Cyno Archives - The Wide Screen

February 17, 2023

Everything We Learned From The “Genshin Impact” 3.5 Special Program!

Having spent the last four months dutifully collecting Primogems and stockpiling Intertwined Fates in preparation for the release of Dehya in Version 3.5, I was cautiously optimistic that the 3.5 Special Program would give us new details about her character that would finally put a rest to the pervasive rumors that her kit is one of the worst ever designed by HoYoverse. I was not expecting HoYoverse to instead throw a wrench into my plans for obtaining the five-star Pyro claymore user I’ve been waiting for since Sumeru’s characters were first leaked by announcing without warning that she’s headed to the permanent Standard Banner in Version 3.6, joining such undervalued characters as Diluc, Keqing, Jean, and Qiqi. It’s practically tantamount to an admission that Dehya’s kit is indeed as bad as has been speculated all along, and that HoYoverse doesn’t foresee players spending enough money on her banner to make successive reruns worthwhile. You’d think they would just…improve her kit, but apparently not.

Dehya, a character from Genshin Impact, standing in the desert and swinging a giant black-and-gold claymore. She is wearing ripped black jeans and the upper half of her outfit is comprised of red and black flowy fabric that trails behind her. — Dehya | gosunoob.com

As for how this affects me, well, I’ve always intended to get Dehya on her debut banner, and that hasn’t changed. I didn’t pre-farm all of her Ascension Materials for nothing, and I’ve already got a Burgeon team where I think she’ll fit nicely. But my motivation to collect at least one additional copy of her character (the first six of which are referred to as Constellations in Genshin Impact, and provide upgrades that Dehya in particular needs to be viable) has admittedly dwindled somewhat now that I know I’ll probably get her randomly at some point in the near future…though with that said, I’ve been playing Genshin Impact for over a year at this point and I’ve only ever obtained two of the six Standard Banner five-stars currently available (Keqing and Jean). Going after her event-exclusive signature weapon, Beacon of the Reed Sea, might be a better investment.

Fortunately, for those of us who have had never had much luck on the Weapon Banner, Dehya can make use of the new four-star claymore, Mailed Flower, that will be available for free in Version 3.5 as a reward for participating in the Windblume’s Breath Event held annually in Mondstadt to celebrate love and romance. The highly-anticipated Event will feature a minigame based on Pac-Man where players will run amok in the Knights of Favonius Headquarters (yes, even the building’s out-of-bounds upper floors) collecting balloons and evading floating enemies, and a rhythm game in which players can perform pieces of the Genshin Impact original soundtrack on three sonically distinct instruments. The Event’s main storyline will reunite Outrider Amber and Trainee Forest Ranger Collei for the first time since the events of the semi-canonical Genshin Impact manga where Collei visited Mondstadt as a child.

In fact, characters from all across Teyvat will be in attendance, including Cyno and Tighnari from Sumeru (Tighnari’s disgraced English voice-actor, Elliot Gindi, appears to have already recorded his lines for the Event, and will not be recast quickly enough to spare players from having to hear his voice, so consider switching languages or simply muting); Ying’er, a fan-favorite NPC from Liyue (who at first glance seems rather out-of-place in this particular Event, though it seems there’s something going on between her and a Mondstadt NPC, alchemist Timaeus); and of course, practically everyone from Mondstadt (with the possible exception of Kaeya, who is occupied elsewhere).

Paimon, Traveler, Kaeya, and Dainsleif, characters from Genshin Impact, seated around a wooden table outside. Kaeya sits facing the other three, and is the only one whose face is visible. He has brown skin, dark blue hair, and an eyepatch covering his right eye. — Paimon, Traveler, Kaeya, and Dainsleif | gematsu.com

Specifically, players who have completed Requiem Of The Echoing Depths can expect to find Kaeya hanging out in Sumeru, where Genshin Impact‘s overarching story will continue with a new Archon Quest titled Caribert (seemingly a reference to Charibert I, the name of a 6th Century Merovingian king who was the first of his dynasty to be excommunicated – for having four wives simultaneously, but I doubt that’s relevant). Kaeya, the long-lost heir to the even longer-lost throne of Khaenri’ah, and Dainsleif, a morally ambiguous survivor of the Cataclysm that destroyed Khaenri’ah five-hundred years ago, will accompany us on an expedition deep into the bowels of the earth in search of answers to our questions regarding the Abyss Order (of which our protagonist’s sibling is a high-ranking member), whose stated purpose is to resurrect Khaenri’ah and usurp the gods responsible for wiping it off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, that’s everything we know for sure about the Archon Quest so far, but anyone who’s familiar with Kaeya and Dainsleif’s extensive lore knows that these two characters meeting onscreen could have game-changing consequences. When we’ve met them individually in the past, they’ve always avoided saying too much about themselves, shrugging us off when we press them about it, so having Kaeya on our side to help grill Dainsleif (and vice versa!) will hopefully force everyone to be a little more forthright.

The first chapters of Dehya’s Story Quest and Faruzan’s Hangout Event are also set to be released in Version 3.5, and I have a feeling from the brief synopses provided by HoYoverse during the Special Program that I’ll enjoy both – Dehya’s Story Quest in particular, as it will see the return of Dunyarzad, a beloved NPC who had a significant role in the Sumeru Archon Quest and was originally responsible for getting Dehya tangled up in the plot to rescue Lesser Lord Kusanali from the clutches of corrupt scholars at the Akademiya, because even though Dehya might have been hired to be Dunyarzad’s silent and stoic bodyguard, she’s too much of a big softie to turn her back on her friend (or girlfriend, depending on how you interpret their relationship dynamic). Anyway, with Dunyarzad now cured of the debilitating illness that required her family to hire a bodyguard for her in the first place, I’m excited to see how their relationship will evolve, and what new adventures they’ll go on together. Faruzan’s Hangout Event, by contrast, will primarily take place in the heart of the Akademiya, and explore the distinctions between the six Darshans and their conflicting philosophies.

As intriguing as this sounds, I still do not understand why Faruzan, of all the four-star characters from Sumeru, is first-in-line for a Hangout Event while Collei and Candace are still waiting months after their release, and Mika, the new four-star Cryo polearm user being introduced alongside Dehya in Version 3.5, is apparently going to be dropped into the game without any accompanying story content to remind players why they should want to pull for him besides the fact that he buffs ATK Speed and Physical DMG while providing a little bit of healing, making him a good support for characters like Eula (and Xinyan, especially if you’re using her as your Main DPS, the way I do). If only it made sense to run Mika on Eula’s banner, given that she’s canonically his commanding officer…or, you know, rerun Eula in general, seeing as it’s been over a year and there’s a Mondstadt Event in Version 3.5 and the aforementioned reward for participating in said Event is a claymore, Eula’s weapon…nope, definitely the logical choice by HoYoverse to slap Mika on a banner with Kamisato Ayaka and Shenhe, two characters with whom he has no real synergy, making for an inharmonious Mono-Cryo medley in the latter half of Version 3.5.

Mika, from the game Genshin Impact, standing in a wooded landscape surrounded by white stairs and snowflakes. He is short, with shaggy blond hair, and a large book levitates over his hands from which he is reading. — Mika | dexerto.com

Beyond that, a few small adjustments and improvements are being made to the game in Version 3.5, of which the simplest and most popular by far is the new system of rewarding players for completing currently released and upcoming chapters of Genshin Impact‘s main storyline with one Intertwined Fate – exchangeable on any limited-time banner – for every Archon Quest. Whether generous or merely exploitative, I will be taking those Intertwined Fates, thank you very much. Dehya will come home to me, and that’s final. But how about you? Pulling for anyone in Version 3.5, or skipping the patch entirely? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

August 22, 2022

Genshin Impact Version 3.1 Introduces Three New Characters

With the release of Genshin Impact Version 3.0 just around the corner, game developer HoYoverse has already begun hyping up the playable characters arriving over a month from now in Version 3.1, as part of a carefully coordinated process dubbed “drip marketing” by fans. Today’s 3.1 drip marketing consisted of official splash-art of three new characters – two we’ve seen before, and one we haven’t (well, unless you’ve been following Genshin Impact leaks very closely, in which case you’ve seen all these characters and probably more).

All three of these characters hail from the soon-to-be-released region of Sumeru, which will receive its first expansion in Version 3.1 alongside a new chapter of the Sumeru Archon Quest, Story Quests for the five-star characters Cyno and Nilou, and presumably a Hangout Event centered around the four-star character Candace. In other words, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to spend time with the characters you like (as long as you do your Daily Commissions and save up Story Keys), before obtaining one or more of them through a limited-time banner. Like all four-stars, Candace will head directly to the permanent Standard Banner in Version 3.2, but if you want either Cyno or Nilou you’d better start stockpiling Primogems and strategizing, because with so many five-stars in the game at this point there’s a chance they won’t rerun again for months.

But who to pull for? The answer to that age-old question will vary depending on your personal preferences – someone who pulls for characters based purely on their damage output and the comfiness of their gameplay might feel differently about, say, Nilou, than someone looking for visually appealing characters with an endearing personality and/or lore relevance – but with the limited information at our disposal I think I’m ready to hazard a guess at how different players will answer that question for themselves, and which of these banners will be most successful as a result (with the caveat that we’ll never really know how many people pulled specifically for Candace, because she’s free).

Going in alphabetical order, let’s start with the character we know least about, Candace – a Hydro Vision-wielder who is rumored to have healing and shielding capabilities befitting the fierce “Guardian of Aaru Village”. With the help of her trusty polearm, Candace ensures that the inhabitants of Sumeru’s humid rainforests and its arid deserts alike respect her village’s neutrality in the conflict between these two forces of nature, and that no harm comes to her people that is not at once reciprocated. In terms of gameplay, she’s very likely either a sub-DPS or a niche support for Nilou and other Hydro characters, but there haven’t been many leaks regarding her kit.

As for whether she’s lore-relevant or will be going forward, that too is difficult to determine – she will play a role in the Sumeru Archon Quest, but as of right now, so will every playable character in Sumeru, so we’ll just need to wait and see if her role is especially prominent. It could be one of those situations where she shows up for all of thirty seconds to help us finish a fetch-quest (i.e. Sayu in the Inazuma Archon Quest), or she might deliver a thirty-minute long, exposition-heavy, unskippable monologue about the ancient history of Sumeru (i.e. Albedo, Dainsleif, and Zhongli any time they open their mouths).

One thing about Candace that we can discuss here and now is her name and her design, which are greatly at odds with each other. Candace is the Latinized form of Kandake, a title reserved for the sisters of Kushite kings in the ancient kingdom of Kush (which sprawled across most of modern-day Sudan and Egypt). There were several notable Kandakes of Kush, but most if not all of these women were Black, just as the population of their kingdom was predominantly Black. The character designers over at HoYoverse must have conveniently glossed over that little detail while “researching”, because they’ve transposed the sacred title of Kandake onto a light-skinned woman in vaguely Egyptian clothing.

Knowing that Candace ought to have been depicted as an unambiguously Black woman, that her name ought to have been spelled a certain way, that she ought not to be wearing garments inspired by those of the Kushite kingdom’s culturally distinct rival to the north…all of these things combined make it a lot harder to celebrate the fact that Candace is at least somewhat darker than the other characters in Sumeru (though still significantly lighter than either Kaeya or Xinyan, who are theoretically German and Chinese, respectively). And on top of all this, the list of countries on which Sumeru is loosely based just keeps growing – at this rate, we’ll be lucky if Genshin Impact doesn’t compress the entire continent of Africa into this one corner of Teyvat.

Cyno is yet another example of how HoYoverse is playing mix-and-match with cultures that aren’t theirs to experiment with, although in his case it’s subtler. His name is derived from the Ancient Greek word for dog, kúōn, while his official title, General Mahamatra, comes to us from the Maurya Empire in India, and his design borrows heavily from depictions of the Ancient Egyptian god of mummification, Anubis. Once again, I’m not sure whether to be excited for Cyno’s release because he’s almost as tan as Candace or just disappointed in HoYoverse for their lack of focus.

Well, at least Cyno’s kit sounds promising. The five-star Electro polearm user is intended to be used as a main DPS, synergizing particularly well with Dendro support characters via the “Catalyze”, “Quicken”, and “Aggravate” reactions when Electro encounters Dendro or vice versa. Dendro reactions are a bit complicated, but Cyno will probably be useful in just about any Electro-centric team comp, thanks to his Energy Particle generation and an Elemental Burst that infuses all his attacks with Electro for a short period of time. I am tempted to pull for him; I just need to save up enough Primogems that I can ensure Dehya comes home shortly thereafter or whenever she releases.

And if you’re pulling for characters based solely on their appearance and aesthetics, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Cyno. His hat has jackal-ears and the jackal-ears have ear piercings, need I say more? His personality is also highly endearing – at first glance, he’s stern, severe, even a little intimidating, but once you get to know him you’ll soon learn that he’s a bit of a dork, who tells really bad jokes and collects trading-cards in his spare time. He’s also one of the highest-ranking members of the Sumeru Akademiya, so he’s got lore-relevance if that’s a deal-breaker for you.

Then again, Nilou is also lore-relevant with an endearing personality, and I happen to think she’s the least appealing of the three characters HoYoverse promoted today. Sure, her dance moves are mesmerizing (unsurprisingly, given that she’s modeled on Persian dancers of the Sassanid Dynasty), but her outfit is almost exclusively rooted in orientalist stereotypes of Arabian belly-dancers and bears little resemblance to the dresses and long jackets worn by Persian dancers, which were – and still are – typically very colorful, almost floor-length, and modest, exposing significantly less of the stomach, arms, and legs than Nilou’s. Her design is overtly sexualized in a way that feels extremely disrespectful to the women of modern-day Iran, and to the entire region in general.

But even beyond that, her kit and intended gameplay don’t sound all that interesting at the moment, given that she basically has to be used as an off-field sub-DPS alongside Dendro characters to unlock her full potential, and my initial reaction to all the Dendro reactions is that they’re overly complicated, requiring more strategy than I typically dedicate to the combat in the game (I play primarily for the lore and the characters, if that wasn’t already clear). Nilou’s greatest strength is her ability to activate and amplify the “Bloom” reaction when Hydro (her element) encounters Dendro, but you still need to run a Dendro main DPS with her and at the moment we have exactly one of those, Tighnari, to choose from.

Additionally, there are rumors that Nilou will require a shield to sustain damage from the very reactions she causes (which could be where Candace fits into her teams), so all in all we’re looking at a potentially very niche character with an uncomfortable playstyle. Without access to Dendro reactions, Nilou is a sword-user whose viability, if she has any, will likely derive from her consistent Hydro application – and still, I can’t see her ever beating out all-purpose characters like Yelan and Xingqiu in that department. But I’m not a Genshin Impact theorycrafter, either, so I could very well be overlooking whatever redeeming qualities to her kit there may or may not be.

Anyway, those are all the new characters we were officially introduced to today, and I’m very curious to know which of the three you intend to pull for, which you’ll skip, and how you feel about their designs and rumored gameplay. Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

August 3, 2022

“Genshin Impact” Version 3.0 Teaser Reveals New 5-Star Characters

**SPOILERS FOR GENSHIN IMPACT VERSION 3.0 AND 3.1 AHEAD!**

If you play Genshin Impact and are active on Twitter, chances are you had already come across the leaked character models of nearly every upcoming character from Version 3.0 through at least Version 3.4, long before HoYoverse gave in and officially revealed most of them in a recent teaser trailer for the upcoming region of Sumeru. The Sumeru character leaks have been (and continue to be) unavoidable – everywhere you turn, there’s fan-art of the most popular characters, redesigns of the characters that fans wish were more culturally and historically accurate (most if not all of them, if we’re being honest), and out-of-context screenshots from the ongoing 3.0 beta of the characters and NPCs we’ll be meeting straightaway when we enter Sumeru near the end of August.

The teaser trailer lays the groundwork for the Sumeru Archon Quest, which is expected to be larger in scope and potentially much longer than the controversial Inazuma Archon Quest. The six characters highlighted in this new trailer, those being Al-Haitham, Al-Tighnari, Cyno, Dehya, Nahida, and Nilou, are each rumored to play a significant role in the Sumeru Archon Quest (and that’s pretty much all I’ll say on that topic, because while this post is spoiler-tagged so we can talk about the characters themselves – primarily their kits and potential playstyles – I don’t want to completely ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the new Archon Quest by revealing story spoilers), but that’s not the only thing these characters have in common.

While there was initially some debate over Dehya’s rarity, leakers now unanimously agree that all six of these characters (including Dehya) belong to the five-star character class – the higher of the two character classes in Genshin Impact. Five-star characters, with their unique burst animations and high base stats, are generally considered stronger or more efficient than their four-star counterparts; therefore, most are only available on limited-time banners that rerun at random intervals, often coinciding with events in which said character plays a significant role. On the one hand, that makes them harder to obtain if you’re not willing to spend actual money on the Primogems you need to pull for characters – but on the other hand, it’s easier to guarantee a specific limited-time five-star for yourself than any specific four-star or even a Standard Banner five-star like Diluc or Jean.

Anyway, I could have told you that everyone in this trailer was a five-star based solely on the fact that Collei and Dori, two four-star characters rumored to be heavily involved in the Sumeru Archon Quest, don’t appear even briefly…the reason being that Collei and Dori, like all four-star characters, will be readily available on the permanent Standard Banner within a month of their first rate-up on Al-Tighnari’s banner – so no one will ever have any incentive to pay for them (and frankly, I wouldn’t pull for Dori even if HoYoverse was paying me, much less spend money on her).

Speaking of Al-Tighnari’s banner, there’s an interesting and surprisingly credible rumor going around that the on-field DPS Dendro bow-user will become the first new five-star to be placed on the permanent Standard Banner since Genshin Impact‘s launch, which is the kind of information that could either negatively affect his banner sales (especially if he’s one of the weaker five-stars, as Standard Banner five-stars tend to be) or potentially boost them (if fans of the character collectively jump at the chance to obtain Tighnari before he ironically becomes harder to obtain amongst a bunch of other five-star units).

Me, I’m saving all my Primogems for Cyno and Dehya, the only two playable characters in Sumeru (at least that we’ve seen) whose skin isn’t literally paper-white, making them by default the darkest-skinned five-star characters in Genshin Impact…although neither character’s skin is actually dark, mind you. In the real world, and almost certainly in the regions of South Asia and North Africa that inspired Sumeru, they’d be considered either light-skinned or white. In almost any other video game, including other gacha games by Chinese game developers like Dislyte, they’d be considered either light-skinned or white. Hell, even in Genshin Impact itself, when compared to brown-skinned four-star characters like Kaeya and Xinyan, and the unambiguously brown NPCs we’re starting to see throughout Sumeru, they’d be considered either light-skinned or white.

Some indignant players have cited the existence of Kaeya and Xinyan as indisputable evidence that the character designers at HoYoverse couldn’t possibly be guilty of perpetuating racism and colorism through their work, and in fact they’re actually progressive and ahead-of-the-curve, which is the type of excuse that I would maybe take seriously if Genshin Impact had, like, four playable characters at most…but as of this writing, that number is closer to fifty-four. And need I remind you that Kaeya and Xinyan are four-star characters, and thus nonsalable? The only reason these two characters and a couple of NPCs from Sumeru have brown skin is because they’re not made to sell, and if that ever changed for any reason, they’d be whitewashed.

That’s what this comes down to, ultimately. Genshin Impact‘s most desirable characters, its five-star characters, are intended to be desirable in every sense of the word (with the exception of Qiqi, a literal child), and their character designs almost inevitably conform to colorist notions of what is “desirable” because the beauty standards of China and Japan, HoYoverse’s two largest markets, are deeply rooted in colorism. HoYoverse didn’t create the problem, and they’re not the only corporation (nor even the only game studio) perpetuating it, but they also didn’t need to get themselves so deeply entangled in this mess and that’s what’s really frustrating about the whole situation.

Genshin Impact‘s fictional world of Teyvat is comprised of seven regions, and the three that have been released to date – Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma – are inspired by late Medieval or early Renaissance-era Germany, Qing Dynasty China (well, to some extent), and Edo Period Japan, respectively. At those specific points in each country’s history, all three would have been predominantly ethnically homogeneous. Sumeru, however, isn’t based on just one country, but rather an amalgamation of something like thirteen different countries between Morocco in the west and India in the east – most of which are and have long been ethnically heterogeneous and racially diverse, by virtue of being situated at the junction of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

That’s why I have no sympathy for HoYoverse in this situation: because if you’re aware, as the game developers must have been after doing even the slightest bit of research into South Asian and North African people and their cultures, that you can’t ever commit to portraying these people and their cultures with even a modicum of respect, then you ought to either commit to the challenge and all of the responsibilities that come with it, or stop and think of a different story setting you can “borrow” from the real world that won’t have detrimental real-world consequences on the people whose cultures and history you’re “borrowing” if you mess up, as you inevitably will if you do what HoYoverse did, which is to stubbornly plow ahead without consideration for the consequences.

Even if you dismiss the lack of skintone diversity amongst the playable characters because “there are some pale or light-skinned people in South Asia and North Africa” (nobody’s saying there aren’t, by the way – we’re saying that it’s colorist for the playable characters from Sumeru to all be white or light-skinned, while the NPCs are tan or brown, but whatever), there’s still a stark difference between HoYoverse’s approach to the previous three regions and their current approach to Sumeru. For instance, the game developers very deliberately singled in on a specific time-period in Japanese history as the basis for Inazuma, to ensure that while they played around with more fantastical elements their focus remained clear and their vision remained cohesive. But with Sumeru, they’ve blenderized so many different cultures it’s impossible to tell which one is even the main ingredient in this dreadful concoction – which is spiked with a heavy dose of orientalism and exoticism for good measure.

That lack of focus behind-the-scenes is attested to in-game by Sumeru’s very own geography, which ranges from a humid rainforest on the borders of Liyue, to an arid desert in the far west where Sumeru butts up against the region of Natlan…with nothing in between but a few miles of sparsely-forested wasteland to ease that abrupt transition. We can see it again reflected in the whimsical architecture of Sumeru City, which bears little resemblance to anything in the real world, and in the fantastical flora and fauna of the rainforest area (the desert won’t be released until Version 3.1). And I’m sad to say it’s a recurring theme throughout the character designs – Al-Tighnari, Al-Haitham, Dehya, Nahida, and Nilou are Arabic/Amazigh/Persian in name only, and Cyno…isn’t even that.

Al-Tighnari, the first Dendro five-star in Genshin Impact, fittingly bears the name of an early 12th Century Arab agronomist and botanist…which makes it all the more upsetting that his design is unspeakably ugly and poorly-researched. He’s wearing a navy-blue hoodie (you can zoom in for yourself, it’s a literal hoodie) with mismatched sleeves because Genshin Impact‘s character designers are obsessed with asymmetry, navy-blue gloves (with rust-colored finger-pads, because why settle on just one hideous color when you can have the whole rainbow?), big rubbery-looking navy-blue bangles hanging off his arms, navy-blue lace-up boots, baggy navy-blue pants with red stripes down the sides, and a severe navy-blue bob hairdo with lime-green highlights. On top of all this, he has the ears and tail of a fennec fox…a navy-blue fennec fox, to be precise. I’ll be right back, I have to aggressively scrub my eyes with soap.

Ah, that’s better. Where were we? Oh yes, the next character on the list isn’t going to be playable until Version 3.4 or Version 3.5 at the earliest, but Twitter is already thirsting over Al-Haitham because he’s a tall and mysterious white man in a skin-tight, semi-transparent black bodysuit with one shoulder exposed (he has more muscle definition than Itto, I’ll begrudgingly give him that). Al-Haitham is rumored to be a Dendro sword user, although his release is still so far off that there haven’t been any leaks regarding the rest of his kit or potential playstyle. His design is sleek and futuristic, comprised of a lot of harsh angles and sharp lines; I don’t hate it, I just hate that it was probably chosen at the cost of the beautiful traditional clothing of any number of South Asian or North African cultures.

Cyno, whose name is derived from the Ancient Greek word for “dog”, kúōn, is an on-field main DPS Electro polearm user who lives in the desert area of Sumeru amidst the crumbling ruins of a civilization that once worshiped anthropomorphic gods similar to those of Ancient Egypt – including a jackal-headed deity whom Cyno emulates with his long-eared hat. I like the hat and its adorable ear-piercings, don’t know how I feel about the rest of Cyno’s outfit, which is relatively skimpy in comparison to most male characters in the game…it feels a bit like one of those ridiculous Halloween costumes for (white) adults that exoticize and fetishize Ancient Egyptian culture, but I’m hoping it’s not really that bad. We can’t see the entire outfit, to be fair.

I have similar concerns regarding Dehya, who is essentially wearing ripped jeans and a crop-top – not exactly what I would have picked out for a character who shares her name with a legendary 7th Century Amazigh queen, but maybe that’s just me. Nonetheless, Dehya is easily the best-dressed and most well-designed of the Sumeru five-stars (in my entirely unbiased opinion as an admirer of tall, muscular, claymore-wielding women), I just wish her design incorporated more…well, any elements of traditional Amazigh clothing. Between now and her estimated release date around Version 3.4 or Version 3.5, there’s still plenty of time to tweak her design slightly, HoYoverse (just please don’t lighten her skin any more, dear lord).

Nilou, described in the trailer as a dancer defying tradition, is rumored to be a sub-DPS or burst-DPS Hydro sword user releasing in Version 3.1, although we’ll meet her sooner than that during the Sumeru Archon Quest, as she’s presumably involved in the rapidly growing uprising against the Akademiya’s authoritarian rule of Sumeru. More research appears to have gone into her design than into certain other characters – Nilou even utilizes traditional Persian dance moves in her signature burst animation, and her outfit, ornate headdress, and tattoos are inspired by the costumes of Persian dancers from the time of the Sassanid Dynasty in what is now Iran. Unfortunately, her outfit has been sexualized to the point where she closer resembles orientalist stereotypes of belly dancers at first glance.

Finally, there’s Nahida – whose kit and playstyle haven’t leaked yet, although she’s currently rumored to be a Dendro catalyst-user releasing in Version 3.2, around the same time the Sumeru Archon Quest wraps up. Her outfit contains no discernible references to the traditional clothing of South Asia and North Africa, and honestly it’s a painfully average design on top of that; she’s wearing a simple, flower-shaped white dress with a couple of emerald-green accoutrements that clash terribly with her paper-white skin and hair. As fan-artists have been quick to demonstrate, Nahida really needed a brown skintone to complement the whites and greens in her clothing and hair if this was the route HoYoverse was insistent on taking with her design.

Well, that’s all of them. Unless there are a couple of four-star characters released in the near future whose designs really blow me away (I might pull for Collei, but I’ve already vowed never to use Dori even if I accidentally obtain her on the Standard Banner), I plan to save my Primogems for Cyno and Dehya…and yeah, that’s pretty much it. Sumeru and its five-star characters have disappointed me greatly – but my disappointment with HoYoverse is nothing compared to the hurt that South Asian, Southwest Asian, and North African fans have felt upon seeing some of these characters meant to represent them and their people, which is why I feel it’s important to actively call out the game developers and demand better…because it’s bad now, but it’s only going to get worse when the region of Natlan, inspired by pre-colonial South American and Mesoamerican cultures, comes out in Version 5.0, unless HoYoverse does something about it now.