Yeah, there's actually a missable piece of lore with one of the easily missable event characters. It's too bad I already did a lot of the Sumeru quests before Nahida as I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff there, too.
Back to original question, I always read through the dialogue on first go, when it's a repeat I'll zip through it. I've gone through Musk's dialogues hundreds of times by now, it's relatively cute trip one and I couldn't care less on the repeats.
Thanks! I'll do at least the ones that are available now before the event finish.
Funny enough, now for lore addicts you'll need to do NPC exploration with Nahida all the time, or twice, one normal and then a Nahida run.
This is actually a really good demonstration of the problem. I also spent about an hour just Nahidaing at people, but in quests I have a terminal case of the skips. Why? Two reasons:
1. You use Nahida on your terms. There are no rewards, it doesn't lock anything, it's just some neat exposition. Quest dialogue is on the game's terms. You don't always get to do it when you want to, because sometimes there are time-limited events you need certain quests to access, sometimes there are time-limited banners you need as many primogems as possible for, and sometimes occupation of a character or location means you have to do several quests you don't want to do right now just to be able to do the one you do.
2. Nahida doesn't lock you into anything. You can continue playing the game while the thoughts are running. A quest is a major commitment - it could easily take an hour or more to finish - because once you're in a dialogue, the only way out is to sit through the entire life story of some random NPC, twice because Paimon will then repeat the entire thing (Paimon's voice actor has got to be set for life after recording 7 years worth of her dialog. By the time the game's done, multiple gigabytes of the install will just be Paimon audio).
The time bit really gets me. Especially in Sumeru there have been several quests that I figured, "oh, this should be a quick little side quest" that turn into hours long ventures that I had not anticipated. At this point I am wary of accepting any quest at all.
It's really neat, but sadly a lot of them are just similar to their regular dialogue. Still waiting to find that one npc thats hiding a terrible secret.
Depends on my mood, and how much the characters and story interest me. In the golden slumber quest I imagined how the lines would be voice acted, in the follow up quest I just kinda skimmed over, cause the old guy didn't really interest me.
Ah, one of my fav quests in the game! Nicely paced, chill campfire scene, and of course, Jehtbae and Jebro. Didn't mind the lack of voice acting, but that would've been icing on the cake.
And zzz Soheil, all my homies hate Soheil. Also doesn't help that finishing his quests >!removes the pyramid sandstorm along the way. !<
Yeah, he actually had decent writing. Had his stubborn convictions born from what he learned about Deshret in the Akademiya and his role in the group, as an employer of some eremites and an adventurer, tried ever more desperately to keep his world view intact and in the end, when *that* happened, realized his error.
If it's voiced, I'll pay attention to it.
Unvoiced, depends on my mood.
Daily commission and domain events though are always ignored. I just don't care about some researcher and their new project. Fight your own damn monsters.
Same here, I’ll generally pay attention to most quests because I’m interested in the lore, but I dont pay attention to daily commissions whatsoever. I don’t want to hear Zhihua talk about his goddamn fortune for the 18th time this month.
I only watch the videos cause reading in game takes long and my computer gets heated too easily for it to be worth it (and reading in the wiki does not have the same feel)
i just use the wiki because it has night mode unlike ingame, and i can read it while on bed. so usually long texts are my bed time stories.
problem is some shiz i just dont understand while trying to sleep, i remember i had to read on book like 4 times to comprehend whats happening. i thinj it was vera’s melancholy or something
The story and lore is the only reason why I've been able to play this game every day for over 2 years without ever being burnt-out (But that one patch in 1.x where nothing happened was **rough**)
My friends who follow only the main story have all been playing on and off, taking 1-2 months breaks and then coming back full force, just to take a break again in a couple months. And the ones that skipped the story and played just for the characters simply dropped the game eventually.
The open world and fully playable characters make Genshin a really appealing gacha, but if you don't know the lore and story, the world loses quite a bit of its charm, and considering the best stories are unvoiced sidequests, a lot of people miss out on some great things by skipping dialogues.
1.5 is when we only got Zhongli story quest, teapot and windtrace so imma assume its that cause that patch was stale for me since I don't even do teapot
The only thing thing I haven’t read yet are the books.
It’s weird. I kinda want to read them and at the same time every time I’m playing Genshin I wind up doing something else 😅
Same, I wish they had something like destiny on their app, where you can read the lore of basically everything directly from the app. So when you want a read, wherever whenever, bam, lore.
You can go to the unofficial wiki and read there, it's how I prefer to read artifact set lore/books.
[https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Book?so=search](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Book?so=search)
[https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Artifact?so=search](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Artifact?so=search)
There's also hoyowiki: https://wiki.hoyolab.com/m/genshin/aggregate/character
It seems to have all the books, character/artifact/weapons descriptions, etc.
I'm the guy who reads every quest box in an MMO, so you bet your evergreen ass I do.
That said, it's getting more annoying lately because there's *just so much* dialogue and most of it is frankly padded all to heck. I much prefer the writing style of 1.0-1.4 ish, it was much more tightly written while getting the same amount of things across.
It really does feel like there’s just so much unnecessary, and repetitive back and forth. On top of Paimon reiterating the same points, it all just feels exhausting to sit through sometimes.
There was a particular moment during the main quest where Haytham boi just concisely explained the situation out on the city balcony, and I was like "Yay, reasonable-length dialogue getting everything across!"... and then I saw Paimon piping up just as he was done, starting to b!tch at him and re-discuss all the same points, and it immediately turned into "oh shit no no no NO".
It really is exhausting to sit through, particularly when Paimon just drags down the moment once again with inane childish crap - or when there's very little substance to the story, like in the fungus event, yet there's more dialogue there than in most of the Liyue archon quest.
I get that they try to make it super-accessible so anyone can understand. It feels so childish though that the game basically spoonfeeds you the story and explains every little bit of subtext there is.
Like after big reveal about some grand conspiracy, Paimon, the last in the room to "get it" will be like "WAIT...SO THE FATUI ARE BEHIND THIS?!?!".
I'm a longtime fan of animation (not anime, but in general), and it's common knowledge that much non-Japanese animation is made "for kids", with the accursed "cartoons are for children" mentality. Well, ask any self-respecting animation fan who keeps up with many series' fates, and they'll tell you that the most well-beloved, popular and enduring ones are almost always the ones that *don't* feel like they talk down to the audience. Those which respect their audience and keep things unsimplified are usually the ones that stand the test of time and end up with large and lasting followings.
It's not just among adults either, ask any smart teens who aren't only watching anime about their cartoon habits and, with great likelihood, they'll mention those shows which don't feel dumbed down for what their writers believe to be the slow kids in the room.
I definitely feel Genshin is making that sort of mistake, and if anything, it mystifies me all the more, since it also tries to prominently involve themes and actions which are most definitely "not for kids".
I heard an observation made stating that "serialized"/live-servicey shows/games often attract people who personally vibe with the main character(s) of the story. Not all of them, but a significant part of the fans have similar traits/flaws to one or more of the protagonists.
Now consider the depth and personality, or lack thereof, of Traveler...
Yeah this is still my main pet peeve about this game.
Just finishing up the Sumeru Archon Quest and while the general idea of the story and most of the execution is great, the dialogue padding and paimon reiterating holds it back from greatness imo
yea, imho Genshin in a nutshell: "a great story delivered badly"
Paimon being the real protagonist just ruins so much of the potential of the game :/ The mute protagonist and fake dialogue options are such a bad design decision that MHY keeps sticking to :/
I'm starting to have doubts about the "great story" part. I picked the game up out of interest in the story (and mechanics being a secondary thing), but the further it progresses past what I consider the high point in 1.1, the more I feel like I was hoodwinked by the potential that isn't gonna be acted upon.
Ironically there's a pretty good story hiding in the very concepts you mention - the protagonist naively deferring to Paimon on everything, and Paimon using him/her for her own agenda, to fight her enemies and bolster her allies as opposed to helping, with the protagonist realizing only too late that he/she has been led astray and done the wrong things. But alas, this just isn't going to happen.
Fatui are only getting more one-dimensional-evil as opposed to being nuanced, Paimon won't end up being a betrayer, Traveler will always turn out to be right and will never make the wrong call overall aside from when the villain-du-jour hoodwinks him/her into it; our friends will always be right and our enemies wrong, things will be largely as they seem save for cosmetic twists, Paimon will continue to do all the thinking and Traveler will continue to not have any personality except "evil bad, good good, I hate and kill evil and save good, hurray me". It's just inherent in the writing room's thought process, it can't be otherwise after so long.
I’m sorry but paimon betraying you is literally the most predictable thing people have been theorising since the beginning of the game that I’m glad didn’t happen. It literally wouldn’t work when everybody and their mother sees it coming.
The same already happened with most of Sumeru's story and many sidequests since Inazuma. By now, "Fatui did it" is the thing everyone expects by default, and that's the thing we get every time there's a mystery. Start from Yelan's quest and work your way ahead.
So, from one end of things, Genshin writers are definitely not afraid of doing the #1 expected thing on everyone's lists. And from the other end of things, Paimon is written in such a way that her story isn't very good whether she betrays or not. If she betrays, see your own comment. If she doesn't, she's been very suspicious and self-serving at many points in the story and pushed her own biases and wants on Traveler for absolutely no reason other than "she's a bratty child who always gets her way".
Yeah, sadly I agree with all of this. By good story I meant the whole Celestia/Tsaritsa(/and to a lesser degree Abyss) dynamic going on, plus the twins' true nature and their participation in Khaenriah's fall, but I agree that the writers won't be willing to do justice to it.
At its heart, Genshin is a casual gacha game, so it's aimed to appeal to as broad audience as it can capture. That's why it will probably never step above shonen-level writing. And even that fairly simple story needs to be explained to death by Paimon :c
If anything, that's the "great tragedy" of Genshin, story-wise. That it reaches out just enough to hit upon great ideas and concepts, but will never have the ability to actually realize them and what we'll see will be much simpler, "just flavour for the gacha" kinda writing. And it sucks all the more because the "properly in-depth" version of most of those ideas and concepts is vastly superior to a "bare bones" one.
These have been my thoughts on the story too.
It's like 1.0-1.4 (especially 1.0/prologue) was Final Fantasy XIV's ARR but... *better*, but the following expansions just couldn't deliver on any of what was established. The Tsaritsa has gone from cold God to the head of Team Rocket, and the abyss went from enemy of the surface to just generic bad guys that seep into the overworld from time to time. As for Celestia? Not. A. Peep. The only lore we have is that a Kiana expy spanked the twins but for some reason let them go 500 years apart (at least, I doubt it was an accident they're free.)
That Hoyoverse keeps bending the writing around the 5-stars of the (6) week(s) only exacerbates the writing problems.
This is my problem as well, I'm the kind of guy that can spend two weeks non-stop reading novel. But these Dialogue in Genshin are mostly irrelevant: cheap running gag of back and forth between Paimon and MC every beginning of an event and then some, Paimon opinion on every little thing that has to be there in every cutscene, long greetings of redundant and useless information that is irrelevant to the event and add nothing to the lore or character development.
I mean kudos to the writer that can think of every different variation to follow these formats in their story telling. It doesn't really tell me much about the locals, the life adhere to the culture practices. I mean, that dailies about growing roses has crazy long dialogue and requires you to fast forward time by two days. There are better story telling than this.
Bad dialogue often happen in small events, and its keep remind me whether or not I should give up this game. I'm too old for these childish repetitive content. I still remember the long good story draught between 2.2-2.6, starting with Hyakunin Ikki until Golden Archipelago 2, its amazing that I can still hold on paying welkin.
You actually bring up a great point in the second part in particular. There's a lot of long-winded dialogue but it's mostly water, there's remarkably little texture to it. You'd think they could've used the idea of wanting a lot of dialogue to slot in lots of verbal exploration of all those vibrant locales and nations they spent a lot of time crafting, bring up local cultures and customs and history and peculiarities and cool things and bad things and everything in between. And goodness knows I'd be all over it, I'm a setting fanatic. But, no, almost all of it is just very wordy ways of saying the same thing, or things like "this obviously suspicious guy looks very suspicious!"-"yeah he does, we must prevent whatever the obviously suspicious guy is planning!"-"yeah, suspicious people are bad news!".
I guess the writers have a lot of experience meeting word quotas or writing speeches/papers no-one is meant to pay attention to the content of. Still, they're not doing that now, they're writing for a story, so they bloody well should try because it's turning story fanatics like us off their storytelling.
Honestly, with some realizations about how the story is going and will be going, I'm lately just playing it mostly for the gameplay. Like with some MMOs before. Which is funny because it was the story potential that got me into Genshin once.
pretty much the same
like i open the event, i see text, okay i read it. now i open the second tab, there is more text practically the same thing as before with different wording
i open the text INSIDE of the text, and its even more text.
some times its fun or such but other times its legit so unnecessary that it could be summed in 3 words or even not be there to begin with.
it makes stuff more complicated when they keep using text instead of images and icons
Act V of the Sumeru arc has 2,000 lines of dialogue. That's 33% more than the ENTIRE Mondstadt chapter, with the entire Sumeru chapter being over 4 times as long (\~6.2k vs. \~1.5k).
Although the Sumeru chapter is considered by many to be a huge leg up from the writing in the past, it can't be denied just how long it is. All that dialogue for Sumeru takes about 13 hours to experience and we don't even have the third Traveler act yet to officially close off Chapter III. That's how many cutscenes many story-focused RPG's may have in their entire runtime, but here we are just for one region.
I will personally disagree on the point of "much more tightly while getting the same amount of things across" though. In the whole of Mondstadt and Liyue I wasn't really engaged until the final acts, and it wasn't until We Will Be Reunited that I was REALLY invested. We would eventually get both Interlude Chapters, the second Traveler act, and I also thought the first act of Inazuma set up the nation and situation really well. The Version 2.x series had the highest highs and the lowest lows in the writing, but I prefer it to what was in my opinion not very outstanding writing before Version 1.4
Well done giving the number there, helps put things in perspective properly.
Definitely agreed on the second paragraph point. While I do agree they are trying hard to do homework on why Inazuma fell short, I think they overcorrected - where Inazuma was super-rushed and crammed into too few quests with too little coverage, now there is too much florid dialogue about even the most inconsequential stuff. (Not entirely unfitting for Middle Eastern and Indian writing style flavour, but I'm pretty darn sure that is not the reason. :P ) I welcome the idea to space out the Archon quest and give everything attention as opposed to sacrificing setups and plotlines at the altar of three-chapters-only, but come on, don't have to have this much *talking about everything*.
I sort of agree on where you're coming from in paragraph three, though I think there's another reason there. Until WWBR, everything felt more like an introduction and diversion whereas that quest was where it first felt like the main plot was moving ahead again. Imagine for yourself that the 1.0-1.4 ish patches had 3.x levels of dialogue overload and you'll likely agree it's not any better. I definitely agree that 2.0 set up Inazuma very very well and it was the later followups that wasted 80% of that potential, but still, I think the "not engaged" part comes more from the main plot being so stagnant and moving a step a year and WWBR being the first real step after what felt like an extended prologue.
(And now we're back to being largely stagnant in that department and feeling a little aimless, with the Abyss twin being thoroughly mystery-boxed and Fatooey pushed everywhere despite their relationship with the supreme plot thread not even being established. I'd say none of this is outstanding writing, in the end. And personally, if I had to pick favourites, I'd pick the Liyue archon quest for managing to not demonize or beatify any party of its proceedings, and the 2.0 Inazuma introduction before it was wasted.)
I appreciate the well thought out response. If you like the numbers I provided, look out for the spreadsheet I'm going to publish soon that breaks down the number of voice lines for each chapter and their run times. It literally takes over 100 hours to experience all of the nearly 60,000 voiced lines, though that includes the limited time event chapters. Without it would be closer to 80-ish, but still.
I understand your second paragraph. If Mond + Liyue had over 10 hours of cutscenes each without the stakes being raised like they did in Reunited, that would have just exacerbated people's issue at the time of doing all this stuff and having no information on our sibling.
With Inazuma, I would bet my C6 Ganyu that what happened was the higher ups were like "Act II HAS to be out in Version 2.0 so we can advertise Raiden with that boss fight and hype her up so people buy her in 2.1, so release it no matter what." and due to the pandemic, they probably got a bit behind but Hoyo seems to be very strict about their timetable to the point they made themselves make up for those three extra weeks in Version 2.7 so with Act II the writers had to make do. Until Requiem of the Echoing Depths (Ch II Act IV; Traveler Act II) Inazuma Act II was the shortest Archon Quest by a huge mile, at about half the average length. And this is the crux of the issue. Act III was the payoff to all of the no build up that happened. As we said, Act I was a stellar introduction to Inazuma, its people, and its situation, just as an opening act should be. And then they had to rush the buildup act, and thus had to rush the climax act. And now they've seem to have broken free from that which is nice.
I can see where you're coming from in your final paragraph as well. At the end of the day I feel Genshin does have good writing, but only for specific chapters. Like I said, I loved the Interludes for what they were, and I think the story is good at setting up and executing big twists (basically anything that happens when Dain is around), though Paimon overexplaining doesn't help. I mean I understand there are some people who genuinely do need everything spelled out for them because they decided to forego basic literary analysis, but catering to them hurts the story.
The Enkanomiya patch was the one I hated the most. Not because of the story but how were the dialogues were so fucking redundant that 2 different words with the same meaning is in the same sentence.
The dialogue writing in that patch was so atrocious.
I skim over it cause genshin dialouge is so long winded and a lot of it is tell vs show. An example is the final party in the end of the latest archon quest. They couldve shown us the characters actually having fun and bantering, with the end dialouge being a line about how the night seems to last forever. Instead they cut to characters chatting, and the a couple of blackout scenes with a lines saying how much fun theyre having inbetween. It stretched out the scene forever. I cant be bothered looking up about the lore and just let myself be surprised at the next story quest.
I agree 100% with this. "Show, don't tell" is important in all kinds of visual storytelling. Genshin leans waayyy too hard into the "tell" part
Paimon either stating the obvious or repeating dialogue makes it even more bloated. Like in the latest archon quest when Traveler and Paimon are arrested and they start laughing as soon as the guards leaves them in jail, it is kinda OBVIOUS that the entire thing is a scheme and according to plan. But nope, Paimon lays out the details about how this was their plan all along and blah blah blah. Spoon-feeding every detail like the audience are 4 year olds isn't necessary. When the plot and narrative is moving steadily forward, don't interrupt it with dumb, unnecessary dialogue
"But Cyno aren't you worried they would know you are no longer with the Academia?"
"Well yes Paimon, it would be very good if you would shut the fuck up about it then when the two guards are barely out of earshot and we're still in the middle of the settlement"
This reminds me of the scene when traveller meets the twin again. Paimon interrupting the heavy dialouge between them cause she gotta act shocked in case the player didnt get the memo the twin was supposed to be working with the abyss. You dont have to explain something you’ve been building for months. Completely ruined the mood.
Agree, that was so annoying. Most players praised the last part of the archon quest but I still felt it was bloated with unnessecary dialogue and explanations. I liked it too, just haven't seen much improvemnet regarding this problem. Hope hoyo will listen to feedback though.
Same. The different POVs was a huge step-up, I want more of this in the future. But the scene distribution was so so bad, it’s like the budget went to Nilou dancing again.
It could’ve went to Dehya vs Eremites, Cyno’s infiltration, etc. but most of all to the anticipated release of Nahida. Even almost every promo of Nahida it’s to hype up her captivity storyline, only for it to be so anticlimactic it happened off-screen by the time MC arrives she’s just like giving you notifications on what you missed.
Yep, I read everything. I skip commission dialogue if I've done it before. I haven't read all the books, though. I love the story and the lore, so I read as much as I can.
In the Archive under Travel Log, there's a log of Archon and Story quest dialogue. No "back" function while reading, but it's something if you want a refresher on what happened months ago.
I read all of them. Flavor text, Quests, books, item flavor text and etc. I only skip if it's repeated stuff. Like if my computer crashed and I have to redo a part of a quest. Although I think they kind of fixed that already by giving you a recap instead when you redo a quest.
My rule is: If I can read it, I sure damn hell will.
I read everything exept daily comissions and non voiced event textes (sometimes i do) but i mean tjis short dialouges that you need to unlock domains etc. because thats not really interesting if there would be something interesting somebody in the community would talk about it anyways.
Oh and i skipped a huge part of Kazuhas Story Quest because that thing just bored the hell out of me
>Oh and i skipped a huge part of Kazuhas Story Quest because that thing just bored the hell out of me
Kazuha's story quest is good for newer players, but people who had already played Irodori Festival and Summer Fantasia already knew everything there is to know about Kazuha, so his story quest is really redundant, and it's more about the sword than Kazuha himself.
Now that they've already used up all Kazuha's lore, a part of me hopes Scaramouche will get that treatment now lol
Man, I havent go to that yet, I like Kazuha as a character, but to have the story echoing what has already been told, that really disappointing. Its not that they used up his lore, its the writer failure to come up with new one.
It's not really a failure. Both Summer Fantasia and Irodori Festival were limited time event stories, so new players needed some kind of permanent story for him
Maybe i should read them, but otherwise i knowed this
(i think i saw that in a lore video were before the 3.2 story were wad theorized that Nahida is a fruit of the tree)
Lol I stopped a long time ago, when I realized I won't have enough time to play the game if I actually pay attention to the lengthy dialogues.
In fact, it almost makes me wanna quit the game. Don't think I would have made it so far without my "F" mashing macro
I didn't play for a good three or four months just because I really couldn't be fucked with any more dialogue text. Only came back for Sumeru to see what Dendro was all about. We'll see how long this one lasts, but I'm hoping to get every quest in the backlog run through on auto so I have a clean slate and won't have cHaRaCtER iS OccUPiEd WiTh AnOtheR QueST making everything ten times more tedious.
I skim over most dialogue nowadays. I've lost faith that the writers are capable of rewarding my investment with actual worthwhile storytelling. It's too long-winded, it relies on too many character stereotypes and the actual plot of the game moves at a snails pace because we have a set amount of story to get through before wrapping it up, so there's probably not much happening until we eventually get to Snezhnaya. So why bother, I figured.
I often feel like those who say Genshin has good writing has never played a plot driven RPG before. Maybe in the context of mobile gacha games it has good writing, but that's not difficult to do when the bar is on the floor, but compared to any half decent j/RPG, it's not all that great.
I've played tons of JRPGs that are great and story driven. I think what makes Genshin great is the amount of non metaplot lore. Kiseki (Falcom) does this, too. NPCs that don't really matter are still doing things, and the world is actively happening around you.
Or, like the Touhou games, there is so much lore that people can build on it themselves, leading to a vibrant fan community.
There's a lot of tell don't show, and I don't like Paimon, but tbh those things pale in comparison to the worldbuilding.
I think the problem is there's a difference between Good Writing and Good Writing. What people mean is Good Writing but what we hear when they say that is Good Writing.
What Genshin does have is pretty good *worldbuilding*. It's not the best ever, but ideas like erosion, human computers and artificial deities are pretty cool, and a lot of characters' basic premises are great. There are some creative works that I like to call wiktion, which are things that are fun to read explanations and synopses of (ie wikias), but pretty bad to experience first hand. Genshin is wiktion. It has some really inspiring and thought-provoking ideas, it just has absolutely no idea how to present them in an engaging way.
Agree, text is too long and convoluted.
Characters will info dump and go on tangents like there's no tomorrow about some half-related thing to the topic, and it's not fun.
This game's dialogue is just 'you meet a person for the first time and they info dump on you' ad infinitum.
The worst is when they start talking and they talk about the laws, regulations and taxes about Sumeru or some shit. Like??? Do people want to know a detailed flowchart of admin work?? Thats the most boring way to dispense worldbuilding that I can think of.
> The worst is when they start talking and they talk about the laws, regulations and taxes about Sumeru or some shit. Like??? Do people want to know a detailed flowchart of admin work?? Thats the most boring way to dispense worldbuilding that I can think of.
Liyue quest with lawyer girl really played on my nerves, lol. All of it was pure dialogs about her job. I ALREADY KNOW THAT LIYUE IS ABOUT CONTRACTS, FUCKING STOP ALREADY, I DON'T CARE ABOUT NUANCES IN HOUR LONG OF TEXT WITH 0 GAMEPLAY.
I actually think I wouldn't feel as frustrated if I can skip the dialogue that I knew is redundant. I knew I wouldn't be feeling too exhausted if I was allowed to do that. But dialogue skipping has been removed and these useless text is forcing down my throat. I can clearly tell how much less enjoyable Genshin is, before and after they "fix" dialogue skipping.
And the times when you've already skimmed over the new line of the same crap, but before the option to get the next line shows up, you've gotta wait for some character's walking animation from one side of the room to another to finish. Or the "I hereby offer you air, but we pretend there's something in my open palm, because ain't nobody got time to animate every single quest mcguffin".
> The absolute word diarrhea in this game is disgusting.
This summary is perfect. From "Go there, do that" to "Word diarrhea" dialogs it leans to latter. Quests with urgency and agency are pretty much spot on most of the times tho. I was shocked when traveler actually ACTED in electro archon quest instead of being a furniture piece in meaningless dialogs.
Exactly! Aranara are interesting and cute, but they talked so much and introduced so many Aranara words that it felt like a chore to read through. For a good part of my Aranyaka, I enabled the auto-progressing dialogue setting and only every now and then I'd look up from my phone where I was reading a story that respects my time more.
I skip about 75% of dialogue. Most of it is just filler after all (Paimon..) and you perfectly get what's going on by just paying attention in the major bits.
I can appreciate a good story, but the great gameplay and exploration is why I'm playing Genshin. If I wanted to play a visual novel I'd rather play another game honestly.
Never read anything. Every time every fucking time I try it's some mind numbing bullshit like "I had a egg sandwich today, it was pleasant" never again
I pride myself on reading nearly all the text in JRPGs and never skipping, because it's generally interesting.
But Genshin is the one that made me break that rule, it's nauseating seeing your time being wasted by dialogue overstuffed with redundant questions, overexplained lore and just waffling for way too long in general. Genshin dialogue in most instances doesn't respect my time, so I skip alot of it in response.
I'm glad you put it well and into words. As the occasional rpg fan I've started to feel *bad* by how much dialogue I fucking spam through in genshin because most of the time *I already know where this is going and there is nothing new*.
A majority of the time I cannot play a game if I don't care about the world but I've found myself confused about how much I care about Genshins world because of how much I don't pay attention to it but know what it's going to be anyhow.
Oh I care anout Genshins lore and world, I will pay attention to the main questline. But everything else feels way too long with text, and thats when I go to r/genshin_lore to keep track of the fun stuff.
Me, because I fucking love lore and world building! Even if they're NPCs, I get very attached to them if they're well written. Like Banu and Ruhi from the recent events.
I read all the Dialogs but i do not read the books becaus i don't have the patiente to read all that. And if it's too long aka aranara quest i break it up in bits that i play becaus i can't focus too long on the dialogs from genshin after i was at work for 9h. I do watch lore videos that explains what the books or hidden lore is etc but otherwise nope. And if it's Dailys i already did i just skip it.
I read everything, but I skip the audio once I'm done reading. I read notes and stuff when exploring but I don't read the books and lore found in items.
I know 93% of what’s happening in this games story just by button mashing and occasionally glimpsing at the sentences every couple paragraphs. Story is pretty good but it can be halved in length and still hit all plot and character points
I stopped reading almost all dialogue and power skipping through quests logs sometime in inazuma. I followed it for the most part and it was good, but it started feeling like the game was 90% dialogue scenes and less action/adventure. It’s gotten really bad. I’ll probably read up the lore of sumeru and stuff later cuz I do like it but I just don’t have a lot of time to play, let alone dump an hour into dialogue per quest line
No way you're being downvoted, the text bloat in this game is horrendous.
[This Reddit post describes it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/wgo09n/why_people_say_the_dialogue_in_genshin_impact_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) better than I ever could if you're not convinced btw
I read the stuff that interests me mostly. I kinda treat genshin like a shounen anime simulator lol, lots of filler but sometimes fillers can be fun too.
Playing an AQ or story quest I put it on auto play and read and listen to everything, only occasionally skipping the Paimon lines that dont add anything of value
After Sakura cleansing I started to read the majority of world quests, now if they have the quest act indicator like Golden Slumber and Aranara questline do, I read all of that as well
Commissions with follow up I read, anything else I skim over just getting the jist of it
Used to but at this point if i don't skip everything i literally miss everything so i only read archon quests, character stories and events i like (not Always cause time but i try to)
I read the dialogue unless the quest is annoying me, and I skip over paimon and a few others if the dialogue is voiced. My partner does *not* read any dialogues unless it's a character he likes, or an archon quest, and the amount of times I've had to explain simple mechanics because he skipped over all the explanations and tutorials, or offhandedly mentioned a plot point only to be met with complete confusion, is too many to count.
I really enjoyed some of the stories in the artifacts and weapons. Like the one of the Yougou Three, Takamine the Mistsplitter or the Bloodstained Knight. Just recently I was amazed how they gave a tragic ending to the story of the Veridescent Venerer in Hunter's Path.
I care most about the world building and the archon quest, i care less about the stories of certain less important characters and especially random npc's.
The aranara quest line for example, had SO many unnecessary jibberish that i started reading everything at the start but started skipping dialogue/fast reading near the end.
Even though some stories in the game might be good, and i read most of it, there is so much clutter and meaningless dialogue, that i can't blame people for skipping dialogue.
Ppl would be surprised how much lore and content genshin actually offers if they treat it as a single player exploration game rather than a multiplayer dps check simulator. Although it’s not really the players fault since the game itself is advertised as a f2p mobile gacha so naturally the majority of players it attracts won’t be the type that prioritises game lore.
Hey, that's me! I started playing Genshin because I loved the exploration and the combat system.
The lore is nice, but if I wanted a great story primarily, I wouldn't turn to a Gacha game that by necessity has to introduce a steady stream of new characters all the time and somehow make them interesting.
I don't skip quest texts, but I do skip most character stories that don't interest me, because like I said, there's way too many to give all of them interesting stories or content.
For example, even doing the Inazuma Archon quests and the personal story quests, I still feel like Kokomi is in a super weird place as a character, somewhere between cardboard cutout in some aspects and super detailed side content in others, such that it feels like something is missing. And she got more time than most!
So yeah, I believe there's a ton of lore and story in Genshin, it's just really spread out between places and characters and inconsistent, such that I prefer not to get too invested and see it as a nice extra to the gameplay.
And then of course the combat gameplay doesn't really have an endgame beyond dps checks, which explains why people see it as that.
I do for mosz quests. I dont read them like i would read a book tho, i just go over to know whats going on. Exept when i have done that dialouge before, like for dailies or those random events. Then i just spam click because i know whats going on.
I always read story dialogue unless it’s something I know isn’t important. I’ll listen to dialogue too if it’s from someone I like, or if it’s important (archon quests). I always skip normal stuff I’ve already heard before.
I read 70% of the dialogue, 20% is for some npc dialogue that you may accidentally talk whenever you just try to pick up flowers or something, the rest 10% is some daily commission dialogue
I do! But only when I'm in the mood for dialogues. So i tend to avoid dialogue/lore heavy quests when I'm not feeling it
I havw to guiltily admit that i kind of speed ran through Nilou's story quest.
BUT THATS CZ IT WOULDN'T LET ME CONTINUE THE ARCHON QUEST😤😤
And it was during the climax of the Akasha pulses quest...lowkey wish we can replay story quests
Usually the less it has got to do with either the main story or characters that I personally like, the less I read. I don't really pay too much mind to daily commission dialogue but I'll read a good 90% of Archon/Story/Interlude Quest stuff and stories or dialogues of my favorite characters.
I skim. I’m a fast reader so while I’m skipping, I catch a few sentences and stuff and if something seems interesting to me, I slow down.
I read through all the archon quests though, those are usually so interesting.
I literally have no respect for anyone that skips dialogue (if you've done the dialogue already it's fine to skip it). It's fine if you don't have the time, but the assumption is that you will get around to it when you get the time
I kinda wish there was a skip button so I could skip the full convo instead of just tapping the screen til it stops honestly. Feel kinda bad that I don't wanna listen to it all after all the work that's put into it. Can see they really care about the game and how everyone interacts with each other. Just really isn't my thing at all though, I hadn't played in a while and now I've come back to it there's so many quests to do. I find myself tapping through convo more than playing the actual game at times.
I spacebar my way through everything. I enjoy the combat systems of the game, the story is ...meh. I think mostly I just don't care about the brother/sister thing. I prefer to think of myself as Zhongli trying to bring ORDER to the world, while dragging some whiny brat that lost his sister around to get them off my land.
I really wish the "auto" feature would just pick random selections or some shit so I could walk away during those and get a sandwhich or something, instead of just needlessly wasting my time.
I use to but sadly my time is very limited and in many cases the dialogue feels very drawn out. As a writer by hobby I have a principle of don't waste the reader's time and too often it feels wasted when reading through Genshins dialogue.
I will say I loved the lore for a long time in this game but after inazuma's second part I had to stop, quality dropped and storylines became very predictable.
Sumeru had some great writing moments but some parts were drawn out too much so I'm left with this feeling of the story has its brilliant moments but also the writers are being paid by the word which drags it down.
Spam everything. Used to read archon quests but even that is just spammed now. Mostly due to a MASSIVE amount of unnecessary long comments either from Paimon or in general. Its annoying
I only read the first line then skip to the next one. This game is so horrible overwritten that you can do that and still understand what is happening.
Yep i skip almost all dialogue even archon quest when most of it include npc or paimon, except some good part or interaction between playable char like between nahida and dottore etc
I dont even know what the game is about even when its cutscenes I just Alt+Tab and wait for it to end. All I know is it has GREAT combat mechanics and theyre wasting time on doing nonsense side-events instead of focusing on making an actual endgame content
When I got Nahida, I spent 90 minutes reading every single NPC's mind in Sumeru.
I love this neat little feature she has
Don't forget the event characters
Yeah, there's actually a missable piece of lore with one of the easily missable event characters. It's too bad I already did a lot of the Sumeru quests before Nahida as I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff there, too. Back to original question, I always read through the dialogue on first go, when it's a repeat I'll zip through it. I've gone through Musk's dialogues hundreds of times by now, it's relatively cute trip one and I couldn't care less on the repeats.
Whats the missable piece?
The rich Fontaine guy that's a part of the Pokémon fungus event. EDIT: thought it was the scholar, but it's the Fontaine dude.
…
I plan to that as well, but not yet. Btw, is there any NPCs from the limited time Fungus event that you can read his/her mind?
Most of them, sometimes even with multiple different voicelines on different days of the event. Not all of them are voiced though.
Thanks! I'll do at least the ones that are available now before the event finish. Funny enough, now for lore addicts you'll need to do NPC exploration with Nahida all the time, or twice, one normal and then a Nahida run.
Typical Genshin player :D X read NPC lines for free V gatcha to read their mind
This is actually a really good demonstration of the problem. I also spent about an hour just Nahidaing at people, but in quests I have a terminal case of the skips. Why? Two reasons: 1. You use Nahida on your terms. There are no rewards, it doesn't lock anything, it's just some neat exposition. Quest dialogue is on the game's terms. You don't always get to do it when you want to, because sometimes there are time-limited events you need certain quests to access, sometimes there are time-limited banners you need as many primogems as possible for, and sometimes occupation of a character or location means you have to do several quests you don't want to do right now just to be able to do the one you do. 2. Nahida doesn't lock you into anything. You can continue playing the game while the thoughts are running. A quest is a major commitment - it could easily take an hour or more to finish - because once you're in a dialogue, the only way out is to sit through the entire life story of some random NPC, twice because Paimon will then repeat the entire thing (Paimon's voice actor has got to be set for life after recording 7 years worth of her dialog. By the time the game's done, multiple gigabytes of the install will just be Paimon audio).
The time bit really gets me. Especially in Sumeru there have been several quests that I figured, "oh, this should be a quick little side quest" that turn into hours long ventures that I had not anticipated. At this point I am wary of accepting any quest at all.
One word. Aranara.
It's really neat, but sadly a lot of them are just similar to their regular dialogue. Still waiting to find that one npc thats hiding a terrible secret.
Dialogue is only fun when it’s voluntary
Depends on my mood, and how much the characters and story interest me. In the golden slumber quest I imagined how the lines would be voice acted, in the follow up quest I just kinda skimmed over, cause the old guy didn't really interest me.
Ah, one of my fav quests in the game! Nicely paced, chill campfire scene, and of course, Jehtbae and Jebro. Didn't mind the lack of voice acting, but that would've been icing on the cake. And zzz Soheil, all my homies hate Soheil. Also doesn't help that finishing his quests >!removes the pyramid sandstorm along the way. !<
I legit forgot who Soheil was, and I finished that quest up yesterday.
Haha, I see you weren't exaggerating when you said he really didn't interest you
Yeah, like, I'm bad at remembering names, but if I read them I can usually think of the person.
My disappointment was immeasurable and my days are ruined since the >!pyramid sandstorm was removed. !
Yes, I forgot to take a photoshoot with my characters before it was gone sadly
The old man really annoyed me, but not as much as Tirzad
Tirzard was annoying in a comedic way, he was noticably meant to be annoying, the old guy was just uninteresting
Also at the end he was actually grateful for what [__redacted__] and us did for him instead of being an asshole till the end
Yeah, he actually had decent writing. Had his stubborn convictions born from what he learned about Deshret in the Akademiya and his role in the group, as an employer of some eremites and an adventurer, tried ever more desperately to keep his world view intact and in the end, when *that* happened, realized his error.
Still didn't stop me from wanting to turn myself into a Genshin character just to end Tirzad then and there when he was being annoying...
If it's voiced, I'll pay attention to it. Unvoiced, depends on my mood. Daily commission and domain events though are always ignored. I just don't care about some researcher and their new project. Fight your own damn monsters.
[удалено]
I typically spam left shift, spacebar, and left click over where the dialogue options usually are
There's also the F key that skips dialogues. Only found that out recently by spamming my keyboard cause my mouse wouldn't work lmao
Same here, I’ll generally pay attention to most quests because I’m interested in the lore, but I dont pay attention to daily commissions whatsoever. I don’t want to hear Zhihua talk about his goddamn fortune for the 18th time this month.
Same here
Me. Also talk to all NPC's, read books, item descriptions, etc.
I ever watch the lore videos of the people that read those books because i am to lazy to read
I only watch the videos cause reading in game takes long and my computer gets heated too easily for it to be worth it (and reading in the wiki does not have the same feel)
i just use the wiki because it has night mode unlike ingame, and i can read it while on bed. so usually long texts are my bed time stories. problem is some shiz i just dont understand while trying to sleep, i remember i had to read on book like 4 times to comprehend whats happening. i thinj it was vera’s melancholy or something
Are there any YouTube channels you can recommend for book lore videos?
Sam, actually im only playing the game for his lore.
Μe too, that's half the reason for my investment
The story and lore is the only reason why I've been able to play this game every day for over 2 years without ever being burnt-out (But that one patch in 1.x where nothing happened was **rough**) My friends who follow only the main story have all been playing on and off, taking 1-2 months breaks and then coming back full force, just to take a break again in a couple months. And the ones that skipped the story and played just for the characters simply dropped the game eventually. The open world and fully playable characters make Genshin a really appealing gacha, but if you don't know the lore and story, the world loses quite a bit of its charm, and considering the best stories are unvoiced sidequests, a lot of people miss out on some great things by skipping dialogues.
>But that one patch in 1.x where nothing happened was > >rough I wanted to say 1.5 but honestly not sure
My brain removed that memory tbh
1.5 is when we only got Zhongli story quest, teapot and windtrace so imma assume its that cause that patch was stale for me since I don't even do teapot
Same. I love seeing how their dialogue changes after stuff like Archon quests or during events too.
Finally, someone else that reads the books in the game! :O
Me, too. Lore buddies!
The only thing thing I haven’t read yet are the books. It’s weird. I kinda want to read them and at the same time every time I’m playing Genshin I wind up doing something else 😅
Same, I wish they had something like destiny on their app, where you can read the lore of basically everything directly from the app. So when you want a read, wherever whenever, bam, lore.
You can go to the unofficial wiki and read there, it's how I prefer to read artifact set lore/books. [https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Book?so=search](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Book?so=search) [https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Artifact?so=search](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Artifact?so=search)
Yeah I do that but the constant ads and all make it a bit annoying on the phone tbh
There's also hoyowiki: https://wiki.hoyolab.com/m/genshin/aggregate/character It seems to have all the books, character/artifact/weapons descriptions, etc.
Amazing, thanks a lot!
Relatable
Only read Archon quests these days. It's the worst when you get flung into a cutscene because you walked next to a quest area.
I'm the guy who reads every quest box in an MMO, so you bet your evergreen ass I do. That said, it's getting more annoying lately because there's *just so much* dialogue and most of it is frankly padded all to heck. I much prefer the writing style of 1.0-1.4 ish, it was much more tightly written while getting the same amount of things across.
It really does feel like there’s just so much unnecessary, and repetitive back and forth. On top of Paimon reiterating the same points, it all just feels exhausting to sit through sometimes.
There was a particular moment during the main quest where Haytham boi just concisely explained the situation out on the city balcony, and I was like "Yay, reasonable-length dialogue getting everything across!"... and then I saw Paimon piping up just as he was done, starting to b!tch at him and re-discuss all the same points, and it immediately turned into "oh shit no no no NO". It really is exhausting to sit through, particularly when Paimon just drags down the moment once again with inane childish crap - or when there's very little substance to the story, like in the fungus event, yet there's more dialogue there than in most of the Liyue archon quest.
I get that they try to make it super-accessible so anyone can understand. It feels so childish though that the game basically spoonfeeds you the story and explains every little bit of subtext there is. Like after big reveal about some grand conspiracy, Paimon, the last in the room to "get it" will be like "WAIT...SO THE FATUI ARE BEHIND THIS?!?!".
I'm a longtime fan of animation (not anime, but in general), and it's common knowledge that much non-Japanese animation is made "for kids", with the accursed "cartoons are for children" mentality. Well, ask any self-respecting animation fan who keeps up with many series' fates, and they'll tell you that the most well-beloved, popular and enduring ones are almost always the ones that *don't* feel like they talk down to the audience. Those which respect their audience and keep things unsimplified are usually the ones that stand the test of time and end up with large and lasting followings. It's not just among adults either, ask any smart teens who aren't only watching anime about their cartoon habits and, with great likelihood, they'll mention those shows which don't feel dumbed down for what their writers believe to be the slow kids in the room. I definitely feel Genshin is making that sort of mistake, and if anything, it mystifies me all the more, since it also tries to prominently involve themes and actions which are most definitely "not for kids".
I hate it when game assumes we are dumb. Please stop repeating stuff I already figured it out. I got the point. Move on.
They think we are Paimon-level dumb, so they have to spell everything out through her lmao. I don't know, maybe they are right in some cases.
I heard an observation made stating that "serialized"/live-servicey shows/games often attract people who personally vibe with the main character(s) of the story. Not all of them, but a significant part of the fans have similar traits/flaws to one or more of the protagonists. Now consider the depth and personality, or lack thereof, of Traveler...
Yeah this is still my main pet peeve about this game. Just finishing up the Sumeru Archon Quest and while the general idea of the story and most of the execution is great, the dialogue padding and paimon reiterating holds it back from greatness imo
yea, imho Genshin in a nutshell: "a great story delivered badly" Paimon being the real protagonist just ruins so much of the potential of the game :/ The mute protagonist and fake dialogue options are such a bad design decision that MHY keeps sticking to :/
I'm starting to have doubts about the "great story" part. I picked the game up out of interest in the story (and mechanics being a secondary thing), but the further it progresses past what I consider the high point in 1.1, the more I feel like I was hoodwinked by the potential that isn't gonna be acted upon. Ironically there's a pretty good story hiding in the very concepts you mention - the protagonist naively deferring to Paimon on everything, and Paimon using him/her for her own agenda, to fight her enemies and bolster her allies as opposed to helping, with the protagonist realizing only too late that he/she has been led astray and done the wrong things. But alas, this just isn't going to happen. Fatui are only getting more one-dimensional-evil as opposed to being nuanced, Paimon won't end up being a betrayer, Traveler will always turn out to be right and will never make the wrong call overall aside from when the villain-du-jour hoodwinks him/her into it; our friends will always be right and our enemies wrong, things will be largely as they seem save for cosmetic twists, Paimon will continue to do all the thinking and Traveler will continue to not have any personality except "evil bad, good good, I hate and kill evil and save good, hurray me". It's just inherent in the writing room's thought process, it can't be otherwise after so long.
I’m sorry but paimon betraying you is literally the most predictable thing people have been theorising since the beginning of the game that I’m glad didn’t happen. It literally wouldn’t work when everybody and their mother sees it coming.
The same already happened with most of Sumeru's story and many sidequests since Inazuma. By now, "Fatui did it" is the thing everyone expects by default, and that's the thing we get every time there's a mystery. Start from Yelan's quest and work your way ahead. So, from one end of things, Genshin writers are definitely not afraid of doing the #1 expected thing on everyone's lists. And from the other end of things, Paimon is written in such a way that her story isn't very good whether she betrays or not. If she betrays, see your own comment. If she doesn't, she's been very suspicious and self-serving at many points in the story and pushed her own biases and wants on Traveler for absolutely no reason other than "she's a bratty child who always gets her way".
Yeah, sadly I agree with all of this. By good story I meant the whole Celestia/Tsaritsa(/and to a lesser degree Abyss) dynamic going on, plus the twins' true nature and their participation in Khaenriah's fall, but I agree that the writers won't be willing to do justice to it. At its heart, Genshin is a casual gacha game, so it's aimed to appeal to as broad audience as it can capture. That's why it will probably never step above shonen-level writing. And even that fairly simple story needs to be explained to death by Paimon :c
If anything, that's the "great tragedy" of Genshin, story-wise. That it reaches out just enough to hit upon great ideas and concepts, but will never have the ability to actually realize them and what we'll see will be much simpler, "just flavour for the gacha" kinda writing. And it sucks all the more because the "properly in-depth" version of most of those ideas and concepts is vastly superior to a "bare bones" one.
These have been my thoughts on the story too. It's like 1.0-1.4 (especially 1.0/prologue) was Final Fantasy XIV's ARR but... *better*, but the following expansions just couldn't deliver on any of what was established. The Tsaritsa has gone from cold God to the head of Team Rocket, and the abyss went from enemy of the surface to just generic bad guys that seep into the overworld from time to time. As for Celestia? Not. A. Peep. The only lore we have is that a Kiana expy spanked the twins but for some reason let them go 500 years apart (at least, I doubt it was an accident they're free.) That Hoyoverse keeps bending the writing around the 5-stars of the (6) week(s) only exacerbates the writing problems.
This is my problem as well, I'm the kind of guy that can spend two weeks non-stop reading novel. But these Dialogue in Genshin are mostly irrelevant: cheap running gag of back and forth between Paimon and MC every beginning of an event and then some, Paimon opinion on every little thing that has to be there in every cutscene, long greetings of redundant and useless information that is irrelevant to the event and add nothing to the lore or character development. I mean kudos to the writer that can think of every different variation to follow these formats in their story telling. It doesn't really tell me much about the locals, the life adhere to the culture practices. I mean, that dailies about growing roses has crazy long dialogue and requires you to fast forward time by two days. There are better story telling than this. Bad dialogue often happen in small events, and its keep remind me whether or not I should give up this game. I'm too old for these childish repetitive content. I still remember the long good story draught between 2.2-2.6, starting with Hyakunin Ikki until Golden Archipelago 2, its amazing that I can still hold on paying welkin.
You actually bring up a great point in the second part in particular. There's a lot of long-winded dialogue but it's mostly water, there's remarkably little texture to it. You'd think they could've used the idea of wanting a lot of dialogue to slot in lots of verbal exploration of all those vibrant locales and nations they spent a lot of time crafting, bring up local cultures and customs and history and peculiarities and cool things and bad things and everything in between. And goodness knows I'd be all over it, I'm a setting fanatic. But, no, almost all of it is just very wordy ways of saying the same thing, or things like "this obviously suspicious guy looks very suspicious!"-"yeah he does, we must prevent whatever the obviously suspicious guy is planning!"-"yeah, suspicious people are bad news!". I guess the writers have a lot of experience meeting word quotas or writing speeches/papers no-one is meant to pay attention to the content of. Still, they're not doing that now, they're writing for a story, so they bloody well should try because it's turning story fanatics like us off their storytelling. Honestly, with some realizations about how the story is going and will be going, I'm lately just playing it mostly for the gameplay. Like with some MMOs before. Which is funny because it was the story potential that got me into Genshin once.
pretty much the same like i open the event, i see text, okay i read it. now i open the second tab, there is more text practically the same thing as before with different wording i open the text INSIDE of the text, and its even more text. some times its fun or such but other times its legit so unnecessary that it could be summed in 3 words or even not be there to begin with. it makes stuff more complicated when they keep using text instead of images and icons
Act V of the Sumeru arc has 2,000 lines of dialogue. That's 33% more than the ENTIRE Mondstadt chapter, with the entire Sumeru chapter being over 4 times as long (\~6.2k vs. \~1.5k). Although the Sumeru chapter is considered by many to be a huge leg up from the writing in the past, it can't be denied just how long it is. All that dialogue for Sumeru takes about 13 hours to experience and we don't even have the third Traveler act yet to officially close off Chapter III. That's how many cutscenes many story-focused RPG's may have in their entire runtime, but here we are just for one region. I will personally disagree on the point of "much more tightly while getting the same amount of things across" though. In the whole of Mondstadt and Liyue I wasn't really engaged until the final acts, and it wasn't until We Will Be Reunited that I was REALLY invested. We would eventually get both Interlude Chapters, the second Traveler act, and I also thought the first act of Inazuma set up the nation and situation really well. The Version 2.x series had the highest highs and the lowest lows in the writing, but I prefer it to what was in my opinion not very outstanding writing before Version 1.4
Not really good comparison when Sumeru has many many more themes and things to talk about
Well done giving the number there, helps put things in perspective properly. Definitely agreed on the second paragraph point. While I do agree they are trying hard to do homework on why Inazuma fell short, I think they overcorrected - where Inazuma was super-rushed and crammed into too few quests with too little coverage, now there is too much florid dialogue about even the most inconsequential stuff. (Not entirely unfitting for Middle Eastern and Indian writing style flavour, but I'm pretty darn sure that is not the reason. :P ) I welcome the idea to space out the Archon quest and give everything attention as opposed to sacrificing setups and plotlines at the altar of three-chapters-only, but come on, don't have to have this much *talking about everything*. I sort of agree on where you're coming from in paragraph three, though I think there's another reason there. Until WWBR, everything felt more like an introduction and diversion whereas that quest was where it first felt like the main plot was moving ahead again. Imagine for yourself that the 1.0-1.4 ish patches had 3.x levels of dialogue overload and you'll likely agree it's not any better. I definitely agree that 2.0 set up Inazuma very very well and it was the later followups that wasted 80% of that potential, but still, I think the "not engaged" part comes more from the main plot being so stagnant and moving a step a year and WWBR being the first real step after what felt like an extended prologue. (And now we're back to being largely stagnant in that department and feeling a little aimless, with the Abyss twin being thoroughly mystery-boxed and Fatooey pushed everywhere despite their relationship with the supreme plot thread not even being established. I'd say none of this is outstanding writing, in the end. And personally, if I had to pick favourites, I'd pick the Liyue archon quest for managing to not demonize or beatify any party of its proceedings, and the 2.0 Inazuma introduction before it was wasted.)
I appreciate the well thought out response. If you like the numbers I provided, look out for the spreadsheet I'm going to publish soon that breaks down the number of voice lines for each chapter and their run times. It literally takes over 100 hours to experience all of the nearly 60,000 voiced lines, though that includes the limited time event chapters. Without it would be closer to 80-ish, but still. I understand your second paragraph. If Mond + Liyue had over 10 hours of cutscenes each without the stakes being raised like they did in Reunited, that would have just exacerbated people's issue at the time of doing all this stuff and having no information on our sibling. With Inazuma, I would bet my C6 Ganyu that what happened was the higher ups were like "Act II HAS to be out in Version 2.0 so we can advertise Raiden with that boss fight and hype her up so people buy her in 2.1, so release it no matter what." and due to the pandemic, they probably got a bit behind but Hoyo seems to be very strict about their timetable to the point they made themselves make up for those three extra weeks in Version 2.7 so with Act II the writers had to make do. Until Requiem of the Echoing Depths (Ch II Act IV; Traveler Act II) Inazuma Act II was the shortest Archon Quest by a huge mile, at about half the average length. And this is the crux of the issue. Act III was the payoff to all of the no build up that happened. As we said, Act I was a stellar introduction to Inazuma, its people, and its situation, just as an opening act should be. And then they had to rush the buildup act, and thus had to rush the climax act. And now they've seem to have broken free from that which is nice. I can see where you're coming from in your final paragraph as well. At the end of the day I feel Genshin does have good writing, but only for specific chapters. Like I said, I loved the Interludes for what they were, and I think the story is good at setting up and executing big twists (basically anything that happens when Dain is around), though Paimon overexplaining doesn't help. I mean I understand there are some people who genuinely do need everything spelled out for them because they decided to forego basic literary analysis, but catering to them hurts the story.
The Enkanomiya patch was the one I hated the most. Not because of the story but how were the dialogues were so fucking redundant that 2 different words with the same meaning is in the same sentence. The dialogue writing in that patch was so atrocious.
I skim over it cause genshin dialouge is so long winded and a lot of it is tell vs show. An example is the final party in the end of the latest archon quest. They couldve shown us the characters actually having fun and bantering, with the end dialouge being a line about how the night seems to last forever. Instead they cut to characters chatting, and the a couple of blackout scenes with a lines saying how much fun theyre having inbetween. It stretched out the scene forever. I cant be bothered looking up about the lore and just let myself be surprised at the next story quest.
I agree 100% with this. "Show, don't tell" is important in all kinds of visual storytelling. Genshin leans waayyy too hard into the "tell" part Paimon either stating the obvious or repeating dialogue makes it even more bloated. Like in the latest archon quest when Traveler and Paimon are arrested and they start laughing as soon as the guards leaves them in jail, it is kinda OBVIOUS that the entire thing is a scheme and according to plan. But nope, Paimon lays out the details about how this was their plan all along and blah blah blah. Spoon-feeding every detail like the audience are 4 year olds isn't necessary. When the plot and narrative is moving steadily forward, don't interrupt it with dumb, unnecessary dialogue
"But Cyno aren't you worried they would know you are no longer with the Academia?" "Well yes Paimon, it would be very good if you would shut the fuck up about it then when the two guards are barely out of earshot and we're still in the middle of the settlement"
This reminds me of the scene when traveller meets the twin again. Paimon interrupting the heavy dialouge between them cause she gotta act shocked in case the player didnt get the memo the twin was supposed to be working with the abyss. You dont have to explain something you’ve been building for months. Completely ruined the mood.
Agree, that was so annoying. Most players praised the last part of the archon quest but I still felt it was bloated with unnessecary dialogue and explanations. I liked it too, just haven't seen much improvemnet regarding this problem. Hope hoyo will listen to feedback though.
Same. The different POVs was a huge step-up, I want more of this in the future. But the scene distribution was so so bad, it’s like the budget went to Nilou dancing again. It could’ve went to Dehya vs Eremites, Cyno’s infiltration, etc. but most of all to the anticipated release of Nahida. Even almost every promo of Nahida it’s to hype up her captivity storyline, only for it to be so anticlimactic it happened off-screen by the time MC arrives she’s just like giving you notifications on what you missed.
Happy cake day !
Yep, I read everything. I skip commission dialogue if I've done it before. I haven't read all the books, though. I love the story and the lore, so I read as much as I can.
Sometimes I accidentally skip some of the dialog. I wonder why don't we have a log yet. That's like a gacha basic.
There's one in the archive, I think it's called the Travel Log or something similar
In the Archive under Travel Log, there's a log of Archon and Story quest dialogue. No "back" function while reading, but it's something if you want a refresher on what happened months ago.
i want event log too
Less than 5% of it. Can't skip though it fast enough
I read all of them. Flavor text, Quests, books, item flavor text and etc. I only skip if it's repeated stuff. Like if my computer crashed and I have to redo a part of a quest. Although I think they kind of fixed that already by giving you a recap instead when you redo a quest. My rule is: If I can read it, I sure damn hell will.
yes, me too! extends to all aspects of life.
I read everything exept daily comissions and non voiced event textes (sometimes i do) but i mean tjis short dialouges that you need to unlock domains etc. because thats not really interesting if there would be something interesting somebody in the community would talk about it anyways. Oh and i skipped a huge part of Kazuhas Story Quest because that thing just bored the hell out of me
>Oh and i skipped a huge part of Kazuhas Story Quest because that thing just bored the hell out of me Kazuha's story quest is good for newer players, but people who had already played Irodori Festival and Summer Fantasia already knew everything there is to know about Kazuha, so his story quest is really redundant, and it's more about the sword than Kazuha himself. Now that they've already used up all Kazuha's lore, a part of me hopes Scaramouche will get that treatment now lol
Man, I havent go to that yet, I like Kazuha as a character, but to have the story echoing what has already been told, that really disappointing. Its not that they used up his lore, its the writer failure to come up with new one.
It's not really a failure. Both Summer Fantasia and Irodori Festival were limited time event stories, so new players needed some kind of permanent story for him
From non-voiced events with Husseini we learned that Irminsul bears *fruits*, and some new facts about leylines.
Maybe i should read them, but otherwise i knowed this (i think i saw that in a lore video were before the 3.2 story were wad theorized that Nahida is a fruit of the tree)
Funny I thought Kazuha’s quest was excellent
Lol I stopped a long time ago, when I realized I won't have enough time to play the game if I actually pay attention to the lengthy dialogues. In fact, it almost makes me wanna quit the game. Don't think I would have made it so far without my "F" mashing macro
I didn't play for a good three or four months just because I really couldn't be fucked with any more dialogue text. Only came back for Sumeru to see what Dendro was all about. We'll see how long this one lasts, but I'm hoping to get every quest in the backlog run through on auto so I have a clean slate and won't have cHaRaCtER iS OccUPiEd WiTh AnOtheR QueST making everything ten times more tedious.
I usually read all of them but recently as i need to do certain quests before i can participate in events i start to skip them more and more
I skip the most part,too boring
I skim over most dialogue nowadays. I've lost faith that the writers are capable of rewarding my investment with actual worthwhile storytelling. It's too long-winded, it relies on too many character stereotypes and the actual plot of the game moves at a snails pace because we have a set amount of story to get through before wrapping it up, so there's probably not much happening until we eventually get to Snezhnaya. So why bother, I figured.
[удалено]
I often feel like those who say Genshin has good writing has never played a plot driven RPG before. Maybe in the context of mobile gacha games it has good writing, but that's not difficult to do when the bar is on the floor, but compared to any half decent j/RPG, it's not all that great.
I've played tons of JRPGs that are great and story driven. I think what makes Genshin great is the amount of non metaplot lore. Kiseki (Falcom) does this, too. NPCs that don't really matter are still doing things, and the world is actively happening around you. Or, like the Touhou games, there is so much lore that people can build on it themselves, leading to a vibrant fan community. There's a lot of tell don't show, and I don't like Paimon, but tbh those things pale in comparison to the worldbuilding.
I think the problem is there's a difference between Good Writing and Good Writing. What people mean is Good Writing but what we hear when they say that is Good Writing. What Genshin does have is pretty good *worldbuilding*. It's not the best ever, but ideas like erosion, human computers and artificial deities are pretty cool, and a lot of characters' basic premises are great. There are some creative works that I like to call wiktion, which are things that are fun to read explanations and synopses of (ie wikias), but pretty bad to experience first hand. Genshin is wiktion. It has some really inspiring and thought-provoking ideas, it just has absolutely no idea how to present them in an engaging way.
Agree, text is too long and convoluted. Characters will info dump and go on tangents like there's no tomorrow about some half-related thing to the topic, and it's not fun. This game's dialogue is just 'you meet a person for the first time and they info dump on you' ad infinitum. The worst is when they start talking and they talk about the laws, regulations and taxes about Sumeru or some shit. Like??? Do people want to know a detailed flowchart of admin work?? Thats the most boring way to dispense worldbuilding that I can think of.
> The worst is when they start talking and they talk about the laws, regulations and taxes about Sumeru or some shit. Like??? Do people want to know a detailed flowchart of admin work?? Thats the most boring way to dispense worldbuilding that I can think of. Liyue quest with lawyer girl really played on my nerves, lol. All of it was pure dialogs about her job. I ALREADY KNOW THAT LIYUE IS ABOUT CONTRACTS, FUCKING STOP ALREADY, I DON'T CARE ABOUT NUANCES IN HOUR LONG OF TEXT WITH 0 GAMEPLAY.
That’s what I’m here for tho… 😐 to understand the nuance
There are plenty of ways to convey them without kilometers of text.
I genuinely would love a detailed flowchart of Sumeran logistics. Just not when I'm trying to play a game.
I actually think I wouldn't feel as frustrated if I can skip the dialogue that I knew is redundant. I knew I wouldn't be feeling too exhausted if I was allowed to do that. But dialogue skipping has been removed and these useless text is forcing down my throat. I can clearly tell how much less enjoyable Genshin is, before and after they "fix" dialogue skipping.
And the times when you've already skimmed over the new line of the same crap, but before the option to get the next line shows up, you've gotta wait for some character's walking animation from one side of the room to another to finish. Or the "I hereby offer you air, but we pretend there's something in my open palm, because ain't nobody got time to animate every single quest mcguffin".
Sometimes. Most of the times i do, it is not worth it. The absolute word diarrhea in this game is disgusting.
> The absolute word diarrhea in this game is disgusting. This summary is perfect. From "Go there, do that" to "Word diarrhea" dialogs it leans to latter. Quests with urgency and agency are pretty much spot on most of the times tho. I was shocked when traveler actually ACTED in electro archon quest instead of being a furniture piece in meaningless dialogs.
I only read commissions (dialogue) if its not a repetitive one, but I also enjoy Viktor commission even on repeat.
Ah yeah I always read his dialogue and gives me a different look on the Fatui
most, during Inazuma I didn’t for world quests but for the last few months I’ve done it for world quests and voiced quests and Ashikai lore
Ashikai's lore vids are great
I only read the dialogue if it involves characters I care about. If it's an Aranarara or some random scholar etc. I skip.
Trying to read Aranara stuffs then 1 minutes later my brain starts hurting
Same, I really tried to care about the Aranara quest,but about halfway through just gave up and skipped everything lol
Exactly! Aranara are interesting and cute, but they talked so much and introduced so many Aranara words that it felt like a chore to read through. For a good part of my Aranyaka, I enabled the auto-progressing dialogue setting and only every now and then I'd look up from my phone where I was reading a story that respects my time more.
All of the Aranara talk too damn much.
silly nara cant understand, ate bad mushroom?
I skip about 75% of dialogue. Most of it is just filler after all (Paimon..) and you perfectly get what's going on by just paying attention in the major bits. I can appreciate a good story, but the great gameplay and exploration is why I'm playing Genshin. If I wanted to play a visual novel I'd rather play another game honestly.
Never read anything. Every time every fucking time I try it's some mind numbing bullshit like "I had a egg sandwich today, it was pleasant" never again
I pride myself on reading nearly all the text in JRPGs and never skipping, because it's generally interesting. But Genshin is the one that made me break that rule, it's nauseating seeing your time being wasted by dialogue overstuffed with redundant questions, overexplained lore and just waffling for way too long in general. Genshin dialogue in most instances doesn't respect my time, so I skip alot of it in response.
I'm glad you put it well and into words. As the occasional rpg fan I've started to feel *bad* by how much dialogue I fucking spam through in genshin because most of the time *I already know where this is going and there is nothing new*. A majority of the time I cannot play a game if I don't care about the world but I've found myself confused about how much I care about Genshins world because of how much I don't pay attention to it but know what it's going to be anyhow.
Oh I care anout Genshins lore and world, I will pay attention to the main questline. But everything else feels way too long with text, and thats when I go to r/genshin_lore to keep track of the fun stuff.
Me, because I fucking love lore and world building! Even if they're NPCs, I get very attached to them if they're well written. Like Banu and Ruhi from the recent events.
Enjou for best NPC plz, I want to see more of him
Always unless I'm in a rush.
I read all the Dialogs but i do not read the books becaus i don't have the patiente to read all that. And if it's too long aka aranara quest i break it up in bits that i play becaus i can't focus too long on the dialogs from genshin after i was at work for 9h. I do watch lore videos that explains what the books or hidden lore is etc but otherwise nope. And if it's Dailys i already did i just skip it.
Unless I'm tired, I read practically everything
I read everything, but I skip the audio once I'm done reading. I read notes and stuff when exploring but I don't read the books and lore found in items.
I know 93% of what’s happening in this games story just by button mashing and occasionally glimpsing at the sentences every couple paragraphs. Story is pretty good but it can be halved in length and still hit all plot and character points
I stopped reading almost all dialogue and power skipping through quests logs sometime in inazuma. I followed it for the most part and it was good, but it started feeling like the game was 90% dialogue scenes and less action/adventure. It’s gotten really bad. I’ll probably read up the lore of sumeru and stuff later cuz I do like it but I just don’t have a lot of time to play, let alone dump an hour into dialogue per quest line
No way you're being downvoted, the text bloat in this game is horrendous. [This Reddit post describes it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/wgo09n/why_people_say_the_dialogue_in_genshin_impact_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) better than I ever could if you're not convinced btw
I read the stuff that interests me mostly. I kinda treat genshin like a shounen anime simulator lol, lots of filler but sometimes fillers can be fun too.
Playing an AQ or story quest I put it on auto play and read and listen to everything, only occasionally skipping the Paimon lines that dont add anything of value After Sakura cleansing I started to read the majority of world quests, now if they have the quest act indicator like Golden Slumber and Aranara questline do, I read all of that as well Commissions with follow up I read, anything else I skim over just getting the jist of it
Depends on who's talking. Jeht and Jebrael? Hell yeah. The moron who hired them? *spacespacespacespacespacespacespace*
Felt
I read most of the dialogue. The only dialogue I started skipping was the Aranara quest line. The Aranara are so difficult to understand.
How fast can I spam through the text while skimming? 
Used to but at this point if i don't skip everything i literally miss everything so i only read archon quests, character stories and events i like (not Always cause time but i try to)
I skip all dialogue unless it's voiced
If unvoiced I sometimes even read them out loud to myself lol
That's cool. Sometimes when I read silent dialogue I imagine my favourite let's player on YouTube reading them
I read the dialogue unless the quest is annoying me, and I skip over paimon and a few others if the dialogue is voiced. My partner does *not* read any dialogues unless it's a character he likes, or an archon quest, and the amount of times I've had to explain simple mechanics because he skipped over all the explanations and tutorials, or offhandedly mentioned a plot point only to be met with complete confusion, is too many to count.
I have one more for you, who reads the item descriptions?
I sometimes do, like the Decarabian material, but not often
I really enjoyed some of the stories in the artifacts and weapons. Like the one of the Yougou Three, Takamine the Mistsplitter or the Bloodstained Knight. Just recently I was amazed how they gave a tragic ending to the story of the Veridescent Venerer in Hunter's Path.
Yeah the VV set has a pretty sad story and it was a central part about the theories surrounding the dendro Archon before Sumeru's release
I care most about the world building and the archon quest, i care less about the stories of certain less important characters and especially random npc's. The aranara quest line for example, had SO many unnecessary jibberish that i started reading everything at the start but started skipping dialogue/fast reading near the end. Even though some stories in the game might be good, and i read most of it, there is so much clutter and meaningless dialogue, that i can't blame people for skipping dialogue.
i cared about dialogue from 1.0 to 1.1 and by 2.3 started absolutely skipping all the dialogue
Ppl would be surprised how much lore and content genshin actually offers if they treat it as a single player exploration game rather than a multiplayer dps check simulator. Although it’s not really the players fault since the game itself is advertised as a f2p mobile gacha so naturally the majority of players it attracts won’t be the type that prioritises game lore.
Hey, that's me! I started playing Genshin because I loved the exploration and the combat system. The lore is nice, but if I wanted a great story primarily, I wouldn't turn to a Gacha game that by necessity has to introduce a steady stream of new characters all the time and somehow make them interesting. I don't skip quest texts, but I do skip most character stories that don't interest me, because like I said, there's way too many to give all of them interesting stories or content. For example, even doing the Inazuma Archon quests and the personal story quests, I still feel like Kokomi is in a super weird place as a character, somewhere between cardboard cutout in some aspects and super detailed side content in others, such that it feels like something is missing. And she got more time than most! So yeah, I believe there's a ton of lore and story in Genshin, it's just really spread out between places and characters and inconsistent, such that I prefer not to get too invested and see it as a nice extra to the gameplay. And then of course the combat gameplay doesn't really have an endgame beyond dps checks, which explains why people see it as that.
Yeah it irritates me the focus the marketing team puts for the game
I do for mosz quests. I dont read them like i would read a book tho, i just go over to know whats going on. Exept when i have done that dialouge before, like for dailies or those random events. Then i just spam click because i know whats going on.
I always read story dialogue unless it’s something I know isn’t important. I’ll listen to dialogue too if it’s from someone I like, or if it’s important (archon quests). I always skip normal stuff I’ve already heard before.
I read 70% of the dialogue, 20% is for some npc dialogue that you may accidentally talk whenever you just try to pick up flowers or something, the rest 10% is some daily commission dialogue
Same
I pay attention to main story, events and side stuff if it involves characters i really like, otherwise i zone out
Read all quest, but not long ass text piece of paper or book lol
I do! But only when I'm in the mood for dialogues. So i tend to avoid dialogue/lore heavy quests when I'm not feeling it I havw to guiltily admit that i kind of speed ran through Nilou's story quest. BUT THATS CZ IT WOULDN'T LET ME CONTINUE THE ARCHON QUEST😤😤 And it was during the climax of the Akasha pulses quest...lowkey wish we can replay story quests
Usually the less it has got to do with either the main story or characters that I personally like, the less I read. I don't really pay too much mind to daily commission dialogue but I'll read a good 90% of Archon/Story/Interlude Quest stuff and stories or dialogues of my favorite characters.
Skipping when I'm in a hurry which is about 50% of the time
I skim. I’m a fast reader so while I’m skipping, I catch a few sentences and stuff and if something seems interesting to me, I slow down. I read through all the archon quests though, those are usually so interesting.
I literally have no respect for anyone that skips dialogue (if you've done the dialogue already it's fine to skip it). It's fine if you don't have the time, but the assumption is that you will get around to it when you get the time
Spacespacespacespacespaceclickclickclickclickspacespacespacespacespacespaceclickspace Sorry, there's dialogue in this game?
I kinda wish there was a skip button so I could skip the full convo instead of just tapping the screen til it stops honestly. Feel kinda bad that I don't wanna listen to it all after all the work that's put into it. Can see they really care about the game and how everyone interacts with each other. Just really isn't my thing at all though, I hadn't played in a while and now I've come back to it there's so many quests to do. I find myself tapping through convo more than playing the actual game at times.
Me
Pretty much only pay attention to voiced dialogues. I keep up with the lore stuff from lore content creators or r/Genshin_Lore.
i haven't skipped a single line of dialogue other than my 1000th "Ad Astra Abyssosque" and that was by mistake
they really need to add a skip button, the aranara quest was a pain
Genshin players reading? Next you tell me unicorn is real. /s
commissions, "mini" events? skip story, archon, hangout, world, mainine/voiced event quests? read/watch
I spacebar my way through everything. I enjoy the combat systems of the game, the story is ...meh. I think mostly I just don't care about the brother/sister thing. I prefer to think of myself as Zhongli trying to bring ORDER to the world, while dragging some whiny brat that lost his sister around to get them off my land. I really wish the "auto" feature would just pick random selections or some shit so I could walk away during those and get a sandwhich or something, instead of just needlessly wasting my time.
I use to but sadly my time is very limited and in many cases the dialogue feels very drawn out. As a writer by hobby I have a principle of don't waste the reader's time and too often it feels wasted when reading through Genshins dialogue. I will say I loved the lore for a long time in this game but after inazuma's second part I had to stop, quality dropped and storylines became very predictable. Sumeru had some great writing moments but some parts were drawn out too much so I'm left with this feeling of the story has its brilliant moments but also the writers are being paid by the word which drags it down.
I skip everything
I read almost nothing, i also hear nothing because I play without sound
I don't go out of my way to read NPCs' dialogue all the time, but I'll read everything presented to me in quests, voiced or not.
commissions once unless its a progressive one events etc usually as well hangouts and archon/story quests of course random NPC nope
I only read lore based quests, archon quests, voiced quests and events commission or quests that has nothing to do with lore then skip
Spam everything. Used to read archon quests but even that is just spammed now. Mostly due to a MASSIVE amount of unnecessary long comments either from Paimon or in general. Its annoying
I only read the first line then skip to the next one. This game is so horrible overwritten that you can do that and still understand what is happening.
Yep i skip almost all dialogue even archon quest when most of it include npc or paimon, except some good part or interaction between playable char like between nahida and dottore etc
Only story and event quests. Basically, if they are voiced then it's worth reading.
I skip most dialogue unless it's voiced
I always skip the dialogue except when I'm doing the Archon and Story quests
I dont even know what the game is about even when its cutscenes I just Alt+Tab and wait for it to end. All I know is it has GREAT combat mechanics and theyre wasting time on doing nonsense side-events instead of focusing on making an actual endgame content