I wish I could like Hoyoverse's work, but they're worse than CBU3 about knowing how to represent melanated people; or even trying to. After my tenth or twentieth argument with Genshin touchers about lack of proper representation, whitewashing of melanated cultures, and how these crackers think I should just be okay with that because it's a Chinese game and these poor wittle indie developers can't be expected to get our skin tone or hair coarseness right, I gave up on anything Hoyoverse put out, as well as its player base. Genshin and Star Rail players are literally a singular rung above League touchers to me at this point lmao

Honkai Star Rail by the same developer has a small story arc that is essentially a light political drama about an IMF-equivalent loan shark, a new leader of a nation, and a former rebel leader. Not in a million years would this story being told in another, less goonery context feature three young women as the main characters, without them being women being the point of the story. At times the games feel like they are from a future where we are free of sexist tropes in storytelling, at least if you squint your eyes.

There's a lot of moments where Hoyoverse's writing for its female cast could have been just as obnoxiously gendered as many anime are but it doesn't. I'm talking about tha whole "I'm a fighter/strong/performing a traditionally masculine-delineated role and this has erased my femininity! Woe is me, who never experienced being a 'woman!'" garbo genre. There used to be a manga called "A Story About Treating a Female Knight, Who Has Never Been Treated as a Woman, as a Woman" and it had hundreds of chapters and would get posted on the r/manga subr*ddit every week. I would smash the downvote button everytime I saw that long-winded gasbag title show up on the feed.

It is absolutely a shame that Hoyoverse is unable to resist whitewashing characters from non-white inspired cultural backgrounds because it does a lot of the other things right. Hoyo gets the game dev's dream of building up a truly international playerbase and they can't even give them representation in the game. Ironically, speaking now as a leftist, Genshin is probably the biggest modern soft power cultural export from China and Hoyo instead built up a global audience only to use that platform to tell everyone how obscenely colorist the company is. Also, now there's a reverse racism problem where global players are using Genshin to scapegoat the entirety of the Chinese population as racist just because of Hoyo's colorist design team leads.

Ugh. I stopped following the company after Natlan when it seemed like all three of their games were just spamming streetwear character designs. Obviously playing it safe with modern motorcycles for Natlan is better than racist tribal loincloths that some people were worried about but it would have been even better to see Aztec/Incan character designs, with the skin tone to match.

Also, Melusines are objectively the perfect potential communards and it's a travesty that there's somehow 200K Genshin fanfics on AO3 and not a single one is about a Melusine-led Fontaine Commune.

For every building made with pride, the architect remains inside

Peeling paint, a marble heart, that's what makes a work of art

Played Genshin for 2 weeks when it came out, dug out my account about half a year ago then stopped halfway through Sumeru again, after realizing I don't wanna waste my time on it.

I would've loved Genshin so much if it only was a single player game, even if that meant that it was limited in scope.

I'm not making sense maybe. Genshin women feel like people. In terms of their characterisation they are people with motivations, not women with motivations if that makes sense?

Yes it does make sense because it's in the lore even lol. Everybody whose ambition is strong and resolut receives a vision, and with that powers which represent the ambition or may be used to live up to their destiny or whatever. You probably know what I talk about

Another factor may be that this amount of power levels the playing field, at least among vision-bearers and archons. They are not bound or dependent on anything or anybody anymore after recieving their vision. It is possible, but really hard to fuck up the character writing with such good story and lore premises

I dunno, feels like in the west and Japan even when writers try to write strong women or just not be sexist they end up condescending us somehow. Here's genshin that I seriously doubt set out to do anything for women and did a way better job by accident.

I don't think it was "by accident". Maybe Mihoyo staff were not principled "feminists" by western standards but GI was always meant to be a much more mainstream and casual game.

At the time HI3rd was already going towards this grand scale melodrama route too, though I never played that, HI3rd's world building and plot is far from hentai slop or whatever you may think given the game.

Even in 1.0 there is absolutely nothing risque about it. The moral outrage over Klee is just absolutely dumb in reality when you actualy go to all conventions back in the day and you see children and adults cosplaying her. The most controversial part of 1.x is maybe that one Barbara fan guy who gives JP idol otaku stalker vibe. Hoyo definitely didn't realize people wouldn't get the "joke" there.

As someone that been playing since mid 1.X wrt to the writing. Enjoyment of the writing is somewhat related with how invested you are in the world building and the lore. I've seen people describe Genshin as an "archeology" type game and its quite apt.

A lot of information is not given to you unless you actively seek out e.g all the artifact descriptions, the huge book library, many key world quests etc.

They do a good job on the main quest for casuals, but its gotten to a point now the lore bombs are kind of reliant on that extra information. This matters a lot for characterization sometimes e.g Nahida's characterization depends a lot on her story quest while the final parts of Fontaine AQ give you most of what Furina's character is all about.

I hope not to spoil much but Furina's characterization is far more meaningful given Egeria's plot, its not just about her, but a "woman" in a position of power effectively made a grand master plan to subvert Heaven.

Likewise Nahida is like more than half about Rukkhadevata's sacrifice.

If you're lazy you don't need to necessarily do all this search yourself though, I really recommend Ashikai's videos to understand what the writers are going for. Sometimes its not even that easy or obvious even with the context given some of the creative writing and unreliable narrators.

Anyway point being I don't think it is by coincidence, I'm sure you played the Freminet event? Thelxie's Fantastic Adventures They don't go out of their way to write a story like that without being competent and knowing what they're doing realy. Some events are remarkable yet forgotten e.g Fischl's summer castle event. Her entire character is a huge magnet for conspiracies and giga brain theories and its great.

I wont talk about literaly everyone but I don't think there is any character realy done dirty but the writers at all. Maybe Kokomi is the worst failed potential, some of the old cast is forgotten or stereotypes(Kuki, Amber, Barbara etc). I'd almost excuse it given the team needs to keep looking forward to new characters so there is pressure getting it right on the first impression. I think ultimately this is their biggest flaw. The infinitely expanding lore and cast makes it impossible to give everyone equal attention.