about delusions........ EVERY delusion kills its barer. But not if u wear a mask (childe has one, Signora too, Scara has it on his hat, Arlecchino..... She doesen't but that's why she has black and red nails. So, about the delusion i dont agree. (Tho, compliments for esaminating the whole archon quest. I don't agree in some parts, Mabey even 50%, but it's a good analysis. Good job-! :3)
In defense of the "power of friendship" moment. The traveler's strength is based on "Will" and he has the ability to borrow the power of others, so him gaing power by calling upon the will of all of Inazuma, actually makes logical sense and no longer falls under the cringe "power of friendship" move
My big thing is that Raiden made her people suffer for so long, then after changing her mind and abolishing the vision hunt decree, ending the war and opening the country back... the people are just happy. They don't have any resentment toward her for all the misery they went through. In her story quest you walk through the city with her and and everyone is so happy to see her like she's a celebrity even though she locked the country down, started a war and stole visions. I just can't buy that no one is still mad at her.
Fr, if this was real life, you know the people would’ve def attempted to dethrone her / possibly execute her. At least thats usually how it goes historically. It rlly doesn’t make sense that the people of Inazuma would be content with her staying in power.
@@LovelyyBoba Maybe becuase she is a god, not a human? You are all acting like she needs inadzuma while its the opposite - without Raiden their country would be destroyed 10 times over during the course of genshin history. Also who can possibly execute her except for Celestia and dragon sovreings, who obviously dont care? Even if whole inadzuma united they would still have no chances in a fight against Ei, thats pretty obvious. People are content with her because she is lirally a living god, who protected them for thousands of years. One year of bad decree doesnt suddenly override this sentiment. Moreover most inadzuma people werent even affected by the decrees cuz there are literally just 100 vision holders , who have been affected(and most of them are fine too, Ayaka just specifically mentions the worst cases to guilt trap traveler into helping her). I honestly dont understand how people can play through the story and still dont understand such obvious plot points.
Because most people, especially in Narukami, liked her and revered her. Normal people didn't think too much about the vision hunt decree, sakoku decree, and watatsumi war. It was just their god doing god things, as she's done for centuries.
The Japanese have a cultural thing known as "Tatemae" which is basically a mask to hide how they truly feel. Even most of those who disagree with Ei would do their best to hide it from others, for the sake of keeping things the way they are. When in private, their true opinions, the "Honne" would show.
I swear, the bit in Sumeru's quest where the traveler rushes back to Inazuma to see if everything is fine after Scara's change to Irminsul, had me feel more stuff about the region than the entirety of the Inazuma quest did
@@MsLilly200 Tsurumi island, enkanomiya and the sacred sakura ritual, altough the puzzles are kinda cringe, they were so much better than the archon quest
I didn’t pay the upmost attention to the long dialogue in the inazuma world quests but i still felt lots of emotion especially with the tsurumi island and ruu.
Act 3 in Inazuma is still better than Acts 3-5 of Fontaine, and Act 6 in Version 4.x (Bedtime Story). I know people like Act 5, but it regressed Navia's character just to give her the same arc she had in Act 2, relied on shock value twice, and introduced multiple questions to the worldbuilding that contradict previously established information. And Bedtime Story was just.. oouff. The words "an insulting and unsatisfying conclusion to two of the most important and engaging plot threads in the game so far" would be polite.
I think her inclusion in the Archon quest makes it worse than it already was. Having a character whose existence is diametrically opposed to what the traveler is fighting for while also being portrayed as somewhat likeable (because she's a playable character) serves to dampen the player's dislike for the Tenryou Commission and weaken the emotion impact of the storyline.
It depends on perspective I think. Sara had a lot of potential but she ended up being reduced to a massive Raiden simp. Girl didn’t even get a hangout quest, which every other Inazuma character except Kirara (the final one released at that point) had one.
Fr, with sumeru and Fontaine we see that the traveler is really sensitive on a psychological level (as shown when we got poisoned the first minute we got in sumeru and when we attuned with the oceanid composed by vacher's (hope his name is spelled correctly) victims) but there in tenshukaku? Was it that we were still healing from the tatarigami or (more probably imo) the visions on the statue firs attempt at trying to tune with us like what actually happened in the fight?
@@lauragrigoletto906 no it was the high concentration of Electro energy. Just like how Traveler was sensitive to the Fountain of Lucine because of high Hydro sensitivity.
One thing I definitely wished happen is that Kokomi got a one on one showdown with Raiden herself, she was built and hyped up to be such a huge figure, her entrance alone nowadays would’ve gotten her at least an act’s worth of storytime, instead all they did was make her incompetent and barely present 😭
That's how you get sushi. Seriously though, Kokomi is a strategist, not a soldier. She would have literally just, died against the Raiden Shogun and it wouldn't even have been a challenge.
@@bellidrael7457 Fair point but with how the version was marketed couple that with the plot, I and a few others I've noted legitimately thought Kokomi's masterplan was to weaken the Shogun's forces enough to where she herself could go up against and face her herself. I wish she didn't get nerfed in lore
@@alcazarzarayEven if she wasn't, why on god's green earth would you have her fight the Shogun? That's like putting a coughing baby against a hydrogen bomb
@@bellidrael7457 Kokomi is such a strategist, we never see her doing any strategy at all. Instead of Kokomi, you could place a giant blue cockroach into Sangonomiya, and nothing would change.
@@Ajoura Oh no I agree, they did a terrible job of showing the characters use what they were best at. But even so they wouldnt have her face off directly with the Shogun.
What bothered me the most is that Raiden was acting smart n unfazed but clearly didn't know what she was doing. And her character's quests depicting her as "a clueless shut in who is just mourning her twin" really made her the worst archon imo.
The worst is that could actually have been an excelent history IF they truly showed how traumatized she was by losing her sister, like, there is almost nothing about how they were together, from the good times they shared to how dependant she was both emotionally and in the ruling of inazuma. If they take more times to show how she was before makoto's death, we would understand not only how big was her lost, but also why, Ei hated change and wanted to make things unchangeble, thus creating a history about accepting that good things will end eventually, and trying to make anything last forever will just ruin it.
@@Edahs_exists the whole reason that her character ended up so mismanaged was bc the writer for inazuma, who they borrowed from hi3, is an infamous asshole who brags about arbitrarily retconning/ignoring previously established information to do whatever he likes, and given that raiden is a version of a character he was writing for in hi3(and ruining in similar measure); after inazuma, he admitted online he wouldnt come back to write for genshin bc he "didn't like the setting", in my opinion I think it's bc the genshin staff told him to stop retconning stuff lol
I think they poorly executed the way the Raiden Shogun is supposed to be. I mean, after all, Ei is trying to emulate some sort of Eternity, while trying to be as intelligent in her delivery as her sister since she was far more intelligent than Ei or most of the Archons in Genshin.
For me, what really irked me about Inazuma was how fleeting Scaramouche's role was. He should have played a bigger role in this arc, especially as someone who is directly connected to Ei and suffered because of her negligence, and yet he is reduced to basically a cameo and his nature as the Shogun's prototype was only told through a missable conversation with Yae Miko. It honestly should have been Scaramouche who confronted Ei in Tenshukaku, I personally like the idea of him triggering a flashback of Makoto within Ei as she looks upon a face that mirrors her own. Him mockingly calling her mother as he confronts her for not only abandoning him but all of Inazuma because she couldn't bring herself to face reality. And unlike Signora, he can survive her attack due to his true nature (something that could be showcased a lot more viscerally in that kind of situation as well). This could play a role in shaking her resolve in a meaningful way, as she is forced to face the direct consequence of her actions in the form of someone who suffered because of her.
The sad part is Signora would’ve survived. Pierro talks about Arlecchino power in her story and isn’t impressed, but in the pale flame set he is astonished by Signora’s power, so it’s safe to assume her delusion weakened her. On top of that, there’s also the lore suggesting she didn’t have any of her memory intact until she transformed. One of her boss drops says “the seal was broke under duress and as her former will emerged from its icy white prison, she remembered her old name, dancing amidst the fire, and she recalled the face of the man she can never see again.” So we basically murdered an innocent woman for plot and shock value for raiden
@@royalsun2284 my full take on the Signora situation: Not to mention the absolute horrible addition of Signora. She’s mentioned once before, and she doesn’t even fit timeline wise. She’s not mentioned at all, shows up at the end, and she’s forced into a duel just to die. Even in the rules traveler goes “I challenge you to a duel” before Signora can say anything raiden goes “proceed” and Signora reiterates the rules of said duel. Not to mention the dialogue line “for the people of liyue you imperiled” when it was literally completely Zhongli. So not only did the traveler take his anger out on Signora, but then on top of that, Scaramouche should’ve been the boss instead of Signora. Scaramouche is the one with ties to raiden and the amount of potential via swapping scara and Signora’s storylines, without any death is just too good to miss out on. How do you make a change with both a mom and troubled son and NOT have any fighting between them. + Signora’s reveal as the crimson witch wasn’t hyped up at all, or even hinted about aside from the artifact set. They basically just threw her in there for no reason
I’ve always wanted a scene with Scara confronting Ei, I don’t know if there has been one yet because I kinda left the game and are just coming back but I always thought it would be very interesting to see. Wish the Inazuma arc was written this way because it would actually make so much sense. My only question is how it would fit with the Sumeru story.
what pisses me off more is the fact that the traveler and paimon were huge dicks to furina (despite knowing the torture she went through) but went on a date with a god who literally killed so many people and was a shit ruler overall
dont forget how mad they got at lyney and lynette for being apart of the fatui! not very long after being all buddy buddy with tartles, whos a fatui harbinger
@@columbinadamselettefanWhile I can’t defend the Furina thing, Traveler is NOT “buddy-buddy” with Tartaglia. Are we forgetting when Traveler was genuinely debating ending his life after his ruin guard fight? I’d say Traveler can stand Childe due to him being an older brother but isn’t really his friend.
Honestly, Sunday from Honkai Star Rail is what Raiden could've been. They both wanted to exert control over their people for what they believed was the greater good, and both had their mind changed by us, the protagonist. Only we can tell and know that Sunday genuinely does want the best for penacony, and explicitly asked for us to show if our view of things is the better one right before battling him. Like you said at some point, Raiden's dialogue before her fight is a little contradicting since she claims to want the best for Inazuma yet fails to care about the internal strife going on. Sunday's change of mind was crystal clear, justified, and on-character, 0 disruption or lack of good pacing, and as he should, he feels no lack of remorse and is atoning for his actions as of now. Raiden's change of ideals happens just because it needs to and she feels little to no regret, doesn't really do anything to gain back the trust of her people and just goes back to "normal". It's once again a case of tell don't show for Inazuma. I just realized this while watching your video btw, very good commentary bro 👍👍
Funnily enough they pulled raiden's whole story better with fucking dead gods who we only can read about that with the character herself,where their actions actually have consequences and they aren't nerfed to "silly shy shut ins" most notably with deshret,both lose someone ver dear,become incrediblydepressed,become obsessed with something (the golden slumber and eternity respectively) begin to slowly fuck over their nation,except in one case the guy has to face the consequences and loses his life because of it but the other one gets off scott free without facing any consequences
Inazuma's lore and worldbuilding was truly what carried it throughout my entire experience doing the Archon Quest, but Hoyo really cut themselves short here by rushing Teppei and especially the ending. The only character that was even REMOTELY entertaining was Yae, since she was the only character to have something up her sleeve and this is putting the bar very low. Kokomi is also one of the biggest offender of this Archon Quest, like what do you mean the extremely smart strategist didn't know about delusions 😭😭 like bro COME ON
I feel like, considering Fatui are generally a foreign force in all Regions I have seen so far (come from afar, are very mysterious yet respected), and if I remember correctly, they are actually fought way less frequently lore-wise than we do in game, so I kinda get why Kokomi might now know about Delusions, and even if she does, is it reasonable to assume that anyone can just pick-up and use them, if Visions are all you are used to?
@@IchigoShinagami it's still stupid that supposed to be "genius strategist" is just taking some weapons from suspicious foreigners without careful investigation
Even Yae acted so strangely. She had the ability to hop into Ei's Euthymia at any time but she chose to be a passive observer of humanity, watching the people brew up their own resistance until the Traveler coincidentally came (and that's when she started acting as our lore-dumping, omniscient guide). This kinda negates the whole idea that she missed Ei cos WDYM? Why didn't you do something to see her again then? I could never like her
@@IchigoShinagami Yeah just cause someone is smart. Doesn't mean they know everything. Given, from what I recall. It was someone mysterious giving them resources to fund their war effort. Not oh hey it the fatui. Which going by the story, it seem like they were force to accept the help. To keep the war effort going. Like is there any reason to believe Kokomi would be aware of what a delusion is? Since she is busy fighting the shogun, that is like to be her main focus given it is the biggest threat currently. Unlike the player character, who has fought and dealt with the fatui countless times. So while the main character might be aware of this, there is no reason to think Kokomi might. Which when she did find out, she did do the smart thing and take the dangerous weapons away, asap. For I believe the story did talk about them having less manpower overall than the shogun. So it makes sense, to take away said weapons. Since in her position, you want to limit losses and keep your soldiers fighting for as long as possible. For you can';t replace them as easily. Which also wasn't Kokomi whole i'm smart thing, relate to tactics and warfare? Not knowledge of other cultures, while also being not so great at being a governor. Which a much better issue to take with it. Would be how little the bloody war was cover. Like was Kokomo forces close to reaching the capital? Who was winning this war? Was it lock in a slate mate, did the main character have any effect on the war effort? So much info was lacking. Due to sticking with their traditional story telling style. Which given the story they were trying to aim for, failed rather badly. This style can work, as shown in a event or two that took place after this main story quest happen. Yet it seems like they did learn later, in Sumeru. That having the point of view from more than one character, can benefit a story by helping to flesh things out. I could tell you more things about the one year war, from gundam than I could about this war.
@@f4llenleaves hell she could have prevented this entire situation 500 years ago by talking her out of the idea of making a puppet and sealing herself away to start with -_- like COME ON.
I always found it a little annoying at how easy it was for Raiden to be swayed into giving up the vision hunt decree and just giving up on her precious eternity. When we first meet Raiden she’s so ruthless and she doesn’t strike me as the kind of person to just give up so easily.
Did you completely forget that Raiden Shogun and Ei are basically two different people by the time you meet them? Raiden Shogun can rarely change her mind, as she follows a set directive. Ei on the other hand has been consistently open-minded, but what had hindered her was the isolation which made her easier to manipulate as the Fatui did such a thing.
Actually i think that makes sense as Inazuma seems to have a recurring theme of duels/contests of strength deciding matters. Its why the Duel Before The Throne exists and the original Tenryo Commissioner was chosen after a fight. We beat her in a fight fair and square so by the law of the land she has to listen to our demand. Also you can’t devalue the fact that we won because the collective will of spurned Inazumas lent out strength. It was basically like Inazuma itself rose up to take down the shogun in battle. You kinda cant ignore that kind of twist as the diety. The real crime is how everything was flipped around in a single cutscene after which everything is back to normal. Like follow through on the aftermath a bit, jeez.
@@timothykim2813 What do you mean exactly by "it's still the same"? How does this refute what I argued? If Yae Miko was there to convince the Raiden Shogun, things would not have changed otherwise she would've dealt with the issue earlier. But she couldn't, because the Raiden and Ei were two different people. Yae had to specifically speak with Ei herself, and that could not have happened without the Traveler's help to get her there.
i remember hearing someone say that if fontaine’s quest happened during the same time as inazuma’s we would have to do errands to get ready for the magic show; that’s really what made me realize how bad inazuma’s pacing was lmao
@@arcturus4762 Well yes, but i feel like at least the errands in Liyue made sense as in there was a clear goal we were working towards the whole time instead of "lets do this random thing to kill time" and overall i think it was an alright way to let us get to know and connect with Zhongli before the final reveal.
The way i was hoping the raiden took responsibility for all that mess she caused , yet the quest wanted us to think ooouh look shes cute she dont know what camera is ! Look she has. Sad past !
I WISH hoyo created characters who just aren’t redeemable and who traveler isn’t necessarily friends with. They don’t have to redeem every character to make them playable, I’m sure there’s plenty of ppl who will still pull like me who is a villains enjoyer. This kind formula is really damaging to the writing of every hoyo game, not just Genshin. It limits the potential for a character writing and their analysis and ultimately makes them so boring imo
@@KingEmiya2023 yeah her story quest was weird when they wasted her first on date quest like ….you tried to kill me sec ago why am i strolling the city with you ?
She did…. She took responsibility and fought for her new ideal for 500 years. Her first story quest was about her going outside and experiencing an ever changing inazuma and starting to redefine what eternity means.
The Vision Hunt Decree and an antagonistic archon was such an interesting concept and could have been an amazing storyline. What I wish the writers did was to add a realistic narrative where Ei would face the consequences of her actions, see the suffering of her people, and rectify her mistakes IN THE SAME ARCHON QUEST. All we got was that the traveler beat her and she was forced to comply with their request to end the Vision Hunt. We got a lot of build up on the devastation caused by the civil war, yet the ending didn’t even acknowledge it. Like what the hell was that? Her 1st story quest made it seem like “Oh, we beat the Raiden Shogun and now we’re cool” and everything is copacetic. Oh, and she was easily forgiven by everyone??? Too many loose ends.
Yeah but sumeru and Fontaine was better but I’m waiting to see natlan snezhnaya khaneri’ah celestia and the sea of flowers at the end because I would consider 7 nations I mention is the would have better writing and I also complained that Inazuma map size is too small and not as a big as liyue and mondstadt not to mention the level design had so much smaller, linear and emphasis on verticality but part 3 of genshin story so far sumeru starts off small and liner with so much verticality, but you further progress through sumeru it gets bigger and open ended, but I’m hoping that by the time we get to khaneri’ah It will be big in open ended, and the battle will be so large and celestial. It is straight out pulled from mondstadt and liyue.
I still can't believe that they didn't capitalise on the perfect set up of Sara's vision being brought about by her loyalty to her Archon. Shes the damn general of the army and would, sooner or later, have to give up her Vision to the statue...and in the process lose that very loyalty that earned her a place at the Shoguns side. An jnevitable consequence of Ei's...pretry unexplained hatred of Visions would probably have been the defection of her freaking general if the Travellor hadnt somehow fixed everything before it reached that point, why cluldnt we have seen that? Why couldn't something so interesting and perfectly set up have been used to start to make her see the flaws in her plan, she loves eternity so much yet she's the one changing everything for the worse, that would jave been so cool! Or Scaramouche getting to confront her, or Kokomi's connecrion to dragons being how we're introduced to the idea of the Dragon sovreigns even if we only learn more through Nahidas second story quest and Neuvilette's whole story. Ayato has a freaking ninja team running around doing his bidding and rather than anything fun or nteresting coming of it we get Sayu...existing, and get told hes definitely doing important stuff off screen, and thats it! If anything he could be ON screen and still responsible for awesome stuff happeninv off screen with the ninjas at his beck and call, why did we lose out on so much potential and instead get a wasted hour reiterating that the Vision hunt decree is bad, several low-stakes dates with girls who dont do much in the story, and the whole mess with Teppei?! I just...dont get how they missed the potential goldmine of drama and gave us...that
The problem is that the story was too ambition for it's allotment of time and writing quality .Also Genshin at this point was still struggling with the need to advertise new characters even if not doesn't make which caused a lot of time wasting with characters that have little involvement with the plot. Like Yomiya is a cool character 10/10 waifu but they worked her into the plot horribly. Same with Sayu. Story would have benefited from focusing on Kazuha, Goro, Sara and Kokomi more and introducing Yae earlier
Fun thing is, Yoimiya at least is the one that tries to contribute to the Inazuma Archon Quest. But yeah... Characters like Ayaka on the other hand 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬
Okay, I remember it being bad, but I never thought it was THIS BAD. We were forced and manipulated to fight against the Shogun, meet the Resistance who are just chilling, then the most random, easily forgotten NPC dies, then the gremlin yaps, then Hot Fox Lady tells us to fight the Shogun again, and finally we win through the power of friendship. The worst part is that Raiden was quickly forgive even though she didn't care about her people on the first place, and now in her place is a waifu that Hoyo really forced her VA to make an extremely kawaii voice in order to sell... The best part about Inazuma is truly when it finishes lmao. Although the Narukami World Quest was nice, probably better than the main story.
Tsurumi Island and Enkanomiya were the ones that brought back hope to the story for me. Those two were how you tell stories- from the environment, back story, lore and the general vibes of the place.
Not trying to justify Ei's catastrophic blunders, but she did care towards her nation as a whole. Its just that her previous method is incredibly faulty due to her being blinded by trauma.
There’s also the fact that visions getting stolen was supposedly a huge deal, made people lose their will or whatever, but the statue they were placed on seems to be kind of unguarded?? Like Itto and his gang were just able to take his vision back no problem?
@@Cecilias You're actually right I didn't notice that before haha. But that still raises a lot of questions, like why tf did they spend so much manpower just to take Itto's vision for seemingly no reason? was it cause they wanted to arrest him and that's the standard protocol? If so, it's still really weird that anyone could just walk up to the statue and take the visions, like it's so informal. I watched over his trailer again and noticed there's another vision next to Itto's on the statue, so it's not just happening to him, which seems so weird to me idk maybe I'm just overthinking 😅
Not to mention, it was treated as such an important plot but guess who never finds out what happens to those who have their visions stolen? Ei never finds out about the consequences about taking away visions from vision holders. NOT EVEN THE TRAVELLER TELLS HER ABOUT IT. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF SHOWING ALL THOSE PEOPLE THAT WERE SUFFERING FROM THEIR LACK OF A VISION AND NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT??!
@@Cynicalhamptur bc she doesnt care. in her quest she literally says rip bozo not giving the vision back ik the fatui's are distributing dellusions but who told them to trust wacky visions.
@@Cynicalhamptur We are never given an answer as to why the hell the visions were a threat for her so called "eternity" bullshit, its never addressed nor any of the fuckery she has done for her nation. It makes it look like prior to meeting Miko on the last scene seem like a total waste of time with all the importance they were giving it. Just another byproduct of Inazuma's crappy writting.
As someone who started playing Genshin early December in 4.2 and ending the whole Archon Quest in mid March, this is very noticably the worst written Archon Quest in many ways. Mondstadt, Liyue and Sumeru aren't written perfectly either. Even in Fontaine you can find flaws for example Act 3. But the weird pacing, concentration on NPCs and less usage of actual playable Characters compared to the other regions make it feel worse than the other ones. Everytime I hear someone say "Inazuma was the Best" "Inazuma was peak Genshin" "Genshin falls off since Sumeru" I know that these people did not revisit or played the Archon Quest after Sumeru and Fontaine came out and look at Inazuma with their pink-hearted nostalgia
You forget that Genshin is a video game, not a book. When people say, "Inazuma was peak Genshin" they mean the exploration, new enemies and puzzles, not the story. Everyone disliked the story but the gameplay more than made up for it. Its much better than the desert area of Sumeru, that area fucking sucked.
@@maras00jr49 help inazuma was literally the worst when it comes to puzzles too, some of them were even rng and enemies were so annoying to fight (spectres especially, they had to nerf them sm)
Tbh I've been playing off and on since 1.1, I was VERY active when Inazuma came out, I literally passed the whole first part on the update's day, and was pissed that I had to wait for the next Version to finish it. I don't think Sumeru is worse than Inazuma, haven't reached Fontaine, but it doesn't sound like it is either, I just really, REALLY love Inazuma, it is still my favourite region and my favourite storyline, even if it was probably worse when we measure it by more objective standards.
Inazuma shine in world building and lore from world quests and Inazuma was a jump in exploration as we went from fields and mountains to every being insane and trying to kill us.
I went through the entire Inazuma arc super fast so I didn't catch a lot of this, but there was a constant presence of "Oh, so we're doing this now? That's how we're supposed to feel? Okay." It just felt like the quest was dragging the player through it instead of actually getting them invested.
Also I hated Teppei. I thought it was a me issue at first, but once the Traveler went on their whole "grr, revenge" thing I lost any and all suspension of disbelief. Like I do NOT care about this random guy who followed us around like a puppy for a bit then went and got himself killed. We get so mad at the Fatui when Teppei really did it to himself, he's one of the first casualties from the delusions and he kept jumping headfirst into situations he knew he couldn't handle. Like I'm positive he would've made it had he just learned to chill a little bit more and not act so brazenly. He got an eyeroll at best when he passed.
@@StingingNettle47 Doesn't help that we saw him 3-4 times. All of them short little waste of time scenes where he acted suicidal. I care about Teppei about as much as the cat on serei island that Neko keeps making me look for. Konbumaru or something.
The thing I liked best about the entire Inazuma plot line was everything involving Kazuha, from his dead friend, his personal lore, to him parrying the shogun while using two visions. He is great. Frankly, giving MC vibes and I loved him. I hated everything about Ritou, the Kamisato clan, and Watatsumi Island. Kokomi didn’t even do anything, she just showed up. It felt like she had SO much potential Ritou dragged on. It went on for SO long, and running around for all those NPCs (that Hoyo seems to care deeply about since one of them hijacked Ayato’s story quest) was exhausting. I didn’t care for the dates with Yoimiya and Ayaka. Like… maybe if they had come at a later point, I might have liked them. But I REALLY did not care. They slowed down the story for me. Yoimiya’s second story however is amazing and I legit got teary eyed. You nailed everything about Ayaka. Like… I understand that her character on a deeper level is about misogyny and expectations for a Japanese princess… but at the same time it felt like she existed to be another waifu in love with the traveler. I think Ayaka fell victim to the bad writing big time. Someone else pointed out Scara as well, and I’d like to second that. He was a cameo that should have been more. The most vital information about him was given to us through a missable conversation with Miko at the very end. Honestly, I feel like in the story of Inazuma, they should have gone all the way with Scara, or not have given us that bit of his lore at all. It felt like a half assed way to introduce him and foreshadow his importance, especially when his connection to Ei was basically a throw away line
Kazuha was the best part of the archon quest, in my opinion. He's still one of my favourite characters and quite iconic out of all characters due to fighting against a god. I kind of want Raiden Ei to continue being antagonistic, considering her redemption was so rubbish. I like the fact Kazuha still can't properly forgive her, which was hinted in one of the events after.
Interestingly, in the most recent Inazuma-based event (Arataki Itto's Rock-'n-Roll Festival) there is an interesting reveal that ties a lot of problems of Inazuma's Archon Quest together in an attempt to fix what otherwise doesn't make much sense. (There's a CatWithABlueHat video that perfectly explains it, but I'll try to summarize it as good as possible) Basically, the event phrased it so, that a 'dog' saved countless other 'animals' during the time when the Shogunate's army and Resistance were at war. So, the Kamisato Clan and Resistance were working together during the war, but behind closed doors. As we see with Kamisato Ayato's most significant characteristic, he is the type of person who lays low and doesn't inherently act out in the open, and is able to utilize the Shuumatsuban as well. After all, the Kamisato Clan is part of the Yashiro Commission, which means that they can't simply help the Resistance as they can't outright oppose the Tri-Commission and the Shogun too. Thus they had to keep things under wraps as much as possible. Soon after, the International Trade Association (which I'll shorten as ITA) - which we deal with at the start of the Inazuma Archon Quest - works together with Komore Teahouse, and created the "Puppy Union", an operation to help rescue "pets" during the war. The ITA had bonds with Sangonomiya, whilst Komore Teahouse had its ties with the Yashiro Commission, and both parties were 'led' by a 'puppy'. Taroumarou for Kommore Teahouse, and Gorou from the Resistance. This also makes it likely as to why the Kanjou Commission was so hostile towards the ITA. But the Commission couldn't outright expose the ITA, as it could expose their collaborations with the Fatui in return. This also greatly clarifies Thoma's personal involvement, and as to why he is regarded as Inazuma's "fixer". He is the first person we meet in the nation thanks to Beidou, the first person he introduces us to is the head of the ITA (Kurisu) and with the Traveler's help, indirectly he made it so the Traveler aided the Puppy Union in turn. Ayaka's story quest also involves her directly assisting Kurisu, but speaks in a manner as to not raise suspicion. She knew exactly how to help him out without him exposing the truth about them being in cahoots as well. Yes the quest isn't good and a total drag, but the way she actually helped him out, clarifies an extra thing regarding the secret bond between the ITA and the Yashiro Commission. Strange that all of this crucial information was hidden in a temporary event that is no longer available though.
Right. This bit of information would've really helped explain a lot of actions happening through Inazuma. IMO, this would've been a perfect plotline for Ayato's SQ when he released as it would've helped tie up those loose ends and it fits in with his character in how he likes to pull strings in the shadows. Unfortunately what's been done is done but at least the devs can expand on things they didn't get to show in the Inazuma AQ to rectify it to an extent. But it is annoying how most of these pieces of information are lost by these limited-time events. I really wish Genshin had a system like HSR so that new players can experience and learn the amazing things that we older players have. I am of the opinion that Kazuha's storyline in GAA was better than his actual SQ and would much rather new players see the GAA version over the SQ.
WAITTT this is so interesting. You know, I kind of understand why some people dislike that post Sumeru, Archon quests are longer and 5 acts in total instead being a little too long (which with Hoyo’s bad writing tendencies is a bad combo) but considering how MUCH info there is in each nation’s problem, I understand the increased length. I’m being so honest when I said this singular comment made me more interested in Inazuma’s AQ than the AQ itself.
She didnt know it was the fatui. She didnt even know what they were using were delusions until teppei died and we found out, after that she quit using them@@pon9035
This event came SO long after the Inazuma Archon Quest released that the cynical part of me thinks they didnt actually have any of this in mind when they wrote it, and instead came up with a way to combine some retcons with a popular type of event that hadnr happened in a while. And while im glad they took the time to make their playable characters actually play a role instead of only focusinb on NPCs, and make them seem less incompetent than the AQ made them out to be, it still feels tacked on? The resistance is already openly opposing the Shogun and her decrees, why the need for THIS much secrecy on their end of the rescues other than to give a reason that nobody told even us about it while the war was still happening, you know? Again, i like this idea of the ones we always knew were the good guys trying to help people actually having a functional way to work together to achieve that, but when i really think about it...i can take it or leave it. It doesnt add that much, doesnt tell us anything new, just provides some evidence that what we were supposed to think about them all was accurate, and it feels like an info dump was slapped onto a rhythm game event that they couldn't think of a full story for, which shatters any idea that maybe they knew what they were doing during the AQ after all 😅
feels so weird how at first raiden is such a strict ruler who knows and controls everything and then she's like um im shy and i miss my friend um yeah sure u can call the decree off okay :( i go try boba now cya
literally fell in love with raiden in general because i thought she would be a “villain” i was so upset when they dumbed her down to appeal to a very obvious type of audience
@@Gogetamain true but we expected to see more of ei being very decisive, cold and smart, whereas that persona is thrown away in the form of her puppet and we meet the real, soft, clueless archon! poor her, she's just an introvert, the war wasn't even what she wanted >o< !
That same case can be made with anyone. If you think they are just doing this for fan service. Take Neuvillette, for example. He talks smack about the Archons, creates a strong demeanor, but what we are shown is a helpless sovereign who is completely useless without his authority. Even after getting his authority, he relies on the Traveler to beat the Narwhal. A complete crybaby, it doesn't fit the sovereign persona at all. Even Furina, to some extent. At first, she is very arrogant and uses sharp words like nothing, but later on, it slowly goes to the same trope: "It's not the real me, you silly." I'm yours typical shipping ahh waifu / husbando
The main issue I had back then and even now is what was the point of the statue. They put so much emphasis on the vision hunt but what was it for? From what I remember the whole idea was given to Ei by the fatui and she just went "yeah, sure". I really thought the reason for the vision collecting was that Ei could use it as some sort of power up or something to fight Celestia or at least do something but no. Maybe I remember wrong but even if I do the storytelling was so bad I can't help it lol
Yeah this is a hidden plot point that you will only understand in hindsight the reason why Ei was taking visions from people is because visions tie people to Celestia and fate of the world and Ei wanted to break free from Celestia's influence in every way. so the assumption is that her plan was something like Rene and Remus had with their hivemind will project, not sure exactly what Ei was trying to do with statue of omnipresent god but it is most certainly is connected to what i mention. i guess we might learn fully when we will find out more about Istaroth. hell even Sacred Sakura plotline doesn't make 100% sense until recently with all the loom of fate explanation that makes you realize that by planting sacred sakura, Inazuma actually broke free from Heavenly principles and its fate, Makoto even says so in Ei 2nd story quest. but at that time we didn't know what it really meant.
Ei said it was because humans lives were short enough as it is, and that a vision is too much power for them. Similar to Teppei dying from his delusion. Opposite to Scara's thoughts. There's also some lore theories about Celestia connections and fate that we might learn more about later.
my biggest complain is Ei's pov. her sister died (as many others??) so she locked herself in her head not caring that her people are dying. literally what the. and then the community will try to analyse the hell out of her actions to justify her. no, she's just extremely bad written. hence, my least favorite archon. am i supposed to sympathise with her bc of her sister? xiao and zhongli lost all their friends in the archon war and the khaenrian war and they still haven't given up on liyue. even venti still watches over mondstad in the shadows.
@@IchigoShinagamiit’s completely understandable for a human like me and you but i’m just so disappointed that she let her nation go at war and didn’t care because of her grief
@@doveskiss8 she didnt know about war tho, and it was directly mentioned in quests that corrupt comissions didnt pass the infromation about it to raiden. So noone was letting the nation go, it was just a case of misinfromation/lack of understanding.
@@doveskiss8 The gods of Tevyat are surprisingly no different than human. They aren't omnipotent and omniscient, and thus can make mistakes just as normal humans do.
Tbh the whole ending of Inazuma story looked like Rabtoon joke they made in ffiv paradody. Ei: - OH! I AM EVIL! Yae: - Stop being evil! [poof] Ei: - I am NO LONGER evil! Like wtf? I also had many many arguments with people who said "Raiden apologized in her second story quest!", yeah, she kinda did, to the Traveler and not her people. That's not what we wanted. "She's a god! She doesn't need to apologize!", yeah, but she's also a ruler, who is responsible for her people, if she was just a god, she could stop being a ruler and give responsibility to some one else, but no. "People forgave her, because she's a god and they admire her!", wow, that's a cult my friend, so you're saying that she can kill your family in front of you and you'll forgive her because boobs- i mean you admire her? That's messed up in so many ways, lmao. "She helped all the victims! Just read messages on the boards in city!", and why i should read some outsource material, that is not present in the main story quest, again? This is so bad. But i guess nothing will work on people who are sold for pretty face, booba-sword and short bathroom robe. At least i respect people who are honest that they like Raiden for her meta gameplay, booba-sword and other minor reasons because waifu gaming and all. That's admirable. I also noticed another plot hole after replaying story quest three times: Yae had an entry pass and she didn't give it to us because... reasons, the whole section with Sayu and following Sara wouldn't happen i guess. Not many people remember this shit, so i'll elaborate a bit on this matter. At the beginning of the first Raiden story quest Yae gives us the entry pass to Teshoukaku. Apparently she always had it, but used it just now. Meaning she always had a free entry to the place and decided not to use it herself, not to give it to resistance, not to give it to Ayaka, and not to give it to us, when the Traveler visited her first time. But after the whole thing she just "take it and go visit Ei", wtf? Lady, if you had that thing on you all the time why didn't you share it? Also if Ayaka and Yae and Kokomi were technically on the same side all the time, why they didn't communicate in any way? And the icing on the cake, why Yae never talked to Ei? She could freely enter the Teshoukaku anyway, so what's the problem? Some people said that "it's because she knew that Ei was stubborn, she tells about it in the second Raiden story quest", yeah, but assuming smth (no matter how good you know someone) and trying to speak with the person (no matter how pointless it would be) ARE DIFFERENT THINGS! "I tried to reason with her but she wouldn't listen" and "i decided not to try speaking with her because i knew she won't listen" hits different. When i went through all those quests again and again i just couldn't find Yea likable in any way. Lazy, irresponsible beatch, that's who she is. But yet again, people only see short dress, sussiness, mommy vibes and nothing more. Who cares about character if it sells well for all the wrong reasons, right? Well, whatever. If you feel offended by the opinion of a random person on internet my condolences. If you like those characters i have nothing against you personally, but objectively speaking the story was bad, the presentation of these characters was bad, and trying to defend that is like lying to yourself. It's ok to like unlikable characters, but don't try to justify their actions pls. Thank you. Term "guilty pleasure" exist, use it.
So you say she didn’t do something but when told that she did you “can’t bother” because it wasn’t screamed in your face. Genshin is an exploration game so it expects you to dig for bits of world building to make the world feel more alive. Plus she was never even she just misunderstood what eternity means due to loss and didn’t want her nation to fall.
@@burstlogic3457 you do understand that some people play the game for other reasons than exploration, right? Also there's no legitimate proof that she did help victims, because the person who said that refused to give any proofs. And tbh i never was found of this "dig for lore" thingy in games, because i came to PLAY the game, not read a Wikipedia. And i still firmly believe that all crucial information about the main plot and consequences of it should be presented through the main story with dialogs and events between characters. SHOW ME HOW SHE HELPED VICTIMS, DON'T WRITE ABOUT IT ON SOME RANDOM PIECE OF PAPER! This is a basic story telling rules for christ sake. I don't care that what she likes to eat and read, i want to see her caring and helping her people, like Nahida did for example. And stop justifying the genocide with her kind of sad backstory. "Oh she lost her friends and sister, and that's why she killed thousands of innocent people". And, i remind you, she didn't even apologized publicly. This is just disgusting. What a piece of trash.
@@atomicgrave4340 1. Then just say that that gameplay style isn’t for you. but don’t say it’s bad overall just because it doesn’t align with how you play games. 2. It wasn’t genocide it was a civil war where death happens on both ends. 3. Raiden wasn’t involved in the war and didn’t start it either that was Watatsumi island. 4. And even then the war would have been over way sooner if they took more effort into espionage. It took the traveler, a firework, and a ninja who sleeps on the job to get the proper knowledge needed to bypass the tenryo commission and speak straight to Ei which she even said she’d be willing to talk about it as long as needed. They could’ve done that and had the whole problem resolved before the traveler even made it to Inazuma. I’m guessing that they still had spite over orobashi so instead of acting on a way to solve the problem faster they just created a prolonged war. So I blame the resistance for that.
@@burstlogic3457 1. this is the most stupid take i've heard. If you don't know how the proper storytelling should be done, don't start the argument, you sound ridiculous. 2. It's still a genocide, because she allowed it to happen, she knew what was going on and did nothing, she started the war by creating a vision hunt decree. It her responsibility! 3. The resistance is responsible only for their own stupidity, instead of finding information about other resistance forces (Ayaka or Yae), they acted on their own. I also blame Yae for not reaching out to resistance at all, even though she HAD FUCKING ENTRY PASS TO TESHOUKAKU! They didn't need Sayu or anyone else, if only Yae would lift her lazy ass and do something about the situation. But believe what you want to believe. I don't care. I spoke my position, and there's nothing you can do, i won't change my opinion. Because that's how I see it. And if it offends you in any way, i already said in the first post: my condolences, grow up.
Another thing missing in the quest: Kamisato Ayato He is supposed to be the head of the Kamisato Clan, he is often mentioned and given importance, and we never even meet him! Later in a UA-cam video we are told he «actually» was helping from the shadows Ajá
yeah i really think we shouldve met him and not ayaka, or met him though ayaka in the aq. he was mentioned so many times, and played such a massive role in the archon quest, yet we never meet him
@@roxy5079 I have the theory they were still altering his design when Inazuma launched, I was interested in his character and was alert to information but there where zero leaks, descriptions or anything until he was about to be released
Genshin was such mess in inazuma i genuinely belive they still didn't have a 3d model for him, would explain why his ult is a little bland compared to other 5 stars
Why can't she be a strong leader and like dango milk? I don't see how that took away from her character what she was doing was wrong and she realized that.
she still is though? the second half of her *first* story quest focuses on her setting the Tenryou Commission straight and putting her foot down, and her second story quest goes deeper into her resolve to be a better ruler, better herself as a person, and reflecting on her wrongdoings. And then some appearances in limited time events where you can see the gradual progess she's making. The fact you *find out* about her sweet tooth doesn't detract from that
What redemption? Lol. Ignoring all the harm she has caused because she's pretty and traumatized isn't redemption. It's even weirder that the characters affected are not at least a little bit resentful for what she did?
Honrstly her second story quest was perfectly fine as is. It's her first story "quest" (if you can even call it that) that should be removed completely. You can have her mention that she secretly loves sweets in an offhand line of dialogue, just don't write the whole effing quest around it.
@@AverageWagie maybe not removed entirely, but changed and swapped orders and modified to make it about her character development and not pure fan service.
You didn’t mention the worst part Back in 2.0 before we had Act 3, it was basically impossible to use one of the main teleport waypoints in Inazuma City because we were wanted and we had to wait 6 whole weeks just to freely walk around the city Minor nitpick yes but god it was so annoying
@@KingEmiya2023 Hoyo can’t be very open with their queer characters (see: honkai impact 3rd manga had to remove a panel of two girls kissing) so they imply things about some characters. For example, yae, yae miko is based on the honkai impact 3rd character yae sakura (who is a lesbian), she and raiden ei have marriage anklets and have been close for at least 500 years etc. if you want a more detailed explanation i recommend E’s videos on queer coding and queer characters in genshin
@@Audentes_Fortuna_Iuvet I personally believe she teases everyone no matter female/male she even teases raiden. You can make arguments for her being either pan or asexual.
After the archon quest I was atleast expecting Ei to get consequences. But nooooo she just walks around and ppl r just afraid of her bcuz she’s powerful n stuff. Like, I get it, you’re an archon, but brave people exist and I feel like nothing happening afterwards to Ei kinda made the quest seem a bit pointless.
What I’ve always heard in defense of her is how she’s protected the nation for 2000+ years, so the people forgave her because they were all told she was manipulated. And because what she’s done for them, far outweighs the negatives. But even then it’s hard for me to see myself liking her
Because people who are blinded by Ei or are diehard fanboys will find any excuse to save the tyranny she has given to its people, not realizing she was never tricked. she knew what was going up but choose to do nothing about it because "it pose no threat to her eternity vision", which is a lot of bullshit, sure thing, and i suppose people starving, going into crisis, scammers, corruption and being extracted from having a vision was a great choice. Flipping the whole nation upside down is such a positive point. People will always try to invent an excuse to save her lazy ass writting.
@@unoreversecard1761 yeah i mean in logic, there are always people who will go against power. it happens all the time, and there is no reason someone wouldnt do it in genshin. a perfect opportunity for a confrontation would be in her first story quest, while we were walking though the street. someone could come up and express their anger for it. even better, the npc in question couldve gone though something a bit like what ei went thought 500 years ago. something to really impact her and make her realize that what she did was messed up, and caused so much of the pain that she suffered though herself. idk maybe there is still a chance for it to happen in an upcoming event, but i doubt it. they missed their chance, and i cant help but feel sad about it.
@@roxy5079 felt that 100%. On Reddit there are plenty of people who wish she would’ve seen people she hurt in her story quests. For a character who’s trying to be more connected with her people, they should’ve taken the opportunity to you know… actually show someone who was hurt because of her. People who died because of their visions being taken away, people who tried to leave the country and got hit by lightning. But nah… apparently Hoyo thought it was better writing to show her dango and light novels rather than her victims.
Personally I loved the Traveler here the most, ppl might say they were "out of character" when they didn't want to help the ppl of Inazuma but the problem is they immediately heard about us and WANTED us to play hero, of course we'll say no. And personally Traveler was still upset about the Venti thing when it came to Signora, I hated her for that too. We wanted to fight her AT Liyue but Paimon said not too but we wanted to fight her, so them challenging her just seems like we finally got what we wanted since Mondstadt. I remember the writer for Inazuma left mid of the story so they had to rush or whatever which is the main reason it was a disaster. But I'll still say I enjoyed it and certain moments still makes me hyped about it even tho it wasn't that great.
In short, the traveler got into a conflict that it really shouldnt had been their business, which it might be why they seemed a little pissed. This story just wanted to clamp a lot of things together but they failed to even give a proper development
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 we saw it briefly in Fontaine as they didn’t want anything to do with Navia initially. But yeah doesn’t happen all to often. But the way Natlan frames it, Aether/Lumine are hyper-focusing on finding their sibling instead of actually experiencing the journey.
ik im late to this comment, but yh its very obv that those soldiers are suffering pretty serious repercussions thanks to the delusions. the mirror maidens skin is grey, nearing blue tones. thats the first one to comes to mind, but its a well known lore fact that delusions are super bad for humans to use. i dont know if this is canon, but i remember reading somewhere that the delusion holders we see have a tolerance, or are trained to withstand its effects little better, but i cant verify that information so dont take my word for it
Not to mention the absolute horrible addition of Signora. She’s mentioned once before, and she doesn’t even fit timeline wise. She’s not mentioned at all, shows up at the end, and she’s forced into a duel just to die. Even in the rules traveler goes “I challenge you to a duel” before Signora can say anything raiden goes “proceed” and Signora reiterates the rules of said duel. Not to mention the dialogue line “for the people of liyue you imperiled” when it was literally completely Zhongli. So not only did the traveler take his anger out on Signora, but then on top of that, Scaramouche should’ve been the boss instead of Signora. Scaramouche is the one with ties to raiden and the amount of potential via swapping scara and Signora’s storylines, without any death is just too good to miss out on. How do you make a change with both a mom and troubled son and NOT have any fighting between them. + Signora’s reveal as the crimson witch wasn’t hyped up at all, or even hinted about aside from the artifact set. They basically just threw her in there for no reason
Signora was the one who made people suffer in Inazuma though. Play this quest again and you will see. Scara also says he just take orders and he is not the one who is giving delusions to people like that. Signora made people suffer, for sure and traveler couldn’t take it anymore after what happened in Mondsyadt and Liyue. And in that place there wasn’t another thing to do since both Raiden and Signora was against Traveler. Also in Raiden boss fight traveler says I’m not here to debate your ideas, I’m here to demolish them clearly shows how traveler found the way of dealing at the end other than philosophical discussion of what eternity means with Raiden. Signora also speaks as If people are nothing at the beginning of the fight, she is indeed gone to the point of that just to make Tsaritsa’s goals done in any way possible.
@@zeynepy8607 lmao. Both scara and Signora mention they aren’t in charge of the delusion factory, even in the lore it suggests a higher rank like Pierro to be running it. Scaramouche manufactured the delusions while Signora was sent for diplomacy and to get the gnosis, because she’s better at that. It was extremely poor writing and it was more traveler taking his aggression out on Signora after Scaramouche got teppei killed
@@zeynepy8607 “traveler couldn’t take it anymore after what happened in mondstadt and liyue” you mean where zhongli intentionally lets all this go down and Signora just shows at the end for the gnosis? Tartaglia summoned osial, not Signora, and in mondstadt she was perfectly just to do what she did considering venti basically caused her lovers death
@@TheCrimsonWitchofFlames Venti did not cause the death of Signora's lover. First, we don't entirely know about Venti during the cataclysm, other than he woke up because he was needed & that he fought Durin with Dvalin in Dragonspine. Second, Rostam was a Knight who was fighting against the abyssal monsters which is how he died To be in such a position, where battles are likely to happen, there is always a possibility of dying. Though I guess it can be argued that Venti didn't save him but we don't know what he was doing aside from killing Durin but even if he was helping the knights, he couldn't save everyone. The archons aren't even omnipresent. Saving everyone from death is impossible, Signora's lover wasn't the only person who died during the cataclysm. Also, people do tend to blame such things on gods because they are supposed to be divine & powerful, Signora would have obviously blamed Venti for Rostam's death in her grief
@@Natoreo Its pretty much psychological stuff, Signora couldn't bear that her husband died and instead of accepting it because she couldn't do anything to save him, she blamed it on the circumstances, or well in our case the archon. I myself dont know much about psychology, but some people i know told me this lol
I feel like the vision hunt decree was SUCH a cool idea and then it got fumbled so bad. Like when we went to the statue of the omnipresent god I was so shook Thoma was just wandering around? With his vision on display? Like boy theyre gonna fucking GET YOU. Like i thought it would make sense for people in positions of power to keep theri visions but normal people? Like Thoma? They should have been the first targeted, and when there was noone left to defend them BOOM Ayato and Ayaka get smacked. Could have been a great criticism on how wealth and power protect people from consequences. Even Sara could have been cooler, imagine the god you love and idolise and FIGHT for suddenly turns and decides to take the one thing most important to you. Do you give it up to her in a display of complete servitude and obedience like that guy in the bible who (almost) sacraficed his own son. Or does the hooror of your soulless empty future without a vision scare you so much youre forced to rebel, to switch sides to the army youve spent years slaughtering for the god youve now abandoned. Also why was Raiden even taking visions? Like I feel it was probably addressed but I dont even remember. Then would have been the perfect time to introduce the fact that the heavenly priciples are asleep, making The hydro archons execution even more scary because we know the heavenly principles could be woekn up if something big enough happened. If Raiden took peoples visions to stop them ascendgin to lvl 100 and awakening the heavnely priciples it would have made her motivations somewhat sympathetic cause like, yeah, thats pretty scary ngl. Also we know now Kokomi and Ayato were working together to save people in areas of conflict but what about smuggling out vision holders? What if when Sara decides to rebel we have to smuggle her out? IDK man I just feel like so many cool ideas were set up in Inazuma but literally none of them panned out well.
I get that Ei and Raiden are not the same, but I absolutely hate how they used it as a get-out-of-jail-free-card. I hate it for many reasons. One, Raiden was a more interesting character. Her evil actions being motivated by her ambition of eternity is original. It makes for an interesting villain. Two, nothing about how this works is clear. Was the puppet a perfect replica of Ei? If so, why did Ei change her mind so quickly at the end, with no real reason? If not, then why would Ei leave the puppet in charge, never checking in to see what she was doing? Or maybe she DID check (that one contradictory line again) and she just didn’t care. Which brings us back to: why would she then change her mind? Three, I deeply hate how suddenly, at the end of the quest, and in the subsequent story quests, absolutely everyone is fine with Ei. « Oh but she isn’t Raiden, she didn’t do the evil stuff » She was still a negligent leader. When Zhongli retired, he made sure humans would be fine without him. When Ei fucked off to her realm, she left a psycho puppet in her place. « Oh but the war didn’t affect them, only few people are vision holders anyways » Yeah, bullshit. First, vision holders have friends and families, so you’re already expanding the amount of people affected, and also, some people just have empathy for others. Some people have principles. Plus, ain’t no way a civil war isn’t fucking up everybody’s lives, including the ones that aren’t directly involved. You’d get supply issues, civilian casualties caught in the crossfire, a hostile environment where people all suspect each other of being rebels/revolutionaries/spies. And did everyone forget inazuman borders were closed? People were essentially trapped. All that to say I don’t believe for a single second there would be no resentment. If you’d told me there were two sides, people who were still loyal to her and people who hated her, I would be fine with that. If you’d told me people were pretending to like her because they were scared of her, fine. But genuine awe? Hell nah.
@books2438 Yeah, the issue lies with this, why would Ei think that leaving an emtionless puppet be in control of sentinent people was a good idea? I have no idea what she was smoking because it doesnt matter what route you choose, it makes her look as a terrible leader, leaving whats basically an AI in power or knowing anything what's happening outside and yet not doing anything just makes her character stand in a bad position. Not to mention, then if she abolished the Sakoku Decree just like that at the very end, it means that at any given moment she was capable of just saying "Okay fam". The problem is that people try to justify her awful actions by trying to use the "complex" character excuse or "it was the puppet". Her decisions did damage Inazuma and third parties, business, foreigns, corruption, a terrible hazardous enviroment as we saw on the islands, visions being stolen because they posed a "threat to eternity" and the most important one, people losing their lives on the battlefield, which extends the pains of anyone close to them, not just the vision bearers. This in turn makes her saying that it hurts her the loss of lives ends up being in such a terrible joke.
@@BeholdTheGaiaForce Exactly! It’s like the didn’t know what the hell they wanted to go with, so they just added stuff here and there that would make Ei look better but it just brings up more questions. Like you said, why couldn’t she stop everything sooner? Well, because she was negligent I guess.
@@books2438 Inazuma was in a constant tug and release from what i remember hearing. Hence why the story writting is actual ass in here, as some people have said, everything becomes so meaningless until you meet Miko on the last stretch of the quest, making everything we went through almost as non-existent, leaving more questions and the abrupt ending being the icing on the cake to end the chapter in such a bitter note. Ei's character suffered the most from this, since she ended up being pretty much a neglecting leader whose words dont match her actions.
Yea, my biggest issue was just the plot conveniences completely ruining the established characters, who they are, why they are that way, and what they're capable of. I liked the finale with kazuha parrying the shogun after the battle before the throne, but then suddenly the power of other visions and friendship somehow allow us to win. If it was better established how thay even came to happen, then yea maybe, but even in the case with Kazuha, he had an intimate connection with his friend's vision, and had an awakening of his own in the moment where he parried the shogun. The traveler just somehow harnessed the power of the visions on the statue to win against the shogun. I didnt like how unsubtle the pressuring to get the traveler to even start this whole rebellion with them was, like there were far better ways to show that the shogun was unreasonable and needed to be defeated in some way that WASNT giving us way too many details about 3 npc visions users who will never matter in the story again, just for all of that to tell us something we already knew. I honestly think it wouldve been cooler if we helped 3 actual inazuman playable characters who had their visions and ambitions taken, so we can see how much suffering has been caused to characters that we'll actually end up caring about in the end. A sad Kirara, Yoimiya, and/or maybe even Itto would've made for a really interesting story where we help get their visions back, build a relationship, AND get more people to help the rebellion. But that one's just me wanting less npc bull
The resistance came out of nowhere after the signora fight and they tried to patch up that plot hole through trailers for Ayato (who came out AFTER the archon quest was complete) where he said “i have to do a favor for my little sister”
Honestly the entire Inazuma quest pissed me off. The way the game makes you fight Ei after fighting Signora, the pacing, and Ei. Don’t get me started on Ei. I guess she’ll never learn that HER ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. BECAUSE SHE GETS *NONE.* Sumeru was a huge step up. Thank you
@@jjilatt123you mean that battle with the puppet? That honestly felt like way more of a feat of strength and will than an actual punishment… Ei sounded “hurt/winded” for 2 lines then was just talking and acting like normal a few seconds later.
@@unoreversecard1761 Real. The fight might as well not have happened because we didnt see anything. It's an important character moment, and if a story is written correctly, then we WANT to see that moment, because we're invested in that character and we want to see them succeed. Its as if Sasuke vs Itachi happened offscreen and the reader just gets told "Yeah Sasuke killed itachi" two chapters later. It would make the entire reason he left the village pointless to us as readers, because we didnt get an actual ending to that story.
I think whats also missing is throwing into her face the whole reason why her nation was heading downwards, anything the player experienced is not mentioned during the quest, not even in the end. As per said already, the battle with the puppet is not a punishment, just tries to do a "wow" than actually seeing the character reflect on what she has done
about the beginning when Traveller says no, I always felt like it didn't make sense tbh, He wants to meet the Shogun and the Shogun is very deeply intertwined in this Vision hunt Decree. And they're just like "Nah, I'll just walk up to this Tyranical Ruler who's stealing visions because they can use elemental powers and these visions are a hindrance to eternity" and not think to themselves, "oh shit, I'm an outsider who can use elemental powers without a vision, I don't think, 1. the guards are gonna let me get close to the Shogun during a fucking war, or 2, if she finds out that I the very famous traveller can use Elemental powers, she will try to eliminate me or banish me." I have no idea what their thought process was and them saying no pissed me off.
Most likely to tease the players who are tired of that “I’m gonna help everyone who asks” hero type which Travelr of course is, because issekai. They still help, pretty much directly, in the end, so yeah, I agree, this no-shtick is really annoying
Tbh I actually don't mind the fact that he denied to help them at first since the traveler is there to ask about kaenriah, not to be a samaritan and in the first two regions we didn't really get involved because we wanted to (in mondstadt it was because we got sucked by a hurricane created by dvalin and venti helped us solve that situation quickly and safely while in liyue it was because we were suspected at first of killing rex lapis and with both after the first event that got us involved things escalated pretty quickly) but that wouldn't be the case in Inazuma until ayaka and thoma made us feel guilty about deciding to not intervene and everything about us being there just to talk with the archon got thrown out of the window in a not so engaging way Edit: realized 2 months later that the autocorrect made the wrong guess on one word
i really, REALLY despise the way they got rid of rosalyne/la signora. sorry for swearing but it does not make any fucking sense at all. it just makes me so mad, the traveler asking for a duel is so out of character, ESPECIALLY because they knew what a duel meant thanks to kazuha's story. the whole thing is illogical, they just killed her off to show how strong the raiden shogun is. and people are supposed to care? when the little information we know about rosalyne is in artifacts? its just very stupid, and as a rosalyne lover, this ruined the archon quest for me. im not even sure if reviving her is a good choice at this point
5 місяців тому+19
nah, that was peak genshin moment, I hope hoyo doesn't revive her
They did the same thing in hsr with Duke Inferno and Acheron. They try so hard to make their precious Meis look badass but it never works on me lmao. I wouldn’t say I was a Signora fan but that moment didn’t make me like Raiden more, she’ll always be the worst archon in my eyes
It honestly was probably my least favourite part of the quest as someone that liked signora. Traveler for one was so unlikable to me that whole segment as they were just making rash decisions because teppei, someone we (or at least me personally) had no real attachment to, the anger felt out of nowhere. They then proceed to blame her for venti and liyue's case. Maybe I can understand venti but liyue? Why were they so hostile to signora and Childe but not zhongli who orchestrated it. It was also out of character for signora to accept the thing. Yes she is proud, very much so but she's described as diplomatic, her deciding to get into a scuffle didn't make sense considering she should ideally know the consequences
Well Signora was a giant walking death flag considering her backstory. I do think it was to early to kill her off but bringing back at this point would feel cheap. Personally I wouldn't have even had her in Inazuma at all and instead introduced Dottore (one of his selves) as the visiting 'diplomat'.
You definitely highlighted a lot of my problems with the Inazuma AQ, but one thing I wanna add is the whole “traitor” subplot. That part hooked me and I was really excited to find out who it was (my suspicions were Teppei and Kokomi at the time), so the fact that the traitor turned out to be some random NPC who you wouldn’t even know was the traitor unless you read a random journal in the Scaramouche domain was a massive bummer
inazuma as a whole was built on shock value, from the archon quest where whole army went against traveler, story quests that were only about npcs, world quests with easy sobstory, and hidden quests that were all about children getting constantly murdered.
everyone just forgiving raiden after she left THREE islands to fall due to biohazard and war because ,,she's dango loving mommy'' was so stupid, raiden shouldnt have been redeemed
@@Termarbeloved Its funny how literally one traveler had to clean up her mess as much as possible on those islands than their own archon. But yeah, Raiden did an awful job as an archon.
@Termarbeloved half of inazuma is not even close to being habitable,one has non stop lightning and rain,one has electric nuclear radiation,and the other is a driver's nightmare,this is ignoring the many minor biohazards in the other islands
I'll be honest i kinda liked the first half of the story especially the one with people's vision removed. Cause as much as we know how tense the situation are as outsiders actually seeing the people having their sense of selves ripped away from them was kinda chilling to me it is one of the view show AND tell that Inazuma given us. But sadly the second half blunders everything that was set up by the first half i genuinely have no good words for it.
I love this comment section so much 😭 At the peak of the inazuma arc you could critique the story, but god forbid you can critique my hot mommy waifu raiden shogun!! It's not even that she did things wrong, her being wrong actually had potential for good storytelling but in the end she suffers no consequence from it, it actually feels like the story is trying to validate her actions and it leaves SUCH a bad taste in my mouth lol
And therein lies the problem - it's hard to define what she actually did wrong without also throwing shade at a lot of other characters, especially those withjn the Tri-Commission that actively worsened the situation
one of my main problems with inazuma as a whole is the reaction of the people AFTER Ei changed her mind. They were all suddenly just celebrating her after possibly hundreds of their people died because of the vision hunt decree. They weren't AT LEAST being critical of her and skeptical of her regime after it. The point of NPCs is to make the world of a game feel more alive but hyv didn't even try on that aspect.
3:25 It’s not a huge deal but it always bugged me that the statue doesn’t actually display the majority of the stolen visions. I chalked it up to having false expectations based on cool fan-created concept arts (since we knew before Inazuma’s release there’d be an imposing “statue with 100 eyes” made up of visions), but in scale and presentation the statue doesn’t feel like it matches at all with what it’s meant to be (a symbol of power) or how every character describes it.
I never turned back to realize how rough it was because I havnt checked it out since it's release @.@ this is a bit of a wake up call to realize how strong my nostalgia had been
even as someone who joined after the quest was fully released, i too never truly looked at how bad the aq was. i knew it wasnt great, but i honestly didnt want the little good things i felt for the region. kinda messed that up when my favorite character was from inazuma and had to glance at the lore. if only they were able to redo the archon quest though, like imagine it being even close to the level sumeru and fontaine were on?
I agree with many of your points (pacing, focred plot points) but I dont agree with how many things you called "out of nowhere", but there are implications that are left unsaid which I'm ok with as long as they are well executed. For example, we know Ei is a warrior as heart and she has much respect for thise who can best her in combat. Her first story quest hints at this when we learn the heads of the commissions all (or maybe it was just one of them I cant remember) all got their positions by winning a duel against her. The traveler changing his mind is also consistent with his kind and caring nature. Although he tried to say no at first, seeing the suffering of the people made him realize he couldn't ignore it and just continue his journey. I do agree the shift felt sudden and it would have been nice to see his unwillingness to help gradually soften rsther than "ok yeah nvm sign me the fk up for the rebellion". My biggest criticism of the quest was the rather sudden resolution of the main plot (literally was just like 5 min and suddenly Inazuma all better) and the final fight with Ei was 100% a power of friendship moment. There was no indication the traveler could take on other people's wills or gain strength from that. At least the Sumeru akasha system was well established throughout the plot and felt more organic when Nahida used it at the end.
I would say "blatant xenophobia" rather than "blatant racism" as it more accurately describes the situation. Because it's not race that's the driving force but rather them being foreigners, outlanders.
Here’s my thoughts on a remake of the Inazuma archon quest. The prologue stays basically the same, except the thief comments on how did they managed to get a Vision from Inazuma, never getting an answer and cowardly going away. Act 1 should have a cutscene where the storm around Inazuma is brewing in which during this period there would be a massive wall of thunder and cloud that covered the borders of Inazuma. It’s during this time that the Traveller (due to the elemental compatibility) would have a small glimpse of the Shogun in the Plane of Euthemia . After crossing to Ritou things stay the same (though more realistic plot and methods) until they reach the Tea House. It’s here that Thoma invites the Traveller to walk around the city since he needs to buy some groceries, meanwhile telling everything about Inazuma. It’s when we follow Thoma that we notice some people that lost their visions and see their behaviour. Seeing the misery of the people, including the ones without a vision. The city seems to be stuck in a form of limbo. Which makes the traveller feel uneasy. Once they finish their shopping Thoma shows them the Statue of the Omnipresent God and suggests the Traveller to help them against the vision hunt decree. Traveller refuses and this leads to them meeting Ayaka, who makes a deal with the Traveller that if they help them abolish the decree, she can help him get to the shogun. Act 2 It’s here that Ayaka asks us to help on freeing the one that makes the fake visions which we meet Yoimiya and meet Sara. This leads to Ayaka thinking of a way to get Sara onto their side, this leads to traveller going to the narukami shrine in order to deliver a letter to Yae Miko. After that, Ayaka tells about the war and if they want Sara to help them convince the Shogun, they need to stop it. This war isn’t just about the Vision but also regarding Watatsumi vs Inazuma. We help Teppei and he explains the history of the island, we meet Sara again during combat and then we meet Kokomi, leading to us going to Watatsumi island and explain why we are here. We discover about the Delusions, prototypes of the ones used by the Fatui (courtesy of the Doctor). It’s then that the traveller sees the death of not just Teppei but also almost half of the army. We confront Scaramouche, who mocks on how humans are so amusing to be toyed with. The traveller (due to elemental compatibility) gets overwhelmed with the remnants of the dead gods (aka Orobashi). This leads to the Traveller falling unconscious and witnessing Raiden kill Orobashi in their dreams. We meet Yae who congratulates us on helping against the Fatui, since the truth about their actions and the deaths of both Inazuma and Watatsumi came to light. Ayaka appears too and explains they can use this as a way to convince Sara, meeting with her and arranging a time to show the proof. We meet Sayu and she does her job. In Act 3 we train with Yae Miko, who explains the situation with the Shogun and makes the Anti Shogun training. Once we are done we get the info from Sayu and meet back with Sara, showing the evidence… it’s then that Sara tells she will contact the resistance to meet in Tenshukakua in order to fix this ordeal… things stay the same until we get inside the plane of the real Ei. At first we ask about our sibling,getting to info. We then talk about the Vision and the Fatui finding she knows about them. We then resort into a due, risking our lifeboat order to make her abolish the vision hunt. We fight Ei and while we are winning, we can’t seem to defeat her. Yae appears and tells us how this plane only takes ambition into consideration, not physical capabilities. It’s then that with the help of everyone’s ambition that Ei loses, forced to abolish the decree. It’s then that after it’s all over that we meet with Miko and Ayaka. It’s then that we get the Ayaka and Yoimiya quest to give us a relax time and helping us think about the abyss twin.
Perso I'd make a small modification, please tell me if it's good or not :D The beginning you did is perfect ✨️ The only thing I'd change is when we fight her at the end, instead of defeating her, she oblirates us, but recognizes the ambition if her ppl and cancel the decree, imo it would be better because the ambition of 100 ppl are nothing against the shogun, like she killed so much gods, and nuked an island, even letting traces on other surrender island, and get stopped by 100 ppl ambition, like wtf? So imk she'd rather recognize and accept their ambition, instead of losing the fight
@JoshuaA1307 after getting TWO more elements, Raiden is presented from the LIYUE STORY QUEST as an undefeatable Archon, as a "strong" ruler, and break that identity in one act
inazuma is my favorite nation but oh god does the quest suck ass to me it was the fact that the raiden just had a clarity moment and then all of the people were happy, also the fact that they justified the shogun who killed a lot of HER OWN NATION JUST BECAUSE OH IM MOURNING MY SISTER and that she talked to miko and suddenly she wasnt bad anymore???? plus her mission being straight up a date babyfying her oh my god
I found it funny how raiden put everyone through hell for years on end and then after a short encounter with the traveler she changed her mind completely and decided to open the country back up 💀 idk if hoyo was rushed to finish the arch or if they just had terrible writers at the time. Either way the ending felt very anticlimactic and way too easy.
A Note: i've noted that in the escape from the shogun, she's actually so taken aback that they had the guts to fight her she stood there baffled but due to poor writing they didn't portray that well.
Analysis and thoughtful reflection like this is so refreshing and needed, really enjoyable to see the literary critique presented in such a way - hope you'll do it for all the archon quests and other major topics, fantastic so far and please keep going, you are doing so well and its genuinely a wonder there are not more channels exploring intriguing topics or discussions like this rather than simply META/stats, so I'm interested and excited to find you!
This video makes me feel so validated because i remember getting harrased in community servers for these exact same thouvhts and words, im so happy others are looking back and realizing how bad teppei and the inazuma arc truly was
You are right about almost all of the points you are making. Factually, the writing is flawed and there are a lot of plot holes. Most of the decisions made by the writers are questionable. For a game like this, which values its lore and world building as much as its characters and gameplay, creating a story like this does feel bad indeed. I enjoyed my time when Inazuma first came out. Playing since the first few patches of the game, this storyline wasn't that good compared to what we had before, so I wasn't really bothered by this back then, and because of that, certain action scenes and all the other stuff was actually very enjoyable for me. I liked how threatening it felt when we first landed there with all those puppet-Raiden cutscenes, even though the story was lacking, it was really good. It might be because we didn't have those patches all at once back then, which (for me at least) created a sense of mystery around the whole situation, and not to mention the amazing side quests and difficult puzzles which are a whole another topic. I loved the idea of that lame, invisible, "terrible" war between watatsumi and shogunate that forced the soldiers to become deserters, I loved how threatening and despotic the shogun/puppet was. Again, the story might have lot of issues, but I was hyped with all that stuff back in the day; 1v1 in the plane of euthymia with the Shogun, she stealing our kill and blowing up the Signora, Kazuha somehow blocking the Shogun, it was peak genshin in my opinion. I think the story of Fontaine would make a fair comparison to Inazuma's, since both are filled with plot holes, but the people enjoyed the former a lot more I think. For insantce, the actions of the hydro archon and her reasons for all the stuff she had, are kinda lame and pointless I'd say, which made me think so lowly of Furina after all the revelations, but the majority of the player base loved Furina. At the end of the day, it's all a matter of opinion. When it comes to any kind of content in genshin, I personally can't seperate the story from the gameplay, because when someone says Inazuma's story is bad, I too remember the mentally challenged Ayaka arc and the supposedly competent watatsumi soldiers arc, but as dumb as they might be, I truly enjoyed playing every moment of it. And yes I liked the anti Raiden Shogun training too, I'm all in for that kinda unreasonable challenges. Some of us just play games for the sake of playing, with our smooth brain mode on. (Also, I don't think Scara. is implying that they're making "Direct" money from the delusions given to the watatsumi soldiers; It's more likely that they are using this as an advert for their other fronts of delusion businesses. However, I don't really remember who's funding the production of those things, it might also be that they're manufacturing delusions for free and then selling them to other factions, thus creating a market of sorts with little to no cost.)
The anti raiden shogun training actually helped me a lot. It’s not just button mashing anymore. I can actually see what im supposed to dodge. Im just upset that is wasn’t replayable after you finish the quest.
I’m sorry but seeing Ei walk down after taking thoma’s visions is the most chills I’ve ever gotten from a video game ever. That alone makes it one of if not my favorite. All the hype leading up to the first archon being a villain was so cool, you just had to be there.
I personally love inazuma's vibe and I like Raiden. It's sad to see that people don't like inazuma mostly because the archon quest just ruined it for them.
I don't mind Inazuma, but I'd be lying if I said I prefer it over the other regions. Inazuma's archon quest was confusing, and difficult. At times in the story, it also felt a bit rushed imo. It seems like the writers weren't actually sure how to introduce Inazuma. Could they have waited a while longer for Inazuma to release? Probably. But the damage has been done. For what it's worth though, Inazuma does have the best natural beauty (at least to me), and the bosses in Inazuma are top tier (besides the Geo Riftlord, it can go die)
I'm a newbie who started playing in February 2023 and i finished Inazuma at the beginning of july 2024 I'll admit that i didn't about Ayaka and Yoimiya's quests slowing down the plot, probably because i was fascinated by the 2 girls... Maybe that's exactly what mihoyo wanted, lmao. Other than that, yeah, these points are all valid. I'd like to add, though, that when we meet Signora we see Sara right there, but they never explain what exactly happened to her. Did Signora fight her? Is she wounded? Or maybe even Shogun herself fought her? Even worse is that they never show or mention her again. Shogun's 1st legendary quest revolves around the Kujou clan struggling to keep their power as head of the Tenryou commission, AND THEY STILL DIDN'T MENTION HER AT ALL! Wth?? Same happened to Teppei. He died, and then they never mention him again (with the exception of Scaramouche maybe). It made his death less impactful than it could've been It's crazy that Seirai and Tsurumi, two regions that are explored through a world quest, have better writing than the archon quest
Also? I totally get the Teppei complaint. I actually made up my own backstory for him when creating someone to intertwine with things that don't make sense or feel kinda dumb. Me? I had him as a young man from Ritou who dreamed of being a hero on the battlefield and seeking glory. One who went into hiding due to speaking out against the Shogun and that he came across the Resistance when led to them by an outsider. And the outsider found out after the war was over what happened to him and essentially mourned his death and blamed themselves for what happened. ...It may not be a perfect idea but it was something.
My problem with the Inazuma quest is that no one cared about anyone or anything other that their own feelings, the war was just there to interfere in their peaceful life: Ayaka and Thoma don't care that the traveler wants to meet Raiden, they just want to not feel so guilty about not doing anything (the others commissions were working with the fatui and not even Sara who was part of the family knew about it, but they had their hands tied!!), they never informed the people that losing the vision could cause memory problems and they had the traveler solving inconsequential problems that again could have been solved with the truth, then Ayaka makes the traveler face Raiden (who almost killed her) for a person (Thoma) she barely knew instead of doing something for him herself (you know being friends with him for years) Yoimiya sees the problem others have while trying to help people with visions but not once she offers her knowledge with pyrotechnics, or to give or even just give a discount in fireworks as a form of distraction to help in battle Teppei is an idiot that doesn't care if he gets others killed because he wants to fight even if he is bad, he uses the traveler to enter the army and gains a position that he does not deserve and knows that he doesn't have the training in combat or strategy to hold, putting everyone at his command at risk, he keeps using the delusions even when he knows he will grow old and die and no longer be useful to the war because he wants to fight now and that's the only way and even with his death he sends the traveler to fight a harbinger for no good reason Kokomi comes out of nowhere after doing gods know what (because we never see any future solution or advantage that could explain what she was doing), she doesn't care enough to stay in the war camp, sends the traveler all over the place with requests, puts both traveler and Tappei as leaders without caring about the fact that the people doesn't know the traveler and Tappei isn't actually fit for the role, even if she calls her army comrades they call her excellency and my lady what makes a clear difference between her and the others and in general doesn't do anything and it gives the impression that she formed an army and is in this war because Raiden was being an inconvenience that ruined her peace Yae Miko is morally gray since the beginning so is no surprise she didn't do anything even if she saw all the problems the people was facing, the problem is that she "cares for her friend" but never even tried to persuade her before, even if it was just because she missed her, the moment she stepped into the traveler's fight with Raiden it causes a reaction for her what makes me wonder why wasn't she there from the beginning and why did she needed us to fight her to "get her back" The people in the commissions don't care about all the problems of the war, the lives lost and the fact that they are all traped because they are making money. Sara has an almost cult like love for Raiden and doesn't have a motive or conviction to keep fighting and stealing visions: the raiden wants it so she do it, when she finds she may not know that's when she demands answers Raiden doesn't care for her puppets, for her people or for Yae Miko, she abandons Scaramouche not even caring about the fact that other people, the fatui, can use him to create problems for others, she is the god and ruler of the nation when she doesn't want to be but doesn't step out of her position for... some reason, she doesn't actually believe that the visions are a problem and even if she had a problem those are visions from other gods to it would make more sense to exile the people to the lands of those arcons than to take something she didn't give and that is of no use for her and apparently she doesn't care that much about eternity because Yae Miko and one fight later she is suddenly a different person (I haven't played her other quests because I hate her but I know that people no even resent or hate her for that) The fatui only care about themselves so I won't even go into detail The only person I saw that cared for others was Gorou, he was with the army when Kokomi was taking a vacation and actually fought in the war, he is the only one (along with Kazuha who is doing this for his friend but at least is other person and he never hides his motives), that deserve praise and the only one I liked in the quest Not even the people of genshin impact cared enough to show people being able to travel, to see family and friends, to be able to find a job and be able to have food, to be able to import and export fabrics or food, we don't even know if the people who had their visions back got their memory back or if the process could be reversed!
Genshin loves to tell and not show. There’s a Nathan quest where it ends with a battle in the past and they choose to use a black screen with words instead of animation
Also it shows the lack of pre writing in Genshin. There’s loom of fate was talked about in version 1.0 and yet when confronted the abyss sibling about it they state they don’t know why they’ll use it for. What was all that build up for???
The idea, the concept is great but yeah the execution I can speak of how bad the inazuma quest for hours 😭💔 like 1. How ayaka and ayato just act behind the curtain but still no impact 2. How ayaka panic when thoma got capture (THEY SHOULD KNOW THAT WILL HAPPEN) 3. what happen with yoimiya and her fake vision (i thought see gonna save thoma) 😭😭 4. We don't need to talk about kokomi the war strategy 5. The build up of the quest are people got killed, economy crisis etc what happens to that??? The way all peope still adore the archon after all of it 😅 (only kazuha don't want go near ei now lolol) And the way people of Fontaine and paimon hate(?) Furina when she doing her best all this time But people of inazuma just make ei their idol No hate, the quest just have so many plot hole And there so many people denying this because it their fav character, the quest CAN NOT BE BAD
i feel like the story would’ve been really interesting if ei had already changed her mind by the time we came but couldn’t leave the puppet as it had gone out of control or something
inazuma is a gorgeous region that is fun to explore.. but the story and what you needed to do was so bad that a friend of mine saw me struggling and offered to beat the quest for me. i let her (with many thanks) and was surprised that she also powered through the chasm so i could play the gem that is sumeru’s story.
I think the tell not show problem is something all of genshin quests suffer from. It also makes lore hard ti follow since names of people and places get so complicated and we have imagine what they look like
The pay off was just not there. Like the ending where Ei just kinda gives up? Honestly we should have left inazuma and come back when we were stronger. Or what happened in Eis 2nd story quest should have been part of the archon story
I feel like Raiden's attitude after the discovery of what was going on outside the plane of Euthymia came out of nowhere. She was originally portrayed as a serious, threatening god who ended up giving up everything she'd fought for CENTURIES and reduced to a cute girl we were supposed to be swooned by. She had great potential but I think Act 3 was so rushed that we didn't even have time to digest all the changes going on with her. Btw great video. I like how eloquently you speak and then randomly become unhinged in some parts; it's unexpected and entertaining to watch.
The way you mentioned the longer time span of the vision holders stories and the way they introduced Teppei in a short time made me think... why didnt they combined both stories? For example, (when ayaka asks us to check the consequences of not having a vision) we meet Teppei and he can be one of these victims, now with him having been stripped from his ambition and seeing how everyone on the nation is suffering; he joins the cause (the traveler could also join around this point, going hand to hand with teppei's encounter). Sure leave the delusions but now it's justified that Teppei wanted to feel/have his ambition back as his condition was getting worse, only for him to die without it due to the delusions. This could help some of those problems a. Settle the "why taking the visions is bad" b. Establishing Teppei as an NPC whose story is now linked / witnessed by us. c. Taking the over time from one part of the quest and distribute it on the other part. It could solve a lot of those issues if executed carefully, as well as giving the traveler a real reason to engage against the shogun.
my biggest problem with inazuma AQ was that they decided to killed major character that could possibly become playable BEFORE even letting traveler speak to her personally. we didnt see any cutscene relevant to her backstory and most of the playerbase doesnt really care about artifacts descriptions. the other harbingers were given way more screentime and wanderer could even be met during MONDSTADT event which is her home nation
Random thing I found about this quest I found strange was the fact that Kazuha, with 2 visions, was only barely able to push back Raiden. Despite this Gorou and the army still decided to rush in
I feel like of they add another act where we somewhat spend some time with raiden showing how bad the situation and seeing how brainwash people in narukami island is. Then, i feel like inazuma would somewhat be saved. like make her struggle or make her stop the war or even make her second story quest to be the part of the act. I would maybe like the quest a little more
I think what they mean is that they wish that the plot points and themes of Raiden’s second story quest were used as another act of the archon quest instead of a character story
@@burstlogic3457 nah what I mean is that maybe if they add another act of the quest with the stuff I said maybe I would like the quest a little more like what Mr mag said
I feel like Ayaka spending time with us at the festival + the dance she did could have been hangout event or something. I enjoyed it but it didn’t need to be in the archon quest. I enjoyed Teppei. I know we didn’t know much about him, but I enjoyed his presence and wished we got to see more of him before he died. The archon quest was imo pretty short, I thought more would happen since Ei is powerful and blah blah blah. Getting more time with resistance + more action would have been nice.
Also some one needs to say this Wander and Tartaglia are awful in terms of morality, but the simps defend their morality till the end of their existence. One attempted genocide one sold delusions for money and it lead to deaths (Tappie being one of them)
Ei's entire character arc is just so terribly executed. I went from liking her because she was the first archon to not be immediately buddy-buddy with the traveler to absolutely despising her from how they redeemed her. Her lore seems interesting but they barely touch on it. We don't learn much about her sister and Inazuma when she was younger. What irks me the most is her first story quest, which you unlock right after you finish the archon quest iirc. It's literally a damn date simulator and the people are just... okay with her? How do none of the Inazuman people resent her? She literally locked up the country and made them miserable by taking away visions! But it's okay because she likes dango milk I guess 💀
A little dumb thing i like to headcanon for Inazuma's early plot, is that it was Ayaka that tipped off the shogunate soldiers about Thoma being a vision holder. Just trying to be cunning like her brother in a plot of politics and scheming, and hoping that this last ditch effort of essentially throwing one of your most trusted servant under the bus, would push the Traveller into finally supporting their cause. Also cos I genuinely dislike Ayaka lmfao Cos honestly, the soldiers had no fucking business scooping Thoma out, an outsider, yes, but also with very close and dare I say almost personal ties to Kamisato, while there was much more "public" character of Yoimiya, whose Pyro Vision wasn't exactly a secret ffs.
7:55 to be fair to hoyo... This is probably that "puppy rescue" operation that was revealed in the latest music event. Kokomi and gorou never wanted the traveler to know this, so it makes sense he says he doesn't know. Still, it does suck that I literally had to see a vid on event lore just to know such a thing even exists
i actually really liked Ei’s character idea about a god grieving their twin and having to have their role taken over my a puppet. i just wish that they handled it better. i love the way Ei’s personality was handled but the circumstances surrounding is what makes a lot of people dislike it.
I have a discord now!! Join so we can discuss the story in detail!
Link: discord.gg/hjypmJASmr
about delusions........ EVERY delusion kills its barer. But not if u wear a mask (childe has one, Signora too, Scara has it on his hat, Arlecchino..... She doesen't but that's why she has black and red nails. So, about the delusion i dont agree. (Tho, compliments for esaminating the whole archon quest. I don't agree in some parts, Mabey even 50%, but it's a good analysis. Good job-! :3)
In defense of the "power of friendship" moment. The traveler's strength is based on "Will" and he has the ability to borrow the power of others, so him gaing power by calling upon the will of all of Inazuma, actually makes logical sense and no longer falls under the cringe "power of friendship" move
the anti-raiden shogun training isn't that bad you can literally just skip the final challenge.
Please use your real voice, AI is dogshit
@@ToMaSsS10 ma’am it’s for privacy. Some people feelbetter with an overlay on their voice
My big thing is that Raiden made her people suffer for so long, then after changing her mind and abolishing the vision hunt decree, ending the war and opening the country back... the people are just happy. They don't have any resentment toward her for all the misery they went through. In her story quest you walk through the city with her and and everyone is so happy to see her like she's a celebrity even though she locked the country down, started a war and stole visions. I just can't buy that no one is still mad at her.
Fr, if this was real life, you know the people would’ve def attempted to dethrone her / possibly execute her. At least thats usually how it goes historically. It rlly doesn’t make sense that the people of Inazuma would be content with her staying in power.
@@LovelyyBoba Maybe becuase she is a god, not a human? You are all acting like she needs inadzuma while its the opposite - without Raiden their country would be destroyed 10 times over during the course of genshin history.
Also who can possibly execute her except for Celestia and dragon sovreings, who obviously dont care? Even if whole inadzuma united they would still have no chances in a fight against Ei, thats pretty obvious.
People are content with her because she is lirally a living god, who protected them for thousands of years. One year of bad decree doesnt suddenly override this sentiment. Moreover most inadzuma people werent even affected by the decrees cuz there are literally just 100 vision holders , who have been affected(and most of them are fine too, Ayaka just specifically mentions the worst cases to guilt trap traveler into helping her).
I honestly dont understand how people can play through the story and still dont understand such obvious plot points.
Because most people, especially in Narukami, liked her and revered her. Normal people didn't think too much about the vision hunt decree, sakoku decree, and watatsumi war. It was just their god doing god things, as she's done for centuries.
The Japanese have a cultural thing known as "Tatemae" which is basically a mask to hide how they truly feel. Even most of those who disagree with Ei would do their best to hide it from others, for the sake of keeping things the way they are.
When in private, their true opinions, the "Honne" would show.
They're probably hiding their true feelings and fear they would make her angry again lol
I swear, the bit in Sumeru's quest where the traveler rushes back to Inazuma to see if everything is fine after Scara's change to Irminsul, had me feel more stuff about the region than the entirety of the Inazuma quest did
Absolutely agree
Pretty much any of the inazuma world quests had me feeling more than the inazuma main quest.
@@MsLilly200 Tsurumi island, enkanomiya and the sacred sakura ritual, altough the puzzles are kinda cringe, they were so much better than the archon quest
I didn’t pay the upmost attention to the long dialogue in the inazuma world quests but i still felt lots of emotion especially with the tsurumi island and ruu.
Act 2's ending had so much potential and then Act 3 killed the entire Arc.
I was so confused at Act 3 like "Wait, this is all?" You know I thought Inazuma archon quest would have 5 Acts not 3.
It makes sense why things turned out the way it did, considering the writing team changed hands at that point.
truly, honestly
Act 3 in Inazuma is still better than Acts 3-5 of Fontaine, and Act 6 in Version 4.x (Bedtime Story). I know people like Act 5, but it regressed Navia's character just to give her the same arc she had in Act 2, relied on shock value twice, and introduced multiple questions to the worldbuilding that contradict previously established information. And Bedtime Story was just.. oouff. The words "an insulting and unsatisfying conclusion to two of the most important and engaging plot threads in the game so far" would be polite.
I feel like they rushed tho whole thing, also, Ei works better as a antagonist in my opinion
I know Sara isn't a character that is not liked a lot but she's probably the charater in Inazuma that at least is behaving normally😭
i love kujou sara so much, she’s my favorite electro unit
real- my immediate favorite during the archon quest was kujou sara, like the whole moral Dillema seemed the best out of really anyone in the quest
Sara is one of my favourite characters, she’s amazing imo
I think her inclusion in the Archon quest makes it worse than it already was. Having a character whose existence is diametrically opposed to what the traveler is fighting for while also being portrayed as somewhat likeable (because she's a playable character) serves to dampen the player's dislike for the Tenryou Commission and weaken the emotion impact of the storyline.
It depends on perspective I think. Sara had a lot of potential but she ended up being reduced to a massive Raiden simp. Girl didn’t even get a hangout quest, which every other Inazuma character except Kirara (the final one released at that point) had one.
You forgot the completely unexplained bit where the traveler was absolutely tweaking as they left from meeting the shogun
Fr, with sumeru and Fontaine we see that the traveler is really sensitive on a psychological level (as shown when we got poisoned the first minute we got in sumeru and when we attuned with the oceanid composed by vacher's (hope his name is spelled correctly) victims) but there in tenshukaku? Was it that we were still healing from the tatarigami or (more probably imo) the visions on the statue firs attempt at trying to tune with us like what actually happened in the fight?
@@lauragrigoletto906 no it was the high concentration of Electro energy. Just like how Traveler was sensitive to the Fountain of Lucine because of high Hydro sensitivity.
Shouldn't have taken all that fent to commemorate beating Signora
I thought it was just a panic attack, honestly. If it was supposed to be something deeper, they definitely didn't show it well.
a legendary sword technique was just used on someone right in front of them of fucking course they'd be tweaking holy shit what the fuck
One thing I definitely wished happen is that Kokomi got a one on one showdown with Raiden herself, she was built and hyped up to be such a huge figure, her entrance alone nowadays would’ve gotten her at least an act’s worth of storytime, instead all they did was make her incompetent and barely present 😭
That's how you get sushi.
Seriously though, Kokomi is a strategist, not a soldier. She would have literally just, died against the Raiden Shogun and it wouldn't even have been a challenge.
@@bellidrael7457 Fair point but with how the version was marketed couple that with the plot, I and a few others I've noted legitimately thought Kokomi's masterplan was to weaken the Shogun's forces enough to where she herself could go up against and face her herself. I wish she didn't get nerfed in lore
@@alcazarzarayEven if she wasn't, why on god's green earth would you have her fight the Shogun? That's like putting a coughing baby against a hydrogen bomb
@@bellidrael7457 Kokomi is such a strategist, we never see her doing any strategy at all.
Instead of Kokomi, you could place a giant blue cockroach into Sangonomiya, and nothing would change.
@@Ajoura Oh no I agree, they did a terrible job of showing the characters use what they were best at. But even so they wouldnt have her face off directly with the Shogun.
What bothered me the most is that Raiden was acting smart n unfazed but clearly didn't know what she was doing. And her character's quests depicting her as "a clueless shut in who is just mourning her twin" really made her the worst archon imo.
Real like WHICH ONE IS IT
The worst is that could actually have been an excelent history IF they truly showed how traumatized she was by losing her sister, like, there is almost nothing about how they were together, from the good times they shared to how dependant she was both emotionally and in the ruling of inazuma.
If they take more times to show how she was before makoto's death, we would understand not only how big was her lost, but also why, Ei hated change and wanted to make things unchangeble, thus creating a history about accepting that good things will end eventually, and trying to make anything last forever will just ruin it.
@@lucasbessa6388 True, good ideas simply poorly executed
@@Edahs_exists the whole reason that her character ended up so mismanaged was bc the writer for inazuma, who they borrowed from hi3, is an infamous asshole who brags about arbitrarily retconning/ignoring previously established information to do whatever he likes, and given that raiden is a version of a character he was writing for in hi3(and ruining in similar measure); after inazuma, he admitted online he wouldnt come back to write for genshin bc he "didn't like the setting", in my opinion I think it's bc the genshin staff told him to stop retconning stuff lol
I think they poorly executed the way the Raiden Shogun is supposed to be. I mean, after all, Ei is trying to emulate some sort of Eternity, while trying to be as intelligent in her delivery as her sister since she was far more intelligent than Ei or most of the Archons in Genshin.
For me, what really irked me about Inazuma was how fleeting Scaramouche's role was.
He should have played a bigger role in this arc, especially as someone who is directly connected to Ei and suffered because of her negligence, and yet he is reduced to basically a cameo and his nature as the Shogun's prototype was only told through a missable conversation with Yae Miko.
It honestly should have been Scaramouche who confronted Ei in Tenshukaku, I personally like the idea of him triggering a flashback of Makoto within Ei as she looks upon a face that mirrors her own. Him mockingly calling her mother as he confronts her for not only abandoning him but all of Inazuma because she couldn't bring herself to face reality. And unlike Signora, he can survive her attack due to his true nature (something that could be showcased a lot more viscerally in that kind of situation as well). This could play a role in shaking her resolve in a meaningful way, as she is forced to face the direct consequence of her actions in the form of someone who suffered because of her.
The sad part is Signora would’ve survived. Pierro talks about Arlecchino power in her story and isn’t impressed, but in the pale flame set he is astonished by Signora’s power, so it’s safe to assume her delusion weakened her. On top of that, there’s also the lore suggesting she didn’t have any of her memory intact until she transformed. One of her boss drops says “the seal was broke under duress and as her former will emerged from its icy white prison, she remembered her old name, dancing amidst the fire, and she recalled the face of the man she can never see again.” So we basically murdered an innocent woman for plot and shock value for raiden
Can you be the lead writer for hoyo instead of whoever/team who made the Inazuma Archon Quest feel like badly written fever dream fanfic
YES OH MY GOD YES!???!1!11!!!!????! THIS SHOULD BE MADE INTO A FANFIC/ONESHOT
@@royalsun2284 my full take on the Signora situation: Not to mention the absolute horrible addition of Signora. She’s mentioned once before, and she doesn’t even fit timeline wise. She’s not mentioned at all, shows up at the end, and she’s forced into a duel just to die. Even in the rules traveler goes “I challenge you to a duel” before Signora can say anything raiden goes “proceed” and Signora reiterates the rules of said duel. Not to mention the dialogue line “for the people of liyue you imperiled” when it was literally completely Zhongli. So not only did the traveler take his anger out on Signora, but then on top of that, Scaramouche should’ve been the boss instead of Signora. Scaramouche is the one with ties to raiden and the amount of potential via swapping scara and Signora’s storylines, without any death is just too good to miss out on. How do you make a change with both a mom and troubled son and NOT have any fighting between them.
+ Signora’s reveal as the crimson witch wasn’t hyped up at all, or even hinted about aside from the artifact set. They basically just threw her in there for no reason
I’ve always wanted a scene with Scara confronting Ei, I don’t know if there has been one yet because I kinda left the game and are just coming back but I always thought it would be very interesting to see. Wish the Inazuma arc was written this way because it would actually make so much sense. My only question is how it would fit with the Sumeru story.
what pisses me off more is the fact that the traveler and paimon were huge dicks to furina (despite knowing the torture she went through) but went on a date with a god who literally killed so many people and was a shit ruler overall
I hate how farina was treated in her own story quest and i hate when they trapped her while she was gonna confess to the traveler
dont forget how mad they got at lyney and lynette for being apart of the fatui! not very long after being all buddy buddy with tartles, whos a fatui harbinger
@@columbinadamselettefan literallyyy 😭 I never understood that
@@columbinadamselettefanWhile I can’t defend the Furina thing, Traveler is NOT “buddy-buddy” with Tartaglia. Are we forgetting when Traveler was genuinely debating ending his life after his ruin guard fight? I’d say Traveler can stand Childe due to him being an older brother but isn’t really his friend.
@@confusedgrapes349 i was referring to the meeting at the start of fontaines archon quest
Honestly, Sunday from Honkai Star Rail is what Raiden could've been. They both wanted to exert control over their people for what they believed was the greater good, and both had their mind changed by us, the protagonist. Only we can tell and know that Sunday genuinely does want the best for penacony, and explicitly asked for us to show if our view of things is the better one right before battling him. Like you said at some point, Raiden's dialogue before her fight is a little contradicting since she claims to want the best for Inazuma yet fails to care about the internal strife going on. Sunday's change of mind was crystal clear, justified, and on-character, 0 disruption or lack of good pacing, and as he should, he feels no lack of remorse and is atoning for his actions as of now. Raiden's change of ideals happens just because it needs to and she feels little to no regret, doesn't really do anything to gain back the trust of her people and just goes back to "normal". It's once again a case of tell don't show for Inazuma. I just realized this while watching your video btw, very good commentary bro 👍👍
Funnily enough they pulled raiden's whole story better with fucking dead gods who we only can read about that with the character herself,where their actions actually have consequences and they aren't nerfed to "silly shy shut ins" most notably with deshret,both lose someone ver dear,become incrediblydepressed,become obsessed with something (the golden slumber and eternity respectively) begin to slowly fuck over their nation,except in one case the guy has to face the consequences and loses his life because of it but the other one gets off scott free without facing any consequences
@@randomperson093deshret isn't an expy waifu that's why.
I pity Sunday.
Sure her sister will and is gonna be safe but he can't personally meet her again
Heck, even Sunday's Ult leak showed he was crying with thorns acting as chains on his hands
@@CDV007 it's so tragic fr 😭😭
Inazuma's lore and worldbuilding was truly what carried it throughout my entire experience doing the Archon Quest, but Hoyo really cut themselves short here by rushing Teppei and especially the ending.
The only character that was even REMOTELY entertaining was Yae, since she was the only character to have something up her sleeve and this is putting the bar very low.
Kokomi is also one of the biggest offender of this Archon Quest, like what do you mean the extremely smart strategist didn't know about delusions 😭😭 like bro COME ON
I feel like, considering Fatui are generally a foreign force in all Regions I have seen so far (come from afar, are very mysterious yet respected), and if I remember correctly, they are actually fought way less frequently lore-wise than we do in game, so I kinda get why Kokomi might now know about Delusions, and even if she does, is it reasonable to assume that anyone can just pick-up and use them, if Visions are all you are used to?
@@IchigoShinagami it's still stupid that supposed to be "genius strategist" is just taking some weapons from suspicious foreigners without careful investigation
Even Yae acted so strangely. She had the ability to hop into Ei's Euthymia at any time but she chose to be a passive observer of humanity, watching the people brew up their own resistance until the Traveler coincidentally came (and that's when she started acting as our lore-dumping, omniscient guide). This kinda negates the whole idea that she missed Ei cos WDYM? Why didn't you do something to see her again then? I could never like her
@@IchigoShinagami Yeah just cause someone is smart. Doesn't mean they know everything. Given, from what I recall. It was someone mysterious giving them resources to fund their war effort. Not oh hey it the fatui. Which going by the story, it seem like they were force to accept the help. To keep the war effort going. Like is there any reason to believe Kokomi would be aware of what a delusion is? Since she is busy fighting the shogun, that is like to be her main focus given it is the biggest threat currently. Unlike the player character, who has fought and dealt with the fatui countless times. So while the main character might be aware of this, there is no reason to think Kokomi might. Which when she did find out, she did do the smart thing and take the dangerous weapons away, asap. For I believe the story did talk about them having less manpower overall than the shogun. So it makes sense, to take away said weapons. Since in her position, you want to limit losses and keep your soldiers fighting for as long as possible. For you can';t replace them as easily.
Which also wasn't Kokomi whole i'm smart thing, relate to tactics and warfare? Not knowledge of other cultures, while also being not so great at being a governor. Which a much better issue to take with it. Would be how little the bloody war was cover. Like was Kokomo forces close to reaching the capital? Who was winning this war? Was it lock in a slate mate, did the main character have any effect on the war effort? So much info was lacking. Due to sticking with their traditional story telling style. Which given the story they were trying to aim for, failed rather badly. This style can work, as shown in a event or two that took place after this main story quest happen. Yet it seems like they did learn later, in Sumeru. That having the point of view from more than one character, can benefit a story by helping to flesh things out. I could tell you more things about the one year war, from gundam than I could about this war.
@@f4llenleaves hell she could have prevented this entire situation 500 years ago by talking her out of the idea of making a puppet and sealing herself away to start with -_- like COME ON.
I always found it a little annoying at how easy it was for Raiden to be swayed into giving up the vision hunt decree and just giving up on her precious eternity. When we first meet Raiden she’s so ruthless and she doesn’t strike me as the kind of person to just give up so easily.
same
Did you completely forget that Raiden Shogun and Ei are basically two different people by the time you meet them?
Raiden Shogun can rarely change her mind, as she follows a set directive. Ei on the other hand has been consistently open-minded, but what had hindered her was the isolation which made her easier to manipulate as the Fatui did such a thing.
Actually i think that makes sense as Inazuma seems to have a recurring theme of duels/contests of strength deciding matters. Its why the Duel Before The Throne exists and the original Tenryo Commissioner was chosen after a fight. We beat her in a fight fair and square so by the law of the land she has to listen to our demand.
Also you can’t devalue the fact that we won because the collective will of spurned Inazumas lent out strength. It was basically like Inazuma itself rose up to take down the shogun in battle. You kinda cant ignore that kind of twist as the diety.
The real crime is how everything was flipped around in a single cutscene after which everything is back to normal. Like follow through on the aftermath a bit, jeez.
@@mcihay246 even in ei's case it's still the same lmao it the only reason she gave up was because her fox buddy was involved
@@timothykim2813 What do you mean exactly by "it's still the same"?
How does this refute what I argued?
If Yae Miko was there to convince the Raiden Shogun, things would not have changed otherwise she would've dealt with the issue earlier. But she couldn't, because the Raiden and Ei were two different people.
Yae had to specifically speak with Ei herself, and that could not have happened without the Traveler's help to get her there.
i remember hearing someone say that if fontaine’s quest happened during the same time as inazuma’s we would have to do errands to get ready for the magic show; that’s really what made me realize how bad inazuma’s pacing was lmao
No wait this is so trueeeeee 😂
To be fair, Liyue’s second quest is just errands. The ending was great, but the entire second one was just collecting stuff, no?
@@arcturus4762 Well yes, but i feel like at least the errands in Liyue made sense as in there was a clear goal we were working towards the whole time instead of "lets do this random thing to kill time" and overall i think it was an alright way to let us get to know and connect with Zhongli before the final reveal.
The way i was hoping the raiden took responsibility for all that mess she caused , yet the quest wanted us to think ooouh look shes cute she dont know what camera is ! Look she has. Sad past !
I WISH hoyo created characters who just aren’t redeemable and who traveler isn’t necessarily friends with. They don’t have to redeem every character to make them playable, I’m sure there’s plenty of ppl who will still pull like me who is a villains enjoyer. This kind formula is really damaging to the writing of every hoyo game, not just Genshin. It limits the potential for a character writing and their analysis and ultimately makes them so boring imo
@@omnaaa exactly they went 180 with her so quick after the archon quest
Her second story quest actually kindoff did that by her fighting her puppet and it was far better than the first.
@@KingEmiya2023 yeah her story quest was weird when they wasted her first on date quest like ….you tried to kill me sec ago why am i strolling the city with you ?
She did…. She took responsibility and fought for her new ideal for 500 years. Her first story quest was about her going outside and experiencing an ever changing inazuma and starting to redefine what eternity means.
The Vision Hunt Decree and an antagonistic archon was such an interesting concept and could have been an amazing storyline. What I wish the writers did was to add a realistic narrative where Ei would face the consequences of her actions, see the suffering of her people, and rectify her mistakes IN THE SAME ARCHON QUEST. All we got was that the traveler beat her and she was forced to comply with their request to end the Vision Hunt. We got a lot of build up on the devastation caused by the civil war, yet the ending didn’t even acknowledge it. Like what the hell was that? Her 1st story quest made it seem like “Oh, we beat the Raiden Shogun and now we’re cool” and everything is copacetic. Oh, and she was easily forgiven by everyone??? Too many loose ends.
Yeah but sumeru and Fontaine was better but I’m waiting to see natlan snezhnaya khaneri’ah celestia and the sea of flowers at the end because I would consider 7 nations I mention is the would have better writing and I also complained that Inazuma map size is too small and not as a big as liyue and mondstadt not to mention the level design had so much smaller, linear and emphasis on verticality but part 3 of genshin story so far sumeru starts off small and liner with so much verticality, but you further progress through sumeru it gets bigger and open ended, but I’m hoping that by the time we get to khaneri’ah It will be big in open ended, and the battle will be so large and celestial. It is straight out pulled from mondstadt and liyue.
I still can't believe that they didn't capitalise on the perfect set up of Sara's vision being brought about by her loyalty to her Archon. Shes the damn general of the army and would, sooner or later, have to give up her Vision to the statue...and in the process lose that very loyalty that earned her a place at the Shoguns side. An jnevitable consequence of Ei's...pretry unexplained hatred of Visions would probably have been the defection of her freaking general if the Travellor hadnt somehow fixed everything before it reached that point, why cluldnt we have seen that? Why couldn't something so interesting and perfectly set up have been used to start to make her see the flaws in her plan, she loves eternity so much yet she's the one changing everything for the worse, that would jave been so cool!
Or Scaramouche getting to confront her, or Kokomi's connecrion to dragons being how we're introduced to the idea of the Dragon sovreigns even if we only learn more through Nahidas second story quest and Neuvilette's whole story.
Ayato has a freaking ninja team running around doing his bidding and rather than anything fun or nteresting coming of it we get Sayu...existing, and get told hes definitely doing important stuff off screen, and thats it! If anything he could be ON screen and still responsible for awesome stuff happeninv off screen with the ninjas at his beck and call, why did we lose out on so much potential and instead get a wasted hour reiterating that the Vision hunt decree is bad, several low-stakes dates with girls who dont do much in the story, and the whole mess with Teppei?!
I just...dont get how they missed the potential goldmine of drama and gave us...that
Everyone says the problem was pacing issues while those issues were merely surface level.
The problem is that the story was too ambition for it's allotment of time and writing quality .Also Genshin at this point was still struggling with the need to advertise new characters even if not doesn't make which caused a lot of time wasting with characters that have little involvement with the plot.
Like Yomiya is a cool character 10/10 waifu but they worked her into the plot horribly. Same with Sayu.
Story would have benefited from focusing on Kazuha, Goro, Sara and Kokomi more and introducing Yae earlier
Fun thing is, Yoimiya at least is the one that tries to contribute to the Inazuma Archon Quest. But yeah...
Characters like Ayaka on the other hand 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬
@@aldomeylano9278Ayaka ? Let's not even talk about Ayato ☠️☠️☠️☠️
@@idk4435 i dislike Ayaka if you ask me for a lot of reasons
The build up, it's too high for an end that was too low. That's probably the way to describe it.
Okay, I remember it being bad, but I never thought it was THIS BAD. We were forced and manipulated to fight against the Shogun, meet the Resistance who are just chilling, then the most random, easily forgotten NPC dies, then the gremlin yaps, then Hot Fox Lady tells us to fight the Shogun again, and finally we win through the power of friendship. The worst part is that Raiden was quickly forgive even though she didn't care about her people on the first place, and now in her place is a waifu that Hoyo really forced her VA to make an extremely kawaii voice in order to sell...
The best part about Inazuma is truly when it finishes lmao. Although the Narukami World Quest was nice, probably better than the main story.
Tsurumi Island and Enkanomiya were the ones that brought back hope to the story for me. Those two were how you tell stories- from the environment, back story, lore and the general vibes of the place.
@@LilySitinot gonna lie after both of those map I immediately forget how bad the Inazuma archon story quest are.
Not trying to justify Ei's catastrophic blunders, but she did care towards her nation as a whole. Its just that her previous method is incredibly faulty due to her being blinded by trauma.
The sakura cleansing is the only redeeming arc for me, not enough to save the story but it's what I remember the most
@@kevinclement1533 I mean we never really see how this trauma affects her.
There’s also the fact that visions getting stolen was supposedly a huge deal, made people lose their will or whatever, but the statue they were placed on seems to be kind of unguarded?? Like Itto and his gang were just able to take his vision back no problem?
itto taking back hus vision happened after the vision decree hunt ended i think?
@@Cecilias You're actually right I didn't notice that before haha. But that still raises a lot of questions, like why tf did they spend so much manpower just to take Itto's vision for seemingly no reason? was it cause they wanted to arrest him and that's the standard protocol? If so, it's still really weird that anyone could just walk up to the statue and take the visions, like it's so informal. I watched over his trailer again and noticed there's another vision next to Itto's on the statue, so it's not just happening to him, which seems so weird to me idk maybe I'm just overthinking 😅
Not to mention, it was treated as such an important plot but guess who never finds out what happens to those who have their visions stolen?
Ei never finds out about the consequences about taking away visions from vision holders. NOT EVEN THE TRAVELLER TELLS HER ABOUT IT.
WHAT WAS THE POINT OF SHOWING ALL THOSE PEOPLE THAT WERE SUFFERING FROM THEIR LACK OF A VISION AND NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT??!
@@Cynicalhamptur bc she doesnt care. in her quest she literally says rip bozo not giving the vision back ik the fatui's are distributing dellusions but who told them to trust wacky visions.
@@Cynicalhamptur We are never given an answer as to why the hell the visions were a threat for her so called "eternity" bullshit, its never addressed nor any of the fuckery she has done for her nation. It makes it look like prior to meeting Miko on the last scene seem like a total waste of time with all the importance they were giving it. Just another byproduct of Inazuma's crappy writting.
As someone who started playing Genshin early December in 4.2 and ending the whole Archon Quest in mid March, this is very noticably the worst written Archon Quest in many ways. Mondstadt, Liyue and Sumeru aren't written perfectly either. Even in Fontaine you can find flaws for example Act 3. But the weird pacing, concentration on NPCs and less usage of actual playable Characters compared to the other regions make it feel worse than the other ones.
Everytime I hear someone say "Inazuma was the Best" "Inazuma was peak Genshin" "Genshin falls off since Sumeru" I know that these people did not revisit or played the Archon Quest after Sumeru and Fontaine came out and look at Inazuma with their pink-hearted nostalgia
You forget that Genshin is a video game, not a book. When people say, "Inazuma was peak Genshin" they mean the exploration, new enemies and puzzles, not the story. Everyone disliked the story but the gameplay more than made up for it. Its much better than the desert area of Sumeru, that area fucking sucked.
@@maras00jr49 help inazuma was literally the worst when it comes to puzzles too, some of them were even rng and enemies were so annoying to fight (spectres especially, they had to nerf them sm)
@@maras00jr49 i'd take 10 Sumeru deserts over Inazuma exploration anyday
Tbh I've been playing off and on since 1.1, I was VERY active when Inazuma came out, I literally passed the whole first part on the update's day, and was pissed that I had to wait for the next Version to finish it.
I don't think Sumeru is worse than Inazuma, haven't reached Fontaine, but it doesn't sound like it is either, I just really, REALLY love Inazuma, it is still my favourite region and my favourite storyline, even if it was probably worse when we measure it by more objective standards.
Inazuma shine in world building and lore from world quests and Inazuma was a jump in exploration as we went from fields and mountains to every being insane and trying to kill us.
I went through the entire Inazuma arc super fast so I didn't catch a lot of this, but there was a constant presence of "Oh, so we're doing this now? That's how we're supposed to feel? Okay." It just felt like the quest was dragging the player through it instead of actually getting them invested.
Also I hated Teppei. I thought it was a me issue at first, but once the Traveler went on their whole "grr, revenge" thing I lost any and all suspension of disbelief. Like I do NOT care about this random guy who followed us around like a puppy for a bit then went and got himself killed. We get so mad at the Fatui when Teppei really did it to himself, he's one of the first casualties from the delusions and he kept jumping headfirst into situations he knew he couldn't handle. Like I'm positive he would've made it had he just learned to chill a little bit more and not act so brazenly. He got an eyeroll at best when he passed.
@@StingingNettle47 Doesn't help that we saw him 3-4 times. All of them short little waste of time scenes where he acted suicidal.
I care about Teppei about as much as the cat on serei island that Neko keeps making me look for. Konbumaru or something.
Exactly. I've never cared about ayaka nor yoimiya and being forced to do their story quests just pissed me off even more
The thing I liked best about the entire Inazuma plot line was everything involving Kazuha, from his dead friend, his personal lore, to him parrying the shogun while using two visions. He is great. Frankly, giving MC vibes and I loved him.
I hated everything about Ritou, the Kamisato clan, and Watatsumi Island. Kokomi didn’t even do anything, she just showed up. It felt like she had SO much potential
Ritou dragged on. It went on for SO long, and running around for all those NPCs (that Hoyo seems to care deeply about since one of them hijacked Ayato’s story quest) was exhausting.
I didn’t care for the dates with Yoimiya and Ayaka. Like… maybe if they had come at a later point, I might have liked them. But I REALLY did not care. They slowed down the story for me. Yoimiya’s second story however is amazing and I legit got teary eyed.
You nailed everything about Ayaka. Like… I understand that her character on a deeper level is about misogyny and expectations for a Japanese princess… but at the same time it felt like she existed to be another waifu in love with the traveler. I think Ayaka fell victim to the bad writing big time.
Someone else pointed out Scara as well, and I’d like to second that. He was a cameo that should have been more. The most vital information about him was given to us through a missable conversation with Miko at the very end. Honestly, I feel like in the story of Inazuma, they should have gone all the way with Scara, or not have given us that bit of his lore at all. It felt like a half assed way to introduce him and foreshadow his importance, especially when his connection to Ei was basically a throw away line
Kazuha was the best part of the archon quest, in my opinion. He's still one of my favourite characters and quite iconic out of all characters due to fighting against a god.
I kind of want Raiden Ei to continue being antagonistic, considering her redemption was so rubbish. I like the fact Kazuha still can't properly forgive her, which was hinted in one of the events after.
Interestingly, in the most recent Inazuma-based event (Arataki Itto's Rock-'n-Roll Festival) there is an interesting reveal that ties a lot of problems of Inazuma's Archon Quest together in an attempt to fix what otherwise doesn't make much sense.
(There's a CatWithABlueHat video that perfectly explains it, but I'll try to summarize it as good as possible)
Basically, the event phrased it so, that a 'dog' saved countless other 'animals' during the time when the Shogunate's army and Resistance were at war.
So, the Kamisato Clan and Resistance were working together during the war, but behind closed doors. As we see with Kamisato Ayato's most significant characteristic, he is the type of person who lays low and doesn't inherently act out in the open, and is able to utilize the Shuumatsuban as well.
After all, the Kamisato Clan is part of the Yashiro Commission, which means that they can't simply help the Resistance as they can't outright oppose the Tri-Commission and the Shogun too. Thus they had to keep things under wraps as much as possible.
Soon after, the International Trade Association (which I'll shorten as ITA) - which we deal with at the start of the Inazuma Archon Quest - works together with Komore Teahouse, and created the "Puppy Union", an operation to help rescue "pets" during the war.
The ITA had bonds with Sangonomiya, whilst Komore Teahouse had its ties with the Yashiro Commission, and both parties were 'led' by a 'puppy'. Taroumarou for Kommore Teahouse, and Gorou from the Resistance.
This also makes it likely as to why the Kanjou Commission was so hostile towards the ITA. But the Commission couldn't outright expose the ITA, as it could expose their collaborations with the Fatui in return.
This also greatly clarifies Thoma's personal involvement, and as to why he is regarded as Inazuma's "fixer". He is the first person we meet in the nation thanks to Beidou, the first person he introduces us to is the head of the ITA (Kurisu) and with the Traveler's help, indirectly he made it so the Traveler aided the Puppy Union in turn.
Ayaka's story quest also involves her directly assisting Kurisu, but speaks in a manner as to not raise suspicion. She knew exactly how to help him out without him exposing the truth about them being in cahoots as well. Yes the quest isn't good and a total drag, but the way she actually helped him out, clarifies an extra thing regarding the secret bond between the ITA and the Yashiro Commission.
Strange that all of this crucial information was hidden in a temporary event that is no longer available though.
Right. This bit of information would've really helped explain a lot of actions happening through Inazuma. IMO, this would've been a perfect plotline for Ayato's SQ when he released as it would've helped tie up those loose ends and it fits in with his character in how he likes to pull strings in the shadows.
Unfortunately what's been done is done but at least the devs can expand on things they didn't get to show in the Inazuma AQ to rectify it to an extent. But it is annoying how most of these pieces of information are lost by these limited-time events. I really wish Genshin had a system like HSR so that new players can experience and learn the amazing things that we older players have. I am of the opinion that Kazuha's storyline in GAA was better than his actual SQ and would much rather new players see the GAA version over the SQ.
I have a question, does it explain why kokomi needs to "cooperate" with the fatui though ? I kinda forgot the Inazuma AQ after all.
WAITTT this is so interesting. You know, I kind of understand why some people dislike that post Sumeru, Archon quests are longer and 5 acts in total instead being a little too long (which with Hoyo’s bad writing tendencies is a bad combo) but considering how MUCH info there is in each nation’s problem, I understand the increased length. I’m being so honest when I said this singular comment made me more interested in Inazuma’s AQ than the AQ itself.
She didnt know it was the fatui. She didnt even know what they were using were delusions until teppei died and we found out, after that she quit using them@@pon9035
This event came SO long after the Inazuma Archon Quest released that the cynical part of me thinks they didnt actually have any of this in mind when they wrote it, and instead came up with a way to combine some retcons with a popular type of event that hadnr happened in a while. And while im glad they took the time to make their playable characters actually play a role instead of only focusinb on NPCs, and make them seem less incompetent than the AQ made them out to be, it still feels tacked on? The resistance is already openly opposing the Shogun and her decrees, why the need for THIS much secrecy on their end of the rescues other than to give a reason that nobody told even us about it while the war was still happening, you know?
Again, i like this idea of the ones we always knew were the good guys trying to help people actually having a functional way to work together to achieve that, but when i really think about it...i can take it or leave it. It doesnt add that much, doesnt tell us anything new, just provides some evidence that what we were supposed to think about them all was accurate, and it feels like an info dump was slapped onto a rhythm game event that they couldn't think of a full story for, which shatters any idea that maybe they knew what they were doing during the AQ after all 😅
feels so weird how at first raiden is such a strict ruler who knows and controls everything and then she's like um im shy and i miss my friend um yeah sure u can call the decree off okay :( i go try boba now cya
Downgraded for fanservice
literally fell in love with raiden in general because i thought she would be a “villain” i was so upset when they dumbed her down to appeal to a very obvious type of audience
Shogun =/= Ei 🤷♂️
@@Gogetamain true but we expected to see more of ei being very decisive, cold and smart, whereas that persona is thrown away in the form of her puppet and we meet the real, soft, clueless archon! poor her, she's just an introvert, the war wasn't even what she wanted >o< !
That same case can be made with anyone. If you think they are just doing this for fan service. Take Neuvillette, for example. He talks smack about the Archons, creates a strong demeanor, but what we are shown is a helpless sovereign who is completely useless without his authority. Even after getting his authority, he relies on the Traveler to beat the Narwhal. A complete crybaby, it doesn't fit the sovereign persona at all.
Even Furina, to some extent. At first, she is very arrogant and uses sharp words like nothing, but later on, it slowly goes to the same trope: "It's not the real me, you silly." I'm yours typical shipping ahh waifu / husbando
The main issue I had back then and even now is what was the point of the statue. They put so much emphasis on the vision hunt but what was it for? From what I remember the whole idea was given to Ei by the fatui and she just went "yeah, sure". I really thought the reason for the vision collecting was that Ei could use it as some sort of power up or something to fight Celestia or at least do something but no. Maybe I remember wrong but even if I do the storytelling was so bad I can't help it lol
Yeah this is a hidden plot point that you will only understand in hindsight
the reason why Ei was taking visions from people is because visions tie people to Celestia and fate of the world and Ei wanted to break free from Celestia's influence in every way. so the assumption is that her plan was something like Rene and Remus had with their hivemind will project, not sure exactly what Ei was trying to do with statue of omnipresent god but it is most certainly is connected to what i mention. i guess we might learn fully when we will find out more about Istaroth.
hell even Sacred Sakura plotline doesn't make 100% sense until recently with all the loom of fate explanation that makes you realize that by planting sacred sakura, Inazuma actually broke free from Heavenly principles and its fate, Makoto even says so in Ei 2nd story quest. but at that time we didn't know what it really meant.
The archon accumulating power to rebel against Celestia and its imposed fate is exactly what they did in Fontaine
@@MrMagnetron2And also prolly Snezhnaya lol
Ei said it was because humans lives were short enough as it is, and that a vision is too much power for them. Similar to Teppei dying from his delusion. Opposite to Scara's thoughts.
There's also some lore theories about Celestia connections and fate that we might learn more about later.
my biggest complain is Ei's pov. her sister died (as many others??) so she locked herself in her head not caring that her people are dying. literally what the. and then the community will try to analyse the hell out of her actions to justify her. no, she's just extremely bad written. hence, my least favorite archon. am i supposed to sympathise with her bc of her sister? xiao and zhongli lost all their friends in the archon war and the khaenrian war and they still haven't given up on liyue. even venti still watches over mondstad in the shadows.
Tbh I do kinda understand her with my own experiences of losing others (I do often shut myself away/feel distant for a time).
@@IchigoShinagamiit’s completely understandable for a human like me and you but i’m just so disappointed that she let her nation go at war and didn’t care because of her grief
@@doveskiss8 she didnt know about war tho, and it was directly mentioned in quests that corrupt comissions didnt pass the infromation about it to raiden.
So noone was letting the nation go, it was just a case of misinfromation/lack of understanding.
@@doveskiss8 Good lord the war wasnt because of the decree it was a long held dispute because of the death of Orabaxi.
@@doveskiss8 The gods of Tevyat are surprisingly no different than human. They aren't omnipotent and omniscient, and thus can make mistakes just as normal humans do.
Tbh the whole ending of Inazuma story looked like Rabtoon joke they made in ffiv paradody.
Ei: - OH! I AM EVIL!
Yae: - Stop being evil! [poof]
Ei: - I am NO LONGER evil!
Like wtf? I also had many many arguments with people who said "Raiden apologized in her second story quest!", yeah, she kinda did, to the Traveler and not her people. That's not what we wanted. "She's a god! She doesn't need to apologize!", yeah, but she's also a ruler, who is responsible for her people, if she was just a god, she could stop being a ruler and give responsibility to some one else, but no. "People forgave her, because she's a god and they admire her!", wow, that's a cult my friend, so you're saying that she can kill your family in front of you and you'll forgive her because boobs- i mean you admire her? That's messed up in so many ways, lmao. "She helped all the victims! Just read messages on the boards in city!", and why i should read some outsource material, that is not present in the main story quest, again? This is so bad.
But i guess nothing will work on people who are sold for pretty face, booba-sword and short bathroom robe. At least i respect people who are honest that they like Raiden for her meta gameplay, booba-sword and other minor reasons because waifu gaming and all. That's admirable.
I also noticed another plot hole after replaying story quest three times: Yae had an entry pass and she didn't give it to us because... reasons, the whole section with Sayu and following Sara wouldn't happen i guess. Not many people remember this shit, so i'll elaborate a bit on this matter. At the beginning of the first Raiden story quest Yae gives us the entry pass to Teshoukaku. Apparently she always had it, but used it just now. Meaning she always had a free entry to the place and decided not to use it herself, not to give it to resistance, not to give it to Ayaka, and not to give it to us, when the Traveler visited her first time. But after the whole thing she just "take it and go visit Ei", wtf? Lady, if you had that thing on you all the time why didn't you share it?
Also if Ayaka and Yae and Kokomi were technically on the same side all the time, why they didn't communicate in any way?
And the icing on the cake, why Yae never talked to Ei? She could freely enter the Teshoukaku anyway, so what's the problem? Some people said that "it's because she knew that Ei was stubborn, she tells about it in the second Raiden story quest", yeah, but assuming smth (no matter how good you know someone) and trying to speak with the person (no matter how pointless it would be) ARE DIFFERENT THINGS! "I tried to reason with her but she wouldn't listen" and "i decided not to try speaking with her because i knew she won't listen" hits different. When i went through all those quests again and again i just couldn't find Yea likable in any way. Lazy, irresponsible beatch, that's who she is. But yet again, people only see short dress, sussiness, mommy vibes and nothing more. Who cares about character if it sells well for all the wrong reasons, right? Well, whatever.
If you feel offended by the opinion of a random person on internet my condolences. If you like those characters i have nothing against you personally, but objectively speaking the story was bad, the presentation of these characters was bad, and trying to defend that is like lying to yourself. It's ok to like unlikable characters, but don't try to justify their actions pls. Thank you. Term "guilty pleasure" exist, use it.
Bro I didn't even see that, that makes Yae look so bad jeez
So you say she didn’t do something but when told that she did you “can’t bother” because it wasn’t screamed in your face. Genshin is an exploration game so it expects you to dig for bits of world building to make the world feel more alive. Plus she was never even she just misunderstood what eternity means due to loss and didn’t want her nation to fall.
@@burstlogic3457 you do understand that some people play the game for other reasons than exploration, right? Also there's no legitimate proof that she did help victims, because the person who said that refused to give any proofs. And tbh i never was found of this "dig for lore" thingy in games, because i came to PLAY the game, not read a Wikipedia. And i still firmly believe that all crucial information about the main plot and consequences of it should be presented through the main story with dialogs and events between characters. SHOW ME HOW SHE HELPED VICTIMS, DON'T WRITE ABOUT IT ON SOME RANDOM PIECE OF PAPER! This is a basic story telling rules for christ sake. I don't care that what she likes to eat and read, i want to see her caring and helping her people, like Nahida did for example. And stop justifying the genocide with her kind of sad backstory. "Oh she lost her friends and sister, and that's why she killed thousands of innocent people". And, i remind you, she didn't even apologized publicly. This is just disgusting. What a piece of trash.
@@atomicgrave4340 1. Then just say that that gameplay style isn’t for you. but don’t say it’s bad overall just because it doesn’t align with how you play games.
2. It wasn’t genocide it was a civil war where death happens on both ends.
3. Raiden wasn’t involved in the war and didn’t start it either that was Watatsumi island.
4. And even then the war would have been over way sooner if they took more effort into espionage. It took the traveler, a firework, and a ninja who sleeps on the job to get the proper knowledge needed to bypass the tenryo commission and speak straight to Ei which she even said she’d be willing to talk about it as long as needed. They could’ve done that and had the whole problem resolved before the traveler even made it to Inazuma. I’m guessing that they still had spite over orobashi so instead of acting on a way to solve the problem faster they just created a prolonged war. So I blame the resistance for that.
@@burstlogic3457 1. this is the most stupid take i've heard. If you don't know how the proper storytelling should be done, don't start the argument, you sound ridiculous.
2. It's still a genocide, because she allowed it to happen, she knew what was going on and did nothing, she started the war by creating a vision hunt decree. It her responsibility!
3. The resistance is responsible only for their own stupidity, instead of finding information about other resistance forces (Ayaka or Yae), they acted on their own. I also blame Yae for not reaching out to resistance at all, even though she HAD FUCKING ENTRY PASS TO TESHOUKAKU! They didn't need Sayu or anyone else, if only Yae would lift her lazy ass and do something about the situation. But believe what you want to believe. I don't care. I spoke my position, and there's nothing you can do, i won't change my opinion. Because that's how I see it. And if it offends you in any way, i already said in the first post: my condolences, grow up.
Another thing missing in the quest: Kamisato Ayato
He is supposed to be the head of the Kamisato Clan, he is often mentioned and given importance, and we never even meet him! Later in a UA-cam video we are told he «actually» was helping from the shadows
Ajá
yeah i really think we shouldve met him and not ayaka, or met him though ayaka in the aq. he was mentioned so many times, and played such a massive role in the archon quest, yet we never meet him
@@roxy5079 I have the theory they were still altering his design when Inazuma launched, I was interested in his character and was alert to information but there where zero leaks, descriptions or anything until he was about to be released
Genshin was such mess in inazuma i genuinely belive they still didn't have a 3d model for him, would explain why his ult is a little bland compared to other 5 stars
i hate raidens redemption, I wanted her to stay a strong leader for her nation and not fantasising over dango milk.
Why can't she be a strong leader and like dango milk? I don't see how that took away from her character what she was doing was wrong and she realized that.
she still is though? the second half of her *first* story quest focuses on her setting the Tenryou Commission straight and putting her foot down, and her second story quest goes deeper into her resolve to be a better ruler, better herself as a person, and reflecting on her wrongdoings. And then some appearances in limited time events where you can see the gradual progess she's making. The fact you *find out* about her sweet tooth doesn't detract from that
What redemption? Lol.
Ignoring all the harm she has caused because she's pretty and traumatized isn't redemption. It's even weirder that the characters affected are not at least a little bit resentful for what she did?
Honrstly her second story quest was perfectly fine as is. It's her first story "quest" (if you can even call it that) that should be removed completely. You can have her mention that she secretly loves sweets in an offhand line of dialogue, just don't write the whole effing quest around it.
@@AverageWagie maybe not removed entirely, but changed and swapped orders and modified to make it about her character development and not pure fan service.
You didn’t mention the worst part
Back in 2.0 before we had Act 3, it was basically impossible to use one of the main teleport waypoints in Inazuma City because we were wanted and we had to wait 6 whole weeks just to freely walk around the city
Minor nitpick yes but god it was so annoying
@@ibukiyagasaki dam I wasn’t even around for that(joined in 3.2) that’s a pain bro
Wtf??? Holy shit it was horrendous
Raiden’s search for eternity was all just yap. She just missed her gay fox
We lesbians are so dramatic sometimes😔
she was on her period guys
How is Yae Miko lesbian, I never really got that?
@@KingEmiya2023 Hoyo can’t be very open with their queer characters (see: honkai impact 3rd manga had to remove a panel of two girls kissing) so they imply things about some characters. For example, yae, yae miko is based on the honkai impact 3rd character yae sakura (who is a lesbian), she and raiden ei have marriage anklets and have been close for at least 500 years etc. if you want a more detailed explanation i recommend E’s videos on queer coding and queer characters in genshin
@@Audentes_Fortuna_Iuvet I personally believe she teases everyone no matter female/male she even teases raiden. You can make arguments for her being either pan or asexual.
Inazuma is by far the most beautiful out of all the regions but has the shittiest archon quest 😅
And the shittiest archon. I love Raiden but she's a terrible ruler lmao
@@Croissant_Craver And a terrible cook. You can't even cook food with her in the game IMAO 😂
@@Mr_Phantom880 The only thing she cooked was Signora😔
@@Croissant_Craver She didn’t even cook Signora she burned her to a point where not even ashes remained of her 😅
@@Mr_Phantom880 Lmao truee🤣
Inazuma was like: Your telling me but not showing me. Strategist were? Redemption arc were? Consequences were? I didn't see it at all.
After the archon quest I was atleast expecting Ei to get consequences. But nooooo she just walks around and ppl r just afraid of her bcuz she’s powerful n stuff.
Like, I get it, you’re an archon, but brave people exist and I feel like nothing happening afterwards to Ei kinda made the quest seem a bit pointless.
What I’ve always heard in defense of her is how she’s protected the nation for 2000+ years, so the people forgave her because they were all told she was manipulated. And because what she’s done for them, far outweighs the negatives.
But even then it’s hard for me to see myself liking her
Because people who are blinded by Ei or are diehard fanboys will find any excuse to save the tyranny she has given to its people, not realizing she was never tricked. she knew what was going up but choose to do nothing about it because "it pose no threat to her eternity vision", which is a lot of bullshit, sure thing, and i suppose people starving, going into crisis, scammers, corruption and being extracted from having a vision was a great choice. Flipping the whole nation upside down is such a positive point.
People will always try to invent an excuse to save her lazy ass writting.
@@unoreversecard1761 yeah i mean in logic, there are always people who will go against power. it happens all the time, and there is no reason someone wouldnt do it in genshin. a perfect opportunity for a confrontation would be in her first story quest, while we were walking though the street. someone could come up and express their anger for it. even better, the npc in question couldve gone though something a bit like what ei went thought 500 years ago. something to really impact her and make her realize that what she did was messed up, and caused so much of the pain that she suffered though herself. idk maybe there is still a chance for it to happen in an upcoming event, but i doubt it. they missed their chance, and i cant help but feel sad about it.
@@roxy5079 felt that 100%. On Reddit there are plenty of people who wish she would’ve seen people she hurt in her story quests. For a character who’s trying to be more connected with her people, they should’ve taken the opportunity to you know… actually show someone who was hurt because of her.
People who died because of their visions being taken away, people who tried to leave the country and got hit by lightning. But nah… apparently Hoyo thought it was better writing to show her dango and light novels rather than her victims.
Personally I loved the Traveler here the most, ppl might say they were "out of character" when they didn't want to help the ppl of Inazuma but the problem is they immediately heard about us and WANTED us to play hero, of course we'll say no. And personally Traveler was still upset about the Venti thing when it came to Signora, I hated her for that too. We wanted to fight her AT Liyue but Paimon said not too but we wanted to fight her, so them challenging her just seems like we finally got what we wanted since Mondstadt. I remember the writer for Inazuma left mid of the story so they had to rush or whatever which is the main reason it was a disaster. But I'll still say I enjoyed it and certain moments still makes me hyped about it even tho it wasn't that great.
I like it when Aether/Lumine essentially tell people to “fuck off”.
In short, the traveler got into a conflict that it really shouldnt had been their business, which it might be why they seemed a little pissed. This story just wanted to clamp a lot of things together but they failed to even give a proper development
@@thomasraines1396Now if only it stayed that way
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 we saw it briefly in Fontaine as they didn’t want anything to do with Navia initially. But yeah doesn’t happen all to often. But the way Natlan frames it, Aether/Lumine are hyper-focusing on finding their sibling instead of actually experiencing the journey.
About the fatui, even the common fatui people are dying (see gray hair) due to their delusions, but other than that i completely agree with you
ik im late to this comment, but yh its very obv that those soldiers are suffering pretty serious repercussions thanks to the delusions. the mirror maidens skin is grey, nearing blue tones. thats the first one to comes to mind, but its a well known lore fact that delusions are super bad for humans to use. i dont know if this is canon, but i remember reading somewhere that the delusion holders we see have a tolerance, or are trained to withstand its effects little better, but i cant verify that information so dont take my word for it
Not to mention the absolute horrible addition of Signora. She’s mentioned once before, and she doesn’t even fit timeline wise. She’s not mentioned at all, shows up at the end, and she’s forced into a duel just to die. Even in the rules traveler goes “I challenge you to a duel” before Signora can say anything raiden goes “proceed” and Signora reiterates the rules of said duel. Not to mention the dialogue line “for the people of liyue you imperiled” when it was literally completely Zhongli. So not only did the traveler take his anger out on Signora, but then on top of that, Scaramouche should’ve been the boss instead of Signora. Scaramouche is the one with ties to raiden and the amount of potential via swapping scara and Signora’s storylines, without any death is just too good to miss out on. How do you make a change with both a mom and troubled son and NOT have any fighting between them.
+ Signora’s reveal as the crimson witch wasn’t hyped up at all, or even hinted about aside from the artifact set. They basically just threw her in there for no reason
Signora was the one who made people suffer in Inazuma though. Play this quest again and you will see. Scara also says he just take orders and he is not the one who is giving delusions to people like that. Signora made people suffer, for sure and traveler couldn’t take it anymore after what happened in Mondsyadt and Liyue. And in that place there wasn’t another thing to do since both Raiden and Signora was against Traveler. Also in Raiden boss fight traveler says I’m not here to debate your ideas, I’m here to demolish them clearly shows how traveler found the way of dealing at the end other than philosophical discussion of what eternity means with Raiden. Signora also speaks as If people are nothing at the beginning of the fight, she is indeed gone to the point of that just to make Tsaritsa’s goals done in any way possible.
@@zeynepy8607 lmao. Both scara and Signora mention they aren’t in charge of the delusion factory, even in the lore it suggests a higher rank like Pierro to be running it. Scaramouche manufactured the delusions while Signora was sent for diplomacy and to get the gnosis, because she’s better at that. It was extremely poor writing and it was more traveler taking his aggression out on Signora after Scaramouche got teppei killed
@@zeynepy8607 “traveler couldn’t take it anymore after what happened in mondstadt and liyue” you mean where zhongli intentionally lets all this go down and Signora just shows at the end for the gnosis? Tartaglia summoned osial, not Signora, and in mondstadt she was perfectly just to do what she did considering venti basically caused her lovers death
@@TheCrimsonWitchofFlames Venti did not cause the death of Signora's lover. First, we don't entirely know about Venti during the cataclysm, other than he woke up because he was needed & that he fought Durin with Dvalin in Dragonspine. Second, Rostam was a Knight who was fighting against the abyssal monsters which is how he died
To be in such a position, where battles are likely to happen, there is always a possibility of dying. Though I guess it can be argued that Venti didn't save him but we don't know what he was doing aside from killing Durin but even if he was helping the knights, he couldn't save everyone. The archons aren't even omnipresent. Saving everyone from death is impossible, Signora's lover wasn't the only person who died during the cataclysm. Also, people do tend to blame such things on gods because they are supposed to be divine & powerful, Signora would have obviously blamed Venti for Rostam's death in her grief
@@Natoreo Its pretty much psychological stuff, Signora couldn't bear that her husband died and instead of accepting it because she couldn't do anything to save him, she blamed it on the circumstances, or well in our case the archon.
I myself dont know much about psychology, but some people i know told me this lol
I feel like the vision hunt decree was SUCH a cool idea and then it got fumbled so bad. Like when we went to the statue of the omnipresent god I was so shook Thoma was just wandering around? With his vision on display? Like boy theyre gonna fucking GET YOU. Like i thought it would make sense for people in positions of power to keep theri visions but normal people? Like Thoma? They should have been the first targeted, and when there was noone left to defend them BOOM Ayato and Ayaka get smacked. Could have been a great criticism on how wealth and power protect people from consequences. Even Sara could have been cooler, imagine the god you love and idolise and FIGHT for suddenly turns and decides to take the one thing most important to you. Do you give it up to her in a display of complete servitude and obedience like that guy in the bible who (almost) sacraficed his own son. Or does the hooror of your soulless empty future without a vision scare you so much youre forced to rebel, to switch sides to the army youve spent years slaughtering for the god youve now abandoned. Also why was Raiden even taking visions? Like I feel it was probably addressed but I dont even remember. Then would have been the perfect time to introduce the fact that the heavenly priciples are asleep, making The hydro archons execution even more scary because we know the heavenly principles could be woekn up if something big enough happened. If Raiden took peoples visions to stop them ascendgin to lvl 100 and awakening the heavnely priciples it would have made her motivations somewhat sympathetic cause like, yeah, thats pretty scary ngl. Also we know now Kokomi and Ayato were working together to save people in areas of conflict but what about smuggling out vision holders? What if when Sara decides to rebel we have to smuggle her out? IDK man I just feel like so many cool ideas were set up in Inazuma but literally none of them panned out well.
I get that Ei and Raiden are not the same, but I absolutely hate how they used it as a get-out-of-jail-free-card. I hate it for many reasons.
One, Raiden was a more interesting character. Her evil actions being motivated by her ambition of eternity is original. It makes for an interesting villain.
Two, nothing about how this works is clear. Was the puppet a perfect replica of Ei? If so, why did Ei change her mind so quickly at the end, with no real reason? If not, then why would Ei leave the puppet in charge, never checking in to see what she was doing? Or maybe she DID check (that one contradictory line again) and she just didn’t care. Which brings us back to: why would she then change her mind?
Three, I deeply hate how suddenly, at the end of the quest, and in the subsequent story quests, absolutely everyone is fine with Ei. « Oh but she isn’t Raiden, she didn’t do the evil stuff » She was still a negligent leader. When Zhongli retired, he made sure humans would be fine without him. When Ei fucked off to her realm, she left a psycho puppet in her place. « Oh but the war didn’t affect them, only few people are vision holders anyways » Yeah, bullshit. First, vision holders have friends and families, so you’re already expanding the amount of people affected, and also, some people just have empathy for others. Some people have principles. Plus, ain’t no way a civil war isn’t fucking up everybody’s lives, including the ones that aren’t directly involved. You’d get supply issues, civilian casualties caught in the crossfire, a hostile environment where people all suspect each other of being rebels/revolutionaries/spies. And did everyone forget inazuman borders were closed? People were essentially trapped.
All that to say I don’t believe for a single second there would be no resentment. If you’d told me there were two sides, people who were still loyal to her and people who hated her, I would be fine with that. If you’d told me people were pretending to like her because they were scared of her, fine. But genuine awe? Hell nah.
@@books2438 I wish they HAD made them separate tbh. If Ei just had been unaware the story could’ve worked really well but NO 🙄
@@Edahs_exists Ei was unaware of the war. The only part she knew about is that the Fatui were there.
@books2438 Yeah, the issue lies with this, why would Ei think that leaving an emtionless puppet be in control of sentinent people was a good idea? I have no idea what she was smoking because it doesnt matter what route you choose, it makes her look as a terrible leader, leaving whats basically an AI in power or knowing anything what's happening outside and yet not doing anything just makes her character stand in a bad position. Not to mention, then if she abolished the Sakoku Decree just like that at the very end, it means that at any given moment she was capable of just saying "Okay fam".
The problem is that people try to justify her awful actions by trying to use the "complex" character excuse or "it was the puppet". Her decisions did damage Inazuma and third parties, business, foreigns, corruption, a terrible hazardous enviroment as we saw on the islands, visions being stolen because they posed a "threat to eternity" and the most important one, people losing their lives on the battlefield, which extends the pains of anyone close to them, not just the vision bearers. This in turn makes her saying that it hurts her the loss of lives ends up being in such a terrible joke.
@@BeholdTheGaiaForce Exactly! It’s like the didn’t know what the hell they wanted to go with, so they just added stuff here and there that would make Ei look better but it just brings up more questions. Like you said, why couldn’t she stop everything sooner? Well, because she was negligent I guess.
@@books2438 Inazuma was in a constant tug and release from what i remember hearing. Hence why the story writting is actual ass in here, as some people have said, everything becomes so meaningless until you meet Miko on the last stretch of the quest, making everything we went through almost as non-existent, leaving more questions and the abrupt ending being the icing on the cake to end the chapter in such a bitter note. Ei's character suffered the most from this, since she ended up being pretty much a neglecting leader whose words dont match her actions.
Inazuma arc is me when i lose interest in my assignments and write whatever in the end just to submit it before the deadline lol
great analogy
Yea, my biggest issue was just the plot conveniences completely ruining the established characters, who they are, why they are that way, and what they're capable of.
I liked the finale with kazuha parrying the shogun after the battle before the throne, but then suddenly the power of other visions and friendship somehow allow us to win. If it was better established how thay even came to happen, then yea maybe, but even in the case with Kazuha, he had an intimate connection with his friend's vision, and had an awakening of his own in the moment where he parried the shogun. The traveler just somehow harnessed the power of the visions on the statue to win against the shogun.
I didnt like how unsubtle the pressuring to get the traveler to even start this whole rebellion with them was, like there were far better ways to show that the shogun was unreasonable and needed to be defeated in some way that WASNT giving us way too many details about 3 npc visions users who will never matter in the story again, just for all of that to tell us something we already knew. I honestly think it wouldve been cooler if we helped 3 actual inazuman playable characters who had their visions and ambitions taken, so we can see how much suffering has been caused to characters that we'll actually end up caring about in the end. A sad Kirara, Yoimiya, and/or maybe even Itto would've made for a really interesting story where we help get their visions back, build a relationship, AND get more people to help the rebellion. But that one's just me wanting less npc bull
The resistance came out of nowhere after the signora fight and they tried to patch up that plot hole through trailers for Ayato (who came out AFTER the archon quest was complete) where he said “i have to do a favor for my little sister”
Honestly the entire Inazuma quest pissed me off. The way the game makes you fight Ei after fighting Signora, the pacing, and Ei. Don’t get me started on Ei. I guess she’ll never learn that HER ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. BECAUSE SHE GETS *NONE.*
Sumeru was a huge step up. Thank you
Ei learned her actions have consequences for 500 years.
@@jjilatt123you mean that battle with the puppet? That honestly felt like way more of a feat of strength and will than an actual punishment… Ei sounded “hurt/winded” for 2 lines then was just talking and acting like normal a few seconds later.
@@unoreversecard1761 Real. The fight might as well not have happened because we didnt see anything.
It's an important character moment, and if a story is written correctly, then we WANT to see that moment, because we're invested in that character and we want to see them succeed.
Its as if Sasuke vs Itachi happened offscreen and the reader just gets told "Yeah Sasuke killed itachi" two chapters later.
It would make the entire reason he left the village pointless to us as readers, because we didnt get an actual ending to that story.
I think whats also missing is throwing into her face the whole reason why her nation was heading downwards, anything the player experienced is not mentioned during the quest, not even in the end. As per said already, the battle with the puppet is not a punishment, just tries to do a "wow" than actually seeing the character reflect on what she has done
@@absolutelynotgriffith1954 We absolutely saw things though. We literally play through the fight multiple times.
about the beginning when Traveller says no, I always felt like it didn't make sense tbh, He wants to meet the Shogun and the Shogun is very deeply intertwined in this Vision hunt Decree. And they're just like "Nah, I'll just walk up to this Tyranical Ruler who's stealing visions because they can use elemental powers and these visions are a hindrance to eternity" and not think to themselves, "oh shit, I'm an outsider who can use elemental powers without a vision, I don't think, 1. the guards are gonna let me get close to the Shogun during a fucking war, or 2, if she finds out that I the very famous traveller can use Elemental powers, she will try to eliminate me or banish me."
I have no idea what their thought process was and them saying no pissed me off.
Most likely to tease the players who are tired of that “I’m gonna help everyone who asks” hero type which Travelr of course is, because issekai. They still help, pretty much directly, in the end, so yeah, I agree, this no-shtick is really annoying
Tbh I actually don't mind the fact that he denied to help them at first since the traveler is there to ask about kaenriah, not to be a samaritan and in the first two regions we didn't really get involved because we wanted to (in mondstadt it was because we got sucked by a hurricane created by dvalin and venti helped us solve that situation quickly and safely while in liyue it was because we were suspected at first of killing rex lapis and with both after the first event that got us involved things escalated pretty quickly) but that wouldn't be the case in Inazuma until ayaka and thoma made us feel guilty about deciding to not intervene and everything about us being there just to talk with the archon got thrown out of the window in a not so engaging way
Edit: realized 2 months later that the autocorrect made the wrong guess on one word
i really, REALLY despise the way they got rid of rosalyne/la signora. sorry for swearing but it does not make any fucking sense at all. it just makes me so mad, the traveler asking for a duel is so out of character, ESPECIALLY because they knew what a duel meant thanks to kazuha's story. the whole thing is illogical, they just killed her off to show how strong the raiden shogun is. and people are supposed to care? when the little information we know about rosalyne is in artifacts? its just very stupid, and as a rosalyne lover, this ruined the archon quest for me. im not even sure if reviving her is a good choice at this point
nah, that was peak genshin moment, I hope hoyo doesn't revive her
why was it peak?
They did the same thing in hsr with Duke Inferno and Acheron. They try so hard to make their precious Meis look badass but it never works on me lmao.
I wouldn’t say I was a Signora fan but that moment didn’t make me like Raiden more, she’ll always be the worst archon in my eyes
It honestly was probably my least favourite part of the quest as someone that liked signora.
Traveler for one was so unlikable to me that whole segment as they were just making rash decisions because teppei, someone we (or at least me personally) had no real attachment to, the anger felt out of nowhere. They then proceed to blame her for venti and liyue's case. Maybe I can understand venti but liyue? Why were they so hostile to signora and Childe but not zhongli who orchestrated it.
It was also out of character for signora to accept the thing. Yes she is proud, very much so but she's described as diplomatic, her deciding to get into a scuffle didn't make sense considering she should ideally know the consequences
Well Signora was a giant walking death flag considering her backstory. I do think it was to early to kill her off but bringing back at this point would feel cheap. Personally I wouldn't have even had her in Inazuma at all and instead introduced Dottore (one of his selves) as the visiting 'diplomat'.
You definitely highlighted a lot of my problems with the Inazuma AQ, but one thing I wanna add is the whole “traitor” subplot. That part hooked me and I was really excited to find out who it was (my suspicions were Teppei and Kokomi at the time), so the fact that the traitor turned out to be some random NPC who you wouldn’t even know was the traitor unless you read a random journal in the Scaramouche domain was a massive bummer
inazuma as a whole was built on shock value, from the archon quest where whole army went against traveler, story quests that were only about npcs, world quests with easy sobstory, and hidden quests that were all about children getting constantly murdered.
everyone just forgiving raiden after she left THREE islands to fall due to biohazard and war because ,,she's dango loving mommy'' was so stupid, raiden shouldnt have been redeemed
@@Termarbeloved REAL
@@Termarbeloved Its funny how literally one traveler had to clean up her mess as much as possible on those islands than their own archon. But yeah, Raiden did an awful job as an archon.
@Termarbeloved half of inazuma is not even close to being habitable,one has non stop lightning and rain,one has electric nuclear radiation,and the other is a driver's nightmare,this is ignoring the many minor biohazards in the other islands
I'll be honest i kinda liked the first half of the story especially the one with people's vision removed. Cause as much as we know how tense the situation are as outsiders actually seeing the people having their sense of selves ripped away from them was kinda chilling to me it is one of the view show AND tell that Inazuma given us. But sadly the second half blunders everything that was set up by the first half i genuinely have no good words for it.
I love this comment section so much 😭 At the peak of the inazuma arc you could critique the story, but god forbid you can critique my hot mommy waifu raiden shogun!! It's not even that she did things wrong, her being wrong actually had potential for good storytelling but in the end she suffers no consequence from it, it actually feels like the story is trying to validate her actions and it leaves SUCH a bad taste in my mouth lol
And therein lies the problem - it's hard to define what she actually did wrong without also throwing shade at a lot of other characters, especially those withjn the Tri-Commission that actively worsened the situation
one of my main problems with inazuma as a whole is the reaction of the people AFTER Ei changed her mind. They were all suddenly just celebrating her after possibly hundreds of their people died because of the vision hunt decree. They weren't AT LEAST being critical of her and skeptical of her regime after it. The point of NPCs is to make the world of a game feel more alive but hyv didn't even try on that aspect.
3:25 It’s not a huge deal but it always bugged me that the statue doesn’t actually display the majority of the stolen visions. I chalked it up to having false expectations based on cool fan-created concept arts (since we knew before Inazuma’s release there’d be an imposing “statue with 100 eyes” made up of visions), but in scale and presentation the statue doesn’t feel like it matches at all with what it’s meant to be (a symbol of power) or how every character describes it.
I never turned back to realize how rough it was because I havnt checked it out since it's release @.@ this is a bit of a wake up call to realize how strong my nostalgia had been
even as someone who joined after the quest was fully released, i too never truly looked at how bad the aq was. i knew it wasnt great, but i honestly didnt want the little good things i felt for the region. kinda messed that up when my favorite character was from inazuma and had to glance at the lore. if only they were able to redo the archon quest though, like imagine it being even close to the level sumeru and fontaine were on?
I agree with many of your points (pacing, focred plot points) but I dont agree with how many things you called "out of nowhere", but there are implications that are left unsaid which I'm ok with as long as they are well executed. For example, we know Ei is a warrior as heart and she has much respect for thise who can best her in combat. Her first story quest hints at this when we learn the heads of the commissions all (or maybe it was just one of them I cant remember) all got their positions by winning a duel against her.
The traveler changing his mind is also consistent with his kind and caring nature. Although he tried to say no at first, seeing the suffering of the people made him realize he couldn't ignore it and just continue his journey. I do agree the shift felt sudden and it would have been nice to see his unwillingness to help gradually soften rsther than "ok yeah nvm sign me the fk up for the rebellion".
My biggest criticism of the quest was the rather sudden resolution of the main plot (literally was just like 5 min and suddenly Inazuma all better) and the final fight with Ei was 100% a power of friendship moment. There was no indication the traveler could take on other people's wills or gain strength from that. At least the Sumeru akasha system was well established throughout the plot and felt more organic when Nahida used it at the end.
I would say "blatant xenophobia" rather than "blatant racism" as it more accurately describes the situation. Because it's not race that's the driving force but rather them being foreigners, outlanders.
Here’s my thoughts on a remake of the Inazuma archon quest. The prologue stays basically the same, except the thief comments on how did they managed to get a Vision from Inazuma, never getting an answer and cowardly going away.
Act 1 should have a cutscene where the storm around Inazuma is brewing in which during this period there would be a massive wall of thunder and cloud that covered the borders of Inazuma. It’s during this time that the Traveller (due to the elemental compatibility) would have a small glimpse of the Shogun in the Plane of Euthemia . After crossing to Ritou things stay the same (though more realistic plot and methods) until they reach the Tea House.
It’s here that Thoma invites the Traveller to walk around the city since he needs to buy some groceries, meanwhile telling everything about Inazuma.
It’s when we follow Thoma that we notice some people that lost their visions and see their behaviour. Seeing the misery of the people, including the ones without a vision.
The city seems to be stuck in a form of limbo. Which makes the traveller feel uneasy.
Once they finish their shopping Thoma shows them the Statue of the Omnipresent God and suggests the Traveller to help them against the vision hunt decree.
Traveller refuses and this leads to them meeting Ayaka, who makes a deal with the Traveller that if they help them abolish the decree, she can help him get to the shogun.
Act 2 It’s here that Ayaka asks us to help on freeing the one that makes the fake visions which we meet Yoimiya and meet Sara. This leads to Ayaka thinking of a way to get Sara onto their side, this leads to traveller going to the narukami shrine in order to deliver a letter to Yae Miko.
After that, Ayaka tells about the war and if they want Sara to help them convince the Shogun, they need to stop it. This war isn’t just about the Vision but also regarding Watatsumi vs Inazuma. We help Teppei and he explains the history of the island, we meet Sara again during combat and then we meet Kokomi, leading to us going to Watatsumi island and explain why we are here.
We discover about the Delusions, prototypes of the ones used by the Fatui (courtesy of the Doctor). It’s then that the traveller sees the death of not just Teppei but also almost half of the army.
We confront Scaramouche, who mocks on how humans are so amusing to be toyed with. The traveller (due to elemental compatibility) gets overwhelmed with the remnants of the dead gods (aka Orobashi).
This leads to the Traveller falling unconscious and witnessing Raiden kill Orobashi in their dreams. We meet Yae who congratulates us on helping against the Fatui, since the truth about their actions and the deaths of both Inazuma and Watatsumi came to light.
Ayaka appears too and explains they can use this as a way to convince Sara, meeting with her and arranging a time to show the proof. We meet Sayu and she does her job.
In Act 3 we train with Yae Miko, who explains the situation with the Shogun and makes the Anti Shogun training. Once we are done we get the info from Sayu and meet back with Sara, showing the evidence… it’s then that Sara tells she will contact the resistance to meet in Tenshukakua in order to fix this ordeal… things stay the same until we get inside the plane of the real Ei.
At first we ask about our sibling,getting to info. We then talk about the Vision and the Fatui finding she knows about them. We then resort into a due, risking our lifeboat order to make her abolish the vision hunt.
We fight Ei and while we are winning, we can’t seem to defeat her. Yae appears and tells us how this plane only takes ambition into consideration, not physical capabilities.
It’s then that with the help of everyone’s ambition that Ei loses, forced to abolish the decree. It’s then that after it’s all over that we meet with Miko and Ayaka. It’s then that we get the Ayaka and Yoimiya quest to give us a relax time and helping us think about the abyss twin.
I'm assuming in this remake, Signora doesn't die? Because that would be interesting to use in the future, though I'm not sure where we'll put her.
@@sffb8295 sadly she does die as per the rules of Inazuma
Perso I'd make a small modification, please tell me if it's good or not :D
The beginning you did is perfect ✨️
The only thing I'd change is when we fight her at the end, instead of defeating her, she oblirates us, but recognizes the ambition if her ppl and cancel the decree, imo it would be better because the ambition of 100 ppl are nothing against the shogun, like she killed so much gods, and nuked an island, even letting traces on other surrender island, and get stopped by 100 ppl ambition, like wtf?
So imk she'd rather recognize and accept their ambition, instead of losing the fight
@@neko.1601 that’s fine by me honestly… I also don’t think we would beat her anyway when we couldn’t beat the Knave
@JoshuaA1307 after getting TWO more elements, Raiden is presented from the LIYUE STORY QUEST as an undefeatable Archon, as a "strong" ruler, and break that identity in one act
inazuma is my favorite nation but oh god does the quest suck ass
to me it was the fact that the raiden just had a clarity moment and then all of the people were happy, also the fact that they justified the shogun who killed a lot of HER OWN NATION JUST BECAUSE OH IM MOURNING MY SISTER and that she talked to miko and suddenly she wasnt bad anymore???? plus her mission being straight up a date babyfying her oh my god
I found it funny how raiden put everyone through hell for years on end and then after a short encounter with the traveler she changed her mind completely and decided to open the country back up 💀 idk if hoyo was rushed to finish the arch or if they just had terrible writers at the time. Either way the ending felt very anticlimactic and way too easy.
For me the problem is how boring hoyo tell the stories in general. Feels like they only want to waste our time.
The more I think about it, the more disappointed I get 💀
A Note: i've noted that in the escape from the shogun, she's actually so taken aback that they had the guts to fight her she stood there baffled but due to poor writing they didn't portray that well.
The entire time I played the quest I suspected that teppei was a spy/traitor and then he just died
I did the anti shogun machine over 30 times
@@Mishse are you okay
@@Edahs_exists still stuck TvT
@@Mishse 😨
@@Edahs_exists I'm FREE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
@@Mishse I did that on my first try😶
Analysis and thoughtful reflection like this is so refreshing and needed, really enjoyable to see the literary critique presented in such a way - hope you'll do it for all the archon quests and other major topics, fantastic so far and please keep going, you are doing so well and its genuinely a wonder there are not more channels exploring intriguing topics or discussions like this rather than simply META/stats, so I'm interested and excited to find you!
This video makes me feel so validated because i remember getting harrased in community servers for these exact same thouvhts and words, im so happy others are looking back and realizing how bad teppei and the inazuma arc truly was
You are right about almost all of the points you are making. Factually, the writing is flawed and there are a lot of plot holes. Most of the decisions made by the writers are questionable. For a game like this, which values its lore and world building as much as its characters and gameplay, creating a story like this does feel bad indeed.
I enjoyed my time when Inazuma first came out. Playing since the first few patches of the game, this storyline wasn't that good compared to what we had before, so I wasn't really bothered by this back then, and because of that, certain action scenes and all the other stuff was actually very enjoyable for me. I liked how threatening it felt when we first landed there with all those puppet-Raiden cutscenes, even though the story was lacking, it was really good. It might be because we didn't have those patches all at once back then, which (for me at least) created a sense of mystery around the whole situation, and not to mention the amazing side quests and difficult puzzles which are a whole another topic. I loved the idea of that lame, invisible, "terrible" war between watatsumi and shogunate that forced the soldiers to become deserters, I loved how threatening and despotic the shogun/puppet was. Again, the story might have lot of issues, but I was hyped with all that stuff back in the day; 1v1 in the plane of euthymia with the Shogun, she stealing our kill and blowing up the Signora, Kazuha somehow blocking the Shogun, it was peak genshin in my opinion.
I think the story of Fontaine would make a fair comparison to Inazuma's, since both are filled with plot holes, but the people enjoyed the former a lot more I think. For insantce, the actions of the hydro archon and her reasons for all the stuff she had, are kinda lame and pointless I'd say, which made me think so lowly of Furina after all the revelations, but the majority of the player base loved Furina. At the end of the day, it's all a matter of opinion.
When it comes to any kind of content in genshin, I personally can't seperate the story from the gameplay, because when someone says Inazuma's story is bad, I too remember the mentally challenged Ayaka arc and the supposedly competent watatsumi soldiers arc, but as dumb as they might be, I truly enjoyed playing every moment of it. And yes I liked the anti Raiden Shogun training too, I'm all in for that kinda unreasonable challenges. Some of us just play games for the sake of playing, with our smooth brain mode on.
(Also, I don't think Scara. is implying that they're making "Direct" money from the delusions given to the watatsumi soldiers; It's more likely that they are using this as an advert for their other fronts of delusion businesses. However, I don't really remember who's funding the production of those things, it might also be that they're manufacturing delusions for free and then selling them to other factions, thus creating a market of sorts with little to no cost.)
When a random old man npc dealing with the loss of the ballet dancers in ZZZ has better characterization than Raiden:
The anti raiden shogun training actually helped me a lot. It’s not just button mashing anymore. I can actually see what im supposed to dodge. Im just upset that is wasn’t replayable after you finish the quest.
I’m sorry but seeing Ei walk down after taking thoma’s visions is the most chills I’ve ever gotten from a video game ever. That alone makes it one of if not my favorite.
All the hype leading up to the first archon being a villain was so cool, you just had to be there.
whew, my list of best archon quests…
1. Fontaine
2. Sumeru
3. Natlan
4. Mondstadt
5. Liyue
6. Inazuma
I personally love inazuma's vibe and I like Raiden. It's sad to see that people don't like inazuma mostly because the archon quest just ruined it for them.
I don't mind Inazuma, but I'd be lying if I said I prefer it over the other regions. Inazuma's archon quest was confusing, and difficult. At times in the story, it also felt a bit rushed imo. It seems like the writers weren't actually sure how to introduce Inazuma. Could they have waited a while longer for Inazuma to release? Probably. But the damage has been done. For what it's worth though, Inazuma does have the best natural beauty (at least to me), and the bosses in Inazuma are top tier (besides the Geo Riftlord, it can go die)
I have trauma from the sidequests.
I'm a newbie who started playing in February 2023 and i finished Inazuma at the beginning of july 2024
I'll admit that i didn't about Ayaka and Yoimiya's quests slowing down the plot, probably because i was fascinated by the 2 girls... Maybe that's exactly what mihoyo wanted, lmao. Other than that, yeah, these points are all valid.
I'd like to add, though, that when we meet Signora we see Sara right there, but they never explain what exactly happened to her. Did Signora fight her? Is she wounded? Or maybe even Shogun herself fought her?
Even worse is that they never show or mention her again. Shogun's 1st legendary quest revolves around the Kujou clan struggling to keep their power as head of the Tenryou commission, AND THEY STILL DIDN'T MENTION HER AT ALL! Wth??
Same happened to Teppei. He died, and then they never mention him again (with the exception of Scaramouche maybe). It made his death less impactful than it could've been
It's crazy that Seirai and Tsurumi, two regions that are explored through a world quest, have better writing than the archon quest
yeah 1 region where half of the island are locked behind a 'nuclear meltdown' quest sure fun to explore
Half? 80% of them
Also? I totally get the Teppei complaint.
I actually made up my own backstory for him when creating someone to intertwine with things that don't make sense or feel kinda dumb.
Me? I had him as a young man from Ritou who dreamed of being a hero on the battlefield and seeking glory. One who went into hiding due to speaking out against the Shogun and that he came across the Resistance when led to them by an outsider.
And the outsider found out after the war was over what happened to him and essentially mourned his death and blamed themselves for what happened.
...It may not be a perfect idea but it was something.
As a guy that doesnt care about lore and just exploration, inazuma is the best nation 4 me
they really wasted kokomi's and yae's potential
My problem with the Inazuma quest is that no one cared about anyone or anything other that their own feelings, the war was just there to interfere in their peaceful life:
Ayaka and Thoma don't care that the traveler wants to meet Raiden, they just want to not feel so guilty about not doing anything (the others commissions were working with the fatui and not even Sara who was part of the family knew about it, but they had their hands tied!!), they never informed the people that losing the vision could cause memory problems and they had the traveler solving inconsequential problems that again could have been solved with the truth, then Ayaka makes the traveler face Raiden (who almost killed her) for a person (Thoma) she barely knew instead of doing something for him herself (you know being friends with him for years)
Yoimiya sees the problem others have while trying to help people with visions but not once she offers her knowledge with pyrotechnics, or to give or even just give a discount in fireworks as a form of distraction to help in battle
Teppei is an idiot that doesn't care if he gets others killed because he wants to fight even if he is bad, he uses the traveler to enter the army and gains a position that he does not deserve and knows that he doesn't have the training in combat or strategy to hold, putting everyone at his command at risk, he keeps using the delusions even when he knows he will grow old and die and no longer be useful to the war because he wants to fight now and that's the only way and even with his death he sends the traveler to fight a harbinger for no good reason
Kokomi comes out of nowhere after doing gods know what (because we never see any future solution or advantage that could explain what she was doing), she doesn't care enough to stay in the war camp, sends the traveler all over the place with requests, puts both traveler and Tappei as leaders without caring about the fact that the people doesn't know the traveler and Tappei isn't actually fit for the role, even if she calls her army comrades they call her excellency and my lady what makes a clear difference between her and the others and in general doesn't do anything and it gives the impression that she formed an army and is in this war because Raiden was being an inconvenience that ruined her peace
Yae Miko is morally gray since the beginning so is no surprise she didn't do anything even if she saw all the problems the people was facing, the problem is that she "cares for her friend" but never even tried to persuade her before, even if it was just because she missed her, the moment she stepped into the traveler's fight with Raiden it causes a reaction for her what makes me wonder why wasn't she there from the beginning and why did she needed us to fight her to "get her back"
The people in the commissions don't care about all the problems of the war, the lives lost and the fact that they are all traped because they are making money. Sara has an almost cult like love for Raiden and doesn't have a motive or conviction to keep fighting and stealing visions: the raiden wants it so she do it, when she finds she may not know that's when she demands answers
Raiden doesn't care for her puppets, for her people or for Yae Miko, she abandons Scaramouche not even caring about the fact that other people, the fatui, can use him to create problems for others, she is the god and ruler of the nation when she doesn't want to be but doesn't step out of her position for... some reason, she doesn't actually believe that the visions are a problem and even if she had a problem those are visions from other gods to it would make more sense to exile the people to the lands of those arcons than to take something she didn't give and that is of no use for her and apparently she doesn't care that much about eternity because Yae Miko and one fight later she is suddenly a different person (I haven't played her other quests because I hate her but I know that people no even resent or hate her for that)
The fatui only care about themselves so I won't even go into detail
The only person I saw that cared for others was Gorou, he was with the army when Kokomi was taking a vacation and actually fought in the war, he is the only one (along with Kazuha who is doing this for his friend but at least is other person and he never hides his motives), that deserve praise and the only one I liked in the quest
Not even the people of genshin impact cared enough to show people being able to travel, to see family and friends, to be able to find a job and be able to have food, to be able to import and export fabrics or food, we don't even know if the people who had their visions back got their memory back or if the process could be reversed!
Genshin loves to tell and not show. There’s a Nathan quest where it ends with a battle in the past and they choose to use a black screen with words instead of animation
Also it shows the lack of pre writing in Genshin. There’s loom of fate was talked about in version 1.0 and yet when confronted the abyss sibling about it they state they don’t know why they’ll use it for. What was all that build up for???
The idea, the concept is great but yeah the execution
I can speak of how bad the inazuma quest for hours 😭💔 like
1. How ayaka and ayato just act behind the curtain but still no impact
2. How ayaka panic when thoma got capture (THEY SHOULD KNOW THAT WILL HAPPEN)
3. what happen with yoimiya and her fake vision (i thought see gonna save thoma) 😭😭
4. We don't need to talk about kokomi the war strategy
5. The build up of the quest are people got killed, economy crisis etc what happens to that???
The way all peope still adore the archon after all of it 😅 (only kazuha don't want go near ei now lolol)
And the way people of Fontaine and paimon hate(?) Furina when she doing her best all this time
But people of inazuma just make ei their idol
No hate, the quest just have so many plot hole
And there so many people denying this because it their fav character, the quest CAN NOT BE BAD
Because tall women never have any wrong☕️
@@nadhif_nasrulwhat
That's the true depiction of the French lol. Always complaining and protesting
i feel like the story would’ve been really interesting if ei had already changed her mind by the time we came but couldn’t leave the puppet as it had gone out of control or something
Interestingly, they did try that sort of concept on her second SQ, it was just too little too late by then.
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363uh huh
inazuma is a gorgeous region that is fun to explore.. but the story and what you needed to do was so bad that a friend of mine saw me struggling and offered to beat the quest for me. i let her (with many thanks) and was surprised that she also powered through the chasm so i could play the gem that is sumeru’s story.
I think the tell not show problem is something all of genshin quests suffer from. It also makes lore hard ti follow since names of people and places get so complicated and we have imagine what they look like
Exactly and they dump a bunch of meaning crap in there
Honestly I went in expecting this to be a mini version of hoyo bouncing off of Star Wars. Oh boy was I disapointed. Genuinly the worst quest.
The pay off was just not there. Like the ending where Ei just kinda gives up?
Honestly we should have left inazuma and come back when we were stronger. Or what happened in Eis 2nd story quest should have been part of the archon story
Seriously. Inazuma should have been something we visit twice with a waiting period in between
I still don't get how Raiden is still allowed to govern Inazuma after causing a genocide, it's like Hitler was allowed to rule Germany after WW2
I feel like Raiden's attitude after the discovery of what was going on outside the plane of Euthymia came out of nowhere. She was originally portrayed as a serious, threatening god who ended up giving up everything she'd fought for CENTURIES and reduced to a cute girl we were supposed to be swooned by. She had great potential but I think Act 3 was so rushed that we didn't even have time to digest all the changes going on with her.
Btw great video. I like how eloquently you speak and then randomly become unhinged in some parts; it's unexpected and entertaining to watch.
The way you mentioned the longer time span of the vision holders stories and the way they introduced Teppei in a short time made me think... why didnt they combined both stories?
For example, (when ayaka asks us to check the consequences of not having a vision) we meet Teppei and he can be one of these victims, now with him having been stripped from his ambition and seeing how everyone on the nation is suffering; he joins the cause (the traveler could also join around this point, going hand to hand with teppei's encounter). Sure leave the delusions but now it's justified that Teppei wanted to feel/have his ambition back as his condition was getting worse, only for him to die without it due to the delusions.
This could help some of those problems
a. Settle the "why taking the visions is bad"
b. Establishing Teppei as an NPC whose story is now linked / witnessed by us.
c. Taking the over time from one part of the quest and distribute it on the other part.
It could solve a lot of those issues if executed carefully, as well as giving the traveler a real reason to engage against the shogun.
When a random comment has a better idea than a company:
my biggest problem with inazuma AQ was that they decided to killed major character that could possibly become playable BEFORE even letting traveler speak to her personally. we didnt see any cutscene relevant to her backstory and most of the playerbase doesnt really care about artifacts descriptions. the other harbingers were given way more screentime and wanderer could even be met during MONDSTADT event which is her home nation
Yea thats what inazuma deserves for not including my man ayato in the archon quest. Karma served right
Random thing I found about this quest I found strange was the fact that Kazuha, with 2 visions, was only barely able to push back Raiden. Despite this Gorou and the army still decided to rush in
I feel like of they add another act where we somewhat spend some time with raiden showing how bad the situation and seeing how brainwash people in narukami island is. Then, i feel like inazuma would somewhat be saved. like make her struggle or make her stop the war or even make her second story quest to be the part of the act. I would maybe like the quest a little more
But it was about that? This comment was made like 3 hours ago and her second story quest has been out? Did you just not see it yet?
I think what they mean is that they wish that the plot points and themes of Raiden’s second story quest were used as another act of the archon quest instead of a character story
@@burstlogic3457 nah what I mean is that maybe if they add another act of the quest with the stuff I said maybe I would like the quest a little more like what Mr mag said
@@msvna1971 I see. I misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying
I feel like Ayaka spending time with us at the festival + the dance she did could have been hangout event or something. I enjoyed it but it didn’t need to be in the archon quest.
I enjoyed Teppei. I know we didn’t know much about him, but I enjoyed his presence and wished we got to see more of him before he died.
The archon quest was imo pretty short, I thought more would happen since Ei is powerful and blah blah blah. Getting more time with resistance + more action would have been nice.
Also some one needs to say this Wander and Tartaglia are awful in terms of morality, but the simps defend their morality till the end of their existence. One attempted genocide one sold delusions for money and it lead to deaths (Tappie being one of them)
Ei's entire character arc is just so terribly executed. I went from liking her because she was the first archon to not be immediately buddy-buddy with the traveler to absolutely despising her from how they redeemed her.
Her lore seems interesting but they barely touch on it. We don't learn much about her sister and Inazuma when she was younger.
What irks me the most is her first story quest, which you unlock right after you finish the archon quest iirc. It's literally a damn date simulator and the people are just... okay with her? How do none of the Inazuman people resent her? She literally locked up the country and made them miserable by taking away visions! But it's okay because she likes dango milk I guess 💀
when you said the story was too short i gasped because it felt like the longest story quest i have ever done
A little dumb thing i like to headcanon for Inazuma's early plot, is that it was Ayaka that tipped off the shogunate soldiers about Thoma being a vision holder. Just trying to be cunning like her brother in a plot of politics and scheming, and hoping that this last ditch effort of essentially throwing one of your most trusted servant under the bus, would push the Traveller into finally supporting their cause. Also cos I genuinely dislike Ayaka lmfao
Cos honestly, the soldiers had no fucking business scooping Thoma out, an outsider, yes, but also with very close and dare I say almost personal ties to Kamisato, while there was much more "public" character of Yoimiya, whose Pyro Vision wasn't exactly a secret ffs.
"We run into Teppei... this son of a bitch." LMAO.
7:55 to be fair to hoyo... This is probably that "puppy rescue" operation that was revealed in the latest music event. Kokomi and gorou never wanted the traveler to know this, so it makes sense he says he doesn't know. Still, it does suck that I literally had to see a vid on event lore just to know such a thing even exists
i actually really liked Ei’s character idea about a god grieving their twin and having to have their role taken over my a puppet. i just wish that they handled it better. i love the way Ei’s personality was handled but the circumstances surrounding is what makes a lot of people dislike it.
Wait people sufered with the anti shogun training i don't remeber being that hard