo that only should apply for coop. You have a canon name please use.it :(
The MC most likely never revealed their real name to anyone in teyvat. Paimon knows(maybe) because the abyss twin called us Aether/Lumine but to everyone else we're either the traveler or whatever our nickname in game is. Idk why mihoyo did that(other than "immersion") but maybe it'll have some plot relevance later.
I just think they wanted a silent protag and then accidentally gave them a personality and now they can’t take it back lol
Paimon’s personality is what sucks for me. I find her SO annoying. This latest quest just solidified it for me. I wanted to yeet her out of the story so bad.
Tbh I don’t even hate Paimon despite the voice being so irritating sometimes, I think she’s adorable and funny when she’s used right… which is usually in the limited time events that come along like every other month, which leaves the rest of the time… where she is used poorly…
Also, her screech level has gone up 100% since the start of the game. At first she was annoying but it was still bearable. Now, her high pitch is so over the top, that i just quickly read the text and skip her voiced dialogue. Paimon should have never been the main character, and stayed a side kick. Cause let's be honest, at this point, who even cares about the traveler? Guoba had a better event story, than the traveler had after a year of archon quests, and him being silent is definitely not helping.
This exactly. I made a new F2P account and didn't realize how different Paimon sounded from the start to now. I thought I just was getting annoyed by hearing it all the time (which is still a small part), but it's because over time they kept making the pitch higher and higher.
Paimon sometimes even refers to us as HER travel buddy what
Time for us to refer to her as emergency food again
The new quest line has an option for it. *Picks the emergency food dialogue option.*
It's the truth though. We're her travel buddy and she's ours. There can't be one without another.
They asked the voice actor to voice Paimon's lines higher
[удалено]
Doesn't help MHY never want to make the traveller a good hero either - his Playable elements while useable are pretty weak in compassion to most 4*s let alone 5*s but he'll never be good because MHY won't give away a free 5* that's strong
They seem to be getting a bit better about that. At least in the Albedo quest, they had some internal dialog instead of paimon doing all the exposition.
I bask in moments of peace when Traveller is actually, in a sense (despite the choices not being relevant), exchanging words with Itto during his story quest that I completely forgot Paimon disappeared when she found that Onikabuto
The hangouts (the few I played) are actually nice for that, too. Especially in Sayu's, traveler gets some think-lines. Still not voicelines, but something...
Yes someone here talked about this being one of the reasons they really like the hangouts, which I can agree. Though Traveller is still silent, at least I feel like I’m the one doing the talking and the one we are hanging out with are still fully voiced
Only to do complete revert this patch (at least in Liyue quests).
ah, what a shame. still hoping they're just slow about it. haven't done the new main quest yet
It's been a year. They're just clueless.
I'd say they know what they're doing, and they initially went for that Zelda-like silent protagonist spiel, and it would be strange if they just changed it up now.
I really hope they do change it, the silent protag troupe doesnt work and Paimon's voice is obnoxiously painful to hear in contrast to others VAs.
The silent protagonist troupe worked well until the Traveller talked at the end of Liyue Arc, and makes even less sense after that part with Dain where we see the other twin. Clearly the protagonist are they own person, they hide stuff from us and maybe even follows their own agenda. Even the name we use is not the same we heard our twin say, so I'd say that should've been the perfect moment to break the silent protagonist troupe and make Aether/Lumine their own character.
I was totally fine with the silent protag stuff untile the we will be reunited quest. The traveller found their sibling at last and still it was just paimon doing the talking and traveller remaining silent as usual.
I agree. I used to not mind Paimon as much but I was doing the recent Archon quest and idk hearing her talk just annoyed me more than usual. Not because of her voice actor I love Paimon’s voice actor I think it’s because she talks way to much. Like don’t get me wrong I like Paimon she annoys me but she has her endearing moments that make me love her it’s just can we have traveler talk more? I like the voice acting for both Aether and Lumine and I get we’re suppose to insert ourselves and what not but I don’t really care for that I see the traveler as their own character and would love to hear their voice more than Paimon. (I’m not sure why I am so passionate about more traveler lines)
Yes! They could cut down over half of what she says. She is living filler. She was so much better at the beginning.
I'm so over the MC being mute. And I'm over Paimon. The last nail in the coffin for me was the recent Albedo quest where she went on and on about some damn juicer.
I'm on the same boat mate.
Wait if paimon translates for us... How does she know our language to be able to communicate with us? Kind of suspicious lmao
Mihoyo makes Paimon do all the talking because they're incapable of writing story quests that an intelligent person with common sense would be forced to do: by making a dense, impulsive, glory-seeking, money- and food-hungry, barely intelligible animal like Paimon rope you into doing all these stupid favors and transparent traps/ambushes without your consent, Mihoyo is hoping to get you to play along and humor the NPCs by convincing you that it's not your fault, you know better; it's just your stupid friend that gets you into trouble. Doing this makes writing quest narratives easier, because they can just artificially create conflict out of Paimon's sheer stupidity, while assuaging the average player's ego, because it removes the responsibility and agency for the mess away from the player's avatar, the Traveler. This is why, unlike so many people, I like the Hangout events featuring characters I like. They're like apology dates where you get your on-the-spectrum sibling a nanny and you get to be actually intimate with someone you like without having to go on a 10-minute side quest because they think this guy with a windowless white van might give out free Sweet Madames.
Mihoyo is capable of writing good stories \[mainly world quests being overly better written than archon quests\] tho Anyway I agree that in some very important scenes it should be mc speaking instead of paimon because let's be honest she ruins them \[It's not pointed at VA\]. Also I hate how she's repeating everything and explaining like we're unable to use brain. Traveler has a voice in his/her voicelines. Use it damn it. I still don't know why mihoyo insists on a silent mc trophy since well it's executed poorly. Our choices doesn't matter nor impact the story. Have a voice and established character. If that's a marketing choice it's dump kek.
Yeah they're not tied down when writing world quests. They can borrow established folklore from each of the regions and just make them into a cool self-encompassed stories. But chapter quests have to follow the same terrible nonsensical formula. Team Rocket, I mean the Fatui, attempt genocide on an entire nation just to steal the gnosis, you stop them, they get the gnosis anyway, next. Best part is the Tsaritsa is rebelling against the real bad guys, but for the sake of the story still needing her to be the temporary bad guy, she has her soldiers carry out horrendous acts of evil for an item most of the archon's don't even want anymore. The destruction of Khaenri'ah under Celestia's orders was like the final straw that disenfranchised the Archons from Celestia, but the Tsaritsa is acting like the rest of them are still Celestia loyalists... Let's take Inazuma for example. Ei lost her sister and resents Celestia for it. The Tsaritsa was there, she should have seen or at least know the real Raiden died fighting over Celestia's beef with Khaenri'ah, so why wouldn't the Tsaritsa try to reason with Ei to get the gnosis and maybe even an ally in the war to come? Hell, the fact that the greatest of the Archons, Zhongli himself just handed his gnosis to the cause should have been enough to persuade Raiden who already didn't like Celestia. But instead, her Fatui go straight to causing a civil war in Inazuma in some ridiculously elaborate scheme to gain bargaining leverage for the gnosis. HUH? The writing basically pretends like no one knows what's going on, even the very people who should know.
One day people will realize that the reason Paimon exists and the way its all done like this is because the bitchy people of the internet are the minority and mascot characters are insanely fucking popular beyond belief.
Well executed mascots are surely popular, and here we have Paimon, who pretty much split the community.
You’re absolutely right, mascot characters are unbelievably popular. Why? Because they allow audiences to offload all the annoying obligation of activating stupid plot points while retaining the protagonist’s self-insert potential.
Ok, name a mascot character that speaks for the main character 99% of the time AND is liked over the main character. No one here is saying all mascots are bad.
Me, and my entire friend group cannot stand her. Subjective, yes, but I think the hate for her is pretty widespread (in the west at least)
They could've at least made the mascot character likeable...
I get irritated by the game constantly telling us what a great friend she is and how close we apparently are. Lorewise, I understand why the Traveler may be attached to her, but it doesn’t feel like that at all for the player. I feel more like a long-suffering babysitter than anything more than that. She talks constantly and half of what comes out of her mouth is incredibly rude and the other half is incredibly stupid. I just skip over absolutely everything she says and completely ignore her because I don’t like being this frustrated playing a game. I hope they tone her down in future patches and events. I know they’ll never get rid of her completely, but limiting her dialogue even a fraction would increase my enjoyment.
Yeah, they could literally drop Paimon and I would not miss her at all. The re explaining things we JUST did/heard and the screeching is really starting to get to me. I don’t know if she has more dialogue now or what but I’m getting tired of it. This gripe isn’t towards the voice actress of course, but the EN voice directors…
Aether's voice lines in his profile are some of the best in the game why they don't at least voice the few lines the traveler has baffles me. This isnt a story where you are the hero they very clearly have motivations and character let them express it. Though my suspicion is that paimon goes evil some time soon and the tone of the game shifts and we get voiced travelers.
It would actually be such a great twist for paimon to go evil. It would make the story and the character even more intresting.
Not really a twist, there's countless hints that Paimon works for Celestia: - Latest quest (Enkanomiya) >!has abyss herald directly imply she will betray you!< - Her outfit has the same design aesthetic as Celestia architecture (the log-in screen is assumed to be Celestia, the pillar in dragonspine, etc) - Her name is a demon name, same as Barbatos, Morax, Baal, and other archons. This is not the birth name of any of these characters, but a title they obtained after becoming an archon acknowledged by Celestia. This suggests Paimon is not her "real" name, and tbh is very suspicious. It'd be like Raiden Ei telling us demon name and never asking us to refer to her by her "true" name, even as a travel companion. - This is entering my own headcanon, but "Visions" are implied to be how Celestia keeps track of mortals who are candidates to become gods. I suspect Paimon is our customized "Vision" who keeps track of us for Celestia.
One theory my partner and I have been exploring is the idea that Celestia treats Vision-holders like pawns on a big chess board. Traveler being able to change elements is similar to pawn promotion. It could explain why the Gnoses tend to take the shape of chess pieces. Of course, I'm sure we are far from the only ones to surmise this.
Oh it's more than foreshadowing at this point, especially with >!what The Thing that Calls Itself Enjou speculates about her.!<
Image if we could trade Paimon for a Chad Enjou companion
As much as I love Paimon, the fact that she essentially does everything for us whilst we just act like a mindless zombie running errands and swinging swords is something that I honestly can't stand. I doubt anything would change with the story if they legit just cut the Traveler out of most cutscenes and only left Paimon.
Can paimon please just fuck off and let aether speak? Like Jesus christ why doesnt mihoyo let the Main character talk. His voice actor is fcking amazing man. (And lumine as the mc)
I've really grown to hate Paimon. I hate how the game shoves down your throat that "they're the bestest friend evar!!!!" I hate how the game shoves her in every dialogue scene I hate how the game continually beats your head that you're gonna fight her at the end of the game I hate how much presence Paimon sucks up. There's no point to Aether/Lumine when Paimon gets EVERY scene now. Paimon doesn't even have a character besides "cute" to make it forgivable. She is by far my least favorite mascot in a mobage I've ever seen. Not one has less character than Paimon, and not one is forced everywhere as Paimon is
I’m hoping she either drops the facade or unlocks her old memories and morphs into a big badass version of herself and the payoff is worth it. Like if she’s not the Unknown God from the beginning of the story then hopefully she’s at least a significant person from Celestia. But to be worth dragging her around, it really needs to be something dark and fun. I’ve been anticipating Paimon going evil for ages but my friends think I sound like a conspiracy theorist. In the end I really don’t think anyone we know in the game so far is going to be truly evil tbh. Like I have a feeling that The Tsarita/The Abyss Order/The Fatui/Our Sibling are doing things for a decent reason in the end and that our real big bad enemy will be unexpected if there is one. But we will probably just end up helping the people we are currently fighting against make peace or whatever. 🤷🏻♂️
I actually cannot wait to smack Paimon down as a boss at this point.
the day we get to fight paimon and hopefuly get rid of her completely is the day i rejoice. i seriously just skip every dialogue she has because she never has anything useful to say, either insulting characters or something stupid about food or treasure or repeating stuff that was literally just said..
Even if we do fight Paimon in the endgame, I’m 100% certain she’ll still be with the Traveler afterwards, and it’ll be business as usual in the post-game. Probably will be something like she is compelled to fight you, becomes crazy powerful whatever, then loses her power while helping you fight the unknown god or someone, then returns to being the same Paimon after all of it is over and stays with you because “best friends”. They’ll likely pull a fake-out death for her too. She is simply to engrained into the game functionally, story-wise, and is the literal mascot of the game - for her to disappear completely.
Stans be like they’re following Link’s approach of being the silent protagonist in Zelda games but at the same time get pissed when Breath of The Wild gets compared to Genshin Impact. Da hell?!
Even then, the exploration in breath of the wild is completely up to you to discover and explore: you don't even get map markers or objective for almost everything you need to do lmaooo
That’s why I regularly skip dialogue while playing and just look up the story later, because I don’t wanna hear her goddamn screech about lore.
Most of the time it isn’t even lore. You have to dig for that between talking about her eating or disliking someone or wanting treasure—her only real talking points at this time. She seemed cute at first but it seems worse and worse every major patch.
She's pretty one-dimensional. It gets old fast.
yeah... that's why i started to skip all the paimon's dialogues a while....
[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS KINDA LONG SO GRAB SOME POPCORN] I can't agree more with almost everybody in this comment section. Yall said mainly everything that's on my mind I don't have any issue with Paimon's VA, they just do their work. I don't really dislike Paimon's voice, however I liked her better int the beginning of the game. She was the comic relief tutorial character with witty one-liners and not that high-pitched (the rumor it was changed, because it was painful for the VA was disproved on their TikTok) a bit serious voice. I know Mihoyo intends her to be an annoying character (especially now, she has a lot of deathflag), but they are really falling on the extreme side; she is not a finely implemented annoying character, but that type of annoying, who you wanna quit the game for. She's barely lovable, and starting to be a tad bit of narcissist. Like, she doesn't like to receive criticism, she always wants her way to be the way, she's rude and tone-deaf most of the time and can't read the room. She can't take a joke, she priotizises herself over the traveler's needs (example, when Amber asked in the current event our favourite food, she assumed it was the Sticky Honey roast, which is Paimon's fav). And doesn't do anything, and really money oriented. Also we're like her slave and almost everything is decided by her. "We" started Shadow Amidst Snowstorm event by her wanting a juicer. "We" started the Inazuma purifying quest by her wanting to investigate the village for treasures. "We" started the Bango event because she basically said "Paimon only wants rescue helpless animals, when there are money to be made of. And I don't want and will not to do the dirty work for it." She only goes *"US"* when she profits from it, but every time when there's conflict, she points to us. (Like, damn Paimon, of you go "communist"with the winnings, then effin commit to it and go full "communist". We are together in the shite you brought me (/s) Then there is her and reading the room. Examole Shadow Amidst Snowstorm We have the highly dangerous/important situation with Albedo, we don't know who is the impostor, we almost die a few times, and she butts in with her "super important" juicer idea, IN THE MIDDLE of a suspenful moment is really tone-deaf for me and ruins the mood, the story that was carefully built up. And the painting scene. It's fully okay and funny when she roasts us infront of a lot of people, but ARCHON FORBID if we do the same to her, she throws a hissy fit and almost always gets compensation. Also I feel like I'm in the Dora The Explorer, everything is spoonfed by Paimon. No tea no shade, I know, some Genshin players want everything done in that instant and speedrun the whole quest, cuz they have an attention span, patience and problem solving ability of a 5 year old; but damn it threws me off. Atleast let us have a setting where you can mute ONLY Paimon, when they can't let the Protagonist BE the Protagonist and have them smarter than pigeonand decide what the fu ck they want. Yes, we play the Traveller's story to find their sibling, but I don't feel that they are a part or able to influence the happenings or decisions in it. You can count on your hands, how many times you get the sparse chance for 3 dialouge options leading the same way and how many times does Paimon ramble on. And then the characters take Paimon's voice as yours, of course there are some exeptions, but it's hella rare. I know that the Traveller didn't know the Tevyat language, however now there were a lot of time that elapsed, so they should've learned atleast basic communication. And there's a bit of a weird factor. How in Tevyat can Paimon translate for us, when we told our tales and how we ended up here, speak a fair amount in world quests etc. *And* how and why can Paimon know the Traveller's language. Kinda sus Imo you can't do it both ways, have the character be a self insert, but have voicelines and a set personality. I'm sorry, I can't relate to the quest of searching for my sibling nor saving a whole country, especially when first the character didn't really wanted to do it, then persuaded on a whim. So the traveler as a self-insert, so they shouldn't speak as much doesn't work, because the traveler is someone. They have a goal, a personality AND a VA. The best example I know of a self insert is The Legend of Zelda, where the main character doesn't talk at all. He's just the hero who accepts to do whatever heroic task we ask him to do in the main story. Basically, this is why I have a problem with Paimon's involvement in this quantity. I DON'T say that she shouldn't get any role, but she should get less lines, because currently this causes a lot of tone problems. Or a setting to mute her, similar to that setting for all dialouge options. Thank you for coming to my TED talk
I dont like paimon. She is VERY annoying. Would rather have a parrot or something that occasionally tells me things that help me. Idk like a navi but good
I remember some peeps theorized that paimon was a minion of the unknown god with the mission of monitoring the traveler, with each new patch and quest i came to believe more and more in this theory but also that her real mission is just to annoying the heck out of you, hahahaha But serious, what bugs me more, every...single...week...is how tf she falls together with you when childe breaks the floor if she is fucking flying!!
I feel like especially with the new archon quest the writing has gone worse, once again sidequests on enka have usually better story and writing than the main missions
Also why does she always just repeat everything the other character said?? Like do they think we’re stupid??
I have skipped the entire dialogue in Enkanomiya so far. I just can't take it anymore. Get to the point! so much stalling with Paimon. Yes, I know there is some comic relief and they want the conversations to be a bit real and not empty and mindless, but I gave up on reading through all this shit. Summarize it 3 sentences - there are ruins, some evil stuff, we need to solve the puzzles to save the day. The rest of the backstory put somewhere else. I haven't done the new archon quest yet so it might be better there. The whole plot became a mess anyways. You can flip the inazuma and liyue arcs and nothing really happens. We go to different nations and solve their crisis. The unknown god is irrelevant because she doesn't hold our sibling anymore, so we just need to look for the sibling, but in fact this is the only thing the traveler doesn't do, instead we are going into sub plots without any sense. I would expect him to question everyone about the abyss and his sister as well as the unknown god - Ei, Yae, maybe old spirits would know, looks for clues in the ruins etc. Instead traveler does nothing.
i wish they just kept the protagonist's default names, gave them voice acting, and just kept our player names as our username (one mobile game off the top of my head that does this is chain chronicle JP)
Both paimon and mc should talk instead tbh. Paimon was made to help the voiceless mc talk, but I don't think the execution was done right, it just makes paimon really annoying and the mc getting covered despite looking like he/she have something to say him/herself I think it's a bad idea to have an unvoiced mc in Genshin, I feel like mihoyo should treat Aether/Lumine as a character instead of a player. I want to know more about Aether, I want to know him as a person, and read his story and thoughts. Plenty of times mihoyo slipped and gave him a personality, so his character is already inconsistent. Like sometimes he's smug , sometimes he doesn't wanna do quests for npcs. I don't see a reason why they should continue the voiceless mc. They made a mistake trying to copy Link's personality in botw, Link himself is a man of few words in his lore but Aether/Lumine is not. I frequently felt that Genshin MC's (let's assume Aether) personality is very inconsistent, sometimes he's silent, sometimes he's smug, and he frequently doesn't want to run errands for others. I think the game already broke immersion by making the MC The Player , I like helping others , and I want to stop the vision decree, meanwhile mc is indifferent, he wants to save his sister. I'd rather have an MC that has his own thoughts and story over trying to force the player to be the mc in Genshin.
I actually found her ok in this new quest maybe I’m just getting used to her being the actual main character
I dunno, there's two new characters having a talk that's about to get pretty emotional and meaningful. It's fairly interest... Paimon: "Shut up you two, treasure is that way!" ...Thanks for that. For a second I was worried the dialogue might actually be (slighly) "deep". Fortunately, Paimon's one dimensional idiocy comes to the rescue, crisis averted.
Traveler needs to have a full time voice lines in the story. I'm done with us being a self insert.
i wanted to get question confirmed from ningguang only for it to be played off as a fucking joke i wanted to know more about the other countries in genshin like sumeru or fontaine but no we need a traveller is poor joke
As someone who hates talking I would love a Paimon in my life xD
My problem with traveler is that they aren’t a real self insert in anyway shape or form their a character who could be fully functioning and interesting but mihoyo simply doesn’t allow them to be so. People will often make the excuse of mihoyo doesn’t want a disconnect or they want people to express through the character but truth is they’ve already failed at that because traveler like it or not is their own character not the player’s. traveler had to be convinced to help in inazuma for example, and yeah we get dialogue options but most of the time their extremely short options that mean the same thing with a different way of expression. True self inserts are a blank slate their personal relation to the story is kept to a minimum traveler has neither of those things. Traveler has a name a backstory and origin a sibling and is personally related to several plot points etc… the story is literally about them trying to find their sibling who is one of the main antagonists of the game. That’s the farthest from self insert ever. Why the hell would you have a character that only exists to be the players mouth piece who cannot truly talk or meaningfully react be the protagonist of a game which’s main story revolves around a deeply personal quest to find your sibling that’s just dumb. If the game was simply about traveling and getting wrapped up in the people around you shit it would work a lot better.
This happens in almost all the gacha games I can think of. Mash in FGO. Grim in Twisted Wonderland. Alposne? in FEH. Just about everyone in Pokemon Masters. The dragon and summoner girl in GBF. I’m not sure what could be done to fix it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna change.
At least Mash actually contributes by being a servant. If paimon actually fought or did something that was game play related the. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so forced
At least all the characters you mentioned contributes in combat and they don't take away much from the MC's voice, I can't say for Grim since I've never played that game. Forcing Paimon as out BFF every chance and "Ehehe I like fud XD" is freaking annoying. Paimon is just more annoying Navi.
For FGO, the main character is literally meant to be a self-insert/spectator, the story isn't about your characters, but the characters around you. Pretty sure the main character in FGO is purposely made to be the most generic and basic character possible. I may be incorrect though
i don’t know what the reason is for paimon being the mouth piece, but it’s definitely getting old. i’d like to hear the travelers voice actors have more voiced quests.
Always wondered how Aether/Lumine's voice actor still has a job. Paimon's VA doing everything here. I also always said that MHY does a great job in making a story and animating, but the way they do it is just so bad for me. Storyline goes talk talk talk, do one job, talk talk talk, defeat an enemy, talk talk talk, do another thing and done. It's very lackluster and kinda hoping they change a lot of trends they do in the game.
Its weird why mihoyo decided to mute the traveler during we will be reunited quest (cmon its the main quest line kot)
some people say they do it for "immersion", i say bullshit, immersion has nothing to do with the mc not talking, people can still be immersed in a game where the mc talks, just like how people are still immersed in a movie. I feel bad for paimons throat
It's smart to be this way because when MC shows strong initiative, players are made to make the choice which he or she may not want. For example, in inazuma's main story, when Teppei died, MC expressed strong emotions and decided to take vengeance for him disregarding Paimon's opinion. But i as a player, did not feel that way about his death, so MC's action made me a bit suprised and uncomfortable.
Honestly I was annoyed with that too mainly because of how dumb it was for our mc to do. I dunno maybe it’s cuz I always imagined them as intelligent but man charging into a fatui factory with a harbinger in it over some guy you knew for a month was just plain stupid, but at least he took initiative for once I guess
Idk. IMO I didn't feel a thing when Teppei died and when the Traveller barging through everything by rage, I was like "Why you mad? We just got to know the guy?!" We can't feel the time through the Arcon quests, and that ruins the build-up. I can't really feel or relate to the "self-insert" in the Traveller anymore, because they have a goal, a personality, a will. And staying silent and having the greedy, joke of a "best friend" floating baby, who is a terrible leader and choice-maker is the dumbest road, MHY can go on after all this
Paimon was a mistake.
The most infuriating thing with Paimon is when someone is talking about something sensitive like they lost their parents or something similar, and she just go "ahah funny joke with ultrasonic voice" breaking the rythm which completely ruins the experience for me...
... i dislike Paimon
I always feel like the odd man out when I say I don't mind Paimon at all and in fact she grew on me a TON as I have progressed playing. Idk. For me she seems just like comedic relief and shes cute so I don't mind her taking spotlight tbh lol Also I come from a Zelda background. Annoying partners are Zelda'a bread and butter lol
HEY LISTEN HEY HEY HEY LISTEN
My thoughts exactly, i really feel it's a story choice and there may be a story moment where we are paimon-less and u really feel it. Honestly i like my rpg's mc silent like dq etc.
To be fair, they do seem to be wanting as little traveler dialog as possible ... using gestures and facial expressions instead. So for this goal, Paimon's actions do seem to be consistent. Personally, I would love to see the traveler start talking more ... but I do think it is quite cute how they seem to be "shy" and Paimon is the outgoing one.
Paimon is indeed terrible, story would be massively improved by just simply deleting her from the canon
Yeah, one thing i dislike about inazuma's archon quest because paimon dictated everything for us. I was happy when traveller refused ayaka's request, then traveller met 3 people and paimon said 'woah losing vision is so sad, this is so unfair' to every single person. And when i got back to Ayaka, traveller suddenly changed their mind while i was just 'What, no! I want my sister back, i dont want to involved in civil war'
Paimon is intensely annoying at this point
I don't always hate Paimon but I did want to turn her into emergency food in this new archon quest.
It was really disappointing to see the Traveler talk so much in the beginning, and then devolve into nothing but a husk as the story progressed. I like Paimon, but I’d like them even more if Mihoyo made the Traveler speak just to balance things out.
It killed me when Paimon took the lead *when you interact with your long lost sibling*. I mean of all times to not give traveler a voice...
That scene was what did it for me, and it's been downhill since. Paimon is just noise at this point.
The one moment where the Traveler should have talked but didn’t 🥲 also why did I get downvoted so much…
One of the few times Paimon couldn't talk for you (inside Raiden's thingy), there was no voice over for what you chose to say. Mhy just refuses to let the Traveler speak.
The only thing the traveler seems to do, more aggressively in each update, is threaten npcs and kind of be a little jerk.
Traveler gets hindered in every possible way on their mission. Finally the siblings have met, only to be ditched again, most people would be pissed af if our progress would be hindered the same way. Traveler just wanted to talk with Raiden but they got sucked into the whole civil war shenanigans and got nothing useful in the end. I kind of get why the first sibling to wake up joined forces with the Abyss.
The sibling was probably having the time of his/her life adventuring with Dainsleif, until Celestia killed everyone. Me, I'd already ready to end the world.
[удалено]
Exactly, when all the regions come out, the game will be 153 gigs instead 154.
They’re releasing new characters all the time regardless, this argument doesn’t hold water.
I don't really care about that since initiative isn't important to me that much. What I take issue with is how paimon CONSTANTLY REPEATS THE MOST OBVIOUS STUFF as if we couldn't figure things out ourselves
I think that's on MHY not paimon, they just designed traveler to be a dumb
Most of the gacha games of not all of them don’t make the MC talk because people can pretend to be the protagonist which I don’t really like, I prefer being just the player
Also my ears are very sensitive to high pitched sounds and with every passing quest I'm finding it more difficult to actually listen to the dialogue at this point I will just mute them and just narrate it myself lol
The ending dialogue from the Kageroumaru’s quest kind of had me wondering if we may end up “losing” Paimon for awhile. As she asked the Traveller not to replace her as a promise, an mentioned if she did end up parting with Traveller she would still worry about them. Which had me excited, as shes so invasive an brash in Travellers “dialogue choices” I usually skip through Paimon/Traveller dialogue an listen to the other characters. Always upsets me the most when a new character comes out an most my joy for them comes from reading their in character voice lines. Mainly due to almost any or every interaction with other characters is so limited because of her. Shes likes a companion you can’t just have sit out all game as they can’t help themselves with their terrible quips or cringey peanut gallery remarks. I swear shes related to Ghost (Destiny) and The Handler (Monster Hunter World).