do people like it when everyone in genshin knows who you are and how amazing you are and is like 'wow!! you must be the famous traveler!!!!'

i hate it and it actively takes me out of the story. this is a world where people are supposed to be able to do fantastical stuff all the time, right? there's an adventurers guild and people like beidou that fight sea monsters. why are we so special.

aventurine and topaz never even met in person :(

i'm not sure if i'd prefer a navia vs arlecchino 'rival factions forced to work together' deal or lyney fighting through meropide to protect his family and killing arlecchino/forcefully taking over the house situation/taking over as harbinger

doing both would get pretty busy. i guess you could mesh them together and make lyney work with navia but. hm.

i suppose it shouldn't need to be said but yeah, it does kinda suck that wriothesely has a backstory about killing meropide's previous warden and taking over the prison, and its a backstory event and not something we get to participate in while we're stuck in meropide

and yeah it does really suck that arlecchino has a backstory about killing the previous knave and taking her place to try and make the house of hearth a better place, and that's a backstory event and not something we do alongside either her (or, idk, lyney)

"this interesting thing happened.... in the past" will not carry a story forever. the characters also have to be doing something interesting now. as it is, we got some build-up about the wrong knave, arlecchino did fuck all in fontaine, and the second we get any focus on her it's to go a) BACKSTORY and b) yeah all that lore you collected about the wrong knave is irrelevant now dw about it.

i guess we learnt about project whatever. we did get that

i suppose it shouldn't need to be said but yeah, it does kinda suck that wriothesely has a backstory about killing meropide's previous warden and taking over the prison, and its a backstory event and not something we get to participate in while we're stuck in meropide

and yeah it does really suck that arlecchino has a backstory about killing the previous knave and taking her place to try and make the house of hearth a better place, and that's a backstory event and not something we do alongside either her (or, idk, lyney)

"this interesting thing happened.... in the past" will not carry a story forever. the characters also have to be doing something interesting now. as it is, we got some build-up about the wrong knave, arlecchino did fuck all in fontaine, and the second we get any focus on her it's to go a) BACKSTORY and b) yeah all that lore you collected about the wrong knave is irrelevant now dw about it.

i guess we learnt about project whatever. we did get that

Worst friend group to ever exist. Reblog to throw rocks at them

what tf is wrong with kabru. seriously (approving)

SPOILERS FOR ARLE: Staggering to me how they're trying to make Arle's backstory a big secret plot twist but they also spent god knows how much money on a 7 minute movie which just. Documents her backstory. The Tarts moments were surprisingly good though. My favourite bit was when he started slandering Arle to her face and said "So I hear where you come from people resolve disputes with fights!" and you can just FEEL the puppy-dog-eyes begging for a throwdown. Slut (affectionate).

You know, as soon as Clervie showed up and started talking about how dark and awful the House was (and we started hmm'ing about Arle) my only thought was "...oh, so they did that so people wouldn't actually think Arle was an awful person responsible for all that, right?"

Because the chapter like... kiiiind of engages with the idea that Arlecchino might kill her kids/our friends, but not really, like I feel if we actually thought that we would've thrown down with her sooner, we've definitely beaten up others for less? (I mean. "Plot twist" being what it was...)

But also while I didn't watch that short, I assume there's no real new information between what Arle infodumps at you and what you actually get to see there. So like. What's the point.

Childe was very cute! I was happy to see him!! While he just ... showed up to create an opening for Arle to infodump on us and bounced before the chapter's story really kicked off, given his personality it came across better than, say, Kaeya's similar role in the last Dainsleif chapter.

I forgive Childe a lot, which is lucky for him, because I'm sour the thing about his Vision was never mentioned at all. If HYV was gonna have us meet him again why did they also write us giving it to Arlecchino...

arlecchino's quest is the exact level of spineless, lazy copout bullshit i would've expected from genshin lmao

genshin has a lot of nerve to have the traveler complain about world-building

my friends

relatedly, i also forgot yelan was meant to be a gambler

As much as I like Aventurine **conceptually** yeah there is kind of a problem when he never actually gambles in-game at all outside of his combat animations which, let's be real, are just aesthetic

Having a well-thought out but vaguely risky plan and using themed analogies does not a (convincing) gambler make.

I really don't care about supplementary YouTube videos bc like... HYV story patches are big and full of expository dialogue. There's time to implement this stuff but an active decision is made not to do it. Between him and Arle's huge loredump that I will also not watch I'm pretty annoyed about HYV's writing choices.

there's a phantom blood musical????

As much as I like Aventurine **conceptually** yeah there is kind of a problem when he never actually gambles in-game at all outside of his combat animations which, let's be real, are just aesthetic

Having a well-thought out but vaguely risky plan and using themed analogies does not a (convincing) gambler make.

I really don't care about supplementary YouTube videos bc like... HYV story patches are big and full of expository dialogue. There's time to implement this stuff but an active decision is made not to do it. Between him and Arle's huge loredump that I will also not watch I'm pretty annoyed about HYV's writing choices.

learning that giorno giovanna was originally planned as a girl has changed me. i feel so robbed. we were cheated

between this and the fugo thing part 5 really is just a tragic hotbed of wasted opportunity. i would give so much to see golden wind as originally envisioned before editorial meddling/araki getting cold feet

Unironically I think we need just a more powerful DS again. Dual screens fuck. The amount of creativity and interactivity and cool UI that went into DS games is literally unmatched and like those things were tough as fuck too. Please hear my wish. I get that the switch is technically handheld and thus portable but also no it is not that thang is so delicate and lacks the sophistication of just being able to shut it at a moments notice to pause everything without having to hit a pause menu. Does anyone hear me. Hello. Pokémon ranger.

I was watching the jp livestream and they said something about a gameplay feature of the Arlecchino boss fight being something like a "reward" for doing something correctly, can't remember what exactly they said but they compared it to something like a rite of passage of sorts for the kids under her care to be able to take out anyone, even their own father and it's like...they really bend over backwards to make their playable cast 'not that bad' huh? I'm worried about what they'll do to declaw Dottore if he ever become playable... Oh and don't even get me started on the new flagship event being about rock but it's ITTO FOCUSED?? HUH?? XINYAN IS RIGHT THERE?! Her whole thing is being into rock music and she even mentioned wanting to participate in the Iridescence Tour or whatever it's called, what is this bs?! USE YOUR CHARACTERS PROPERLY HYV PLEASE

I still like how in Star Rail's murder mystery 2.0 ends on 3 possible suspects and 20 minutes into 2.1 every single one of them just says they didn't kill anyone. And the game just expects you to accept that. (If you're used to HYV that checks out but like. Any other story) And Duke Inferno was cool with Acheron killing him, actually.

Never mind that I seriously doubt anyone actually died, so the playable "killer" is off the hook too.

This is the company that considers 'influencer', 'slightly dodgy but ultimately good guy' and 'lazy gaming addict' somewhat risky, so what do we even expect... as long as we can actually fight Arlecchino and not get blue-balled like we did with the whale in 4.2, I guess that'll be a step up.

Tbh, I originally anticipated Dottore's thing to be that if he became playable it'd be a younger segment from "before" he became awful who denounces his older self and also didn't actually do anything wrong. Then he killed all his segments in Sumeru before they were ever important or relevant, lmao. Maybe we'll still get that... that's my best guess...

They are seriously overplaying the Itto card... Xinyan never shows up where you expect her, I remember she ended up in a roguelike event a couple years back when there was a music event the same patch. Though she's not the only one, somehow this patch Albedo ended up in the cat petting event and... not... the alchemy one...???

There is also Aventurine & Ratio comparison with Kaveh & Al-Haitham going on ... that one is probably more understandable given both have similar opposite-attract & banter going on. Comparing Kaveh with Aventurine is kind of wild though.

Yeah, I've seen a bit of that. I at least got that connection back when Ratio dropped due to his superficial similarities to Al-Haitham and Aventurine somewhat resembling Kaveh (+ banter). There's not really much beyond surface similarities though.

Aventurine reads more like bad-end Lyney+Lynette to me.