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So…Natlan Is A Disappointment

It’s been almost two years since the release of Sumeru in Genshin Impact Version 3.0, two years since the last time that Genshin faced a sizable backlash from players over the pervasive issue of racism and colorism in the game’s character design, two years during which the developers have been hard at work on Natlan, the Nation of War, set to release about a month from now in Version 5.0 – and in those two years, Genshin Impact has not gotten better in this regard…if possible, it’s actually gotten worse somehow. Because while there is no one in Natlan (yet) with a design as blatantly offensive as Sumeru’s Dori, for which I suppose I should be grateful, there is also no one whose design bears out the idea, put forward by the music, environment design, architecture, and the characters’ names, that this region is inspired by the cultures and mythologies of pre-colonial North, Central, and South America, Polynesia, and West Africa.

The character of Kinich from the region of Natlan in Genshin Impact, swinging through a canyon. He has shaggy dark-blue hair with blue-green highlights, and green eyes. He is wearing a black short-sleeved shirt under a black sleeveless vest with gold and blue geometric motifs on the front. He has large earrings, and a green-and-gold headband. He is holding an orange-and-purple ball. Beside him flies a dragon rendered in 8-bit animation for no discernible reason, bright orange with green scales and wearing sunglasses.
Kinich (based on the Mayan sun god Kinich Ahau) | youtube.com

Is this exactly shocking, after the Sumeru debacle? Well, no. To be honest, my expectations for Natlan were already extremely low, and had been ever since Sumeru. But I was still holding out hope that something would have changed, and I can’t help but be disappointed to learn that HoYoverse doesn’t care how many surveys you send back with complaints about the game’s lack of diversity in skin-tones, or about viral tweets and petitions. They make too much money off of Genshin as it stands for them to have to care, and unless players stop spending exorbitant amounts of money on this game every month to get six copies of every new character and five copies of their signature weapon, frankly, change isn’t happening. If Genshin can get away with not including Black and brown playable characters in a region inspired by majority Black and brown cultures, they’re not going to suddenly start in the next region, Shezhnaya, inspired by Tzarist Russia.

Some context on Natlan: it’s the sixth region players will visit on their journey across the world of Teyvat, after Mondstadt (probably still the region with the least culture, but just enough to tell that it’s supposed to evoke Germany, anytime between the Renaissance to the 1800’s), Liyue (rooted in a rich and beautiful depiction of late Qing Dynasty China, with subareas representing various Chinese subcultures; no surprise there, seeing as Genshin Impact is a Chinese game), Inazuma (unmistakably inspired by Meiji Restoration-era Japan, with specific islands aligning closely to Hokkaido and Okinawa), Sumeru (a messy assortment of disparate cultural references, from Algeria through ancient Egypt and Abbasid-era Iraq all the way to Iran and India), and Fontaine (grounded in 18th to 19th Century France, but built on the ruins of an older, Celtic civilization and a Roman Atlantis). Four of the five regions in the game to date are based in a pretty specific period of time in one specific real-world region’s history (and Shezhnaya, as mentioned, seems likely to continue that trend). Sumeru and now Natlan are the odd ones out. No bonus points for guessing what else they have in common.

With Natlan, the vibe Genshin seems to have been going for is “what if all the Indigenous peoples in the Global South had formed an intercontinental, pre-colonial utopia…with dragons”, which is an intriguing premise, even if Genshin‘s writers probably aren’t the best people to pull it off. But somewhere along the line, and maybe I’m naive for believing it was relatively late in the development process because of how the character designs all look so much more cohesive with darker skin, as though the colors of their clothes and hair were deliberately chosen to complement darker skin-tones, I have no doubt that someone higher-up demanded that the characters’ skin be lightened…a little more….and then a little more…until what was meant to be a pre-colonial utopia came out looking distinctly post-colonial in the final product because almost everyone was now white.

I’m not absolving the character designers themselves of all fault, however, because I have issues with the playable cast of Natlan that go beyond their skin-tones and are baked into their designs at a fundamental level. To start with, all of Genshin Impact‘s 84 playable characters (95 if we include the eleven revealed in the Natlan teaser trailer) use one of just five basic models (tall female/male; short female/male; and child-height female) with hardly any variation in facial features apart from eye color and the occasional mole or marking. Natlan didn’t need to break the mold to still do a good job, but it’s a missed opportunity to give characters body-types, facial features, and hair textures that diverge from the Eurocentric beauty standards that Genshin‘s characters currently adhere to almost by default.

The character of Citlali from the region of Natlan. She has purple eyes and long violet hair, loose in the back with pig-tails in the front, and a headdress of purple feathers. She is wearing a dark purple sleeveless top with fabric gauntlets on her arms and gold bracelets. She is holding an orange and purple ball in her hands.
Citlali (the Nahuatl word for “star”) | youtube.com

But while that would have been a nice touch, it was not nearly as imperative as simply getting the designs right. Clothes, accessories, and hairstyles make up each character’s distinctive and highly individual silhouette, allowing you to identify each character’s cultural background at a glance. Fantastical elements are to be expected in a fantasy game – there are characters with animal ears, antlers, wings, and tails, sometimes multiple tails – but most of these characters are based in the mythological creatures or native wildlife of their home region’s real-world equivalent. Ganyu, from Liyue, is part-Qilin, a horned beast in Chinese folklore. Gorou, from Inazuma, has the ears and tail of a Shiba Inu, a Japanese dog breed. And their outfits, apart from being a bit more revealing than historical clothing, are still very clearly Chinese and Japanese, respectively. The same largely holds true for Mondstadt and Fontaine.

Genshin Impact, in the past, has even boasted of its commitment to historical accuracy and cultural sensitivity, releasing a twenty-minute long video breaking down the development process for the character of Yun Jin, an opera singer from Liyue who is based in traditional Chinese opera culture, in which the developers speak of their extensive research, of how they tried to reference the costumes used for historical Chinese heroines in Yun Jin’s design, how they landed upon the concept of “striking a pose” as a key element in her combat animations, how they went out of their way to hire an opera professional to be the character’s singing voice. They did something very similar with the character of Furina in Fontaine, with a video describing how the original song “la vaguelette” came to be, and how the decision made upfront to write the song’s lyrics in French for the purposes of authenticity posed a challenge for the team until they got into contact with a French opera singer. HoYoverse is not incapable of accuracy; they make it a priority and use it to their advantage when it suits them.

Not in Natlan, though. If you run down the list of newly revealed characters, you’ll quickly discover that everyone is named after a deity or historical figure – Mualani, after a Hawaiian princess; Kachina, after an entire category of spirits in the beliefs of the Pueblo Native Americans; Kinich, after the Mayan sun god Kinich Ahau, and so on. A few are conspicuous misspelled in English, perhaps in an attempt to make the appropriation less egregious – but Ororon can only be in reference to Ọlọrun, the Supreme Deity of the Yoruba religion, and Mavuika, the name of the Pyro Archon, is a very slight variation on Mahuika, a Māori goddess of fire. You wouldn’t be able to guess any of their backgrounds from their designs, however, without squinting (and even then, I think, you’d have a hard time of it).

The character of Ororon from Natlan in Genshin Impact, standing against a dark background. He has shaggy dark-blue hair and heterochromatic eyes, one blue and the other pink. He is wearing a blue-and-purple scarf with a half-hood over a black leather sleeveless vest, with black fingerless gloves and gray skintight pants. He has a tattered black cloak. His face, shoulders, and forearms are heavily tattooed.
Ororon (a misspelling of Ọlọrun, the Supreme Deity of the Yoruba) | br.ign.com

Ororon is probably the best/worst example of this, as his design is not only isolated from cultural context but downright boring – a blue-green scarf the only pop of color in an outfit comprised of a black leather sleeveless vest and ripped-up skintight jeans with fingerless gloves. I have not seen anyone point out so much as a single cultural reference on his person, and I am highly doubtful that any will be found. The rest are not much better, to be honest. Kinich appears to wield an oversized macuahuitl (a bladed wooden club used by Aztecs and Mayan warriors), which is something, and I suppose there are some vaguely Mesoamerican-ish motifs in Mavuika’s jewelry and the patterning on her…black leather zip-up bodysuit.

Now, in a world where knights in armor and rock’n’roll musicians exist simultaneously, anachronistic clothing choices are pretty much inevitable, but with that said, I do think it’s worth examining why every other region’s fashion is (for the most part) historical with some modernizations, while Natlan’s is the exact opposite: modern clothing – including puffer-jackets, short-shorts, vests with zippers, and visors – with a few scattered and debatable references to traditional Indigenous clothing and patterns. I would not be surprised to learn that this choice was made to avoid having to use actual traditional clothing almost entirely.

Almost, I say, because there is one character in the trailer wearing non-modern (not necessarily historically accurate) clothing; Iansan, named after the Candomblé goddess Iansã, one of the very first characters revealed back in 2020, and still the only character in Natlan with brown(er than the rest) skin. She is one of the very few characters I can see myself pulling for in the upcoming patches, on account of her having darker skin, though I’m not sure what to make of Natlan’s darkest-skinned character being the only one wearing non-modern clothing, with a skull (originally thought by some to be the skull of a water buffalo, sacred to Iansã, now very clearly a cartoonish dragon skull) as a headdress and a necklace of dragon teeth. They already have a habit of casually referring to the brown-skinned Eremites of Sumeru as “barbarians”, and anyone who’s played the Dirge of Bilqis world quest remembers how aggravating it was to have the game force you to stand aside and say nothing while Liloupar, the spirit of a slave-owner, heaped shockingly racist vitriol on Jeht, an Eremite NPC and a friend of the player character’s, so I’m nervous to see how Iansan especially is handled.

The character of Iansan from the region of Natlan, walking determinedly through a forest underneath a waterfall. She has short shaggy white hair with a black, yellow and purple headband, to which a dragon skull headdress is attached. She has long, elf-like ears and bright green eyes. She is wearing an orange and purple tunic with detached black sleeves and a fur collar, with a necklace of what look like dragon teeth and a large circular medallion.
Iansan (based on the Candomblé goddess Iansã) | youtube.com

So…Natlan is a disappointment. I’ll be honest with you, I have very little hope left that HoYoverse will make any changes to the existing characters’ designs or skin-tones at this point. I appreciate that several of the game’s English voice-actors have put their jobs on the line to publicly call out the company, and that some high-profile content creators have done the same, but as I said earlier, unless players rally to make sure that Genshin Impact suffers a financial loss, by not spending money on the game, I do not believe they will pay attention. Now, just to be clear, I don’t think anyone’s necessarily a bad person for continuing to spend money on Genshin, and if you’re from any of the cultures represented in Natlan and having a certain character means something to you, I understand that…but this is where we’re at. Two years since Sumeru, and the conversation hasn’t changed because HoYoverse hasn’t changed; and I don’t know if they ever will on their own.

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Everything We Learned From The “Genshin Impact” Version 4.3 Special Program

Genshin Impact Version 4.3, Roses And Muskets, has the unenviable challenge of following up what is now widely considered to be one of the best updates to the open-world game since launch, Masquerade Of The Guilty, which capped off the Fontaine Archon Quest with an epic, emotionally devastating final act that solidified the Archon Quest in many peoples’ minds as better-written and more engaging than most, if not all, of those that came before (for myself, the meandering nature of the middle-act set almost entirely in the dreary underground Fortress of Meropide prevents it from climbing all the way to the top of my ranking, but then, my extreme dissatisfaction with how the Sumeru Archon Quest ended makes it more of a close match-up). Version 4.2 also featured the release of the former Hydro Archon Furina as a playable character, and she has single-handedly changed the game for those who have her (not me, however, I’ve been saving my Primogems all throughout this patch, resisting the temptation to try for Furina by reminding myself that Navia is up next).

Navia from Genshin Impact, a tall woman with long honey-blonde hair, wearing a frilly dark-blue corset-top and hoop skirts, with golden ornaments and a dark blue hat perched on her head, standing flanked on either side by men in black suits and fedoras with their arms crossed.
Navia | pockettactics.com

We have official confirmation now that Navia is, indeed, up next in Version 4.3. The five-star claymore user will be Genshin Impact‘s first Geo character in a long time – but despite all she brings to the underrepresented Element and her stunning character design, it’s highly unlikely that her banner sales will break any records in the way Furina’s have. She’s not exactly niche, but with a playstyle built around Crystallize, the underwhelming Elemental Reaction between Geo and Pyro, Electro, Cryo or Hydro that produces a pitiful shield, she’s not a guaranteed game-changer either, and I have a feeling that positive word-of-mouth will be a big factor in her success as a unit. Navia is intended to function as an on-field Geo DPS in teams that employ her as a hypercarry, meaning she’ll be dealing the majority of your team’s damage. And in contrast to past Geo DPS’ like Arataki Itto, who have been held back by their inability to synergize with anyone but other Geo characters or make much use of Geo’s one Elemental Reaction, Navia’s unique kit not only gives her greater freedom, it practically necessitates that you run her with characters who can trigger Crystallize frequently.

Will this suddenly make Crystallize any good? Well, yes and no, because while Navia needs all the Crystallize Shards she can get from her teammates, and she deals massive damage via her Elemental Skill in exchange, she’s very much alone in that. Until we get more Geo characters who benefit from Crystallize, including a more easily obtainable four-star and/or a dedicated support for the Elemental Reaction, Navia isn’t really going to do anything for the Element as a whole – even with her best teams needing one other Geo support for the energy, that role is going to go to Zhongli in most cases, and Zhongli is a character who has enjoyed success largely despite his Element. That being said, this is a first step in the right direction for Geo, and the release of a new Artifact Set, Nighttime Whispers In The Echoing Woods, that boosts Geo DMG by 20% after using an Elemental Skill and by an extra whopping 150% while under the protection of a Crystallize shield, makes it very likely that it won’t be the last (this Set and Song Of Days Past, which translates Healing into DMG, will be obtainable through a new Domain).

While Navia will be joining Genshin Impact‘s roster in the first half of Version 4.3, a new four-star character named Chevreuse, will be making her debut in the second half, featured on Raiden Shogun and Yoimiya’s rerunning banners. Chevreuse, a Pyro polearm-user and Captain of Fontaine’s Special Security and Surveillance Patrol, makes use of the underrated Overloaded Elemental Reaction between Pyro and Electro, which knocks affected opponents back a short distance – when a character in her team triggers Overloaded, Chevreuse gains an Overcharged Ball that she can use during her Elemental Skill, entering Aiming Mode to fire and deal widespread Pyro DMG. During her Burst, she launches a grenade that explodes on contact with an opponent, creating smaller grenades that explode again after a short duration, dealing even more DMG. As someone who actually likes the Overloaded reaction, I’m very excited to test out Chevreuse’s kit.

Both Chevreuse and Navia will feature heavily in the version’s main Event, Roses And Muskets, which I gather is a festival to celebrate the fact that Fontaine did not sink beneath the waves of the Primordial Sea. Furina, no longer the Hydro Archon, is directing a film for the festival starring Navia, Chevreuse, journalist Charlotte, and special guests all the way from Inazuma, Kamisato Ayaka, Kamisato Ayato, and Yoimiya, whose inclusion on the cast-list might have something to do with the fact that Xavier of the Inazuma-based Tatarasuna Tales questline is listed as the film’s director. An as-yet unplayable character, Chiori of Chiori’s Boutique, is onboard as the art director, and of course, Furina assigns us, the player, to be her cameraperson. Scene-blocking, lighting and cinematography will be incorporated into several of the Event’s minigames, while other activities include…sniping opponents and sheepherding? I’m not sure if I totally understand those last two, but hey, I’ll do anything for more Primogems.

Following that, Arataki Itto and Kuki Shinobu arrive in Liyue Harbor for Shinobu’s class reunion, and Itto wastes no time setting up the Arataki Blazing Armor Beetle Boot Camp to bring the Inazuman art of beetle-fighting to Liyue. Much like the last iteration of this Event, players will commandeer a stag-beetle through progressively more challenging duels against the best players that Liyue has to offer, including some new characters. In Fontaine, the Lost Riches Event gives players another opportunity to claim a floating Seelie companion in a range of beautiful colors. And back in Mondstadt, the traveling salesman Liben returns at long last with a series of daily errands for players to complete in exchange for gifts, while surely tantalizing us with gossip about our next destination after Fontaine, the volcanic region of Natlan (about which we know next to nothing except what Neuvillette told us in Version 4.2, that the land is populated by both dragons and humans, and that the Fatui Harbinger Capitano seeks to exploit the permanent state of conflict between their peoples).

Chevreuse from Genshin Impact, standing on a street overlooking the Court of Fontaine. She is short, with long purple hair, and wears a stylized bright red military uniform with a tall round hat and an eyepatch. She is holding a musket in the firing position.
Chevreuse | nextrift.com

And apart from a few adjustments to the game’s interface and quality-of-life improvements (for instance, teleporting players automatically back to the “Start Challenge” button when they choose to re-enter a combat Domain, and providing players with better Artifact filters – nothing particularly revolutionary, just smart small stuff like that), there’s not a whole lot happening in Version 4.3, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Version 4.2 was already pretty overwhelming, Version 4.4 will be Lantern Rite to mark the Chinese New Year, then Dainsleif is scheduled to pop up again in a revelatory Interlude Quest before disappearing again for another year, new regions of Fontaine and Liyue are likely to become available, Furina’s second Story Quest will probably be a big deal, and the Fatui Harbinger Arlecchino is speculated to become playable before Version 5.0, so it’s okay to have a breather, you know?

Who will you be pulling for in Version 4.3, if anyone, and why or why not? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

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Genshin Impact Just Revealed The Cast Of Fontaine’s Archon Quest

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since the map of Teyvat, the world of Genshin Impact, expanded to include the region of Sumeru. In some ways, it feels like just yesterday, and I can clearly recall how I charged through the overgrown tunnel connecting Liyue to Sumeru moments after logging in that night (having positioned myself at the border of Liyue the day before) and found the landscape changed before my very eyes; and yet, it seems like so long ago that Sumeru’s lush green jungles and blazing golden deserts were unexplored still, almost inconceivable that there was a time when Withering Zones were still an issue for me and Dendro reactions were still strange and unfamiliar (today, I’m nearing 100% completion on all of Sumeru, I can hardly remember the last Withering Zone I encountered on my travels, least of all one that posed a problem, and it’s rare that I step out without at least one Dendro character in my party).

Official screenshot of Clorinde from Genshin Impact, a tall woman with long blue hair and purple eyes, aiming a white revolver at the camera. She wears a blue tricorn hat, a blue-and-white uniform, and white gloves.
Clorinde | dotesports.com

But while I can’t definitively say if my time in Sumeru flew by or passed slowly, it is coming to an end now, that much is indisputable. With the Fatui plot to install one of their own as Sumeru’s Archon foiled and their allies in the Sumeru Akademiya stripped of their titles and banished to the forests, Sumeru is in the hands of its “rightful” Archon, Nahida…and while I don’t trust her or any Archon to govern humans better than a Fatui Harbinger would, the game is downright insistent that I should, so I suppose I’ll just headcanon that Nahida delegates most of her responsibilities to Alhaitham and other sages while she and Scaramouche do the work that mortals cannot, burrowing deep into the Irminsul Tree in search of answers to their (and our) questions about Khaenri’ah, Celestia, the Traveler, and the truth of Teyvat.

Until they stumble across something big and call us back to Sumeru, however, the Traveler has no pressing business in the Nation of Wisdom and must continue their own journey of discovery, which leads northwest to Fontaine, where the deep blue waters of an inland sea are darkened by the ever-present shadow of Celestia, home to the Heavenly Principles that have for centuries watched silently over humanity, distributing Visions almost as freely as gifts, but not with good or generous intentions, if they’re anything like the Gnoses that Celestia uses to pull the strings on Teyvat’s seven Archons…or used to, perhaps. Four Archons have recently exchanged their Gnoses with the Fatui, whose Tsaritsa is the Cryo Archon and in possession of a Gnosis already. Just two remain, and one of these is in Fontaine. But the Fatui would be fools to try and take the Hydro Archon’s Gnosis literally out from under Celestia. I guess that would explain why the name of their organization is derived from the Latin word fatuus, meaning fool.

That being said, the Harbinger Arlecchino doesn’t strike me as a fool, not based on what we saw of her in A Winter Night’s Lazzo last year and certainly not after the release of a new trailer for Fontaine just last night, titled The Final Feast, that sets her up to be the Fontaine Archon Quest’s main antagonist. The governess of Snezhnaya’s House of the Hearth, where children forcibly taken from their homes are shaped into Fatui assassins and encouraged to kill everyone close to them who could become a potential weakness for them in the future, Arlecchino has experience with covering all her bases, and I can’t imagine that the Tsaritsa would entrust her with this delicate task if her plan wasn’t waterproof (get it, cuz Fontaine is the Hydro Archon’s nation?). I’m personally invested in Arlecchino’s success, because if she fails, my character will have to kill her, and I don’t know if I can physically bring myself to do that again, not after La Signora died for good. I’m sick and tired of HoYoverse killing off their villains unceremoniously when they know damn well that people would spend their entire life-savings on a devilishly hot evil woman. In a suit, no less!

Anyway, back to Arlecchino’s plan for capturing the Hydro Gnosis. Fascinatingly, it may involve Lyney and Lynette, two of the three characters from Fontaine who will become playable in Version 4.0, all three of whom are siblings. Lyney, a five-star Pyro bow-user, is a renowned magician who performs most nights at the Court of Fontaine (apparently a theater and opera-house, not to be confused with the Opera Epiclese, which amusingly is the only actual court-house in Fontaine, a paradox that cleverly illustrates the degree to which justice and spectacle have become hopelessly intertwined under the current Hydro Archon), with his eerily emotionless sister Lynette, a four-star Anemo sword-wielder, acting as his “Multi-Function Magic Assistant”. If you’ve been following leaks, you may have already been aware that Lyney, Lynette and Arlecchino are…acquainted, but the trailer essentially confirms it, with the siblings putting on a show for the Harbinger that earns stiff, short applause before she ascends to the stage herself and steals the show.

Official screenshot of Arlecchino from Genshin Impact, standing between Lynette on the left and Lyney on the right. Arlecchino is a tall, very pale woman with short, spiky white hair streaked with black, and red eyes. She wears a high-collared, long-sleeved white suit-jacket over a gray bodysuit. Lynette and Lyney have their heads bowed. They both have ashen hair, and similar magician's outfits, though Lynette's has teal-blue bows and Lyney's has wine-red bows, and Lynette has cat-ears in her hair.
(left to right) Lynette, Arlecchino, and Lyney | videogames.si.com

I’m also curious as to what role the third sibling, four-star Cryo claymore-user Freminet, plays in all of this, and why the trailer opens with him apparently drowning, given that he’s supposed to be one of Fontaine’s most accomplished and professional deep-sea divers (though I suppose if we’ve learned anything this past month, it’s that experience with the ocean doesn’t make it any less perilous). I assume it’s his voice that whispers the words “My mission…” as his body hits the water heavily and begins to sink, which is interesting because his official biography states explicitly that “as a classic lone wolf, [Freminet] never accepts commissions from others”, meaning this mission of his is likely something personal, something related to his siblings and the Fatui scheme in which they’re entangled. I guess we’ll have to wait for more details, but my mind is racing as I run through all the potential avenues this story could take.

And that’s before we factor in a dozen other characters, whom the trailer introduces in a cleverly-edited and cheerfully-scored montage that moves briskly through the streets and sewers that bridge the gap between the two sides of Fontaine’s capital city, the side belonging to the ruling class, all airy plazas, clean boulevards, and houses built to endure, and the side begrudgingly allocated to the working class, a dark, grimy, hazardous maze of tunnels and catacombs. All the while, Lyney is explaining to his audience how a cunning magician wins control of the surprisingly gullible human brain by fooling their senses – “People don’t realize how much they expect their eyes to tell them the truth”. I have to wonder if this magician’s strategy will be used on a much grander scale in Fontaine by the Hydro Archon herself, and if Genshin Impact has the courage to make a firm stance against political propaganda, censorship, and the aggrandization of law-enforcement.

The characters introduced in the trailer presumably comprise the main cast of Fontaine’s Archon Quest, and include Charlotte, an upbeat journalist from The Steambird whom many players will have already encountered in Version 3.7; Navia, a fancily-dressed woman with a Geo Vision (I’m only being slightly hyperbolic when I say that Genshin Impact remembering to make new Geo characters is more shocking than anything else I’ve seen thus far from Fontaine); Wriothesley, a handsome fellow named for the historical figure Thomas Wriothesley, remembered primarily as a power-hungry advisor to King Henry VIII who happily betrayed Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, to his death; Clorinde, possibly a police-captain by the cut of her uniform, who carries a revolver, earning a name derived from the female warrior Clorinda in Jerusalem Delivered, an ahistorical account of the First Crusade, by way of frigates in the French navy during the Napoleonic War; Siegwinne, a half-Melusine character whose name, according to one source, comes from the Medieval German epic poem Wolfdietrich, the titular protagonist of which is a dragon-slayer; and Neuvillette, the Chief Justice of Fontaine, who shares a name with a small town in northern France.

With the exception of the Hydro Archon, Neuvillette is probably the most powerful person in Fontaine and also the most interesting, not only because he’s tall and attractive with a veritable mane of white hair and a deep, luscious voice (though he is interesting for all of those reasons, don’t get me wrong), but because of the peculiar arrangement between him and his Nation’s Archon, who sits in on trials and apparently has a habit of being loud and disruptive, presumably swaying the opinions of jurors, intimidating witnesses, and throwing tantrums if “her side” doesn’t win. Her very presence in the courtroom is a stark reminder of the ways in which the Nation of Justice has failed to live up to its own Ideal, but Neuvillette can’t throw her out if she won’t go, so he tolerates the complaints and rude remarks she hurls at him from her theater-box, perhaps by assuring himself that the public will rise up against her and clear his path to the top.

Genshin Impact has gone back-and-forth and back-and-forth again on the subject of Archons, what ought to be done with them and what can be done with them, but if any an Archon deserves to be deposed, it’s Focalors or Furina (the former is her “true name”, also that of a demon in the Ars Goetia who sinks warships, while the latter is the name she uses in her day-to-day life, and belongs to a little-known Roman goddess of springs). That’s not a bad thing. I adore Focalors and I’m tempted to start saving for her debut banner based solely on the fact that she has the personality of a gremlin. But I also know that Genshin Impact has a tendency to try and hand-wave away every Archon’s mistakes with elaborate excuses for why they didn’t know and couldn’t possibly have known what was happening under their watch. That worked once, just barely, with Ei, but even in that case I was disappointed that the game didn’t allow her to be truly morally ambiguous, and I don’t think they can realistically get away with it a second time. It’s okay for characters to be really rotten!

Official screenshot of Focalors from Genshin Impact, waving a burning photograph in front of her face. She has short white hair, with streaks of light-blue through it, and blue eyes, the left somewhat darker than the right. She wears a small blue top-hat perched on the left side of her head, a dark blue jacket with a frilly black collar and large golden cuffs, and gloves, one black, the other white.
Focalors | pockettactics.com

And that’s not to say Focalors can’t have noble motives for doing really horrible things. I have to assume that she’s been living in fear of Celestia for a long time, and that she’s so quick to condemn others, even many of her own citizens, to a life of suffering in the shadows because it’s better for everyone if the gods in Celestia only see perfection when they look down on Fontaine, or they might decide one day to wipe the entire nation – and its people – off the map, just as they did with Khaenri’ah when they disapproved of what they saw there. Hence the need for all these layers of illusion, all the smoke and mirrors…maybe it started as a way to keep Fontaine safe (as an Archon should), and inevitably spiraled out of control as more and more people were condemned for increasingly smaller and smaller crimes. Ironically, when this environment Focalors has created becomes unsustainable the nation will collapse in on itself and then they’ll be screwed, but change is needed and however it comes about, the people of Fontaine will probably be better off rebuilding their nation from scratch than they are with an Archon passing judgement on every move they make.

Well, I’ve rambled long enough. What do you think of the trailer for Fontaine, and the drip-marketing for Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

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Everything We Learned From The Genshin Impact Version 3.8 Special Program

Before Genshin Impact players leave behind the golden sands of Sumeru for the fjords of Fontaine, HoYoverse has prepared one last desert adventure for the Traveler to undertake in Version 3.8, meaning that this year there will be no sojourn to the Golden Apple Archipelago that has traditionally brought players so much joy every summer since the game’s launch. Still, we’ll have a new map to explore for a limited time that will provide rich rewards ahead of Fontaine’s release, a grandly whimsical Event Storyline which we can safely assume will segue into the upcoming nation’s Archon Quest, a main cast of four seemingly random characters with entire chapters worth of hidden lore between them, and a voice cameo from the Hexenzirkel’s mysterious leader, Alice. So it’s basically the Golden Apple Archipelago, in all but name and aesthetic.

A screenshot from Genshin Impact Version 3.8. A small wooden vessel, shaped vaguely like a boat with helicopter blades on top, propels itself forward along a slender wooden track suspended in mid-air above a jungle.
Adventures in Bottleland | gematsu.com

“Bottleland” is perhaps not the cleverest name for the setting of this summer’s cornerstone Event, whose participants have been personally selected by Alice to fill the roles of archetypal characters in an in-game series of short plays collectively titled The Magic Bottle, but the area itself is visually distinct, an emerald-hued oasis encircled by the desert, where an abandoned theater and carnival rides in various stages of dilapidation are linked by the circuitous track of a treacherous roller-coaster that I can’t wait to climb onboard. The Traveler has appropriately been cast in the prominent role of the “Adventurer” seeking the Magic Bottle of legend, with Paimon, Collei, Eula, and Sangonomiya Kokomi joining the ensemble in bit-parts, but the stars of the show are Alice’s own daughter, Klee, playing the “Little Mage”, and Kaeya, the “Dagger Thief”, who are also the only two actors who have made any effort to get into-character with new outfits, soon to be available as alternate skins (Klee’s can be purchased in the shop for roughly $30, while Kaeya’s is a reward for collecting tokens scattered throughout Bottleland).

Other activities in Bottleland include minigames galore, and if tons of easily obtainable Primogems aren’t incentive enough for you to shoot balloons with a water-cannon, dance in the spotlight to burn up enemies on the theater’s stage, or play pinball with finches (I didn’t fully understand that last one, either, it’s not just you), then a free copy of Layla might sweeten the deal. No new characters will join Genshin Impact‘s roster in Version 3.8, but players will have the extremely rare chance to pick up Cryo claymore-user Eula, who holds the record for the fewest reruns of any five-star character (exactly one, over five-hundred days ago) in a game that has the ability to rotate character banners either more frequently, or consistently, but won’t, for whatever reason. If you don’t pull on Eula’s banner now, there’s no knowing when she’ll come back, if ever, but is it worth it when Fontaine is right around the corner and even in Version 3.8, other tantalizing options include Sangonomiya Kokomi, who synergizes beautifully with Bloom-reaction based teams, Wanderer, an exceptional Anemo unit, and Klee, who is not great but might see more use with her new alternate skin coming out?

Version 3.8 will wind down with a couple of smaller-scale Events – Shared Sight, in which players will use an experimental device to locate animals by seeing through their eyes; Perilous Expedition, a classic combat Domain; and a rerun of Adventurer’s Trials, a really fun Event where specific characters’ special abilities must be utilized to complete challenges tailored just for them (for instance, using Heizou’s unique combination of punches and high kicks to play soccer with Slimes). Additionally, a Hangout Event for Kaeya was announced, but very little of the story was teased. It’s not much, but there’s never much to do in the last few weeks before a major update, which I figure is intentional as it encourages players who didn’t speed-run an entire nation upon release to go back and finish up outstanding quests.

A screenshot from Genshin Impact. Melusine, a diminutive pink creature wearing a blue police uniform, strolls down a wide boulevard between rows of tall, elegant buildings advertising, among other things, fine clothes and whimsical mechanical toys. Outside the stores, colorfully-dressed aristocrats are window-shopping, small dogs wearing wigs and hats wait for their owners, and golden robots trudge along carrying heavy bags for their owners. The atmosphere is one of lazy opulence.
Fontaine | Twitter @GenshinImpact

But I can’t blame any player for having their sights set on Fontaine, to the exclusion of all else, especially today, following our first (official) look at the upcoming Nation of Justice, where colorfully-dressed ladies and gentlemen waited on by servient automatons flaunt their exorbitant wealth on the wide, straight, boulevards and in the plazas, for the most part blissfully unaware or deliberately ignorant to the fact that their pride and joy, their beautiful, modern capital city, stands precariously poised above a seething crowd of lower-class laborers who make their cushy lifestyle possible, but are forced to live in the sewers that sunlight does not breach. Why does the Hydro Archon allow the scales of justice to be unbalanced, and who does she serve; her people or the gods who reside above Fontaine? Perhaps she is to them what her nation’s poor and oppressed are to her, barely of note? Whatever’s going on, one thing is for certain: Fontaine’s glittery façade hides ever-widening cracks in the nation’s foundations that could swallow all of its people, rich and poor, gods and mortals alike.

Also, mermaids. Fontaine has mermaids. Specifically melusine, a lesser-known sea-spirit from Western European folklore that has as much in common with descriptions of dragons as with mermaids, typically being depicted as a woman with a fish’s tail and wings, often with the ability to shapeshift. The Melusine of Fontaine are a diminutive species like the Aranara and Pari of Sumeru, not particularly humanoid but fully integrated into human society and working alongside them, and I can’t wait to find out how that came to pass, and whether the connections between the French melusine and dragons implies a similar link between the Melusine of Fontaine and the dragons that once ruled Teyvat.

Screenshot from Genshin Impact. Melusine, a diminutive pink creature in a blue police uniform, creeps through the dimly-lit sewers of Fontaine, where underpaid laborers in aprons toil away at dangerous jobs. In the distance, a circular window lets in a little natural light.
Sewers of Fontaine | Twitter @GenshinImpact

But now you know what I think, I want to hear what excites you about Version 3.8 and about Fontaine, as well as what worries you, like the possibility of some infuriating oxygen mechanic hindering endless underwater exploration, or of squid enemies that hit you with ink and leave you blinded, hopelessly disoriented, in the dark (can you tell I have thalassophobia, a fear of the deep ocean, and teuthiphobia, a fear of squid?) As always, I’ll ask you to refrain from discussing leaks regarding unreleased content, but feel free to share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!