Genshin’s Story ISN’T great (but it’s a lot more complicated than that)
In my writing, I’ve constantly talked about shows that have left a great impact on me. Neon Genesis Evangelion was one of the first shows I watched that I felt that I not only related to but completely understood, Omori was a game that struck me in the heart with learning to let go, and Honkai Impact 3rd gave me the hope to fight for a better future, so on, so forth. And while I have written about Genshin Impact before, I’ve talked about its potential to be a great game narrative wise and how perspective really factors in to make the storyline more compelling. So after two years of starting Genshin Impact and one year since I wrote that piece, I think it’s the perfect time to dive deep into my 2nd open world Role Playing Game after Breath of the Wild, the BOTW gacha itself, Genshin Impact. And after two whole years of playing, what do I think of the game as a narrative? Does it build on the perspective that I praised it for having? Is it fun gameplay wise, and does it live up to the massive hype?
Short answer: It fucking sucks lmao.
Long answer? It’s a lot more complicated than that.
Before you click off this video, or article, or whatever you’re viewing this on, please hear me out. Genshin Impact has a lot about it that is amazing. It’s clear that the team behind it has a never-ending river passion poured into it, dare I say even more passion than some *OTHER* Triple-A companies have. The soundtrack is phenomenal, and the attention to detail they put into the game even with how vast the map is is incredible. The *ahem* artstyle is very appealing to the eye and can make for some genuinely stunning shots, The exploration and combat feels silky smooth and amazing with many possibilities (albeit within different characters under ‘wishing” banners), and when starting out, many players would have a lot of fun exploring all three regions of Teyvat.
That being said, this brings me to what in my opinion are Genshin Impact’s major problems,
Replayability
I mentioned that a new player would have a lot of fun with Genshin Impact, and, for the most part, I don’t think I’d be wrong. Open world games are always full of so much to do, and it just so happens that Genshin Impact might be one of the busiest open worlds out there. Because it does attempt to replicate Zelda, there are many different hidden secrets, world quests, and puzzles to discover on your own, and the map feels extensive and vast instead of invoking a sense of claustrophobia (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but does have the added benefit of feeling free to make you appreciate the environment a lot more). For me Single-Players have always been about that magical feeling of sitting down with your pc or console at 10 AM in the morning, doing all the quests, and letting yourself be immersed into that world.
Yeah, Genshin Impact did that for about 3 weeks.
To its credit, those three weeks were absolutely wonderful, and also to its credit, Genshin Impact is a gacha game that updates every 40 days with new content, but regardless, I feel like that is the point of this argument. I’m not going to ramble about the predatory tactics of Genshin, because it’s been said so many times by YouTube that at this point it feels redundant, but I am frustrated at how content is handled. Lack of endgame content is a big thing that people have been arguing about recently, and while I do have my reservations, I also agree with them for the most part. Great games even when replaying feel like they have many things to do with the smooth combat and the storytelling that grips you even after you’ve experienced them before. Genshin has you do two commissions with fighting involved, spend your resin, and 2 other commissions that are basically fetch quests while also slathering you in lines upon lines of exposition. THE EXPOSITION NEVER STOPS. PLEASE STOP I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID BOYFRIEND GLORY.
*ahem*
Which brings me to Genshin’s next major problem:
Storytelling:
Hooooooo boy, do I have a lot to say about this. If you thought my rant about replayability was long, buckle up, because we have so much to talk about.
You would think that due to such a long wait for the highly anticipated story content to be released, they do a good job of storytelling.
Well, I suppose I’m not being entirely fair, as it is pretty complicated, but all in all I don’t enjoy a good portion of the story. I enjoy the cutscenes, and I enjoy some of the themes in the dialogue, but I definitely do not like how rough the “dialogue” is.
I say dialogue, but what I mean is lines of exposition dump. Like I previously mentioned, Glory, for the fifteenth time, I don’t care about your god damned boyfriend, please let me get to the cool shit so I can fight the boss, watch the really good cutscene, and go home.
Do you understand what I mean? Like, there’s a reason why the Genshin community has a common consensus on one thing, and that’s the fact that they like to skip dialogue because of HOW FUCKING SLOW PEOPLE TALK.
Guys, I don’t know if you know this, but exposition does not even come close to the effect that actual storytelling can have. We don’t need paimon telling us exactly what happened here, we want to figure it out ourselves. We don’t want so much exposition that our brain fails to catch up, we want to be shown that information through creative means of gameplay or details.
I understand that not everything can be told through creative gameplay, especially with such a vast world like Genshin, and that exposition is necessary. But there is a big difference between exposition scattered between the dialogue, and exposition that happens
Every
Fucking
Line.
Not only is the player prone to skipping or skimming through dialogue faster than you leveling up your favorite character the minute after you received them, this has the added effect of nullifying any personality that characters can have. Not only do they not talk like normal human beings, the amount of information that they speak out makes them feel more like robots than actual living breathing characters. Listen, I may be biased here, but I genuinely do not remember learning a single interesting thing about Yelan in the new Archon quest. You could make the argument that she does have a personality and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but it definitely feels like the game does not show that personality side of her in an effective way.
It’s a huge shame. Genshin Impact is a game with an immense amount of potential narrative — wise, and Mihoyo have proven with their amazing manga series that they are more than capable enough to handle the story. But whereas you can feel the life and the expression of the Genshin Impact manga, the game doesn’t really convey it well. You can tell that the people who work on Genshin’s story are passionate, but are brought down by a flawed storytelling system that was doomed from the start.
Genshin’s biggest problem narrative wise isn’t the fact that it constantly updates the story. It’s not that the story just can’t be great, it’s the fact that they have to constantly introduce and sell new characters while explaining everything in detail. I realize that I have been very harsh on MiHoYo for putting exposition and passing it as dialogue, but I recognize the effort it really takes to make a game of this caliber; it’s hard. Truth is, when you introduce so many new regions, each with their different characters and secrets, the exposition and explaining will get more and more bloated. Unless something in the storytelling changes, the foundations will start to collapse in on itself and the story will become hard to follow and inconsistent.
This is why there’s a murmur among the crowd that Sumeru might make or break Genshin. Not only is it the midpoint of the story, it is also the exact time where people are starting to have doubts about the storytelling methods of Genshin Impact. It’s the part where we see just how dedicated MiHoYo is in immersing us into the world of Genshin Impact, because this is the perfect time to start taking risks with your storytelling and experimenting in order to create a story that people are not only watching, but experiencing.
— — — — — -
It’s games like Genshin Impact that almost perfect the art of the open world RPG and stories like Honkai Impact 3rd which convince me that MiHoYo could make a killer Triple — A 80 hour single player action game that rivals even the biggest titles today. You can tell with the production quality of their cutscenes and their behind the scenes regarding music and story that this is a game they care a lot for. It’s just that they work for a chinese game developer determined to make you spend money on it. And while MiHoYo has shown glimpses of Genshin Impact as as passion project, this coming update will ultimately decide on whether they are willing to sacrifice some monetary gain in order to create a game that people can truly respect, not only for its lack of a gacha element, but also its passion in both storytelling and worldbuilding.
Of course, Genshin probably won’t stop being a Gacha game, and most of the complaints I listed here take drastic changes in order to fix. MiHoYo is a company first and foremost, and, well, taking risks to better immerse players into their story and their messaging sadly isn’t a priority for most companies around the world. But even so, I hope that through the smallest of changes, from making their events more relevant to the main story while also allowing newer players to catch up on them, to giving the traveler a personality other than a self insert, they let their passion for the game shine through.
Conclusion:
Genshin Impact has potential. So much, in fact, that it’s quite literally impossible to tell a compelling story with so many characters neglected from the main quest. You can easily feel the effects of the massive character list just by listening to the lines of dialogue the characters recite, but It is to my belief that taking the first step and separating the player from the traveler is a necessary step in the right direction.
I really want to like this game. I’ve spent hours upon hours literally reading Genshin Impact fanfiction. I’ve read the manga and I consume so much lore content that it’s probably not healthy, which is great and all, but it would feel a lot better if the game itself took the time to develop the characters in a way that feels smooth and genuine. I don’t say this lightly when I say the Genshin Impact fanfic community is quite literally carrying the story, because they have made me feel so much more emotion than the game itself.
But even though it feels like the story is a terrible waste of potential, even when I wish the characters had more personality, I think I’ll still play it. The story, while bloated, does have its moments and I’d be lying if I said those moments didn’t satisfy me, but I just wish that Genshin was more consistent with the way they develop characters and the story. It is a damn good game after all.
Just please, please don’t give me the Ballon escort commission again, MiHoYo?
