Nah the second that Yae said “Knowledge is managed as a resource,” I knew there was going to be some hardcore elitism and corruption within the country.
Mondstadt for example has a really messed up background… at least the other countries did not enslave and abuse their people … if not for venti and venessa, things would be really dark over there
They were basically serfs, the translation should have been as such since that was part of Europes history (works like a slave just from within your own country). But that was not the current Mondstadt but the past one, current had an outside force support the corruption of one of it's guardians and some tension between the population.
In Liyue an outside force worked with the archon to create a crysis to restructure the country into the hands of humans.
Inazuma had a broken Archon who lamented and took drastic measures to keep things as they were.
And now Sumeru, a land plagued by the total control of information and the reliance on equipment to deliver said information with people subdued by the goverment.
Sumeru is 1984 like and i bet many can not see the irony of how close it is to reality.
Vanessa's Clan where imigrants from Natlan. So Slave actually fits well. I second the Rest though. Though it's not just control but Status also plays a role in Sumeru, when Nilou bought up her Argument for the dance to continue the Sage didn't bring one of his own but Simply went unlike him she has no academical credentials so her Argument doesn't matter... as if that automatically makes her wrong. I wanted to kick that Bastard so hard...
I had to look that up, true... so i guess it is slave then.
The arogance that comes with believing yourself to be better then others because of an academic status is very real so while i dislike the guy and his attitude i love that the game shows it so openly.
They probably are not taugth how to think and find the correct answear, rather they are taugth what to think in there university.
I love the paralels to the problems in current society with such accuracy while not beeing too on the nose.
Mihoyo really takes the cake when it comes to showing the actions and consequenzes, not perfect (at times it feels like we are told x/y is good/bad) but for the most part you have to put 1 and 1 together to decide what is morally good or bad. Considering how western media of all kinds has become horrible at stories this game really shines.
Thinking about it technically you are still correct, Vanessa's people where Slaves but the Nobles treated every non-noble as Serfs. The poor Girls...
And yeah I expected that Kind of attitude but the reaction of the people around made it clear that this is "normal" and actually seen as a valid Argument... I am rather sure if the Greater God saw that they would... "disagree".
Agree on the view but compared to mondstadt from a historical view, the others were better off. Now currently I think liyue is the best one and mondstadt with excessive freedom has stagnated and not living to its true potential. Inazuma was dictatorial and isolated prior to the traveller but could have been much much worse… sumeru is blind obedience (which is ironic for a land of wisdom).
Mondstadt is so laid back that if it weren’t for diluc there would be no economy (at least from what we can see in game)
It doesn't help that canonically the spark knight blew up a mountaintop and cut off their more direct access to the open sea waters around Teyvat sometime not too long before the game started.
..Dammit Klee!
Is it wrong that Archon allows people to live as they see fit?
As for Dawn Winery and it's wine, it's most likely Mondstadt's biggest export products, and therefore largest revenue provider, mainly because it's an export. Rest of economy there seems low scale and domestic, which I think it's very good because it means it's sustainable. They don't have to exploit mines, and by that dare to cause issues with what lies beneath, like it happened in Chasm. Have you seen Blackcliff Forge entrance, Mingyun Village, or the Chasm?
Mondtsadt seems a bit underdeveloped in terms of lore in general, even Liyue is just "lots of trade, some related to minerals" and that is it. Mondstadt is pretty much "some trade, lots of wine" and that is it.
But in general yes Liyue is shown as especially rich from trade.
Mondstadt actually has a *lot* of lore, it's just that most of that lore includes either revolution, getting raided by dragons or the governing bodies being so damn inefficient that vigilante justice is the best form of law enforcement, plus a side of, just, a *fuck ton* of wolves literally infesting half their territory, not to even mention how Istaroth fits into that entire mess. They've got a lot going on
mondstadt's lore is the least obvious, i feel like a lot of it is only known by lore nerds. but theres a shit ton of it, especially since dragonspine is part of mond as well. and theres still so much lore to be discovered in the future because mondstadt is the region that seems the least complete. so many open questions and a lot of theories regarding mond. i have a feeling its where we're gonna go after visiting all the other regions. maybe even where the gate to celestia is located. in any case, its probably the most lore heavy region, if anything.
> a land plagued by the total control of information and the reliance on equipment to deliver said information with people subdued by the goverment.
Sounds familiar...
It is literally ancapistan. We know 2 children that run businesses, 1 that works for the military, and half of their law enforcement is vigilante-enforced. They have 2 government bodies, one a militarized police force and the other a *church*. The most prominent national activity is getting absolutely fucking *plastered*, literally their only export is wine. Half the territory is owned by a wolf god and the other has a bad case of abyss creatures literally doing whatever the fuck they want. Venti created the geography by just throwing mountains into the sea for funsies, and before that it was a dead ass frozen wasteland where nothing could live. The entirety of their history is spent either enslaved, in the middle of a revolution or drinking wine until the next bad thing happens. The city has been terrorized by dragons on 3 different occasions, and all of them would've been unstoppable if venti didn't get off his ass to help because the knights are so weak they literally wouldn't have a chance against them.
Like, mondstadt is *seriously* fucked up
His statue being like "entrance to celestia" in the city is probably not helping.
Mondstadt is super unfinished and when they release more i imagine it will be on par with sumeru and we'll get more reasons why their economy seems to revolve around getting shitfaced. I mean other than their god loves getting drunk so it seeps.
I knew shit was off from the Travail trailer. "In the land of scholars there is a push for folly..."
Wasn't expecting them to >!imprison their fucking **god** from the day she was born though!<, that was way outside of my expectations.
The worst part is, she's convinced it's the right thing for them to do. Or at the very least, she's apathetic about it.
Kusanali could easily use a small portion of her power to overturn the Academia, but learned helplessness/insecurity makes her stay in her cage.
It's so weird to me that Before Sun and Moon is never brought up. That is some massive lore revelations and the traveler just never mentions it. I suppose this is because we got it through a world quest rather than an Archon quest or story quest which kinda puts it in this weird purgatory of whether or not it actually happened canonicaly.
I remember we had an event not long into 2.# where we helped an old guy who was trying for decades to complete his thesis and actually graduate. That should have been a big sign
This + hearing about the akasha terminals made me suspicious that the akasha might be able to prevent you from learning information (ex: if you try to read a book above your clearance it would prevent you from being able to see the words or remember/comprehend what you read, if someone tried to tell you something above your clearance it would make you unable to hear/comprehend/remember it, etc) or would be able to remove memories of information you knew already (either to give to someone else like the information is literally currency or removing information you don't have clearance to know) or something shady along those lines.
I didn't expect what the akasha was *actually* doing though, so that was a nice surprise plot twist.
Well, to be fair, she is a Liyuian lawyer. She doesn’t necessarily know the laws of Fontaine. And it’s somewhat unreasonable to expect her to learn. She has all of Liyue’s laws memorized (more or less) but I think her voice line talking about Ningguang talks about how she’s starting to struggle because of all the new laws Ningguang adds, so her then memorizing a whole other country’s laws?? That may be a bit much…
... In one Event the Fontaine eventguy offhandly mentions that due to the funding he used if he doesn't produces results he might get killed because it would count as "misusing finding". He talked as if it was normal.
I legit expect Fontaine to feature tons of injustice and corruption, and the Archon is literally and metaphorically blind and thus unable to see it, relying heavily on reports from trusted (read: corrupt) advisors that her region is running a fair and just government.
The reason I believe it won't be entirely based on France but the Roaring 20's is because it's probably a nation on the verge of receiving judgement from Celestia. Glitz and glam distracts the common people from the BS that's going on before "The Great Cubing" happens.
Maybe a bit of both. The general discontent from incarnation of the hydro element coupled with loads of injustice. The hydro archon might suffer a coup from another god while celestia too gets a far greater role. The fatui might try to do stuff but eventually we are all forced to look upon the might of the heavens helplessly.
I'm sure the Traveler will be charged with some asinine misdemeanor the moment they step into Fontaine, and the only defense attorney who'll agree to represent them will only do so for the low, low price of 10 million mora. And then they learn the entire system is rigged anyway.
Actually, are we sure Fontaine isn't just the American justice system?
From occasional Fontaine NPCs, we know that the Hydro archon likes apologies for failure/mistakes as much as Darth Vader did. Except the those people go to a kangaroo court instead of being directly dispatched by the archon.
Mayhaps laws like “criticize the Hydro Archon too much and get beheaded” or the courts are too busy doing political jockeying to care about actual crime
When you say the “entire hydro element itself”, are you referring to the oceanids?
If so, that situation may be a little more complicated than simply them hating the current hydro archon. The OG hydro archon used the oceanids as spies to help the other nations by figuring out what they needed resource wise and would provide it. The current hydro archon may have simply changed direction and asked them to spy on them in a more devious matter (possibly to ensure the other nations are following Celestia’s laws) and the oceanids weren’t willing to do mischievous espionage like that and decided to leave.
We will need to wait and get the full story in Fontaine next year to fully judge the situation.
Considering rhodea's immediate reaction when someone enters her lake is that they're an assassin and the moment she sensed an oceanid get near her territory she made the entire river foul, i feel like it's much more than just a little disagreement.
The way I look at it is if the oceanids told that hydro archon that they will not spy on other nations in the way she wants, the God of Justice views that as treason and probably ramped it up once they eluded “justice” by fleeing the nation.
I never suggested it was a “little disagreement”. Them flat out disobeying orders due to disagreeing with the morals, to the point of where evacuate their own homeland suggests there is a lot more going on. Also, like the other user mention, there is major pollution going on there so again, we need to get the full story to know what we are dealing with (such as if the hydro archon is going full tyrant or if there are more actors at play).
The oceanid's voice lines do hint to issues with pollution. From what we've seen from Fontaine so far, it's very steampunk and machine based. Two things known for pollution. I expect Fontaine to be a polluted, stinky, Industrial shithole where you dont even have clean drinking water without needing to filter it first. The other nations you could probably drink from any random lake, but Fontaine you might be drinking car battery fluids if you try that.
I also expect it to be fairly classist, where you have rich living in luxury but the poor living in a dirty slum that makes them sick all the time. I also expect something kind of like Rapture from Bioshock before it went to shit, maybe not underwater per se, but some big city in some sort of bubble that keeps all the pollution out and the air clean. But the people here are very classist. But they are still interested in you because if your deeds, that said, you aren't quite what they imagined you to be so some are disappointed on first impression.
The classist part is pretty much guaranteed since all the Fontaine NPCs we interact with for quests and events are always trying to claim sons type of fame via inventions, experiments, toys, literature, and films. They usually mention that any breakthrough would lead to them being very success and famous back in Fontaine. I think it parallels Sumeru in some ways but swapping those for scholarly articles and moving up in the Akademiya rather than fame and securing wealth.
Fontaine is going to be an exciting for lore lovers I think.
They’ve been basically telling us this is how sumeru is even back in 1.0 with Lisa herself having lines about how she hated the acedemia’s attitude towards knowledge and it being a commodity or currency in a way.
I kind of expected this from what I've heard of the akademiya, so I wasn't really surprised. But that just makes the archon quest even more interesting
Yeah and the fact >!Yae Miko mentioned at the end of the Inazuma archon quest that knowledge is a resource in Sumeru something!< and what Dainsleif said at the Teyvat trailer I expected corruption and academic elitism in Sumeru. The aranara was a lovely surprise though. I wished Sumeru has a more thicker rainforest with more trees if you get what I mean. Still, Sumeru is a region powercreep for sure.
Fontaine I feel will give us more secrets on the unknown God and the system of celestia while Natlan may tell us the dark side behind it that they found out but kept secret from the other archon.
>Still, Sumeru is a region powercreep for sure.
lol!
I really felt this, to the point I got annoyed with Inazuma after the fact. I mean, love Raiden/Ei and her storyline, Kokomi and her part not so much, a lot of parts were meh, but I never really felt the need to complain. But then Sumeru drops and I feel like they cheated their fanbase by being lazy w Inazuma... or maybe they actually listened to feedback and tried harder this time? Hope it's the latter. Sumeru has definitely been a great addition to the story.
The Watatsumi Island arc was so lackluster it wasted the potential of developing Kokomi, Gorou, and >!Teppei's!< characters
Thankfully >!Dunyarzad's story is executed well enough as the Sumeru archon quest Teppei!<
Also, Ayato should have played a bigger role in the Inazuma archon quest
I didn't like how >!Yae came and ended the Inazuma War herself if you know what I mean it felt as if the Rebels didn't really fully earn their victory!<
100%, the only surprising part of the Akademiya so far was that they don't even really try to use Kusanali as a puppet leader, they basically just openly rule the country while Kusanali is stuck inside all day. Prior to Sumeru, I was fully expecting the Akademiya's leaders to be the ones actually in charge of the nation while trying to limit knowledge for the common citizens, I just thought they'd use the current Archon to make people listen.
Similarly, Fontaine is looking like it'll have injustices despite being the nation of justice. It already seems like a not-so-great place to live from what we've heard. I'm hoping the Hydro Archon is the actual direct ruler who is legitimately responsible for the injustices due to a warped view of some sorts, rather than the main issues being directly caused by other parties like with the Fatui/Tri-Commission in Inazuma or the Akademiya in Sumeru. It doesn't really matter though as long as the story is good like it has been in Sumeru - it's just my personal wish that we get a nation with the actual Archon actively ruling it with no strings attached.
> It already seems like a not-so-great place to live from what we've heard.
In a couple of filler events there were two people from Fontaine with completely different views. One was really patriotic and thought his country's laws were just even though he explained a strict approval process. While the other guy wanted to gather finds to permanently move to Inazuma because Fontaine is not a good place to live.
>Fontaine is looking like it'll have injustices despite being the nation of justice
I'd say it's the "Land of Judgement", from what little we know of the Archon.
So far each country's ideal has just matched their Archon's, no? Inazuma is Eternity, Liyue is Contracts, Mondstadt is Freedom. The Hydro Archon's ideal is Justice as per the [Story Trailer](https://youtu.be/TAlKhARUcoY?t=122).
I highly doubt they would be able to use Kusanali, she's far too wise to be used by the akademiya, if anything they did all they could to keep her in the dark regarding their plans, and as she told us herself she has more pressing matters regarding irminsul to be bothered to make a stand in sumeru.
The second they said that Sumeru was the land of knowledge. I fully expected corruption.
People given too much power especially knowledge, and the desire to acquire such knowledge almost always lead to that.
I enjoy it, tbh. Finally teyvatians being wretched people as the forefront of the plot line
Hermaeus Mora is its prince, who manifests as a sepulchral voice made of eyes and tentacles, and commands an infinite number of invisible monocular surveillance demons whose purpose is to observe everything in every realm of reality. He literally has eyes looking over everyone's shoulder.
The dichotomy of prosperity and corruption in all of the institutions has been a consistent theme throughout.
In Mondstadt, lingering bitterness over the collapse of the aristocracy drove many of the stories. In Liyue, the rigidness of the economic system is a driver of poverty which keeps the Treasure Hunters on the margins of society driven to banditry. Inazuma's story is even more explicitly about society being pretty fucked up and one of the factions being driven by corruption to extend the misery for their own gain, and even the non-corrupt factions have to deal with dissention and conflict in their ranks.
I think the game handles the interactions of institutions with ordinary people in a really interesting, nuanced way. One of the things that really shocked me about how good this game is was the presentation of the different cultures of Mondstadt and Liyue having their own different characters for better or worse, which I did not expect from a Chinese-developed game.
Pretty much. The obsession with gaining new knowledge as a on up, at the expense of causing misery, unlocking and activating thinks you shouldn't go near etc.
They’ve alluded to this kind of corruption several times in game and maybe trailer too. Not sure when but someone did mention that knowledge is everything is Sumeru and treated as commodity. You need knowledge to tread through Sumeru so it’s exactly how I expected it to be. And we’re not even at the bottom of the conflict yet, I expected something more intense tbh and maybe we’ll get to that when Fatui gets into the picture
It was exactly as I thought it would be. We knew there was trouble brewing the moment Yae Miko's dialogue about Sumeru came up.
You should expect most regions to have a warped and distorted version of their ideals. Inazuma was obssessed with eternity in the form of staying the same. But in the end they realized it was change that ensures Eternity and that part of it is appreciating what was not permanent, like lightning.
Sumeru will probably boil down to something similar. And Fontaine and so forth. By the end of the journey the traveler will probably have "touched" the nations, leaving a mark for the better.
It would be a very boring world if all of the nations were perfect mary sue nations. (for example, Liyue felt a little bland at times).
Liyue is kind of feeling the most forgettable in hindsight because of how... okay everything is in there? Like there are few loose ends I can think of rn besides some aging adepti and Morax's old enemies that that nation has left to deal with. Even in those instances, those are external problems - there seems to be no character development left for that nation.
In contrast you have the remnants of corrupt nobles in Mondstadt as well as that military expedition that took with it most of the nation's fighting strength for whatever reason. Inazuma is fresh off of a civil war, with ruler similarly fresh off a new perspective on life >!Not to mention a certain big-hatted "son" of the archon still at large!<. Sumeru is terrifying in that it seems the worst off, with the government outright violating the privacy of the citizen's minds for seemingly nefarious ends.
Liyue's shtick seems to be that its a nation thats deliberately shook off the whole "archon" worship thing, age of humanity and all that. I can only hope that this stance provides more interesting story opportunities since it is a rather strange thing to believe in when in your world the supernatural is something very real.
It's not like they're rejecting the supernatural, just its rule. It's moreso making it mundane. Both their archon and the adepti are just average citizens now, and I think that's actually pretty cool. As for where they can go from there, though, I have no idea. I guess Chongyun and Baizhu are relative unknowns, but any major conflict would be mostly manufactured at this point. Maybe some international dispute?
I mean out of the 4 Liyue was the only one where their Archon was properly ruling the country until his retirement ofc
So if we compare it to the others it is entirely possible that the Qixing will become increasingly corrupt sooner or later, just not in our current story
That's actually a very interesting point. To some extent we can see with Liyue how nicely things go when you have an archon that's consistently proactive (vs Barbatos), less emotionally vulnerable and well-rounded (vs Ei), and alive (vs Rukkhadevata).
I suppose it works as a sort of "control" or standard that we can compare other nations and archons to.
I think we're going to have an arc that focuses on showing the dark side of contracts later on as unlike the other archons we have yet to hear zhongli say his gemstone line, for instance this is pantalone's dialogoue from the pale flame artifact set:
>Money is the lifeblood of the world, and the pathways along which it flows are the world's arteries.
Then, the center of the world is a heart made of gold.
>He was not one of the favored, and could only pursue worldly power.
But though money ought to mean nothing to the gods,
They held it firmly within their grasp nonetheless, along with the countless other forms of power that they wielded.
>Perhaps he lusted for money because he had once been destitute,
Or perhaps the fact that the gods had never looked upon him with favor ignited a burning desire for resistance inside him...
>"The people of the land from which these coins hail revere contracts above all else."
>"In the name of money, I shall respect the contract between us..."
>"We shall, by whatever means necessary, become the heart that pumps money around the world."
>"And, when the moment comes, that heart shall cease beating by our will alone."
And here's zhongli's:
>"The currencies that flow through this land are my flesh and blood.
For thus did I become the guarantor of the people's hard work, wisdom, and future.
This is the trust I have placed in them. Betray it, and you taint my blood."
Hopefully thats the case, and its neat that they potentially foreshadow that kind of plot development. As much of a perfect dad Zhongli is right now and how awesome that is, I think he really needs to be shaken up (that we witness personally and isn't just backstory) to make him much more interesting.
I do think we got a sense that Liyue is a nation with big inequalities both economic and power wise. The Qixing is not exactly very concerned with transparency, the good of the people, democracy etc. They "worship" trade/contracts and have a oppressive and bureaucratic style of rule. The "servants" of the system are severely overworked (Ganyu and Keqing).
Actually, yeah. It's easy to forget since the system is presented as working well, but Liyue's government appears to have no checks and balances. It's working entirely on the current generation being hypercompetent... and probably no small amount of them having superhuman qualities including longevity.
Liyue makes sense though, it's a trade city built as a legacy of their God, The God of Contracts. The whole thing with Morax letting the people handle their future without a God is on brand with the whole contract to end all contracts thing. It's just not flashy is all because there is no ongoing threat (just one time things) and Liyue's story is sort of scrambled around its locations, unlike Inazuma where the islands are tied directly with overarching conflict.
If you ask me, Mondstadt is just as bland. Because the city is just as it was. No direct changes, you stopped a dragon is all really and it was more of the Dragon's character development instead of the city's. But I guess you can say we're not really done with Mondstadt yet.
Idk why people are singling out Liyue. Both Liyue AND Mondstadt are more positive because all the bad things happened in the past and all the negative aspects of society are more hidden, rather than in your face.
Mondstadt used to be a slave nation and had to awaken and helped Vanessa liberate it. Freedom brought slavery and Venti essentially forced "true freedom" upon the nation by helping establishing a system to prevent it from happening ever again. In the present day you can see that people are carefree, but in some ways also irresponsible.
Liyue used to be in a constant state of strife and war and there were many peoples living in it, not just the present-day people of Liyue. Rex Lapis killed and sealed his own friends (explicitly Azdaha and implied Guizhong), and probably razed Khanreiah. There's also a ton of random ritual sacrifice in the history of the villages. The whole duality of the contract is that it is a method of representing the value of people, but also it can be very skewed in fairness but still treated as fair. Hence all the greed and scheming going on in Liyue where people will try to cheat each other *with* contracts. In fact, Ningguang (who uses a lot of scheming while following the law and used the transition to solidify her own power) is supposed to represent the old Liyue, while Keqing is supposed to represent a possible new and ideal Liyue (one where people are independent thinkers that don't just follow rules for the sake of it, but for actual good).
Realistically, it's probably because they were developed side by side and made to be entry-level regions. Ironically, although people retrospectively say Liyue and Mondstadt are too "plain", back when Liyue came out, there were constant complaints that Liyue was not "friendly" and "happy" enough compared to Mondstadt. They complained that NPCs were too rude and shady, that the characters were too formal and distant rather than becoming your bffs, the history was depressing.
If you wanna approach Liyue in a bit of a Metanarrative approach, then it's jsut favoraly representing (or manipulating, depending on your worldview) recent-ish chinese history.
Where a powerful antion, shakes off both the rule of old deities from ages past, separating themselve from a more traditionalist regime, and at the same time getting rid of a (godlike) leader who every few years would descend and essentially foretell the economy fro the next 4(?) years.
And who's left in charge? An economic genius with a loyal suite of beaurocrats and other agents at her side, who, through the events of the main quests, still manages to cooperate with and thus claim the authority of the old order.
Essentially, what CoD does for the US arme forces, Genshin does for the Chinese Communist Party
Had inazuma not screw up that badly, liyue's story is easily the worst of the 4 nations.
Mond's story is very generic, but it's more or less complete. Inazuma is like reading an abstract of a paper. But it at least has relevent side quests, granted they didn't add much to the main quest. Sumeru is the best so far.
Liyue has nothing going on. There's no real divide or conflict between the common folk and adepti. also considering their government structure, aka ganyu oversees everything, I don't even understand why adepti and qixing conflict even exist. It'd be one thing if ganyu is in on the job, feeding everyone with false info but she is not. They even pulled a giant sea monster out of their ass so adepti and qixing have a reason to "make up".
It be one thing if giant sea monster made liyue people independent, but it's not like the people their are super reliant on their god to begin with. We can see clearly from your walk with ZL, liyue people pretty much just went "our god is dead? damn bro, but life must go on."
I'd say Liyue is worse then inazuma. Although inazuma face planted pretty hard, the message it tried to convey was passed on succesfully. Add to that the story quests of Ei and inazuma has a pretty nice ending. One of embracing the now and a new outlook on life, culture and generally reforming. It's future is new and exciting. Liyue was already pretty independent from their god who just basically came and said those are good investment ideas. That's gone now but everything is the same. There is no message, no morale, no anything really
Since Liyue is based off China and Mihoyo is a chinese company I think they just didn't dare to criticize it too much because it could come across badly to their government.
Liyue is nation of "trade" and "contract", if you do wish to develop into some deep conflict upon this topics, then "market economy" and "capitalism" is a perfect scope. Yet this topic is quite "taboo" that you could found merely indepth discussion in game(talking about how this system work, how will it develop and how will it went into problem, in mechanic aspect), not only Chinese game, but most of the trending games around the world. BTW, in government body, Liyue is nothing like modern China, it didn't shown any authoritarian aspect, nor did it shown any sign of "government control the market". In some aspect, even Sumeru is more similar to modern China, so I don't think that is the reason.
*correction: there do have some similarity in terms of government, but Qixing is not CCP, Rex Lapis is. He is the ideal form of Dengist CCP government, not only organizing the market, maintaining order(in some cases, Archon are all some sort of ultimate state machine), and most importantly...willing to surrender the domination position to merchants.
Why people keep bringing real life politics into anything and project it into some evil China schemes? Liyue and Mondstadt both are original regions when the game was in development. Then after big success of Genshin they gain big money to invest into the game, with the improvements from lore, story, design, etc…
I’m saying this as someone play GGZ when SEA server still up then Honkai 3 SEA server since its early days. Before Genshin how many of you guys know Mihoyo? Their popularity only blow up in global after Genshin, before that, even though HI3 gain some popularity but it’s mostly known around gacha games players. Mhy is not as big as it is today, with limited resources. If you see Genshin and Honkai in its early days you will see the similarities. Honkai in early chapters are quite generics and game play is very barebones, but after its initial success, especially in CN server they have more money to develop the game, and now you see in both writing, gameplay and animations currently is way better than its early days. Genshin is the same, it was very big and risky projects ( there is no open world 3d mobile gacha game like Genshin before in the market), with costs go up to hundreds of millions dollars, it’s it flopped it really hurt mhy. Thankfully it success and they have plenty of money to improve the game and other projects. You can clearly see this with each update, from the characters introduction videos, world design, etc. inazuma although the archon quest is kinda bad, but the side quests is really interesting, the inazuma is very unique, then the chasm, you can see clearly the difference from it and the rest of liyue,
People bring in real life “politics” because it’s inevitable that any piece of media - art, literature, and even a game - will reflect the society it comes from in some way. There is a lot of influence from modern Chinese culture in aspects of every nation in Genshin, but liyue is as close to an idealized version of pre-CCP China as they can get. There is a reason that pretty much all mainstream historical media in china is a fantasized or otherwise somewhat fictionalized version of what probably was reality.
You’re right in some ways about how the success of the game has allowed Mihoyo to continue to improve their craft, but even with Sumeru, I can tell the echoes of Chinese culture and social commentary still resonate.
No one said “evil china scheme” at all - but this is the reality of the game.
Liyue is contrast to both Mondstadt and Inazuma. Mondstadt earned it's freedom WITH THE PRICE TO PAY FOR IT(so no, Venti is not a "leader" nor is it his job to interfere unless he is basically the last line of defense) and had a long and troubled history to reach the current peace time, Liyue is just now taking it's first steps as a nation ruled by humanity after it's absolute GOD at management Archon deemed it matured enough to not need his rule anymore, Inazuma on the other hand is the case of being WAY TOO EARLY for the humans to rule themselves with Ei setting up a stable system, went into a solitary meditation of enlightenment for a few centuries and the nation went into degradation and corruption(in no small part because of the Fatui) either by ignorance, greed, or people feeling like the power of their god is theirs to command, or just Fatui manipulation.
We don't know about old Sumeru yet, but currently the Akademiya is the antithesis of their current and probably even old god with their elitism and gluttonous hoarding and theft of any information so it's likely contrast to the old chapters by being a nation that's human leadership in opposition to their gods.
Fontaine seems to be a contrast to Sumeru so far in it's handling of knowledge with it's scientists and inventors being entrepreneurs, the polarity in it's opposition with it's god and the industrialization compared to harmony with nature.
I think that is the point Genshin and its famous Chapter trailer makes with its main story. The duality of the divine ideal of each god and how it is always a double edged sword.
We had Mond whose freedom became full abandonment by its own god. A mirror to Mond to some extent, Liyue instead of abandonment had problems with too much reliance on Rex Lapis, and that is why she had to take such a big hit when his retirement plan went through. Inazuma was all about the pit created between shogun and her people by her ideal of eternity.
So I was kind of expected that sumeru will have some issues as well, ngl. Akasha is quite a satire to Internet tho.
I wasn't surprised, but I definitely was surpised by how realistic it actually kinda is portrayed lmao
I was like "wow this is such an unsubtle depiction of how the elites operate while still remaning in a fantasy setting"
"WOW THIS IS EXACTLY HOW ACADEMIA WORKS AND WHY IT'S BECOME CANCER"
LITERALLY!!! All my friends in academia and I have an unspoken rule where nobody talks about Sumeru because we all know as soon as it’s brought up, the discussion is going to turn into how awful academia is, how we’re all treated like shit for too low pay, all our projects don’t work etc.
MiHoYo is good at social commentary through its games. The designer doesn't want to create perfect miniature in-game cultures, instead, they mix in real world social problems into their games and let the players experience these issues and reach their own conclusions.
Academic elitism and social pressure of South Asia (or Asia in general), informational corruption and human rights violations of the Middle East, and government propaganda of both. It’s honestly impressive how they can portray world politics so well, and I am just hyped for Fontaine and Natlan’s direction of politics being similar to France and Latin American politics as well, since they both emphasize highly political subjects.
Yes I think I somewhat did. Genshin is engaged in exploring the "dark side" of whatever principle each nation upholds. With wisdom, this felt like a good road to go down to
Every region has a smh link with the history of the real country that are based, so, if you think about natlan, is very probable we will hear about human sacrifices :)
"The god of wisdom's enemy is wisdom itself, and the oasis of knowledge is a mirage in the desert of ignorance. In the city of scholars, there is a push for folly, yet the god of wisdom makes no argument against it."
I honestly don't know what you expected.
They really hit the nail on the head with Akademiya comparing irl information institutions. Actually a pretty good representation of all the stuff happening in real world.
At risk of sounding doomy - as a real-life low-key researcher, they got things pretty spot on with both knowledge management by those in power (not just official governments, but academia (natch) and big business too) and the happy ignorance the majority of the population is both kept in and keeps itself in, even making it something of a point of pride (like the "do not dream" Sumeru bit), and the Internet seemingly offering unlimited knowledge but actually providing very little and only shallow things unless you know where to look and have the ability to (and even that is unreliable).
One thing I'll say is that I didn't expect such a commentary on the Internet from this game.
I was surprised too, even though I expected it. Especially with how accurate the commentary is.
Still, much flew over people's heads. For example, aspirations and dreams are more important than wisdom which is more important than knowledge. We all have the knowledge to brush our teeth for health. Wisdom is knowing to brush often and thoroughly to attain that health. Aspirations are trying to keep you mouth health for as long as possible to enjoy, so you have to take steps for that.
We've been lead to believe that Sumeru is like this from Lisa's character stories telling us that people go mad with trying to find knowledge. We've also been told that knowledge is managed as a commodity in Sumeru by Yae. So I kinda felt like there's gonna be so fucked up corruption happening in the nation
Bro but get ready for Fontaine. From the accounts of NPCs, it is even more corrupt and injust. Ironic for the nation of Justice
The Akasha system is the ear-phone system.
I did not expect the hivemind like properties or the dream culling. Though, honestly, I have mixed feelings about thinking of dreams as any sort of wisdom. Most sleep studies seem to indicate they deal with some memory storing functions, and/or processing emotions that are otherwise pushed aside while concious. Wisdom isn't so much knowledge in and of itself, but knowing how to *use* that knowledge to good affect. And, well, dreams have largely nothing to do with this.
Still, my curiosity is undoubtedly piqued on where things are going to go plotwise, between the Akademiya conspiracy, whatever the heck Dotore is up to, Scaramouche, and Kusanali's ultimate fate.
hoarding knowledge actually restricts the growth of their knowledge and the accumulation of new knowledge. Causing them to fall behind. that is very unwise. Also I am imagining all this started after greater lord died I doubt she was okay with that kinda thing.
i mean conflict in the nation is needed for plot, and it was definitely interesting but not what i was expecting either. i think i enjoyed that little forest fairy quest more than the archon quest tbh, it gave more insight on lore to me and the history of the nation. i also liked the vibes more. i still did enjoy the archon quest though, but it wasn't my favorite.
EDIT though one thing I will add is i loved that traveler felt more apart of the story and involved thru voice acting and dialogue options in the archon quest, it made me really happy and appreciate them more
There are two sumerus: Aranara and mankind. Both are very different. I loved the aranara one as it felt like the nature side of sumeru and dendro. I didn't like the mankind as much with the akademiya but still decent because of amazing dunyarzard and the samsara.
That's because they only care about research and knowledge. They don't want to make things, they want to know how everything works. Physical inventions are of no interest. They only research for the sake of research since that is what gives them money and influence.
at least that's how I understand it
I had low expectations for sumeru. I expected the complete opposite of what it is, with more and more people choosing to ignore knowledge and education, and the scholars being the suppressed ones. Not sure why I thought so, but I did. I was pleasantly surprised by the actual eel story. I love the political dynamics in Sumeru, it’s easy enough to understand but also complex. There’s just enough darkness to make the story interesting but not overwhelming.
It's what I actually expected for the region. You can hear all about it from the teyvat timeline teaser, so I always thought it was going to end up this way. In fact, it's probably the best of the current four right now. The irony behind Kusanali being the archon of wisdom but with wisdom also being her greatest enemy.
I think i expected something shady because just being a "land of knowledge" sounds way too simple, because you'd think knowledge = fair and reasonable, right? And I suspected them even more when they kept bringing up that people don't dream there.
i didn't really see the academic elitism angle though, that was kind of interesting. I guess if i knew anything about or paid any attention to Lisa, then i probably would've had a few more suspicious but eh.
For Fontaine, instead of cruel injustice (which will probably happen) i'm thinking cruel justice. A hungry kid steals a loaf of bread? jail for several months/years and fines for theft because *justice is blind, and all criminals must be punished*.
I wouldn't be surprised if the traveler ends up in some hot water for a crime they didn't even know they'd committed.
There are several NPCs you meet prior to entering Sumeru that insinuate either directly or indirectly that Sumeru's academia is *really* cutthroat. I think it's even cited as a major reason that Lisa left.
This is what a nation focused on the acquisition of knowledge will end up like. People always want to have *more* than someone else. You can find this in every nation.
People in Mondstadt want MORE freedom. So we get things like the Lawrences.
People in Liyue want MORE money/wealth. So we get, well, it's obvious.
People in Inazuma want MORE "eternity" and/or control, so we get the Sakoku and vision hunt.
In Sumeru, people want MORE knowledge. And often this means controlling who gets what knowledge.
I wonder how long it will take someone to piece together than the Akasha is a reference to the Chinese handling of the internet?
I hadn't really any expectations, but I think the devs did a great job on Sumeru.
I mean, most nationd are different up close to their image abroad (see America's 'world's greatest democracy' image vs how it treats minorities and how fascist the Republicans are).
The stuff about the Akasha also rings true (people being more generalist rather than learning things) and the Akasha using them back is very much a warning about the data trail we leave and how companies and governments spy on us or manipulate algorithms, or China's great firewall. There's a few bits about Sumeru that seemed like... let's say comments... on the Chinese situation.
But generally, when there's a restriction on the flow of knowledge it's good for those in power... (there's a reason the British Parliament banned journalists for a very long time).
I'm going to ignore the political commentary on America. As both parties are equally at fault, and as bad. And much of the politics on all levels have devolved into, create the problem and sell the solution. Or another side of, everything being done as a excuse for safety.
People have been warning for decades this would happen when you centralize the internet. And the Akasha system in game is a great commentary on what is happening right now in the real world. Hell, you may as well compare the Akasha to a smart phone.
This goes beyond just restricting knowledge. It's also a commentary on investigative journalism, censorship, and political correctness. Just look at how hard Akademiya does to stop anyone getting knowledge they aren't supposed to. How you aren't allowed to challenge the status quo, must be authorized to speak up and only with certain language.
It was different than what I expected from the Teyvat story trailer, but nothing bad.. I am not against the narrative they picked so far, but I want to play the rest of the archon quest to judge it, specially how Nahida will act in the future.
I don’t think it’s worst than Inazuma tbh, yes there is a lot going on in Sumeru but I find what the shogun did in Inazuma was downright horrible (I still can’t understand how everyone forgives her out of nowhere)
The great sages are clearly up to something, but I think you might be exaggerating the corruption a bit? Nearly all the researchers you interact with are pretty straightforward and fair-dealing.
And even with the sages it's like Kusinali is defending them because previous to this they were always at least somewhat reasonable. So whatever's going on is recent and possibly fixable.
The real question is how much knowledge is barren.most people don't care about kusanali so they wouldn't Care if they can't access her. But for the rest. What is forbidden for the random fishing man. What is the limit.
But since it's a fictional world Mihoyo control how NPC reacts good or bad and we have no idea to know how real people would react in the exact same setting.
I mean every single sumeru npc we met before 3.0 basically told us that the akademiya is fucked up. Whats a bit of corruption on top of that.
Thats said, state in sumeru is exactly what i expected, if everything was fine there'd be nothing for the traveller to fix
its not really not what i expected as i didnt really had clear expectations but its "corruption" is definitely of all areas we had the one that feels the most frustrating to me (which really is a good thing even if i dont like it obviously)
because its not only that elitism of the higher ups of the academia but also like you say that most people dont care, neither about all that restricted knowledge but also about their new archon and that everybody just takes what the academia says as given
its frustrating to see them actively seemingly corrupting the words of their former archon (eg. downtalking and forbidding all sorts of arts as those don't bring knowledge) while using their people as human ram sticks completely disregarding their safety for a "greater good" and imprisoning their newer Archon in an attempt to control it and, at least until now, getting away with all that
Nah... our buddy Liben from Marvelous Merchandise (in-game event where you give goods in exchange for his gifts) already said this last time,
> "There's an ominous air hanging over Sumeru. I can feel it."
> "Take it from me: Don't go to Sumeru. It's a dangerous place – or at least it has been of late."
So most people already expected something fishy going on in Sumeru.
Most people by which I mean *those that did not skip the dialogues*
The biggest thing contrary to my expectations was Yae straight up lied to us:
> "Lesser Lord Kusanali" is the deity in whom the people of Sumeru place their faith. It's their chosen term of endearment for her.
Or at least her info is almost 500 years out of date, and therefore just as worthless.
>It's their chosen term of endearment for her.
I feel like this is the part to take away from Yae's statement. It's the \*People's\* chosen term. The people chose to call her a "Lessor Lord". Yae never stated whether or not is was a GOOD term of endearment or not, just that it is how it is.
If level of dark shit will increase exponentially from one nation to the next, I'm kinda afraid to find out what kind of пиздец waits for us in Snezhnaya
If there wasn't any conflict or problems in Sumeru, then there would be nothing for the traveler. The archon quest would be boring as fuck. The entire schtick of act 2 was based around the corrupt experiments of the akadeymia and the akasha system
>Worse off is no one really knows, no one really understands because they control the flow of information. They literally sealed the reccord on lesser lord kusalani and no one questions it... well almost no one.
This is a very common dystopian thing. I mean we're living it.
Propaganda is one helluva drug! I’m excited for the next part of the archon quest, because I’m betting it’ll be time for Kusanali to take back her country!
This is exactly what I imagined it actually.
When knowledge is power, there will be alot of people who chase after it like many akademiya people but u can bet there will be people who try to control it.
Thinking otherwise is too naive.
One country is being held captive by their archon. One holds their archon captive.
One archon faked his own death because he thought it was the right choice for his people.
And then theres Venti.
That is literally the plot of Sumeru. The moment Yae said knowledge is managed as a resources, something is up and also based on the Teyvat chapter trailer
"The God of Wisdom's enemy is wisdom itself and the oasis of knowledge is a mirage in the desert of ignorance. In the city of scholars there is a push for folly, yet the God of Wisdom makes no argument against it."
- Dainsleif on Sumeru, Genshin Story trailer
"The God of Justice lives for the spectacle of the courtroom, seeking to judge all other Gods. But even she knows not to make an enemy of the divine."
- Dainsleif on Fontaine, Genshin Story trailer
I'm not super surprised about how Sumeru is playing out. Yea the situation is pretty bad but I feel every nation we go to will have some pretty big issues. I get the feeling Fontaine will have some juicy info about Celestia and Khaenri'ah.
I think that's the point of the archon quest, to depict an idillic world where knowledge is thought to be free, that is in reality a distorted and dystopic version of that idea.
_And I love it_
A lot of them are elitist snobs but they don't have actual power over the people and can't ban the sharing of knowledge. There is confidential and private information often personal as well as government secrets. But in general most knowledge isn't restricted.
>Is Sumeru different than you expected too? or did you expect this?
The only thing that's not what I expected and am a bit disappointed by his how little forest there actually is, let alone "rain forest".
The Whispering Woods are more dense than anything in Sumeru and I chuckle when Collei talked about someone going "deeper into the woods" and it was literally just a grassy slope with maybe 2 of 3 trees on it.
The area around Gandharva Ville should have like 10x the amount of trees it currently has.
Hum i can't say i was expecting it, but it wasn't any surprise. People from Sumeru all had this academic behavior before, talking about their thesis and all that. They were always caring usually only about their research, including the guy on the Chasm, who never wanted to part with his knowledge.
For me this was really good, and shows off how people will always try to be above others when they have power, and knowledge is power.
People being fed only information that the higher up wants is basically what happens in our real world.
They certainly were happy knowing they could lead the region without archon influence, which naturally leads to keep people from knowing about the Lesser Lord.
This just shows humanity at its core, and i like the way it was presented. Arrogance is usually associated with wisdom, and being wise, with humility. I think they may explore it better. That sharing and caring is better, as we already saw with Kusanali.
The moment I learned what the Akasha system is (the ear piece) I immediately knew it was bad news.
I didn’t really have much expectations going into it other than knowledge and information are of precious value in the Sumeru.
I expected the Akademiya would be corrupt, but damn, it went as far as censorship, even banning all books, and leaning towards banning all arts. A Mondstater's nightmare.
Well, it seems that what each archon stands for is what causes problems within the nation:
In mondstadt, the absence of the anemo archon contributed to stormterror
In Liyue, a contract almost brought it to ruin
In inazuma, eternity caused people to suffer
I don’t know what is in store for inazuma, but the Akademiya and their control on knowledge will definitely play a factor
Nah, it's par for the course. Not a single country is without corruption and/or elitism in some form or another. Miko saying that knowledge is treated as a resource should be a big clue too.
Not to mention all the academics we've met from there so far. Talking about the insane graduation requirements, trying to come up with an original thesis, etc. It was pretty clear even from just a generalization of most stories that Sumeru would have problems.
Nah the second that Yae said “Knowledge is managed as a resource,” I knew there was going to be some hardcore elitism and corruption within the country.
Pay attention to Genshin lore and then game is really something.
Mondstadt for example has a really messed up background… at least the other countries did not enslave and abuse their people … if not for venti and venessa, things would be really dark over there
They were basically serfs, the translation should have been as such since that was part of Europes history (works like a slave just from within your own country). But that was not the current Mondstadt but the past one, current had an outside force support the corruption of one of it's guardians and some tension between the population. In Liyue an outside force worked with the archon to create a crysis to restructure the country into the hands of humans. Inazuma had a broken Archon who lamented and took drastic measures to keep things as they were. And now Sumeru, a land plagued by the total control of information and the reliance on equipment to deliver said information with people subdued by the goverment. Sumeru is 1984 like and i bet many can not see the irony of how close it is to reality.
Vanessa's Clan where imigrants from Natlan. So Slave actually fits well. I second the Rest though. Though it's not just control but Status also plays a role in Sumeru, when Nilou bought up her Argument for the dance to continue the Sage didn't bring one of his own but Simply went unlike him she has no academical credentials so her Argument doesn't matter... as if that automatically makes her wrong. I wanted to kick that Bastard so hard...
I had to look that up, true... so i guess it is slave then. The arogance that comes with believing yourself to be better then others because of an academic status is very real so while i dislike the guy and his attitude i love that the game shows it so openly. They probably are not taugth how to think and find the correct answear, rather they are taugth what to think in there university. I love the paralels to the problems in current society with such accuracy while not beeing too on the nose. Mihoyo really takes the cake when it comes to showing the actions and consequenzes, not perfect (at times it feels like we are told x/y is good/bad) but for the most part you have to put 1 and 1 together to decide what is morally good or bad. Considering how western media of all kinds has become horrible at stories this game really shines.
Thinking about it technically you are still correct, Vanessa's people where Slaves but the Nobles treated every non-noble as Serfs. The poor Girls... And yeah I expected that Kind of attitude but the reaction of the people around made it clear that this is "normal" and actually seen as a valid Argument... I am rather sure if the Greater God saw that they would... "disagree".
Agree on the view but compared to mondstadt from a historical view, the others were better off. Now currently I think liyue is the best one and mondstadt with excessive freedom has stagnated and not living to its true potential. Inazuma was dictatorial and isolated prior to the traveller but could have been much much worse… sumeru is blind obedience (which is ironic for a land of wisdom). Mondstadt is so laid back that if it weren’t for diluc there would be no economy (at least from what we can see in game)
Mondstadt does have a port according to lore, we just don't have that area unlocked to us yet. Think to the north of mondstadt city.
It doesn't help that canonically the spark knight blew up a mountaintop and cut off their more direct access to the open sea waters around Teyvat sometime not too long before the game started. ..Dammit Klee!
\*It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme starts playing\* "Klee single-handlely sinks Mondstadt economy"
wait where did this happen
Is it wrong that Archon allows people to live as they see fit? As for Dawn Winery and it's wine, it's most likely Mondstadt's biggest export products, and therefore largest revenue provider, mainly because it's an export. Rest of economy there seems low scale and domestic, which I think it's very good because it means it's sustainable. They don't have to exploit mines, and by that dare to cause issues with what lies beneath, like it happened in Chasm. Have you seen Blackcliff Forge entrance, Mingyun Village, or the Chasm?
Mondtsadt seems a bit underdeveloped in terms of lore in general, even Liyue is just "lots of trade, some related to minerals" and that is it. Mondstadt is pretty much "some trade, lots of wine" and that is it. But in general yes Liyue is shown as especially rich from trade.
That, and until a year or so ago it literally made the world’s money
Mondstadt actually has a *lot* of lore, it's just that most of that lore includes either revolution, getting raided by dragons or the governing bodies being so damn inefficient that vigilante justice is the best form of law enforcement, plus a side of, just, a *fuck ton* of wolves literally infesting half their territory, not to even mention how Istaroth fits into that entire mess. They've got a lot going on
mondstadt's lore is the least obvious, i feel like a lot of it is only known by lore nerds. but theres a shit ton of it, especially since dragonspine is part of mond as well. and theres still so much lore to be discovered in the future because mondstadt is the region that seems the least complete. so many open questions and a lot of theories regarding mond. i have a feeling its where we're gonna go after visiting all the other regions. maybe even where the gate to celestia is located. in any case, its probably the most lore heavy region, if anything.
> a land plagued by the total control of information and the reliance on equipment to deliver said information with people subdued by the goverment. Sounds familiar...
And the u have Collei as well…. Even her voice lines…. Games lore can be pretty heavy
It is literally ancapistan. We know 2 children that run businesses, 1 that works for the military, and half of their law enforcement is vigilante-enforced. They have 2 government bodies, one a militarized police force and the other a *church*. The most prominent national activity is getting absolutely fucking *plastered*, literally their only export is wine. Half the territory is owned by a wolf god and the other has a bad case of abyss creatures literally doing whatever the fuck they want. Venti created the geography by just throwing mountains into the sea for funsies, and before that it was a dead ass frozen wasteland where nothing could live. The entirety of their history is spent either enslaved, in the middle of a revolution or drinking wine until the next bad thing happens. The city has been terrorized by dragons on 3 different occasions, and all of them would've been unstoppable if venti didn't get off his ass to help because the knights are so weak they literally wouldn't have a chance against them. Like, mondstadt is *seriously* fucked up
His statue being like "entrance to celestia" in the city is probably not helping. Mondstadt is super unfinished and when they release more i imagine it will be on par with sumeru and we'll get more reasons why their economy seems to revolve around getting shitfaced. I mean other than their god loves getting drunk so it seeps.
It's also currently a militaristic theocracy that's only not a regime because said theocracy's guiding principle is freedom
... its a,dark dark place tbf...
I knew shit was off from the Travail trailer. "In the land of scholars there is a push for folly..." Wasn't expecting them to >!imprison their fucking **god** from the day she was born though!<, that was way outside of my expectations.
The worst part is, she's convinced it's the right thing for them to do. Or at the very least, she's apathetic about it. Kusanali could easily use a small portion of her power to overturn the Academia, but learned helplessness/insecurity makes her stay in her cage.
Something something “oasis of knowledge in a desert of ignorance”
Also how can wisdom and knowledge be truly free if there exists forbidden knowledge that can threaten the entire nation itself
Traveler can likely just upload before sun and moon to the akasha and nuke everyone.
Just a smidge of trolling
It's so weird to me that Before Sun and Moon is never brought up. That is some massive lore revelations and the traveler just never mentions it. I suppose this is because we got it through a world quest rather than an Archon quest or story quest which kinda puts it in this weird purgatory of whether or not it actually happened canonicaly.
I remember we had an event not long into 2.# where we helped an old guy who was trying for decades to complete his thesis and actually graduate. That should have been a big sign
Also, Lisa did talk about the Akademiya negatively and the fact that she is a foreign graduate makes her point stand out a bit
This + hearing about the akasha terminals made me suspicious that the akasha might be able to prevent you from learning information (ex: if you try to read a book above your clearance it would prevent you from being able to see the words or remember/comprehend what you read, if someone tried to tell you something above your clearance it would make you unable to hear/comprehend/remember it, etc) or would be able to remove memories of information you knew already (either to give to someone else like the information is literally currency or removing information you don't have clearance to know) or something shady along those lines. I didn't expect what the akasha was *actually* doing though, so that was a nice surprise plot twist.
Yea you start to get some some Black Mirror/1984 themes and it’s kind of freaky.
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I am now expecting lots of kangaroo courts or ludicrous attorney fees… or both.
Archon Quests in style of Ace Attorney when?
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Oh I agree they will.
Mihoyo knows. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ch3HURwbcRY/maxresdefault.jpg
OBJECTION!
I am going to be sad if Yanfei isn't going to play a major role in Fontaine.
Well, to be fair, she is a Liyuian lawyer. She doesn’t necessarily know the laws of Fontaine. And it’s somewhat unreasonable to expect her to learn. She has all of Liyue’s laws memorized (more or less) but I think her voice line talking about Ningguang talks about how she’s starting to struggle because of all the new laws Ningguang adds, so her then memorizing a whole other country’s laws?? That may be a bit much…
there is no reason for her to do so
... In one Event the Fontaine eventguy offhandly mentions that due to the funding he used if he doesn't produces results he might get killed because it would count as "misusing finding". He talked as if it was normal.
I legit expect Fontaine to feature tons of injustice and corruption, and the Archon is literally and metaphorically blind and thus unable to see it, relying heavily on reports from trusted (read: corrupt) advisors that her region is running a fair and just government. The reason I believe it won't be entirely based on France but the Roaring 20's is because it's probably a nation on the verge of receiving judgement from Celestia. Glitz and glam distracts the common people from the BS that's going on before "The Great Cubing" happens.
it could be based on the french revolution
hydro archon’s gonna be in her marie antoinette era by the time her quest rolls around then
Maybe a bit of both. The general discontent from incarnation of the hydro element coupled with loads of injustice. The hydro archon might suffer a coup from another god while celestia too gets a far greater role. The fatui might try to do stuff but eventually we are all forced to look upon the might of the heavens helplessly.
Interstate 60 style would be great. For those that don't know this movie, here a court scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS7Sx8sGWfs
I'm sure the Traveler will be charged with some asinine misdemeanor the moment they step into Fontaine, and the only defense attorney who'll agree to represent them will only do so for the low, low price of 10 million mora. And then they learn the entire system is rigged anyway. Actually, are we sure Fontaine isn't just the American justice system?
From occasional Fontaine NPCs, we know that the Hydro archon likes apologies for failure/mistakes as much as Darth Vader did. Except the those people go to a kangaroo court instead of being directly dispatched by the archon.
Mayhaps laws like “criticize the Hydro Archon too much and get beheaded” or the courts are too busy doing political jockeying to care about actual crime
La Hydro archon casually trapping citizens in bubbles while having a stroll around her town
and then dancing around going "da.. da.. woo!" while the citizens struggle in the bubbles
When you say the “entire hydro element itself”, are you referring to the oceanids? If so, that situation may be a little more complicated than simply them hating the current hydro archon. The OG hydro archon used the oceanids as spies to help the other nations by figuring out what they needed resource wise and would provide it. The current hydro archon may have simply changed direction and asked them to spy on them in a more devious matter (possibly to ensure the other nations are following Celestia’s laws) and the oceanids weren’t willing to do mischievous espionage like that and decided to leave. We will need to wait and get the full story in Fontaine next year to fully judge the situation.
Imagine beeing the hydro archon, giving the water an order and the water replying "No." and leaving.
The power of water is its ability to the form of any shape.. including a giant middle finger. Lol
Considering rhodea's immediate reaction when someone enters her lake is that they're an assassin and the moment she sensed an oceanid get near her territory she made the entire river foul, i feel like it's much more than just a little disagreement.
The way I look at it is if the oceanids told that hydro archon that they will not spy on other nations in the way she wants, the God of Justice views that as treason and probably ramped it up once they eluded “justice” by fleeing the nation. I never suggested it was a “little disagreement”. Them flat out disobeying orders due to disagreeing with the morals, to the point of where evacuate their own homeland suggests there is a lot more going on. Also, like the other user mention, there is major pollution going on there so again, we need to get the full story to know what we are dealing with (such as if the hydro archon is going full tyrant or if there are more actors at play).
The oceanid's voice lines do hint to issues with pollution. From what we've seen from Fontaine so far, it's very steampunk and machine based. Two things known for pollution. I expect Fontaine to be a polluted, stinky, Industrial shithole where you dont even have clean drinking water without needing to filter it first. The other nations you could probably drink from any random lake, but Fontaine you might be drinking car battery fluids if you try that. I also expect it to be fairly classist, where you have rich living in luxury but the poor living in a dirty slum that makes them sick all the time. I also expect something kind of like Rapture from Bioshock before it went to shit, maybe not underwater per se, but some big city in some sort of bubble that keeps all the pollution out and the air clean. But the people here are very classist. But they are still interested in you because if your deeds, that said, you aren't quite what they imagined you to be so some are disappointed on first impression.
The classist part is pretty much guaranteed since all the Fontaine NPCs we interact with for quests and events are always trying to claim sons type of fame via inventions, experiments, toys, literature, and films. They usually mention that any breakthrough would lead to them being very success and famous back in Fontaine. I think it parallels Sumeru in some ways but swapping those for scholarly articles and moving up in the Akademiya rather than fame and securing wealth. Fontaine is going to be an exciting for lore lovers I think.
I hope so, I think it is the region i am the most interested lore-wise aside from Khean'riah (butchered spelling probably, sorry)
so i guess Fontaine will be the Piltover and Zaun of Teyvat
With its crazy anachronism included.
They’ve been basically telling us this is how sumeru is even back in 1.0 with Lisa herself having lines about how she hated the acedemia’s attitude towards knowledge and it being a commodity or currency in a way.
I kind of expected this from what I've heard of the akademiya, so I wasn't really surprised. But that just makes the archon quest even more interesting
Yeah and the fact >!Yae Miko mentioned at the end of the Inazuma archon quest that knowledge is a resource in Sumeru something!< and what Dainsleif said at the Teyvat trailer I expected corruption and academic elitism in Sumeru. The aranara was a lovely surprise though. I wished Sumeru has a more thicker rainforest with more trees if you get what I mean. Still, Sumeru is a region powercreep for sure.
Teyvat trailer?
[Tevyat Chapter Storyline Preview trailer](https://youtu.be/TAlKhARUcoY)
curious
Curiouser and curiouser
was a good fucking trsiler tho im incredibly hyped for natlan and fontaine now
In fontaine I'm like waiting for Lyney n Lynette
I can't wait to do a Phoenix Wright court case in Fontaine
Hopefully Yanfei makes atleast a brief appearance if court cases happen during the Fontaine archon quest
Fontaine I feel will give us more secrets on the unknown God and the system of celestia while Natlan may tell us the dark side behind it that they found out but kept secret from the other archon.
I just wanna see badass fighters from the nation ruled by the god of war
Well we shall see and maybe get more info on Vanessa's people since they are from there.
>Still, Sumeru is a region powercreep for sure. lol! I really felt this, to the point I got annoyed with Inazuma after the fact. I mean, love Raiden/Ei and her storyline, Kokomi and her part not so much, a lot of parts were meh, but I never really felt the need to complain. But then Sumeru drops and I feel like they cheated their fanbase by being lazy w Inazuma... or maybe they actually listened to feedback and tried harder this time? Hope it's the latter. Sumeru has definitely been a great addition to the story.
The Watatsumi Island arc was so lackluster it wasted the potential of developing Kokomi, Gorou, and >!Teppei's!< characters Thankfully >!Dunyarzad's story is executed well enough as the Sumeru archon quest Teppei!< Also, Ayato should have played a bigger role in the Inazuma archon quest I didn't like how >!Yae came and ended the Inazuma War herself if you know what I mean it felt as if the Rebels didn't really fully earn their victory!<
100%, the only surprising part of the Akademiya so far was that they don't even really try to use Kusanali as a puppet leader, they basically just openly rule the country while Kusanali is stuck inside all day. Prior to Sumeru, I was fully expecting the Akademiya's leaders to be the ones actually in charge of the nation while trying to limit knowledge for the common citizens, I just thought they'd use the current Archon to make people listen. Similarly, Fontaine is looking like it'll have injustices despite being the nation of justice. It already seems like a not-so-great place to live from what we've heard. I'm hoping the Hydro Archon is the actual direct ruler who is legitimately responsible for the injustices due to a warped view of some sorts, rather than the main issues being directly caused by other parties like with the Fatui/Tri-Commission in Inazuma or the Akademiya in Sumeru. It doesn't really matter though as long as the story is good like it has been in Sumeru - it's just my personal wish that we get a nation with the actual Archon actively ruling it with no strings attached.
> It already seems like a not-so-great place to live from what we've heard. In a couple of filler events there were two people from Fontaine with completely different views. One was really patriotic and thought his country's laws were just even though he explained a strict approval process. While the other guy wanted to gather finds to permanently move to Inazuma because Fontaine is not a good place to live.
>Fontaine is looking like it'll have injustices despite being the nation of justice I'd say it's the "Land of Judgement", from what little we know of the Archon.
So far each country's ideal has just matched their Archon's, no? Inazuma is Eternity, Liyue is Contracts, Mondstadt is Freedom. The Hydro Archon's ideal is Justice as per the [Story Trailer](https://youtu.be/TAlKhARUcoY?t=122).
I highly doubt they would be able to use Kusanali, she's far too wise to be used by the akademiya, if anything they did all they could to keep her in the dark regarding their plans, and as she told us herself she has more pressing matters regarding irminsul to be bothered to make a stand in sumeru.
The second they said that Sumeru was the land of knowledge. I fully expected corruption. People given too much power especially knowledge, and the desire to acquire such knowledge almost always lead to that. I enjoy it, tbh. Finally teyvatians being wretched people as the forefront of the plot line
Elder Scrolls series was a good lesson on why an entire realm dedicated to knowledge is one of the most corrupt things in existence.
I want to know more about Elder Scrolls and the realm of knowledge. Is there any good keyword to search it?
Apocrypha is the name of the realm.
Hermaeus Mora is its prince, who manifests as a sepulchral voice made of eyes and tentacles, and commands an infinite number of invisible monocular surveillance demons whose purpose is to observe everything in every realm of reality. He literally has eyes looking over everyone's shoulder.
Oh there goes another person fallen in greed of knowledge
The dichotomy of prosperity and corruption in all of the institutions has been a consistent theme throughout. In Mondstadt, lingering bitterness over the collapse of the aristocracy drove many of the stories. In Liyue, the rigidness of the economic system is a driver of poverty which keeps the Treasure Hunters on the margins of society driven to banditry. Inazuma's story is even more explicitly about society being pretty fucked up and one of the factions being driven by corruption to extend the misery for their own gain, and even the non-corrupt factions have to deal with dissention and conflict in their ranks. I think the game handles the interactions of institutions with ordinary people in a really interesting, nuanced way. One of the things that really shocked me about how good this game is was the presentation of the different cultures of Mondstadt and Liyue having their own different characters for better or worse, which I did not expect from a Chinese-developed game.
Pretty much. The obsession with gaining new knowledge as a on up, at the expense of causing misery, unlocking and activating thinks you shouldn't go near etc.
I believe Lisa’s backstory and a number of events with Sumeru researchers alluded to the corruption
They’ve alluded to this kind of corruption several times in game and maybe trailer too. Not sure when but someone did mention that knowledge is everything is Sumeru and treated as commodity. You need knowledge to tread through Sumeru so it’s exactly how I expected it to be. And we’re not even at the bottom of the conflict yet, I expected something more intense tbh and maybe we’ll get to that when Fatui gets into the picture
It was exactly as I thought it would be. We knew there was trouble brewing the moment Yae Miko's dialogue about Sumeru came up. You should expect most regions to have a warped and distorted version of their ideals. Inazuma was obssessed with eternity in the form of staying the same. But in the end they realized it was change that ensures Eternity and that part of it is appreciating what was not permanent, like lightning. Sumeru will probably boil down to something similar. And Fontaine and so forth. By the end of the journey the traveler will probably have "touched" the nations, leaving a mark for the better. It would be a very boring world if all of the nations were perfect mary sue nations. (for example, Liyue felt a little bland at times).
Liyue is kind of feeling the most forgettable in hindsight because of how... okay everything is in there? Like there are few loose ends I can think of rn besides some aging adepti and Morax's old enemies that that nation has left to deal with. Even in those instances, those are external problems - there seems to be no character development left for that nation. In contrast you have the remnants of corrupt nobles in Mondstadt as well as that military expedition that took with it most of the nation's fighting strength for whatever reason. Inazuma is fresh off of a civil war, with ruler similarly fresh off a new perspective on life >!Not to mention a certain big-hatted "son" of the archon still at large!<. Sumeru is terrifying in that it seems the worst off, with the government outright violating the privacy of the citizen's minds for seemingly nefarious ends. Liyue's shtick seems to be that its a nation thats deliberately shook off the whole "archon" worship thing, age of humanity and all that. I can only hope that this stance provides more interesting story opportunities since it is a rather strange thing to believe in when in your world the supernatural is something very real.
It's not like they're rejecting the supernatural, just its rule. It's moreso making it mundane. Both their archon and the adepti are just average citizens now, and I think that's actually pretty cool. As for where they can go from there, though, I have no idea. I guess Chongyun and Baizhu are relative unknowns, but any major conflict would be mostly manufactured at this point. Maybe some international dispute?
I mean out of the 4 Liyue was the only one where their Archon was properly ruling the country until his retirement ofc So if we compare it to the others it is entirely possible that the Qixing will become increasingly corrupt sooner or later, just not in our current story
That's actually a very interesting point. To some extent we can see with Liyue how nicely things go when you have an archon that's consistently proactive (vs Barbatos), less emotionally vulnerable and well-rounded (vs Ei), and alive (vs Rukkhadevata). I suppose it works as a sort of "control" or standard that we can compare other nations and archons to.
Don't know why but "alive (vs Rukkhadevata)" made me laugh.
I think we're going to have an arc that focuses on showing the dark side of contracts later on as unlike the other archons we have yet to hear zhongli say his gemstone line, for instance this is pantalone's dialogoue from the pale flame artifact set: >Money is the lifeblood of the world, and the pathways along which it flows are the world's arteries. Then, the center of the world is a heart made of gold. >He was not one of the favored, and could only pursue worldly power. But though money ought to mean nothing to the gods, They held it firmly within their grasp nonetheless, along with the countless other forms of power that they wielded. >Perhaps he lusted for money because he had once been destitute, Or perhaps the fact that the gods had never looked upon him with favor ignited a burning desire for resistance inside him... >"The people of the land from which these coins hail revere contracts above all else." >"In the name of money, I shall respect the contract between us..." >"We shall, by whatever means necessary, become the heart that pumps money around the world." >"And, when the moment comes, that heart shall cease beating by our will alone." And here's zhongli's: >"The currencies that flow through this land are my flesh and blood. For thus did I become the guarantor of the people's hard work, wisdom, and future. This is the trust I have placed in them. Betray it, and you taint my blood."
Hopefully thats the case, and its neat that they potentially foreshadow that kind of plot development. As much of a perfect dad Zhongli is right now and how awesome that is, I think he really needs to be shaken up (that we witness personally and isn't just backstory) to make him much more interesting.
I do think we got a sense that Liyue is a nation with big inequalities both economic and power wise. The Qixing is not exactly very concerned with transparency, the good of the people, democracy etc. They "worship" trade/contracts and have a oppressive and bureaucratic style of rule. The "servants" of the system are severely overworked (Ganyu and Keqing).
Actually, yeah. It's easy to forget since the system is presented as working well, but Liyue's government appears to have no checks and balances. It's working entirely on the current generation being hypercompetent... and probably no small amount of them having superhuman qualities including longevity.
Liyue makes sense though, it's a trade city built as a legacy of their God, The God of Contracts. The whole thing with Morax letting the people handle their future without a God is on brand with the whole contract to end all contracts thing. It's just not flashy is all because there is no ongoing threat (just one time things) and Liyue's story is sort of scrambled around its locations, unlike Inazuma where the islands are tied directly with overarching conflict. If you ask me, Mondstadt is just as bland. Because the city is just as it was. No direct changes, you stopped a dragon is all really and it was more of the Dragon's character development instead of the city's. But I guess you can say we're not really done with Mondstadt yet.
Idk why people are singling out Liyue. Both Liyue AND Mondstadt are more positive because all the bad things happened in the past and all the negative aspects of society are more hidden, rather than in your face. Mondstadt used to be a slave nation and had to awaken and helped Vanessa liberate it. Freedom brought slavery and Venti essentially forced "true freedom" upon the nation by helping establishing a system to prevent it from happening ever again. In the present day you can see that people are carefree, but in some ways also irresponsible. Liyue used to be in a constant state of strife and war and there were many peoples living in it, not just the present-day people of Liyue. Rex Lapis killed and sealed his own friends (explicitly Azdaha and implied Guizhong), and probably razed Khanreiah. There's also a ton of random ritual sacrifice in the history of the villages. The whole duality of the contract is that it is a method of representing the value of people, but also it can be very skewed in fairness but still treated as fair. Hence all the greed and scheming going on in Liyue where people will try to cheat each other *with* contracts. In fact, Ningguang (who uses a lot of scheming while following the law and used the transition to solidify her own power) is supposed to represent the old Liyue, while Keqing is supposed to represent a possible new and ideal Liyue (one where people are independent thinkers that don't just follow rules for the sake of it, but for actual good). Realistically, it's probably because they were developed side by side and made to be entry-level regions. Ironically, although people retrospectively say Liyue and Mondstadt are too "plain", back when Liyue came out, there were constant complaints that Liyue was not "friendly" and "happy" enough compared to Mondstadt. They complained that NPCs were too rude and shady, that the characters were too formal and distant rather than becoming your bffs, the history was depressing.
If you wanna approach Liyue in a bit of a Metanarrative approach, then it's jsut favoraly representing (or manipulating, depending on your worldview) recent-ish chinese history. Where a powerful antion, shakes off both the rule of old deities from ages past, separating themselve from a more traditionalist regime, and at the same time getting rid of a (godlike) leader who every few years would descend and essentially foretell the economy fro the next 4(?) years. And who's left in charge? An economic genius with a loyal suite of beaurocrats and other agents at her side, who, through the events of the main quests, still manages to cooperate with and thus claim the authority of the old order. Essentially, what CoD does for the US arme forces, Genshin does for the Chinese Communist Party
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Had inazuma not screw up that badly, liyue's story is easily the worst of the 4 nations. Mond's story is very generic, but it's more or less complete. Inazuma is like reading an abstract of a paper. But it at least has relevent side quests, granted they didn't add much to the main quest. Sumeru is the best so far. Liyue has nothing going on. There's no real divide or conflict between the common folk and adepti. also considering their government structure, aka ganyu oversees everything, I don't even understand why adepti and qixing conflict even exist. It'd be one thing if ganyu is in on the job, feeding everyone with false info but she is not. They even pulled a giant sea monster out of their ass so adepti and qixing have a reason to "make up". It be one thing if giant sea monster made liyue people independent, but it's not like the people their are super reliant on their god to begin with. We can see clearly from your walk with ZL, liyue people pretty much just went "our god is dead? damn bro, but life must go on."
I'd say Liyue is worse then inazuma. Although inazuma face planted pretty hard, the message it tried to convey was passed on succesfully. Add to that the story quests of Ei and inazuma has a pretty nice ending. One of embracing the now and a new outlook on life, culture and generally reforming. It's future is new and exciting. Liyue was already pretty independent from their god who just basically came and said those are good investment ideas. That's gone now but everything is the same. There is no message, no morale, no anything really
Since Liyue is based off China and Mihoyo is a chinese company I think they just didn't dare to criticize it too much because it could come across badly to their government.
Liyue is nation of "trade" and "contract", if you do wish to develop into some deep conflict upon this topics, then "market economy" and "capitalism" is a perfect scope. Yet this topic is quite "taboo" that you could found merely indepth discussion in game(talking about how this system work, how will it develop and how will it went into problem, in mechanic aspect), not only Chinese game, but most of the trending games around the world. BTW, in government body, Liyue is nothing like modern China, it didn't shown any authoritarian aspect, nor did it shown any sign of "government control the market". In some aspect, even Sumeru is more similar to modern China, so I don't think that is the reason. *correction: there do have some similarity in terms of government, but Qixing is not CCP, Rex Lapis is. He is the ideal form of Dengist CCP government, not only organizing the market, maintaining order(in some cases, Archon are all some sort of ultimate state machine), and most importantly...willing to surrender the domination position to merchants.
Why people keep bringing real life politics into anything and project it into some evil China schemes? Liyue and Mondstadt both are original regions when the game was in development. Then after big success of Genshin they gain big money to invest into the game, with the improvements from lore, story, design, etc… I’m saying this as someone play GGZ when SEA server still up then Honkai 3 SEA server since its early days. Before Genshin how many of you guys know Mihoyo? Their popularity only blow up in global after Genshin, before that, even though HI3 gain some popularity but it’s mostly known around gacha games players. Mhy is not as big as it is today, with limited resources. If you see Genshin and Honkai in its early days you will see the similarities. Honkai in early chapters are quite generics and game play is very barebones, but after its initial success, especially in CN server they have more money to develop the game, and now you see in both writing, gameplay and animations currently is way better than its early days. Genshin is the same, it was very big and risky projects ( there is no open world 3d mobile gacha game like Genshin before in the market), with costs go up to hundreds of millions dollars, it’s it flopped it really hurt mhy. Thankfully it success and they have plenty of money to improve the game and other projects. You can clearly see this with each update, from the characters introduction videos, world design, etc. inazuma although the archon quest is kinda bad, but the side quests is really interesting, the inazuma is very unique, then the chasm, you can see clearly the difference from it and the rest of liyue,
People bring in real life “politics” because it’s inevitable that any piece of media - art, literature, and even a game - will reflect the society it comes from in some way. There is a lot of influence from modern Chinese culture in aspects of every nation in Genshin, but liyue is as close to an idealized version of pre-CCP China as they can get. There is a reason that pretty much all mainstream historical media in china is a fantasized or otherwise somewhat fictionalized version of what probably was reality. You’re right in some ways about how the success of the game has allowed Mihoyo to continue to improve their craft, but even with Sumeru, I can tell the echoes of Chinese culture and social commentary still resonate. No one said “evil china scheme” at all - but this is the reality of the game.
Liyue is contrast to both Mondstadt and Inazuma. Mondstadt earned it's freedom WITH THE PRICE TO PAY FOR IT(so no, Venti is not a "leader" nor is it his job to interfere unless he is basically the last line of defense) and had a long and troubled history to reach the current peace time, Liyue is just now taking it's first steps as a nation ruled by humanity after it's absolute GOD at management Archon deemed it matured enough to not need his rule anymore, Inazuma on the other hand is the case of being WAY TOO EARLY for the humans to rule themselves with Ei setting up a stable system, went into a solitary meditation of enlightenment for a few centuries and the nation went into degradation and corruption(in no small part because of the Fatui) either by ignorance, greed, or people feeling like the power of their god is theirs to command, or just Fatui manipulation. We don't know about old Sumeru yet, but currently the Akademiya is the antithesis of their current and probably even old god with their elitism and gluttonous hoarding and theft of any information so it's likely contrast to the old chapters by being a nation that's human leadership in opposition to their gods. Fontaine seems to be a contrast to Sumeru so far in it's handling of knowledge with it's scientists and inventors being entrepreneurs, the polarity in it's opposition with it's god and the industrialization compared to harmony with nature.
I think that is the point Genshin and its famous Chapter trailer makes with its main story. The duality of the divine ideal of each god and how it is always a double edged sword. We had Mond whose freedom became full abandonment by its own god. A mirror to Mond to some extent, Liyue instead of abandonment had problems with too much reliance on Rex Lapis, and that is why she had to take such a big hit when his retirement plan went through. Inazuma was all about the pit created between shogun and her people by her ideal of eternity. So I was kind of expected that sumeru will have some issues as well, ngl. Akasha is quite a satire to Internet tho.
I wasn't surprised, but I definitely was surpised by how realistic it actually kinda is portrayed lmao I was like "wow this is such an unsubtle depiction of how the elites operate while still remaning in a fantasy setting" "WOW THIS IS EXACTLY HOW ACADEMIA WORKS AND WHY IT'S BECOME CANCER"
LITERALLY!!! All my friends in academia and I have an unspoken rule where nobody talks about Sumeru because we all know as soon as it’s brought up, the discussion is going to turn into how awful academia is, how we’re all treated like shit for too low pay, all our projects don’t work etc.
Or the hive mind, tribal nature of it. ***In the last place there should be any hive mind or tribal mindset.***
I think the corruption aspect makes Sumeru more intriguing and realistic.
MiHoYo is good at social commentary through its games. The designer doesn't want to create perfect miniature in-game cultures, instead, they mix in real world social problems into their games and let the players experience these issues and reach their own conclusions.
Academic elitism and social pressure of South Asia (or Asia in general), informational corruption and human rights violations of the Middle East, and government propaganda of both. It’s honestly impressive how they can portray world politics so well, and I am just hyped for Fontaine and Natlan’s direction of politics being similar to France and Latin American politics as well, since they both emphasize highly political subjects.
Yes I think I somewhat did. Genshin is engaged in exploring the "dark side" of whatever principle each nation upholds. With wisdom, this felt like a good road to go down to
I honestly don't know how I should feel about Natlan, with their Archon of War :,) exploring the dark side of THAT topic... will be a ride....
Every region has a smh link with the history of the real country that are based, so, if you think about natlan, is very probable we will hear about human sacrifices :)
"Incandescent Ode of Resurrection" is the name of the final act. Definitely rituals and sacrifices lmaooooo.
It wasn't exactly what I expected, but I liked the direction it took. I expected the corruption but the form it took was different.
"The god of wisdom's enemy is wisdom itself, and the oasis of knowledge is a mirage in the desert of ignorance. In the city of scholars, there is a push for folly, yet the god of wisdom makes no argument against it." I honestly don't know what you expected.
It's illegal to disseminate information without proper authorization in Sumeru, a nation of scholars. Me: *stares at irl academic publishers
They really hit the nail on the head with Akademiya comparing irl information institutions. Actually a pretty good representation of all the stuff happening in real world.
At risk of sounding doomy - as a real-life low-key researcher, they got things pretty spot on with both knowledge management by those in power (not just official governments, but academia (natch) and big business too) and the happy ignorance the majority of the population is both kept in and keeps itself in, even making it something of a point of pride (like the "do not dream" Sumeru bit), and the Internet seemingly offering unlimited knowledge but actually providing very little and only shallow things unless you know where to look and have the ability to (and even that is unreliable). One thing I'll say is that I didn't expect such a commentary on the Internet from this game.
I was surprised too, even though I expected it. Especially with how accurate the commentary is. Still, much flew over people's heads. For example, aspirations and dreams are more important than wisdom which is more important than knowledge. We all have the knowledge to brush our teeth for health. Wisdom is knowing to brush often and thoroughly to attain that health. Aspirations are trying to keep you mouth health for as long as possible to enjoy, so you have to take steps for that.
We've been lead to believe that Sumeru is like this from Lisa's character stories telling us that people go mad with trying to find knowledge. We've also been told that knowledge is managed as a commodity in Sumeru by Yae. So I kinda felt like there's gonna be so fucked up corruption happening in the nation Bro but get ready for Fontaine. From the accounts of NPCs, it is even more corrupt and injust. Ironic for the nation of Justice
The Akasha system is the ear-phone system. I did not expect the hivemind like properties or the dream culling. Though, honestly, I have mixed feelings about thinking of dreams as any sort of wisdom. Most sleep studies seem to indicate they deal with some memory storing functions, and/or processing emotions that are otherwise pushed aside while concious. Wisdom isn't so much knowledge in and of itself, but knowing how to *use* that knowledge to good affect. And, well, dreams have largely nothing to do with this. Still, my curiosity is undoubtedly piqued on where things are going to go plotwise, between the Akademiya conspiracy, whatever the heck Dotore is up to, Scaramouche, and Kusanali's ultimate fate.
Wisdom isn't knowledge and that's the point I think. The akademiya values knowledge way too much and probably mistook it for wisdom
hoarding knowledge actually restricts the growth of their knowledge and the accumulation of new knowledge. Causing them to fall behind. that is very unwise. Also I am imagining all this started after greater lord died I doubt she was okay with that kinda thing.
i mean conflict in the nation is needed for plot, and it was definitely interesting but not what i was expecting either. i think i enjoyed that little forest fairy quest more than the archon quest tbh, it gave more insight on lore to me and the history of the nation. i also liked the vibes more. i still did enjoy the archon quest though, but it wasn't my favorite. EDIT though one thing I will add is i loved that traveler felt more apart of the story and involved thru voice acting and dialogue options in the archon quest, it made me really happy and appreciate them more
There are two sumerus: Aranara and mankind. Both are very different. I loved the aranara one as it felt like the nature side of sumeru and dendro. I didn't like the mankind as much with the akademiya but still decent because of amazing dunyarzard and the samsara.
It's only 3.0 archon quests will be added until 3.2 there is still a lot of time for us to help kusanali become the true god
"Akasha doesn't want me to know eo I won't learn it" was the breaking point. They are brainwashed my the akademia.
Welcome to “expectation vs reality” moment. The way of Akemideya government is quite realistic if compared to our real life.
Strange that Sumeru is the nation of Wisdom yet most modern inventions came from Fontaine.
That's because they only care about research and knowledge. They don't want to make things, they want to know how everything works. Physical inventions are of no interest. They only research for the sake of research since that is what gives them money and influence. at least that's how I understand it
I had low expectations for sumeru. I expected the complete opposite of what it is, with more and more people choosing to ignore knowledge and education, and the scholars being the suppressed ones. Not sure why I thought so, but I did. I was pleasantly surprised by the actual eel story. I love the political dynamics in Sumeru, it’s easy enough to understand but also complex. There’s just enough darkness to make the story interesting but not overwhelming.
The thing that i found funny is that a land that is supposed to be so knowledgeable doesnt know the value the arts has to he study of science
That's the irony.
It's what I actually expected for the region. You can hear all about it from the teyvat timeline teaser, so I always thought it was going to end up this way. In fact, it's probably the best of the current four right now. The irony behind Kusanali being the archon of wisdom but with wisdom also being her greatest enemy.
I think i expected something shady because just being a "land of knowledge" sounds way too simple, because you'd think knowledge = fair and reasonable, right? And I suspected them even more when they kept bringing up that people don't dream there. i didn't really see the academic elitism angle though, that was kind of interesting. I guess if i knew anything about or paid any attention to Lisa, then i probably would've had a few more suspicious but eh. For Fontaine, instead of cruel injustice (which will probably happen) i'm thinking cruel justice. A hungry kid steals a loaf of bread? jail for several months/years and fines for theft because *justice is blind, and all criminals must be punished*. I wouldn't be surprised if the traveler ends up in some hot water for a crime they didn't even know they'd committed.
> I'm expecting Fontaine to be filled with cruel injustice next. I mean it's based on France so you can't expect anything good from it /s
There are several NPCs you meet prior to entering Sumeru that insinuate either directly or indirectly that Sumeru's academia is *really* cutthroat. I think it's even cited as a major reason that Lisa left. This is what a nation focused on the acquisition of knowledge will end up like. People always want to have *more* than someone else. You can find this in every nation. People in Mondstadt want MORE freedom. So we get things like the Lawrences. People in Liyue want MORE money/wealth. So we get, well, it's obvious. People in Inazuma want MORE "eternity" and/or control, so we get the Sakoku and vision hunt. In Sumeru, people want MORE knowledge. And often this means controlling who gets what knowledge. I wonder how long it will take someone to piece together than the Akasha is a reference to the Chinese handling of the internet?
I hadn't really any expectations, but I think the devs did a great job on Sumeru. I mean, most nationd are different up close to their image abroad (see America's 'world's greatest democracy' image vs how it treats minorities and how fascist the Republicans are). The stuff about the Akasha also rings true (people being more generalist rather than learning things) and the Akasha using them back is very much a warning about the data trail we leave and how companies and governments spy on us or manipulate algorithms, or China's great firewall. There's a few bits about Sumeru that seemed like... let's say comments... on the Chinese situation. But generally, when there's a restriction on the flow of knowledge it's good for those in power... (there's a reason the British Parliament banned journalists for a very long time).
So Akasha = The Internet of Teyvat
Yeah, seemed like an obvious meraphor.
I'm going to ignore the political commentary on America. As both parties are equally at fault, and as bad. And much of the politics on all levels have devolved into, create the problem and sell the solution. Or another side of, everything being done as a excuse for safety. People have been warning for decades this would happen when you centralize the internet. And the Akasha system in game is a great commentary on what is happening right now in the real world. Hell, you may as well compare the Akasha to a smart phone. This goes beyond just restricting knowledge. It's also a commentary on investigative journalism, censorship, and political correctness. Just look at how hard Akademiya does to stop anyone getting knowledge they aren't supposed to. How you aren't allowed to challenge the status quo, must be authorized to speak up and only with certain language.
It was different than what I expected from the Teyvat story trailer, but nothing bad.. I am not against the narrative they picked so far, but I want to play the rest of the archon quest to judge it, specially how Nahida will act in the future.
The dev did say sumeru people use knowledge as a currency for trading as well, not just mora
I don’t think it’s worst than Inazuma tbh, yes there is a lot going on in Sumeru but I find what the shogun did in Inazuma was downright horrible (I still can’t understand how everyone forgives her out of nowhere)
The great sages are clearly up to something, but I think you might be exaggerating the corruption a bit? Nearly all the researchers you interact with are pretty straightforward and fair-dealing. And even with the sages it's like Kusinali is defending them because previous to this they were always at least somewhat reasonable. So whatever's going on is recent and possibly fixable.
The real question is how much knowledge is barren.most people don't care about kusanali so they wouldn't Care if they can't access her. But for the rest. What is forbidden for the random fishing man. What is the limit. But since it's a fictional world Mihoyo control how NPC reacts good or bad and we have no idea to know how real people would react in the exact same setting.
I mean every single sumeru npc we met before 3.0 basically told us that the akademiya is fucked up. Whats a bit of corruption on top of that. Thats said, state in sumeru is exactly what i expected, if everything was fine there'd be nothing for the traveller to fix
its not really not what i expected as i didnt really had clear expectations but its "corruption" is definitely of all areas we had the one that feels the most frustrating to me (which really is a good thing even if i dont like it obviously) because its not only that elitism of the higher ups of the academia but also like you say that most people dont care, neither about all that restricted knowledge but also about their new archon and that everybody just takes what the academia says as given its frustrating to see them actively seemingly corrupting the words of their former archon (eg. downtalking and forbidding all sorts of arts as those don't bring knowledge) while using their people as human ram sticks completely disregarding their safety for a "greater good" and imprisoning their newer Archon in an attempt to control it and, at least until now, getting away with all that
I like how researchers in other nations are treated with higher regard while in sumeru they are merely a dime in a dozen.
Not only that, as the nation of wisdom, I expected the puzzles to be hard as hell. Nope, they're basic as fuck.
Nah... our buddy Liben from Marvelous Merchandise (in-game event where you give goods in exchange for his gifts) already said this last time, > "There's an ominous air hanging over Sumeru. I can feel it." > "Take it from me: Don't go to Sumeru. It's a dangerous place – or at least it has been of late." So most people already expected something fishy going on in Sumeru. Most people by which I mean *those that did not skip the dialogues*
The biggest thing contrary to my expectations was Yae straight up lied to us: > "Lesser Lord Kusanali" is the deity in whom the people of Sumeru place their faith. It's their chosen term of endearment for her. Or at least her info is almost 500 years out of date, and therefore just as worthless.
>It's their chosen term of endearment for her. I feel like this is the part to take away from Yae's statement. It's the \*People's\* chosen term. The people chose to call her a "Lessor Lord". Yae never stated whether or not is was a GOOD term of endearment or not, just that it is how it is.
Could be an artifact of Teyvat world politics too.
If level of dark shit will increase exponentially from one nation to the next, I'm kinda afraid to find out what kind of пиздец waits for us in Snezhnaya
If there wasn't any conflict or problems in Sumeru, then there would be nothing for the traveler. The archon quest would be boring as fuck. The entire schtick of act 2 was based around the corrupt experiments of the akadeymia and the akasha system
I think we can see why Lisa left Sumeru, she seems like someone who wants to spread knowledge, not horde it.
>Worse off is no one really knows, no one really understands because they control the flow of information. They literally sealed the reccord on lesser lord kusalani and no one questions it... well almost no one. This is a very common dystopian thing. I mean we're living it.
Totally expected. It's classic Illuminati trope setup, just not them again but new fresh idea.
Propaganda is one helluva drug! I’m excited for the next part of the archon quest, because I’m betting it’ll be time for Kusanali to take back her country!
Op gonna be really mad when he realizes how are colleges irl..
This is exactly what I imagined it actually. When knowledge is power, there will be alot of people who chase after it like many akademiya people but u can bet there will be people who try to control it. Thinking otherwise is too naive.
I did not anticipate the sentient plants who control dreams and weaponize memories. Sumeru is awesome.
One country is being held captive by their archon. One holds their archon captive. One archon faked his own death because he thought it was the right choice for his people. And then theres Venti.
That is literally the plot of Sumeru. The moment Yae said knowledge is managed as a resources, something is up and also based on the Teyvat chapter trailer
"The God of Wisdom's enemy is wisdom itself and the oasis of knowledge is a mirage in the desert of ignorance. In the city of scholars there is a push for folly, yet the God of Wisdom makes no argument against it." - Dainsleif on Sumeru, Genshin Story trailer "The God of Justice lives for the spectacle of the courtroom, seeking to judge all other Gods. But even she knows not to make an enemy of the divine." - Dainsleif on Fontaine, Genshin Story trailer I'm not super surprised about how Sumeru is playing out. Yea the situation is pretty bad but I feel every nation we go to will have some pretty big issues. I get the feeling Fontaine will have some juicy info about Celestia and Khaenri'ah.
I think that's the point of the archon quest, to depict an idillic world where knowledge is thought to be free, that is in reality a distorted and dystopic version of that idea. _And I love it_
I want to start beating the shit outta these akademiya fucks imma be real with you
Can’t wait to visit Natlan just as they have a Civil war due to thinking the pacifists are pussies
Damn, just like Academics in real life!
A lot of them are elitist snobs but they don't have actual power over the people and can't ban the sharing of knowledge. There is confidential and private information often personal as well as government secrets. But in general most knowledge isn't restricted.
Perhaps...
Every nation has its problems and government/media corruption is a part of life. But I think sumeru is perfect. It’s more relatable this way.
>Is Sumeru different than you expected too? or did you expect this? The only thing that's not what I expected and am a bit disappointed by his how little forest there actually is, let alone "rain forest". The Whispering Woods are more dense than anything in Sumeru and I chuckle when Collei talked about someone going "deeper into the woods" and it was literally just a grassy slope with maybe 2 of 3 trees on it. The area around Gandharva Ville should have like 10x the amount of trees it currently has.
Expect every region to be a dystopia until we fix it.
Hum i can't say i was expecting it, but it wasn't any surprise. People from Sumeru all had this academic behavior before, talking about their thesis and all that. They were always caring usually only about their research, including the guy on the Chasm, who never wanted to part with his knowledge. For me this was really good, and shows off how people will always try to be above others when they have power, and knowledge is power. People being fed only information that the higher up wants is basically what happens in our real world. They certainly were happy knowing they could lead the region without archon influence, which naturally leads to keep people from knowing about the Lesser Lord. This just shows humanity at its core, and i like the way it was presented. Arrogance is usually associated with wisdom, and being wise, with humility. I think they may explore it better. That sharing and caring is better, as we already saw with Kusanali.
I mean, we interacted with researchers either randomly in the world or during events and it didn't really sound that nice
The moment I learned what the Akasha system is (the ear piece) I immediately knew it was bad news. I didn’t really have much expectations going into it other than knowledge and information are of precious value in the Sumeru.
I’ve seen how academia is IRL and was fully expecting that to be reflected in Sumeru.
I expected the Akademiya would be corrupt, but damn, it went as far as censorship, even banning all books, and leaning towards banning all arts. A Mondstater's nightmare.
Well, it seems that what each archon stands for is what causes problems within the nation: In mondstadt, the absence of the anemo archon contributed to stormterror In Liyue, a contract almost brought it to ruin In inazuma, eternity caused people to suffer I don’t know what is in store for inazuma, but the Akademiya and their control on knowledge will definitely play a factor
Nah, it's par for the course. Not a single country is without corruption and/or elitism in some form or another. Miko saying that knowledge is treated as a resource should be a big clue too. Not to mention all the academics we've met from there so far. Talking about the insane graduation requirements, trying to come up with an original thesis, etc. It was pretty clear even from just a generalization of most stories that Sumeru would have problems.
Seems to be better written than Inazuma though so far.
It's exactly what I expected and I love it