Genshin Impact Turns A Bad Storyline Into A Sublime Portrayal Of Grief

When the main story of Genshin Impact’s Inazuma region concluded last September, a lot of fans (including yours truly) felt a little bit let down. The story felt incomplete, and the actions of its main villain, the goddess Raiden Ei, didn’t seem very logical. Later story updates helped to clarify the historical context, but the Inazuma chapter remained unsatisfying.


With last week’s addition of Raiden Shogun’s latest character quest, however, the developers have proven that they had a plan all along, one that reveals profound depths of emotion in a character who previously felt underdeveloped. Now, we understand the irreplaceable loss this previously opaque antagonist endured, the unhealed wound she’s borne for centuries. The immortal goddess of Inazuma may be inherently fantastical, but her grief was something that I related on a crushingly personal level.


Prior to the update, the Inazuma storyline was about a tyrant–Raiden Shogun–who had stolen power from her citizens and closed off her country from the world. She centralized power and crushed her dissenters ruthlessly so that her country could remain unchanged. This tyrant, you eventually discover, was a clone of the real Raiden Ei, who had allowed her duplicate to rule in her stead.


It fell to the main character to convince the goddess Ei to stop her tyrannical clone by proving that her people’s ambitions were worthwhile, rather than a threat to her ideal of “eternity.” Many players criticized the ending because the antagonist faced no consequences for her actions, and it felt hamfisted that she would change her political direction so quickly.


Many players also felt that the developers had “softened” Raiden Ei’s personality in order to appeal to a male playerbase. Gacha monetization is heavily dependent on microtransaction sales from heterosexual men, after all, and fans were upset that a plot-important character might have had her personality blunted for the sake of her sex appeal.
However, that’s all changed with the 2.5 update.


Players and critics alike are now praising her newly enriched characterization for its emotion and nuance. And with good reason. For starters, the storytelling itself is vibrant and effective, utilizing the Sacred Sakura’s flower petals to great emotional effect, featuring exemplary voice performances for Raiden in both Chinese and English, and successfully integrating the history of Inazuma into the emotional beats. But most importantly, Raiden’s quest offers one of the most realistic portrayals of grief that I have seen in years.


Read the full article on Kotaku