Funnily enough, I got the vibes of said political intrigued not from Ayato's story quest, but Sumeru's Archon quest where Nahida fights Dottore not through violence but outwitting each other by just talking to each other, it may not be the same set-up but it delivers that intrigued that makes political stories interesting, a battle of intelligence.
I also got that vibe, at first I was like woowww this political stuff is cool but I can’t explain any right now cuz I forgot😭 the quest was still mid imo and it definitely didn’t make me care about ayato at all. I feel like if only he had gotten an appearance before his banner he would be more implemted in the story cuz I really didn’t care about him or his rank as the yashrio commissioner as I do Ayaka. Like imagine, they didn’t have to pull that lame explanation in his demo on how the resistances showed up at tenshukaku and instead we see it…
i'm happy that people are analyzing this story quest because it's always nice to try and see things from other perspective. i'm one of the people who like ayato as a character and i just wanted to learn about his life and kinda have like a ''date'' lol or something about him, but now that i watched this video it's true that hoyo pick curtain NPCs that will show a side in the playable character and make it still about the character. great video!
THIS Ayato is literally my favorite character the moment I saw him and I knew he was the kind of char I've always liked. Seemingly tough and cold but genuinely cares about those close to him, and it was upsetting to me that SO many people misinterpreted his whole character and called him bland/boring without even bothering to look further into him to the point they actually hate him?? I get not liking a character but hating on them and deliberately mischaracterizing them for it just ruins the whole story to begin with. I was just thinking about making a video on Ayato to bring light to his mischaracterization but I saw this in my recommended and I just KNEW I had to watch this
So first of all.... I had forgotten this quest so a recap of the plot initially would have been great. The more so because the plot is so complex that reading the wiki summary is of no help whatsoever. I'm not sure if I could even summarize it adequately even after reading through a bunch of the lines. Let me try: Chisato and Kamaji are getting married. These are the two that Traveler meets and smuggles a love letter between early in arriving in Inazuma. So they are legitimately in love. But it seems that the timing of the marriage is bad because while originally they were both minor characters, the events of the Archon quest have led to both of their fathers, the prior heads of the two commissions that their respective families dominate, being arrested. So now Hiiragi Chisato is the acting head of the Chisato clan and therefore head of the Kanjou commission. It's not quite as bad for Kamaji because he has an elder brother (is that right?) so he's not the head of the Kujo clan. The problem is with Chisato because after they get married she'll be considered a part of the Kujo clan with her husband, and therefore the Hiiragi clan will have no head and one of the lesser clans associated with the Kanjou commission will most likely lead a power struggle to unseat the Hiirgais as top clan of that commission. And that's bad because....? Ei just hates change. The head of the Kujo clan is a traitor and Ei is still thinking of letting them continue to be the head clan of the Tenryou commission. As Ayato says, "The Almighty Shogun has always despised these pathetic power games. As a Commissioner, I am a servant of the Shogun, and it is therefore my duty to handle these tiresome matters on her behalf." As for the power games it seems someone has pushed the two lovers to rush to marriage sooner than they had thought by sending a proposal to Kamaji as if it had been sent from Chisato. Well it's not like they aren't wanting to get married. By the time it's revealed they are being manipulated (and the letter wasn't just one of them trying to be coy about bringing up the topic of marriage), Chisato is in a bind because she doesn't want to permanently harm her clan, but she does want to get married, but she doesn't want the proximal cause of her marriage to be some petty political manipulation either. Then the political faction manipulating her sends out a rumour that the wedding is on, making it very hard to reverse, now that's it's "gone public". And Ayato basically fixes everything, acting very cleverly. Is that about it?
I don’t think it’s because she hates change. She certainly did before and during the archon quest but not now. She hates power games because they are driven by selfish intentions and usually use similar tactics as the fatui and Tenryo commission. They are just something that anybody not personally benefiting from it would dislike.
This is interesting... I've never hated the outright idea of story quests focusing heavily on npcs, but I've always wondered why I prefer some of them more than others. I liked Venti's, Yelan's, and Tighnari's, to name a few, but Xiao's, Alhaitham's, Nahida's 1st, Nilou's, Kazuha's, Cyno's, and Ayato's were boring to me to varying degrees (I don't hate any of them though, mind). I'm probably just too dense to make the thematic connections between the featured npcs and the characters, yeah lmao, because it's not the npcs themselves I dislike -- I have a LOT of favorite npcs in Genshin! -- it's just some of the stories I can't get that invested in, compared to others. The comparison between Yelan's story quest and Ayato's story quest is especially fascinating though wrt my vastly different reactions between them: both of them involve working together with a playable character who masterminds their way into figuring out and thwarting the plot of an npc, with very little actual new insight given into said playable character, and yet, I didn't mind too much not learning more about Yelan herself, and I was VASTLY more engrossed in Zhiyi's story than... any of the npcs in Ayato's story quest. I think part of it also has to do with the fact that I at least had (the excellent) Perilous Trail interlude to get a good sense of Yelan's character, but with Ayato, all I really have is his story quest (he's barely in the Irodori Festival).... and I was really hoping to see him interacting with Ayaka and Thoma, to see more of his quirks and get more of an insight into the struggles he had to go through when he was growing up to save his family; there's a very compelling and emotional character buried deep in there, but his story quest didn't give me... any of that for Ayato, and on top of that, political drama I couldn't understand and didn't care about, when I was already disgruntled about Inazuma's writing as a whole. Maybe there could have been a way to do a politics-focused quest for him that gave me a better insight into the Ayato we read about in his lore, but this wasn't it lol; just give me the emotional interactions between the Kamisato family 😭
In cases, npc centric quests make sense and are really good, for example Yoimiya's quests (both first and second) had very intriguing npcs and yoimiya is a character that is very compassionate and known to be there to help anyone in need, we learn more abt her through her relationships with the characters and we see a more mature side to her in helping out those npcs and we get to learn more abt her love for fireworks Nilou's quest too was good, I loved the bazaar in the AQ and how theyre practically a family, made up of artists, people who are shunned because of the Akadymia's practices, yes I wish we got to learn more abt maybe why Nilou ended up there in the first place but the quest being centered around the members of the bazaar, and a girls relationship with her father was extremely touching and highlighted (again) so much of Nilou's character More recently Furina's storyquest was a perfect example of a npcs reflecting the pc, the story of the little oceanid reflected Furina extremely well, and having Furina meet and learn abt people who were affected by the disaster she worked so hard to prevent was great, because it gave her that human insight towards human struggle, something she lacked because she couldn't even attempt that sort of connection without her identity being exposed, not to mention having her be able to accept herself and love acting again and not be tied down to her bad experience with it in the past 500 years Imo Ayato's didn't highlight much of his character, the political intrigue was interesting enough, and there was something to be had with how it seemed to reflect Ayato's struggle once he became the head of his clan but it wasn't as well done as the others, and there def could've been a better way to go abt it, especially in comparison to Ayaka's storyquest and how much we got to see her parents death affecting her I REALLY wanted to see more of the Ayato who had to struggle, especially with how much expectations he had to deal with as the oldest son and having inherited the clan at such a young age, the storyquest was more of a dive into the political system of Inazuma as a whole rather than a dive into Ayato as a politician imo if that makes sense, which is why it felt very lacking
My problem with the Ayato quest is neither because it's political nor because it's an "NPC story", but simply because the writing isn't good enough. I do like political stories but writing a good one requires a lot of complexity with character relations and a good backstory. That political aspect in Ayato's story quest is actually very basic. It's just some dude who wants to gain power by making his enemies lose theirs. We don't even know how the Commissions work specifically so we're just led to assume that all of Ayato's actions are some 4D chess moves. "Oh I actually knew about Matsuura's evil plot but let him do it halfway so that I can trap him" or whatever, we never even saw him do the hard work. By the time the traveler comes along majority of the plot is already done, we're just there to witness the spectacle. The writing itself is lazily designed so that Ayato would look smart without actually showing it to us. Every time I see players say "they just didn't like the quest because it's political" they all look so pretentious. If you actually read political stories you would know this is a bad one.
I think it was Inazuma writing in general. Similar to what you wrote I also felt with Kokomi. The strategies, plans and schemes are there because the writers tell us so. But there is no real buildup or explaining of any of those. Ironically, it's something which seems to be typical for (starting) light novels. So in that sense, at least it fits the "Inazuma: novels nation" theme.
Inazuma is based on Edo Period which would indicate that their government is more or less a dictatorship where the Shogun’s top advisors try to convince him (or in this case her) to pass certain decrees. The politics was also very reminiscent of Japanese feudal politics where power struggles between clans came down to a series of marriage alliances. I don’t view Ayato as a benevolent Inazuma politician, but instead as the pragmatic head of the Kamisato clan. Preventing the marriage between Chisato and Kamaji was just as much about maintaining the balance of power as it is about ensuring that two other most powerful positions are occupied by close allies. Additionally, in the long term a marriage between Chisato and Kamaji would threaten to isolate the Yashiro Commission by bringing the Kanjou and Tennryou Commissions closer together, Matsuura even points this out.
i definetly agree with you in terms of npc involvment in quests and you put my feelings about ayatos sq into words. still, for me, ayato was a big disappointment overall and i think part of it is that he was teased to be this big thing, ayakas older brother, fandom went insane for him, the scraps we had about him were interesting and then... he couldn't live up to it. its such a shame he baerly gets any involvement in quests and his own story quest is underwhelming AND his role in last events was this weird mastermind type ?? i feel like we baerly got to know him
I don't necessarily disagree with your points as to how it could be made better, but I do think some of the aspects that it left somewhat vague are implied via the Archon Quest; for example, why ensuring a balance of power is maintained is so important. Still, in any of these cases, the framing could be more explicit so that the concerns feel more immediate. Overall, though, very well thought out and I appreciate you actually looking at what the quest was trying to achieve and assessing it based on THAT. One thing I feel the average player fails to do, whether it be the writing or even the gameplay, is look at what any given decision may have been trying to achieve. Sure, whether the player liked a decision or not matters, but truthfully, what matters more is whether the team managed to achieve their own goal for any given decision. What kind of game HoYo is making is something that is far less flexible than whether they are achieving that vision. Feedback is much more effective when it seeks to help the team better achieve their goals rather than try to tell them their goals should change. Again, it's not that that kind of feedback is invalid, but it's far less helpful. NPCs are an important part of Genshin's story and world. Genshin is an open world game, and the approach HoYo took when deciding what that meant for their game is that the world of Teyvat itself is the main character. That means every person, every place, every historical event, they are all a tapestry that make up a piece of a whole. That's not to say every NPC has depth, there are many that serve little functional purpose, but the general principle is that everyone should matter. It's a point put forward by Dainsleif explicitly in his third question, whether Vision holders hold more importance in the eyes of the Gods over regular people. There's a sort of irony in that players are like the gods of the world and they often view NPCs as lesser, sadly mirroring this conundrum. I always thought it interesting that the one time an Archon Quest was blocked by a World Quest, it was the one that most directly inspected the plight of a human who at least appeared to have the kind of ambition that would grant a Vision, yet was never granted one, making one wonder why the Gods seemingly disregard certain people...only for many players to disregard her on their way to what they deemed more important. I've always wondered if that was deliberate. But in any case, I think much of the "meaning of the journey" is lost if you disregard the NPCs, as its the playable characters who are, in their own ways, fighting for a better world. They're not fighting for a better world just for Vision holders, but for everyone. The playable characters value "NPCs" greatly and yet players do not, and that's one reason I think there's often dissonance between what players want out of the story and what it gives them.
So your criticism is that there's no stakes to whether another clan takes over from the Hiirgai --like who cares? In fact since their head was just arrested for corruption maybe they ought to be kicked out? And the answer is that in Inazuma this is all you need for a rich amount of gossip and intrigue. The idea of some terribly unimportant slight re-arrangement in the top clan within one of the commissions. No policy change. No effect on almost any member of the public. They're all just a bunch of gossips and this is basically the equivalent of a royal marriage that has a hint of scandal. Like the British king marrying a Catholic. It's completely unimportant to the people materially but at the same time hugely important to them socially and in terms of gossip. I bet there are plenty of people - ordinary people - who would take the view that Chisato is a b-i-tch for doing her clan wrong if she goes ahead and married and others saying, no but this is a love match she must follow her heart. It's like the way people have different views of Princess Diana. Btw Matsuura is from the Kujo clan -- he isn't from a clan related to the Kanjou commission. His motives are more subtle than "I want to be head of a commission". It's more like "if I cause in-fighting in the Kanjou commission it'll help the weakened Tenryou commission keep it's own edge within the three" And in fact the way Ayato manipulates him proves that Matsuura holds the good reputation of the commissions as more important than his own personal politics --- and that Ayato KNOWS that he does. Ayato's plan ONLY works because he knows Matsuura would hate to seriously cause any serious loss of face to the three commission system as a whole. So it's all VERY subtle and VERY minor political posturing. And Matsuura is NOT much of a bad guy. I am not sure Matsuura betrays anyone. He's promoting his clan and commission. He just tries to play political games that Ayato knows Ei hates. Plus Ayato doesn't want a royal wedding tarnished with this crap either for reputation of Inazuma reasons or personally hurting Chisato reasons - both falling under his commission's legitimate concerns. He's head of the commissions to make weddings run smoothly after all. ------------------------------- To make this plot clearer maybe they should have had some of the peasants gossiping about the marriage say something bad about Chisato along the lines of "but won't she bring disrespect on her father's clan like this?" and bring out the Princess Diana analogy. ------------------------------- On reflection I quite like how pathetically NOTHING this entire plot is because it highlights just how placid and "eternal" Inazuma politics are. To Inazuma this is what counts as a HUGE scandal. In any other country it would be nothing. And it's even far LESS of a scandal than your video suggests I think. I agree they needed to say something like "if the marriage is delayed a couple of years then the Hiiragi clan will have time to adopt a son from the branch family and prepare them to be the new clan head ". IE bring in a male cousin. The unspoken implication is that with a little time the problem goes away and the lovers can get married. There has to be some way for an heirless clan to fix that issue of course, but they don't mention that in game. There's is NEVER any suggestion that the two won't get married eventually.
i didn't mind it being npc sentric quest cuz how ayato just shits on tht npc however would have been cooler if yae miko, sara or even shogun showed up since they r important figures in inzauma like kujou sara is struggling to uncover some sort of corruption with the commisions so what happened in main story won't happen again and ayato hears her and decides to take action. at the end they could have presented their cases to the shogun for her to be the judge could have beeb cooler while i agree with u tht npcs r here to show how the world works and through them we learn about the world and about the playable characters but it's when story makes these npcs be to CENTRAL point of a main story line to the point traveler forms a bond with these npcs and tht we r supposed to feel sorry or bad for them examples: teppei. we could have explored kokomi's struggle to fight the war, gorou's udying loyalty and how he'd support her whether by fighting or emotionally (just imagine how many heart strings their realtionship will pull), we could have learned why these two sides r fighting and how long their anomosity was brewing between them from kokomi. also wht stress this puts kokomi in, her convictions her drive, etc. kokomi should have be the central part of tht part pf the story but instead it was some npc tht we can find anywhere and all we did is talk to some other npc guards. in sumeru we also have to care for this dumbozard lady npc character who escaped from home just to see some dance and being spoiled little brat. there instead we could have learned about dehya and how she struggled as a child growing and was forced to become stronger and fight just to be able to provide for herself and throught tht we could have learned the dicrimination tht people in the desert face by the academya. there was so much potential and they wasted it on some npcs. idc about some sick npc i care about stuggle of the nations tht in civil war and how they overcome it in order to move to a more peaceful way of living with each other, how people in the tropics and people in the desert will understand each other and learn to be more open minded and how characters navigate through tht. in hsr it was done well. the way they handled npcs and characters was well done. characters got their character development and it also made me be actually feel empathetic to npcs. example: in belobog overwolrd and underground were sealed off for 10 years. there was a man whose daughter was left on the overworld as he was stuck in the underword. and now we finished the story and blockages was lifted he was reunited with his daughter as she was all grown up and had a son. tht was short and sweet. they also used npcs as exposition to showcase the undergound's struggle to survive. in ayato's case as i said i didn't mind being npcs here because they serve a purpose. it's to show ayato's skills as a polition as well as his communications skills not to mention his kindless despite being overly strategical. he is manupalitve and gets things done by careful plans and it involves playing with people's mind. but also he doesn't do tht to innocent people. he uses his skill to help those in need and tht shows his character. these npcs in his quest were only there to sing his praises and show us how cool he actually is. THIS IS HOW U USE NPCS RIGHT
I personally just realy fisliked the fact that we stoped 2 people who genuinly love eachother from geting maried because "mah political situation". In isolation, the quest plays out like Ayato is just manipulating everone for his own benifit. I know that's not the case but i only know that for meta reasons.
Funnily enough, I got the vibes of said political intrigued not from Ayato's story quest, but Sumeru's Archon quest where Nahida fights Dottore not through violence but outwitting each other by just talking to each other, it may not be the same set-up but it delivers that intrigued that makes political stories interesting, a battle of intelligence.
I also got that vibe, at first I was like woowww this political stuff is cool but I can’t explain any right now cuz I forgot😭 the quest was still mid imo and it definitely didn’t make me care about ayato at all. I feel like if only he had gotten an appearance before his banner he would be more implemted in the story cuz I really didn’t care about him or his rank as the yashrio commissioner as I do Ayaka. Like imagine, they didn’t have to pull that lame explanation in his demo on how the resistances showed up at tenshukaku and instead we see it…
i'm happy that people are analyzing this story quest because it's always nice to try and see things from other perspective. i'm one of the people who like ayato as a character and i just wanted to learn about his life and kinda have like a ''date'' lol or something about him, but now that i watched this video it's true that hoyo pick curtain NPCs that will show a side in the playable character and make it still about the character. great video!
THIS
Ayato is literally my favorite character the moment I saw him and I knew he was the kind of char I've always liked. Seemingly tough and cold but genuinely cares about those close to him, and it was upsetting to me that SO many people misinterpreted his whole character and called him bland/boring without even bothering to look further into him to the point they actually hate him?? I get not liking a character but hating on them and deliberately mischaracterizing them for it just ruins the whole story to begin with.
I was just thinking about making a video on Ayato to bring light to his mischaracterization but I saw this in my recommended and I just KNEW I had to watch this
So first of all.... I had forgotten this quest so a recap of the plot initially would have been great. The more so because the plot is so complex that reading the wiki summary is of no help whatsoever. I'm not sure if I could even summarize it adequately even after reading through a bunch of the lines. Let me try:
Chisato and Kamaji are getting married. These are the two that Traveler meets and smuggles a love letter between early in arriving in Inazuma. So they are legitimately in love. But it seems that the timing of the marriage is bad because while originally they were both minor characters, the events of the Archon quest have led to both of their fathers, the prior heads of the two commissions that their respective families dominate, being arrested. So now Hiiragi Chisato is the acting head of the Chisato clan and therefore head of the Kanjou commission. It's not quite as bad for Kamaji because he has an elder brother (is that right?) so he's not the head of the Kujo clan. The problem is with Chisato because after they get married she'll be considered a part of the Kujo clan with her husband, and therefore the Hiiragi clan will have no head and one of the lesser clans associated with the Kanjou commission will most likely lead a power struggle to unseat the Hiirgais as top clan of that commission.
And that's bad because....? Ei just hates change. The head of the Kujo clan is a traitor and Ei is still thinking of letting them continue to be the head clan of the Tenryou commission. As Ayato says,
"The Almighty Shogun has always despised these pathetic power games. As a Commissioner, I am a servant of the Shogun, and it is therefore my duty to handle these tiresome matters on her behalf."
As for the power games it seems someone has pushed the two lovers to rush to marriage sooner than they had thought by sending a proposal to Kamaji as if it had been sent from Chisato. Well it's not like they aren't wanting to get married. By the time it's revealed they are being manipulated (and the letter wasn't just one of them trying to be coy about bringing up the topic of marriage), Chisato is in a bind because she doesn't want to permanently harm her clan, but she does want to get married, but she doesn't want the proximal cause of her marriage to be some petty political manipulation either.
Then the political faction manipulating her sends out a rumour that the wedding is on, making it very hard to reverse, now that's it's "gone public".
And Ayato basically fixes everything, acting very cleverly.
Is that about it?
I don’t think it’s because she hates change. She certainly did before and during the archon quest but not now. She hates power games because they are driven by selfish intentions and usually use similar tactics as the fatui and Tenryo commission. They are just something that anybody not personally benefiting from it would dislike.
This is interesting... I've never hated the outright idea of story quests focusing heavily on npcs, but I've always wondered why I prefer some of them more than others. I liked Venti's, Yelan's, and Tighnari's, to name a few, but Xiao's, Alhaitham's, Nahida's 1st, Nilou's, Kazuha's, Cyno's, and Ayato's were boring to me to varying degrees (I don't hate any of them though, mind). I'm probably just too dense to make the thematic connections between the featured npcs and the characters, yeah lmao, because it's not the npcs themselves I dislike -- I have a LOT of favorite npcs in Genshin! -- it's just some of the stories I can't get that invested in, compared to others.
The comparison between Yelan's story quest and Ayato's story quest is especially fascinating though wrt my vastly different reactions between them: both of them involve working together with a playable character who masterminds their way into figuring out and thwarting the plot of an npc, with very little actual new insight given into said playable character, and yet, I didn't mind too much not learning more about Yelan herself, and I was VASTLY more engrossed in Zhiyi's story than... any of the npcs in Ayato's story quest. I think part of it also has to do with the fact that I at least had (the excellent) Perilous Trail interlude to get a good sense of Yelan's character, but with Ayato, all I really have is his story quest (he's barely in the Irodori Festival).... and I was really hoping to see him interacting with Ayaka and Thoma, to see more of his quirks and get more of an insight into the struggles he had to go through when he was growing up to save his family; there's a very compelling and emotional character buried deep in there, but his story quest didn't give me... any of that for Ayato, and on top of that, political drama I couldn't understand and didn't care about, when I was already disgruntled about Inazuma's writing as a whole. Maybe there could have been a way to do a politics-focused quest for him that gave me a better insight into the Ayato we read about in his lore, but this wasn't it lol; just give me the emotional interactions between the Kamisato family 😭
In cases, npc centric quests make sense and are really good, for example Yoimiya's quests (both first and second) had very intriguing npcs and yoimiya is a character that is very compassionate and known to be there to help anyone in need, we learn more abt her through her relationships with the characters and we see a more mature side to her in helping out those npcs and we get to learn more abt her love for fireworks
Nilou's quest too was good, I loved the bazaar in the AQ and how theyre practically a family, made up of artists, people who are shunned because of the Akadymia's practices, yes I wish we got to learn more abt maybe why Nilou ended up there in the first place but the quest being centered around the members of the bazaar, and a girls relationship with her father was extremely touching and highlighted (again) so much of Nilou's character
More recently Furina's storyquest was a perfect example of a npcs reflecting the pc, the story of the little oceanid reflected Furina extremely well, and having Furina meet and learn abt people who were affected by the disaster she worked so hard to prevent was great, because it gave her that human insight towards human struggle, something she lacked because she couldn't even attempt that sort of connection without her identity being exposed, not to mention having her be able to accept herself and love acting again and not be tied down to her bad experience with it in the past 500 years
Imo Ayato's didn't highlight much of his character, the political intrigue was interesting enough, and there was something to be had with how it seemed to reflect Ayato's struggle once he became the head of his clan but it wasn't as well done as the others, and there def could've been a better way to go abt it, especially in comparison to Ayaka's storyquest and how much we got to see her parents death affecting her I REALLY wanted to see more of the Ayato who had to struggle, especially with how much expectations he had to deal with as the oldest son and having inherited the clan at such a young age, the storyquest was more of a dive into the political system of Inazuma as a whole rather than a dive into Ayato as a politician imo if that makes sense, which is why it felt very lacking
My problem with the Ayato quest is neither because it's political nor because it's an "NPC story", but simply because the writing isn't good enough. I do like political stories but writing a good one requires a lot of complexity with character relations and a good backstory. That political aspect in Ayato's story quest is actually very basic. It's just some dude who wants to gain power by making his enemies lose theirs. We don't even know how the Commissions work specifically so we're just led to assume that all of Ayato's actions are some 4D chess moves. "Oh I actually knew about Matsuura's evil plot but let him do it halfway so that I can trap him" or whatever, we never even saw him do the hard work. By the time the traveler comes along majority of the plot is already done, we're just there to witness the spectacle. The writing itself is lazily designed so that Ayato would look smart without actually showing it to us.
Every time I see players say "they just didn't like the quest because it's political" they all look so pretentious. If you actually read political stories you would know this is a bad one.
I think it was Inazuma writing in general. Similar to what you wrote I also felt with Kokomi. The strategies, plans and schemes are there because the writers tell us so. But there is no real buildup or explaining of any of those. Ironically, it's something which seems to be typical for (starting) light novels. So in that sense, at least it fits the "Inazuma: novels nation" theme.
Inazuma is based on Edo Period which would indicate that their government is more or less a dictatorship where the Shogun’s top advisors try to convince him (or in this case her) to pass certain decrees.
The politics was also very reminiscent of Japanese feudal politics where power struggles between clans came down to a series of marriage alliances.
I don’t view Ayato as a benevolent Inazuma politician, but instead as the pragmatic head of the Kamisato clan. Preventing the marriage between Chisato and Kamaji was just as much about maintaining the balance of power as it is about ensuring that two other most powerful positions are occupied by close allies. Additionally, in the long term a marriage between Chisato and Kamaji would threaten to isolate the Yashiro Commission by bringing the Kanjou and Tennryou Commissions closer together, Matsuura even points this out.
i definetly agree with you in terms of npc involvment in quests and you put my feelings about ayatos sq into words.
still, for me, ayato was a big disappointment overall and i think part of it is that he was teased to be this big thing, ayakas older brother, fandom went insane for him, the scraps we had about him were interesting and then... he couldn't live up to it. its such a shame he baerly gets any involvement in quests and his own story quest is underwhelming AND his role in last events was this weird mastermind type ?? i feel like we baerly got to know him
I don't necessarily disagree with your points as to how it could be made better, but I do think some of the aspects that it left somewhat vague are implied via the Archon Quest; for example, why ensuring a balance of power is maintained is so important. Still, in any of these cases, the framing could be more explicit so that the concerns feel more immediate.
Overall, though, very well thought out and I appreciate you actually looking at what the quest was trying to achieve and assessing it based on THAT. One thing I feel the average player fails to do, whether it be the writing or even the gameplay, is look at what any given decision may have been trying to achieve. Sure, whether the player liked a decision or not matters, but truthfully, what matters more is whether the team managed to achieve their own goal for any given decision. What kind of game HoYo is making is something that is far less flexible than whether they are achieving that vision. Feedback is much more effective when it seeks to help the team better achieve their goals rather than try to tell them their goals should change. Again, it's not that that kind of feedback is invalid, but it's far less helpful.
NPCs are an important part of Genshin's story and world. Genshin is an open world game, and the approach HoYo took when deciding what that meant for their game is that the world of Teyvat itself is the main character. That means every person, every place, every historical event, they are all a tapestry that make up a piece of a whole. That's not to say every NPC has depth, there are many that serve little functional purpose, but the general principle is that everyone should matter. It's a point put forward by Dainsleif explicitly in his third question, whether Vision holders hold more importance in the eyes of the Gods over regular people. There's a sort of irony in that players are like the gods of the world and they often view NPCs as lesser, sadly mirroring this conundrum. I always thought it interesting that the one time an Archon Quest was blocked by a World Quest, it was the one that most directly inspected the plight of a human who at least appeared to have the kind of ambition that would grant a Vision, yet was never granted one, making one wonder why the Gods seemingly disregard certain people...only for many players to disregard her on their way to what they deemed more important. I've always wondered if that was deliberate.
But in any case, I think much of the "meaning of the journey" is lost if you disregard the NPCs, as its the playable characters who are, in their own ways, fighting for a better world. They're not fighting for a better world just for Vision holders, but for everyone. The playable characters value "NPCs" greatly and yet players do not, and that's one reason I think there's often dissonance between what players want out of the story and what it gives them.
It was actually really good, it explained a lot of things about how Inazuma works.
So your criticism is that there's no stakes to whether another clan takes over from the Hiirgai --like who cares? In fact since their head was just arrested for corruption maybe they ought to be kicked out?
And the answer is that in Inazuma this is all you need for a rich amount of gossip and intrigue. The idea of some terribly unimportant slight re-arrangement in the top clan within one of the commissions. No policy change. No effect on almost any member of the public. They're all just a bunch of gossips and this is basically the equivalent of a royal marriage that has a hint of scandal. Like the British king marrying a Catholic. It's completely unimportant to the people materially but at the same time hugely important to them socially and in terms of gossip. I bet there are plenty of people - ordinary people - who would take the view that Chisato is a b-i-tch for doing her clan wrong if she goes ahead and married and others saying, no but this is a love match she must follow her heart. It's like the way people have different views of Princess Diana.
Btw Matsuura is from the Kujo clan -- he isn't from a clan related to the Kanjou commission. His motives are more subtle than "I want to be head of a commission". It's more like "if I cause in-fighting in the Kanjou commission it'll help the weakened Tenryou commission keep it's own edge within the three" And in fact the way Ayato manipulates him proves that Matsuura holds the good reputation of the commissions as more important than his own personal politics --- and that Ayato KNOWS that he does. Ayato's plan ONLY works because he knows Matsuura would hate to seriously cause any serious loss of face to the three commission system as a whole. So it's all VERY subtle and VERY minor political posturing. And Matsuura is NOT much of a bad guy.
I am not sure Matsuura betrays anyone. He's promoting his clan and commission. He just tries to play political games that Ayato knows Ei hates. Plus Ayato doesn't want a royal wedding tarnished with this crap either for reputation of Inazuma reasons or personally hurting Chisato reasons - both falling under his commission's legitimate concerns. He's head of the commissions to make weddings run smoothly after all.
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To make this plot clearer maybe they should have had some of the peasants gossiping about the marriage say something bad about Chisato along the lines of "but won't she bring disrespect on her father's clan like this?" and bring out the Princess Diana analogy.
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On reflection I quite like how pathetically NOTHING this entire plot is because it highlights just how placid and "eternal" Inazuma politics are. To Inazuma this is what counts as a HUGE scandal. In any other country it would be nothing. And it's even far LESS of a scandal than your video suggests I think.
I agree they needed to say something like "if the marriage is delayed a couple of years then the Hiiragi clan will have time to adopt a son from the branch family and prepare them to be the new clan head ". IE bring in a male cousin. The unspoken implication is that with a little time the problem goes away and the lovers can get married. There has to be some way for an heirless clan to fix that issue of course, but they don't mention that in game. There's is NEVER any suggestion that the two won't get married eventually.
This quest always bugged me for some reason, now I understand why
I loved it
i didn't mind it being npc sentric quest cuz how ayato just shits on tht npc
however would have been cooler if yae miko, sara or even shogun showed up since they r important figures in inzauma
like kujou sara is struggling to uncover some sort of corruption with the commisions so what happened in main story won't happen again and ayato hears her and decides to take action.
at the end they could have presented their cases to the shogun for her to be the judge
could have beeb cooler
while i agree with u tht npcs r here to show how the world works and through them we learn about the world and about the playable characters
but it's when story makes these npcs be to CENTRAL point of a main story line to the point traveler forms a bond with these npcs and tht we r supposed to feel sorry or bad for them
examples: teppei. we could have explored kokomi's struggle to fight the war, gorou's udying loyalty and how he'd support her whether by fighting or emotionally (just imagine how many heart strings their realtionship will pull), we could have learned why these two sides r fighting and how long their anomosity was brewing between them from kokomi. also wht stress this puts kokomi in, her convictions her drive, etc. kokomi should have be the central part of tht part pf the story but instead it was some npc tht we can find anywhere and all we did is talk to some other npc guards.
in sumeru we also have to care for this dumbozard lady npc character who escaped from home just to see some dance and being spoiled little brat. there instead we could have learned about dehya and how she struggled as a child growing and was forced to become stronger and fight just to be able to provide for herself and throught tht we could have learned the dicrimination tht people in the desert face by the academya. there was so much potential and they wasted it on some npcs. idc about some sick npc i care about stuggle of the nations tht in civil war and how they overcome it in order to move to a more peaceful way of living with each other, how people in the tropics and people in the desert will understand each other and learn to be more open minded and how characters navigate through tht.
in hsr it was done well. the way they handled npcs and characters was well done. characters got their character development and it also made me be actually feel empathetic to npcs.
example: in belobog overwolrd and underground were sealed off for 10 years. there was a man whose daughter was left on the overworld as he was stuck in the underword. and now we finished the story and blockages was lifted he was reunited with his daughter as she was all grown up and had a son. tht was short and sweet. they also used npcs as exposition to showcase the undergound's struggle to survive.
in ayato's case as i said i didn't mind being npcs here because they serve a purpose. it's to show ayato's skills as a polition as well as his communications skills not to mention his kindless despite being overly strategical. he is manupalitve and gets things done by careful plans and it involves playing with people's mind. but also he doesn't do tht to innocent people. he uses his skill to help those in need and tht shows his character. these npcs in his quest were only there to sing his praises and show us how cool he actually is. THIS IS HOW U USE NPCS RIGHT
I personally just realy fisliked the fact that we stoped 2 people who genuinly love eachother from geting maried because "mah political situation".
In isolation, the quest plays out like Ayato is just manipulating everone for his own benifit. I know that's not the case but i only know that for meta reasons.
Yey SocSci ❤
Pilipino po ba kayo
I don't think Ayato is a likeable character so this quest didn't appeal to me