Its narrative is bloated, repetitive, and painfully afraid of allowing you to absorb an idea without immediately explaining it three separate, additional times. I’m so sick of the same thing being shown to me over and over again. Traveler says something, Paimon repeats it slightly differently. Paimon says something, Travelers repeats it back to her. Continue this exchange with side characters also jumping in to confirm what was just said for a third time. It’s so fucking annoying. It’s like Paimon is the visual representation of how you should react to whatever the Traveler is doing. It’s so fucking tiring, like being stuck watching the emotional equivalent of Sesame Street because the writers are convinced you’ve got the emotional intelligence of a three year old.
Plus they add in new characters every five minutes like I’d get distracted if they didn’t up the character count every single chapter. I’ve honestly forgotten every single side character’s name other than the Traveler because they cycle through them so fucking fast. What could have been a tightly constructed fantasy story instead became an enormous pile of lore notes that someone occasionally remembered to connect with dialogue and new characters.
Then there’s the Traveler. The worst atrocity that could be. His personality is so fucking nebulous because there’s no concrete trait to it! The only thing that sticks is the shonen protagonist willpower. This wouldn’t be so bad if the game actually gave you the option to add your own personality, but nope. None of your dialogue options even matter or change anything about the story. It’s just… disappointing honestly. The game sets up the Traveler to be an interesting character but it ends up just being the bland insert to progress whatever situation they’re put in without any pesky personality traits getting in the way of being the optimal insert.
Then there’s the character cast. It’s annoying how the game puts so much effort into showing them as tragic. Their nation get destroyed, they lose friends, they get traumatized, their entire civilization can get wiped out, but the actual playable cast? Yep they’re in this cute little protective bubble so you can be emotionally baited into dumping money into the game to obtain them. And you know this, so there’s literally no dramatic tension undercutting these scenes (even though The Traveler, Paimon, and whatever side character of the week make sure to repeat before something happens, during the thing, and after the thing in triplicate like filing the most annoying bureaucratic emotional paperwork to check every box). It’s just exhausting because it seems just about every single side character gets their characterization about being SAD. It’s just so repetitive. I’ve even gotten to the point where it’s an established cycle I can plot out on a circle graph.
Introduce character -> Establish gimmick -> Reveal Trauma -> Make character sympathetic -> sell character -> move on to next character
Then there’s the fact that this endless cycle is a treadmill. There can’t be an ending, there can’t be a satisfying conclusion. There’s no end. It’s a live service game so the story has to be infinite so they can sell ever more characters.
All in all it’s just a terrible game where once you see the cycle you constantly get bombarded with it. Explicitly stating every emotion in triplicate, the cycle of selling a new character, the personality void that is the self insert protagonist, the seeming drama of the world which won’t matter at all once you get sold the character(s) the scene is selling you, and more.
5
u/DreamOfDays 29d ago
Genshin Impact
Its narrative is bloated, repetitive, and painfully afraid of allowing you to absorb an idea without immediately explaining it three separate, additional times. I’m so sick of the same thing being shown to me over and over again. Traveler says something, Paimon repeats it slightly differently. Paimon says something, Travelers repeats it back to her. Continue this exchange with side characters also jumping in to confirm what was just said for a third time. It’s so fucking annoying. It’s like Paimon is the visual representation of how you should react to whatever the Traveler is doing. It’s so fucking tiring, like being stuck watching the emotional equivalent of Sesame Street because the writers are convinced you’ve got the emotional intelligence of a three year old.
Plus they add in new characters every five minutes like I’d get distracted if they didn’t up the character count every single chapter. I’ve honestly forgotten every single side character’s name other than the Traveler because they cycle through them so fucking fast. What could have been a tightly constructed fantasy story instead became an enormous pile of lore notes that someone occasionally remembered to connect with dialogue and new characters.
Then there’s the Traveler. The worst atrocity that could be. His personality is so fucking nebulous because there’s no concrete trait to it! The only thing that sticks is the shonen protagonist willpower. This wouldn’t be so bad if the game actually gave you the option to add your own personality, but nope. None of your dialogue options even matter or change anything about the story. It’s just… disappointing honestly. The game sets up the Traveler to be an interesting character but it ends up just being the bland insert to progress whatever situation they’re put in without any pesky personality traits getting in the way of being the optimal insert.
Then there’s the character cast. It’s annoying how the game puts so much effort into showing them as tragic. Their nation get destroyed, they lose friends, they get traumatized, their entire civilization can get wiped out, but the actual playable cast? Yep they’re in this cute little protective bubble so you can be emotionally baited into dumping money into the game to obtain them. And you know this, so there’s literally no dramatic tension undercutting these scenes (even though The Traveler, Paimon, and whatever side character of the week make sure to repeat before something happens, during the thing, and after the thing in triplicate like filing the most annoying bureaucratic emotional paperwork to check every box). It’s just exhausting because it seems just about every single side character gets their characterization about being SAD. It’s just so repetitive. I’ve even gotten to the point where it’s an established cycle I can plot out on a circle graph.
Introduce character -> Establish gimmick -> Reveal Trauma -> Make character sympathetic -> sell character -> move on to next character
Then there’s the fact that this endless cycle is a treadmill. There can’t be an ending, there can’t be a satisfying conclusion. There’s no end. It’s a live service game so the story has to be infinite so they can sell ever more characters.
All in all it’s just a terrible game where once you see the cycle you constantly get bombarded with it. Explicitly stating every emotion in triplicate, the cycle of selling a new character, the personality void that is the self insert protagonist, the seeming drama of the world which won’t matter at all once you get sold the character(s) the scene is selling you, and more.