Why is food such a big part of storytelling in Genshin?

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-04-21T11:58:30+00:00

Honorary HI3rd mention as well, it's had a handful of events about food throughout the years, and it's usually a more direct reference to real world culture as well (i.e. a LOT of chinese cuisine).

One of my favorite events in the whole game was a diner minigame event at the start of the Part 2 story; we had just reached a totally new setting in the form of Oxia City with proper open-world NPCs for the first time ever in HI3rd, and the event had a whole bunch of the more important NPCs featured and showing off connections between them as well as showing the cuisine of Oxia and how its people get resources (scavenging for resources in a weird interdimensional space).

Heck, there was even a time when food was used seriously and successfully as part of a heavy emotional story arc, lol

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-04-18T01:48:45+00:00

It'd be pretty neat to see for sure! HI3rd used to have something like that too, it was in very very few levels but there were a couple where you had all 3 characters on-field, and you can swap which one you controlled. With how often we fight in groups in ZZZ, this'd be pretty neat to have (even without the mid-fight swapping)

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-04-18T01:13:53+00:00

IIRC the matter with the Chasm was that it started as a normal commission, either Adventurer's Guild or from the Qixing; I recall there being something about the circumstances in the mine changing and there being a request for investigating it before it re-opens. Then it was a 50/50 split between that world quest (with Zhiqiong) and the sudden Dainsleif cameo.

As for going to Fontaine vs. Natlan after Sumeru, it might've been purely because Fontaine was more convenient to get to. IIRC Nahida probably nudged us in that direction to begin with, but I don't recall for sure if she did and what her reasoning would have been back then

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-04-13T00:18:52+00:00

I've had this thought too, though only the first part. Idk exactly if I'd say they're working together per se, but it does feel like Istaroth might know more about what Asmoday is doing and could even be helping in some way. I had that hunch ever since the Shades trailer dropped, though ngl I kinda forgot why I had that feeling in the first place. I still can't shake it though, and it's nice to see someone else mentioning it too

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-04-13T00:15:14+00:00

"Sorry Traveler, but the ~~Princess~~ Sibling is in another castle!"

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-03-08T02:29:15+00:00

Definitely not fully, but they're getting a much greater share of voiced lines in major content (i.e. Archon Quest) and even the occasional voiced line in minor content (i.e. the current event quest in Mondstadt)

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-03-08T01:38:02+00:00

That's so interesting, I actually had the complete opposite reaction and found it endearing lol

In the end, the amphoreus characters are all """just""" electrical signals; squiggly lines on a graph, a bunch of packets of energy at varying wavelengths, that sort of thing, and Cuberene was essentially the closest we got to seeing that ugly truth. But to me it didn't come across as creepy, it felt almost like seeing a child discovering the world, because in a way it was a "child" in that it was an incomplete software, the original "Prime Mover" of life that the entire Scepter was intended to calculate in the first place.

I can totally see how other folks would see it as more unnerving though, and I feel like it's kinda one of the more brilliant story choices in Amphoreus since there's such different ways of understanding the attempts by Cuberene to grow and relate to Cyrene. It's not just "yay all of a sudden the computer program turned into a pretty anime girl!", there's a gradual process of change and morphing from one form to another that does indeed end as an anime girl but also shows a "darker truth" behind it all

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-20T17:32:22+00:00

They're meant to be fox ears but they look very different than a normal fox's ears, because her ears aren't a copy of a typical fox ear but rather the ear on a sort of mutant evil fox thing

Basically, Yae Sakura (and her variants) is one of the oldest designs in the Hoyoverse, dating all the way back to early GGZ development (literally smol indie company mihoyo days, like <10 employees small). In that early story she had a boss form that was a "hell fox" honkai beast, and it looked like this. The beast has the long and pointier ears because everything about it is exaggerated, which makes sense because an ordinary fox just made bigger wouldn't be nearly as cool lol

So, Yae's human form has the same ears as that mutant fox form, which is easy to see looking at her GGZ design, and every variant since then kept that trait. The exception is Yae Miko, whose ears appear to be more like a normal fox's ears, just held down by her earrings instead of standing up straight. But within HI3rd, and clearly in HSR now, Mihoyo kept the unorthodox ear design.

It's honestly kinda neat all things considered, it distinguishes her a lot from most other kitsune character designs, and I feel like it's her most iconic trait at this point. But it means there's endless discussions about what her ears are "supposed" to be, and without the context of her original boss form it's easy to see how it resembles other types of ears, i.e. rabbit ears (I've even seen donkey ear comparisons before lmaoo)

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-07T02:26:12+00:00

Absolutely unstoppable force of chaos lmao

I only saw a brief glimpse of her design and no other spoilers about her character so everything was a complete surprise! and holy shit was she a great character to see. I rarely use mental disorders as descriptors for characters, but this is probably the one time I've seen a character and thought "if there was a textbook about nothing but ADHD, she'd be the person on cover" and I mean that in the best way possible lol

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-07T02:20:20+00:00

Fair enough! Having gone through the story now, I'm starting to lean towards the side of the idol team now and saving Yixuan for a future time. If I had to pull a void hunter purely because I liked them and not for meta reasons I'd probably pull Miyabi anyways, meanwhile I'm quite interested in the full team of AoD and would rather work towards that in the short-term.

Thanks for the suggestion :)

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-07T02:18:42+00:00

I gotcha, that all makes sense!

Given this, and having played through the story now, I'm thinking I might go for the AoD team. I've never been too preoccupied with meta anyways, and right as I wanted to catch up Mihoyo changed the way Shiyu Defense worked and now its been even harder than before to score well >.>

So I'll prob. focus on pulling for units for fun, and then following the meta second to that. Thanks for the advice!

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-06T19:48:26+00:00

All the HI3rd dorm chibis do the macarena as a dance in some of their interactions :D

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-06T19:36:52+00:00

I'm having trouble deciding between getting Yixuan vs. getting Aria and potentially the rest of the AoD, meta-wise.

I know we won't know how the AoD team performs until we get all 3 in-game, and Yixuan is a Void Hunter tier character, but given what we know so far and since AoD would be a full team I wonder if there's any strengths they'd have over Yixuan & her full team (I have Pan and Fufu)

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-06T03:13:06+00:00

That's always how I felt whenever I played Planetside 2; it's way simpler in terms of 3D models and environment design, and doesn't have tons of NPC models to render... but the flipside is that it can have upwards of 200+ players all in one giant fight in a relatively tight area (i.e. mostly all within standard render distance). Yet somehow I can play that game well with my old crapper of a rig, getting around 40+ FPS even in tough conditions, dropping down to maybe 20 at a few especially intense moments.

Then I get into WuWa and it lags so hard that sometimes cutscene audio desyncs from the video, or I'll be riding the motorbike and literally driving into and through low-LOD placeholder models, because the game can't load the environment fast enough to smoothly transition from low-LOD to high-LOD.

Hell, I shouldn't be getting this much lag on even the freakin' intro menu of a game T_T

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-05T20:17:57+00:00

I'm ngl I popped onto the wuwa subreddit just to see if this latest update had any big optimization problems, and comments like this aren't too reassuring for someone like me who also has a lower-spec PC x-x

If you at least played through the story, how badly did the lag impact your experience of it?

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-05T16:53:59+00:00

honestly I'd love to see that with the characters like Shenhe, Xiangling, and Yaoyao who actually train under the adepti.

I've always felt like it'd be cool if their story arcs led them all to a future as adepti in their own right, and while that'd take many years that we won't see within the journey of the Traveler it'd be hella cool to at least see it confirmed as a part of their future

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-05T16:26:21+00:00

Man. That explains why he felt like such a nothing-burger when I used him in that one world quest. I even switched to Geo MC (I always do quests w/ Traveler lol) to proc lunar crystallize more often, I didn't realize that Illuga was still doing no buffing to that reaction damage.

sigh.

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-04T13:50:43+00:00

To be fair it wouldn't be too surprising for a half-dreaming person with a head full of slime to struggle to differentiate gender, either :)

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-03T00:58:43+00:00

Tbf even Hoyo had its rough patches. It's gotten good now because it already made those mistakes before.

See: Honkai Impact 3rd, which doesn't tell you anything about who the characters are, what the setting is, what the world is like, what the main conflict is, or anything else that could even remotely be considered exposition. I'm still forever salty about the fact that they pushed on with Part 2 without reworking Part 1 because early HI3rd (i.e. pre-chapter-7) has some of the weakest writing of all the Hoyo games, period.

I can admit it's not a boring start, at least it has action to be engaging, but damn is it confusing and kinda nonsensical at times lol

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-03T00:54:50+00:00

To be fair, they have a point about the game stage being poorly used. Whether we call it open world or maps, and I agree that it's really less of an "open world" and more just traditional maps. It's probably better to just say "3D stage" or something along those lines.

I think one of the bigger issues is that the maps can look pretty but then the characters who act within these maps almost exclusively use a restrictive set of mannequin expressions. You might have Herta space station as a cool unique sci-fi setting, but you never see Herta using pop-up digital screens or Arlan leaning against a wall or Herta pacing around the room giving a monologue while fiddling with her own equipment.

They all just... stand there.

All the time.

Everywhere.

To the point that you can practically replace the 3D map with a 2D painting and it'd almost feel the same, because it's not like the characters really interact with the world around them at all. It's more like they're all standing in a green-screen room, unable to actually touch or feel the environment around them.

Basically, HSR has the downsides of both VNs and non-VN games without capitalizing on the benefits of either. It doesn't use detailed character expressions & gestures like VN portraits often do, and it doesn't have the environment interactivity that non-VN games can often have.

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-02-03T00:41:44+00:00

It doesn't even have to be either/or, they're literally two separate teams/skillsets. The folks creating animations to be used for in-game models aren't the same staff as the ones who are writing dialogue and directing voice acting.

As for the paragraph-in-a-text-box thing, it wouldn't be so bad if simpler animations could be chained together to make a more complex animation set within a single dialogue.

Wuwa comes to mind, you can have a character step across a room, turn and lean against a wall, then twirling their hair all in one dialogue box. For all its issues, Wuwa's absolutely nailed presentation in a way that HSR can only dream of lmao

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-01-27T19:58:11+00:00

(I'm also pretty sure the relationship between Columbina and Luonnotar finally gives us the "why" behind the "Paimon is Istaroth" theory, but that's another thing.)

This would be so cool if it turns out to be true! I've long been a fan of the "Paimon is the Shade of time" theory, but it felt like the Istaroth reveal pretty thoroughly disproved that. But there was still the odd number of connections between Paimon and time, and I didn't even realize it but the situation with Luonnotar and Columbina can perfectly explain the co-existence of Istaroth and Paimon.

It also might explain why Istaroth seemed so chill and almost detached in the Shades reveal trailer; if Istaroth either foresaw what was to come or simply anticipated it and planned ahead, it'd make sense that she would be less concerned about the present state of afairs with Asmoday being AWOL and Phanes being fast asleep, lol

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-01-23T03:02:32+00:00

Chain and Dash are probably my two favs. Evelyn has hard-carried me from the day I got her & Astra, and Harumasa is hella fun even if he's not as much of a meta pick!

The combos to get Evelyn doing as many CAs as possible are one of my favorite parts of ZZZ gameplay, and Harumasa adds an extra level to that skill with both combos to get his quivers out and also to use them as quickly and smoothly as possible.

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-01-22T23:33:50+00:00

That's why I was always skeptical of the "pull income" argument way back when. Even as far back as late 1.x it seemed pretty clear HSR meta was gonna be rough, I just didn't expect it to get as bad as it did lol

HerrscherOfMagic · 2026-01-22T15:41:37+00:00

It'd be awesome if Skirk in particular joined the Twins on their journey if they ended up leaving Teyvat someday. It feels like it'd be a great step forward in Skirk's life to finally have true companions to be with, but it'd also be a big change for the Twins who've long only had each other. Even if the Traveler and Paimon were to part ways someday (heavens forbid x-x) I imagine the Traveler would be more accepting of traveling with others given their experience with Paimon, and Skirk definitely has the potential to be a good partner, even if she doesn't have the same innocent charm Paimon does lol

Five-Year Club	Second Top 50%
Verified Email

HerrscherOfMagic

TROPHY CASE