#any other game and she'd be a villain her people wanted to overthrow

[ac-liveblogs]

Raiden Shogun’s Character Quest, Act 1

I spent the first half of this bemoaning how funny this could be in more competent hands, and the second half massaging my shiny new headache brought on by the sheer audacity. Anyway!

We’re introduced to the act by learning that Inazuma is in trouble; between the enroaching storm wall and the the Tricommission its in a general state of chaos, and the Shogun has vanished so nothing can be done about either. So... we’re off to a great start.

Thoma is the one out doing the legwork for the Kamisato Commission again. Seriously, why does Ayaka even exist. She seems fairly narratively pointless, I don’t think a single thing would change if Thoma was just acting on Ayato’s behalf. 

Ei, within very short time, says that she cannot modify the Raiden Shogun, but that fixing the storm wall was no problem; she’d just need to... modify the Shogun... ??? (And we don’t even fix the storm wall during this Act, so. What is the truth.)

This whole “sheltered upperclass woman out of touch with the commoners” spiel has already been done with Ayaka and Eula, though Ei really does take it up to 11 with her complete lack of understanding of the concept of fiction (and right after I thought her being completely stupefied by light novel names was actually pretty funny, too!). I don’t think this is meant to be a symptom of Ei spending most of her life as a warrior with no time for downtime, but even if it is they could have picked something less stupid for her to be ignorant about. 

Also, we seriously establish that Inazuma is in both political and literal physical danger, and just take Ei out on a date. 

Like dragonslayers and motion sickness, the joke about broke Archons will continue on well into the future, won’t it...

I don’t understand why NPCs get so much focus in Genshin. Especially when the playable cast doesn’t get much to work with? Why not switch out Kamaji for Sara, seriously. 

In fact, why not, oh, I don’t know - address the Vision Hunt at all? The entire conflict in the second half is about the Kujou clan’s culpability in the Vision Hunt decree, which somehow manages to damn the clan and completely ignore that Ei is the one that made the decree in the first place. Ei even has the audacity to tell the Takatsukasa clan they better not lie to her the way the Fatui did, but... Ei explicitly did not care about the Fatui’s manipulation of her and Inazuma. Why this retroactive painting of her as a victim?

Her doing the bare minimum of sorting out a mortal quarrel that she caused is treated as a victory for her. Like, she’s the Shogun. That’s her job. I really do not understand why her people are putting up with her. 

Archons vs mortal NPC cutscenes continue to be unimpressive on the Archons’ part. If anything, I admire Kamaji’s sheer guts. Also, shoutout to the ronin that attacked the Shogun. Hope they got paid well.  

Yae Miko is a terrible friend, by the way. 

Ei makes it pretty clear throughout this Act that she really, genuinely, does not give a shit about the humans in her care, considers their issues petty and doesn’t particularly want to rule them. She just wants to preserve her ideal of eternity. In any other game this would read as villainous, so it’s theoretically interesting to actually engage with this perspective. Theoretically. 

But. Here we have a god who does not care about their people, has enacted two decrees that are/were actively harming them, and is not for a single second held to account for any of it. Ei dismisses their concerns as petty, and her opinion does not change. At most, she comes to accept that humans changing is inevitable and should be taken into consideration. There are no consequences for her treatment of her people. The lives ruined are treated as a bump in the road, and Ei needs some time to think and change her strategy.

It is a callous disregard for human life, and I’m shocked the game is treating it as legitimate. Ei clearly has not learnt her lesson. 

I understand that Genshin is more about the Archons than the humans, but the Traveller passively going along with the Archons once they’re in their friend circle without like, objecting or voicing any opinion or disagreement of their own is... genuinely frustrating. Not all Archons have legitimate ways to rule, but it seems we’re fine accepting anything.  

Anyway, Ei’s fifth character story has her dreaming that the Shogun began considering her a danger to it’s preset ideals of eternity (her old self’s ideals of eternity), because she has changed too much. That concept is far more interesting than anything else we got with her.