Where Genshin succeeds, and fails, at telling stories of its past. | Arlecchino Story Quest Analysis

Arlecchino's story quest was so close to greatness! 🤏 But sadly, Hoyoverse themselves spoiled so many of their own players from enjoying the central mystery of the plot.
It also engaged in a bit too much yapping about the past. Genshin has this problem sometimes, but it can also expertly share its fictional history with players.
Did you feel like you had Arlecchino's story quest spoiled by watching her special animation? Or did you find it enjoyable anyways? Leave a comment and I'll try to respond!
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:13 What story do you tell with Arlecchino?
3:19 Visual Novel Storytelling in Gacha Games
5:00 Genshin is very reliant on pre-rendered cutscenes.
6:30 Spoilers Bricked this Story's Setup
9:00 Why would Hoyo do it this way?
10:25 Conclusion - Genshin's Storytelling Fluctuates
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[@arosdeco1629]

This is to me the WORST part of Genshin: its past is always more interesting than the present. This is a huge problem, I feel like we should be playing in the past.

[@rurue-hf6nu]

to each their own of course, but i find the experience of connecting the faded dots very immersive. albeit, genshin’s timeline is presented in a way that feels.. very convoluted. again though, to each their own. i can totally see people preferring to experience the events of the past first-hand.

[@mika086]

I think you just spoiled yourself a major upcoming plot-point without knowing... XD

[@GhostEmblem]

I feel like in most stories (not all) the past is more interesting than the present, until you actually see the past and realize you only heard the best bits mushed together with no down time.

[@arosdeco1629]

@@mika086 even if we do time travel now, it's too late. The present story feels diluted compared to the past.

[@mika086]

@@arosdeco1629 nah, i didn't mean that

[@Wiradika1414]

They really need to give us more Cinematics in the Game itself ngl... Its okay if its not a 2D, but at least give us a Proper 3D Cinematics like how HI3rd got I guess

[@zodrak6595]

no to begin with they need to make a better writing

[@adityawidarma3803]

Arlecchino: "i born with a rare constitution of see through lies and deceit" Traveler & Paimon: "ok how do we deceive her?" *near the end* Traveler & Paimon: "OMG how did she see thought our plan?"

[@joaofaria7404]

Yeah, the sauce was given before the SQ. And when I imagined they would expand on what we saw in the animation...nope, give it a VN style recap telling us nothing really new.

[@tamaki_akira5]

Fk this is my issue with mhyo they spoiled the effing story with that animation, they could've released that at least a week after her release but no😑

[@windeen]

They actually DIDN'T need to wait until after. They could have still posted it and also saved us from being spoiled at the same time. Let me explain: I was mad. Really angry. I saw that short and was REALLY excited for her lore (I didn't care about getting her for many reasons. But I wanted to see her for the mystery). Then the patch dropped and.... it was boring. Dissapointing. Because they ruined the suspense and build up for me. Now, I happen to also play Star Rail. And I'm going to try and make my main point without spoiling anything for 2.2 there. About a week or so after that disappointment in Genshin dropped. 2.2 in Star Rail dropped. I was working on playing through its story (a set of trailblaze quests for 2.2 that add up to somewhere between 11 and 13 hours).... so it took a few days to work through it for me. Star Rail has something like Genshin's collected miscellany, that is called: "Keeping up with Star Rail!" I had somewhat gotten over the annoyance of the Arle quest being spoiled for me (though was still disgusted with Hoyo constantly complaining about people spoiling the story aspects, then they think that short won't do the same thung) and so, I clicked on the "Keeping up with Star Rail" latest 2.2 video. And right away I see THIS at the very start of the video: "We recommend viewing this video AFTER experiencing the Trailblaze Mission "Beauty and Destruction ". ...... WTF Hoyo.....? This was around 2 or 3 weeks after the Arlecchino short. They VERY LIKELY planned this before the Arle video dropped. I am also aware that there are different teams in Hoyo that are working on the different games. However, that could have saved a lot of people from being spoiled! They could have still posted it when they did. And with that warning there, it would be the player's choice to get spoiled or not. That annoyed me even more because it's so simple and would have only added half a minute to that video.

[@boop3342]

seeing how 4.7 is also releasing animation short, this might be a trend onwards(?) i just hope they wont spoil too much or i'd just decide to watch them way later

[@eastonair]

Ooh good point, maybe this is what they have the Genshin anime team working on now… At least the 4.7 animation was more of a music video? I guess we won’t know til tonight.

[@Melotaku]

It was a double edged sword for me. I really enjoyed the animation. Watching it for the first time before playing the quest was an amazing experience. But it the watered down the experience of he story quest. If I had played the story quest first, I likely would have enjoyed it more. But then watching the animation afterwards probably wouldn’t have had as much of an impact on me. I likely wouldn’t have cared nearly as much about Clervie if I didn’t see her in the animation before.

[@eastonair]

Yeah another commenter mentioned featuring Clervie in some sort of teaser first (like showing the cute/wholesome parts) and then saving the bigger dramatic stuff for the in-game quest could have worked and solved it both ways.

[@HydraneousHadokenPent-Striker]

From what I've seen, the less a person knows the lore related to the HotH, the more they claim the short spoiled them. Things knowing the lore makes known/obvious without needing the short: 1) Clervie is talking about the previous Knave 2) Arlecchino loves her children 3) That Alrecchino killed the previous Knave Something you can instantly infer based on it being Arlecchino's Story Quest: 1) That Arlecchino is Peruere Not sure how much that actually leaves to spoil.

[@eastonair]

Lore enjoyers are out in force! Thanks for sharing your perspective.

[@dragonlordleda]

I thought her quest was okay & made me appreciate her character a little bit more despite not rolling for her. My only complaint is it felt so slow IF you watched the animation beforehand. So you’re just waiting for it to retell you what you already know. Of course, there’s the other issues and points you’ve mentioned. Releasing the animation beforehand to boost marketing hype is so true!

[@inthenameofcontractlendmem983]

Looks like I'm not the only one who thought "Dang, Lyney was so braindead to pull tricks on the one who's been teaching him to pull tricks the whole time"

[@mikonyx7712]

I mean, Arllechino LITERALLY killed the person that thought her everything she knew about fighting.

[@FaizeofMist]

Nothing hypes me up for the Genshin Storyline like supplementary materials and fan trailers/analysis/animations. Nothing deflates my expectations for the Genshin Impact story like actually playing the story.

[@eastonair]

This comment goes hard.

[@occidere8437]

I demand more videos from you sir. Your comedy and insight while not being too emotional is a breath of fresh air in this community. It feels somewhat like watching Vars II, but less anylitical and less focused on meta. Of course you do you, just wanted to express how much I like the few videos you have out right now.

[@raihanrusli2720]

10:55 actually you can learn about the curse if you read the lores, perinheri book, and hilichurl, for better or worse. Yeah genshin also tend to tell us explanations of some stuff outside voiced quests. Like who gave Furina a vision from Neuvillette's text story. But those who diligently read the lores automatically realized that peruere is khaenriahn by the time the anime video went out

[@Aritulpa]

Interesting video, love your content I agree with your take on the pay-off and that the animation spoiled the entire story, I believe that it was actually done to tackle one of the major problems that many people have with Character story quests; that the quests tend to focus on an unknown NPC (many that aren't related to the character) than the actual character themselves, maybe they thought by already revealing clervie and arlecchino's relationship they could immediately curb that problem; however in doing so they spoiled the entire story. Its a weird thing considering how close they were, why no one thought to show off more of the 'cuter scenes' for the released animation to show that she's relevant and align the players with her, then save the rest of the animation for the actual story quest is beyond me but i hope they improve upon this. (Also the fact there wasn't a singular mention of her curse, the most important thing players wanted to know about her but instead put it in her character story is very VERY stupid)

[@eastonair]

I hadn’t thought about Clervie as a partial solution to the NPC-focused character quest. That’s a good point. It was cool to see her being important beyond the generic NPCs (though they were still a part of it). Including Lyney and Co. also kept the focus on more playable characters I guess. > Release the cute scenes as a teaser to build the mystery. This also would have been a great solution! Anything to build the mystery would have really helped. It almost feels like there was some messed up planning here which is pretty rare for hoyo.

[@jarrenraves]

@@eastonair I'd actually be interested in hearing your thoughts about the npc-focused story quest problem itself if you're willing to share. I think its a sentiment that even predates my own genshin account, but the more I play and the more story quests hoyo adds, the less I've felt it holds up as this 'endemic problem ruining every story quest it touches' (I'm obviously overstating there, but that was pretty much how it was originally sold to me and probably many others XD)

[@eastonair]

I’ve enjoyed a lot of story quests despite the “NPC Problem” but haven’t given it too much thought as a whole. My first take: A well-written and presented quest will entertain whether or not it heavily features NPCs. I’m going to chew on this some more…

[@jamiekb9v]

interesting analysis as always! keep up the content 🙂

[@eastonair]

Thanks for watching Jamie!

[@eclairfarron7366]

It was about studying Arlecchino. How she thinks, how she reacts, how she behaves and how she feels. The dialogue scene with an ex-member is important to get to know better Arlecchino's personality and how capable she is as a Fatui member. So, it is not mainly about Clervy and the childs. It is about Arlecchino!

[@theRaika]

Me that watched the anime short before doing the story quest.. didn't felt I bit spoiled, infact it made me care more about Cuerve (of that's how her name is spelled) the first time I saw her compare to imprinting her to another random NPC. Also, complaining about this short being spoilers, 😂 you guys haven't read any of the artifacts, books, materials etc. lore I'm guessing. Those are the real spoilers lol

[@eastonair]

For sure, it’s not a universal thing. We’re all going to react to the stories differently. It was nice that she wasn’t a generic NPC. But yeah most people don’t read artifact or similar lore.

[@nathanielmorey2800]

So knowing exactly who she was didn’t spoil a quest that starts off with you trying to figure out who she is? If you say so.

[@langleyhi]

Yessir, your videos are really really good its a pity they come out now and then, would love to see more fron you!!

[@eastonair]

Thank you! I have a non-YT career and family and these take a long time to edit so it is tough to balance. But I like making them so I want to get faster!

[@langleyhi]

@@eastonair Your videos are indeed very high quality and independently of how often or not would they come out I will support your channel))

[@oncedemayo]

really good video, did a great job at keeping me focused, unlike a lot of genshin’s non archon story quests was surprised to see only a few hundred views on this, keep up the good work!!

[@GrandEvoker]

Luckily I didn't actually watch the animation before doing the story. I might have thought it was a spoiler from the actual quest and didn't click the videos. So that probably helped me enjoy the quest more.

[@Kazuki_22]

9:22 Simply, a major business decision to market Arlecchino and that has been Hoyo's MO for the past 4 years.

[@TechnoTrex1089]

Very true

[@brunocandiotti5441]

Very nice essay. I love when people stablish their arguments in actual knowledge of what are they talking

[@Melotaku]

Putting the animation in the game instead of the exposition given by Arlecchino seems like an obvious choice. And yes I probably would have enjoyed the quest more if that’s how it was. I see the point about it not fitting into Genshin void because Honkai Impact does it and it’s amazing, I love it. I always look forward to the next one when playing. Maybe I look forward to it a little TOO much. I look forward to it so much that it completely overshadows the rest of the story. It makes me almost want to rush through the story so that I can see the next animation. The animations are so good that they are what makes or breaks an arc. They are what everyone remembers about an arc. Maybe this is what they were trying to avoid. They released it separately so that they are remembered as two separate entities. Or maybe the animation video file just took up too much space, who knows lol.

[@kayleighdriessen]

I get it that a large portion of Genshin's lore is connected to the past like as if we're in history-class 24/7 where we have to learn and uncover more from if we want to do more and better in the present and future but yeah Genshin could really allow us to immerse ourselves in the present-events more too even if it's not some Slice of Life that it needs like e.g the roles of the Traveler and Abyss-sibling might be easily interchangable but even all twin-siblings in general have individuality outside of being another person's twin, maybe we could see Traveler learning more to slow down on their journey and try to connect with Teyvat's residents even outside of Archon-quests, even if one might say they get along with everyone in general there have to be some people like in Monstadt with whom one of the siblings connects closer with than the others because of similair personality and favorite activities. Plus we gotta have more cinematics and have Traveler speak more since despite not originating from Teyvat, after about a few years they should have adepted enough to Teyvat's language to not constantly need Paimon to do the conversing for them.

[@zente3003]

I wouldn't say that the short spoiled that much, really. Plus, I would say that the SQ gave us Arlecchino's personal side on the whole matter, not just retelling the cinematic

[@AphasiacRaccoon]

When the world needed him most, he returned

[@Bliss467]

They also exposited at the end of the Fontaine archon quest a lot, which I really didn’t like. It was just counterbalanced by a phenomenal scene of Furina being forced to act out her centuries of lonely trauma… by herself

[@walaska1656]

Finally someone makes a vid about this. Arlecchino’s backstory is cool. Her story quest tells enough of it. I’m so disappointed that the story quest did nothing but retold everything we already knew from the animation. I like the different medium they use to present the story but at least they should make them adhere to the canon model of the character. RE SKINNED TRAVELER PLEASE.

[@user-dl5vf5du2k]

Genshin characters yap so much in their screen time they should make it a VN, ones in the hangouts work too.

[@gilroyscopa]

...and that's why I never watch the promo-material before playing the quests. Spoilers everywhere

[@marcusbullock2753]

I personally like Clorinde story quest more than Arrlechino one.

[@eastonair]

Yeah, the tabletop bits with the different characters was pretty fun!

[@jojomicheldu59]

Clorinde's SQ is by far the best one in the game. Why would you compare it to this dumpster fire

[@mark9152]

Before watching the video, I personally like that they showed us the backstory of Clervie and Peruere first before the story quest. Because if I didn't watch that, I'd go into the story quest and give no importance to Clervie. Like who is this NPC kid and why should I care? The last part where she says goodbye wouldn't be similarly as impactful. But I do acknowledge that moving forward, newer players wouldn't have the benefit of watching the backstory first because it isn't integrated into the game. So the experience of most players with regards to this is playing the story quest without knowing the backstory. And tbh, I don't really know what to say about that. WIthout knowing the background of the Peruere, the SQ is basically a generic "she wasn't a bad guy in the first place," twist. And most wouldn't be as attached or caring towards Clervie. Would be nice if they incorporate the animation into the game. Like when you start the SQ, you are given an option to watch the whole thing.

[@mark9152]

After watching the video, I agree that they should've put the animation in quest when Perry the Crimson Platypus was monologuing with still images in the background. But again, the only ones that are spoiled with the animation are current players. Most newer players won't even know that there is an animation. But this also brings another problem, that is, the Perry monologue with images is not as catchy as the animation. So newer players might not even get attached to Clervie like we did with the animation.

[@eastonair]

Thanks for watching! Good point about the existing/new player divide. @Aritulpa commented that, teasing some of Clervie’s past importance with Arlecchino in a trailer without giving the whole thing would have worked too. Maybe that would have been the best option, actually. Then players have an idea of her importance and so they care immediately about her existence, but are also curious for the full story.

[@martin_7917]

So did HSR ever give any extra info or hinted at Tinqyun being alive?

[@eastonair]

They hinted about continuing her story during the 2.2 dev stream.

[@martin_7917]

@@eastonair Interesting. Would you make a video about it if it's something significant to her story or what kind of a person she is/was?

[@eastonair]

@martin_7917 It depends on how they resolve her story. I’ll make a video about it if I feel I have something interesting/worthwhile to say!

[@Setzen_Kreig]

Houkai3rd players seeing A Post Houkai Odyssey that is spoilers for 8 years after the main story of Houkai3rd: 💀 See? it's not the first time and APHO was worst within the spoilers 🤣🤣🤣 And at that time, Kiana the mc was stated as dead on the moon.

[@eastonair]

Does it still count as a spoiler if they retcon the events? Tbh this is kind of a Hoyo bad habit. Big boss fights are always revealed ahead of time, for instance.

[@Setzen_Kreig]

@@eastonair They will retcon it, that's for sure, they did it since the flame chasers

[@Phillipmurr]

you deserve more subscribers your ability to give criticism without sounding overly negative or dramatic is welcoming,,

[@whywasthismywholeassname]

True

[@TheGamingTeam101Tgt101]

i disagree. i feel like it was more impactful cuz i knew the moment of seeing clervi was like oh shit oh shit. i know what is going on., and it was still entertaining throught

[@eastonair]

I do see your point of view. Having some idea of Clervie was made for greater buy-in than the typical generic NPC used in Genshin story quests. I think they gave away just a little too much!

[@klonrymeryme5293]

ever since Fontaine out the dev seems are running out of idea both for their story telling and how they make limited time content each patch, like dude who in the right mind making limited event about petting cat? even the itto music concert event are half asset and some do speculate that event was supposedly itto act 2 quest but got scrapped which make people wonder are some of the past limited event are scrapped act 2 quest for some of the characted they had plan for? no wonder they decide to announce a community content creation event where the player have a chance to make new endgame or limited time content, that announcement alone should tell their player the dev are running out of idea and have to rely on their own player, which most of them sadly disgruntled and quit.

[@eastonair]

Genshin’s events have always been smaller or experimental in nature. The cat event was boring but I bet a regular piece of feedback they get is: “let us pet the animals!” They seem to be more focused on variety than deep exploration of game mechanics with most events these days

[@Julianaronconi]

I didn’t dislike the story quest and I don’t think they spoiled everything with the animation (I actually think people are too sensitive to spoilers these days). But a lot that could be expanded on from the animation was not even brushed on (like what is her curse or what happened in snezhnaya or her beginning times as father). So that felt a little disappointing for me. But yeah, of course the writing is not perfect. I’d love if they’d actually show us some of the lore you can get from reading stuff like artifacts lore

[@eastonair]

I remember listening to Ashikai talking about artifact lore and her idea for this was: instead of just having a ton of text, do a drawing depicting each Artifact set’s story. A lot more players would enjoy seeing it that way. Obviously it isn’t going to happen this late in the game but it would really step up the artifact lore experience.

[@leegunring]

This is because of technical limitations. GI is a mobile game and must be cautious in terms of capacity. If they can't keep limited-time events permanent and cutscenes can't be played back in order to reserve storage space on their phones, they're even less likely to cram in a seven-minute animation

[@eastonair]

I’m not sure of this. A lot of the character quests get cutscenes. Baizhu’s was about 4 minutes long. They could uninstall it after completion too (they have that functionality already for SQ voicelines I believe)

[@dian_326]

amazing video as always, i agree that the hype died down after being previously being spoiled on youtube when playing her quest. compared to itto, who had one single leak of a picture of his back, caused the community to go haywire 😭😭 maybe im just biased towards him but we need more of this anticipation for future characters!!!

[@b4u4ever26]

i think they should’ve put the animated short inside of her quest because : 1 it spoiled her entire quest plot apart from the end 2 her story was kind of spoiled by an npc two years ago so double spoilers i guess

[@imperialsarcasm]

Arlecchino quest was nice if i didn't spend 95% of it being like I know what happened already, may as well skip all of it up to her fight

[@nathanielmorey2800]

This was easily the most frustrating thing they ever did. The whole point of the quest was to solve who the girl was but we already knew… at that point they should have just showed the anime in game. I just really don’t understand the marketing strategy here

[@generaltoszur1036]

Yes it did feel a bit wierd to play arlecchino s quest after watching the animation , but i dont think we should undermine how good the quest was just because animation " spoiled something ". Its not like everything was spoiled , we did learn that she really cares about her children , we did get some teases of future plot with this project stuzha stuff , we did get other harbingers mentioned , and just becuase we saw the animation that means they shouldnt show us the same information in the quest ? Traveler didnt watch the animation so we shouldnt act like this 5minute segment of recaping the animation with some more details by arlecchino ruined the quest. Will we act the same if lets say we get to meet both dain and our sibling in the new dain quest , just because animation showed both sibling and dain ? This wasnt a spoiler it was literally just a recap of some parts of our journey up to the desert , but i am sure a lot of people will act like " uhuuh quest ruined again the spoiled it again "

[@dominicjannazo7144]

My thoughts exactly, they spoiled their own story. At least it wasn't as bad a wanderer, revealed to be alive and playable right before he released as a boss at the end of a main story. If wanderer was a single patch later it would have been fine, and i hope Hoyo realized this and don't confirm a character at risk of death as playable to remove tension. (I know starrail has dead characters it's a different game)

[@eastonair]

I think they almost did the same with Furina with the some art of her with her vision was out before we knew her full story. Genshin is seeming to steer away from high stakes, risk of death, and evil playable characters. I think Arlecchino’s evil factor got toned down somewhat because there were world quests in Inazuma about helping people escape from the supposedly vicious House of the Hearth. I wonder if and how they’ll try to redeem Dottorre 💀

[@no-do4pv]

​@@eastonair theres no way they'd try to redeem him after everything he has done.

[@CriticalClone]

W video

[@maj0ga.]

As a Hi3 player, never watch an Animated Short if you don't want to be spoiled. Hoyo has always done this and I doubt they'll change. Watch Animated Shorts AFTER you finish the story if you don't want to be spoiled because it will happen in every Animated Short they pre-release

[@eastonair]

why is hoyo like this

[@Zeela47]

Hoyo gave a short episode, a longer cutscene for the knaive compared to a once a year quest about the twins and dain where they gave us an offscreen battle less than 3 mins reunion with our sibling we waited for a year for this trash? Bruhh

[@eastonair]

They can sell Arlecchino, they can’t sell the our twin (yet)! I actually thought the new Dain quest was pretty good besides the off-screen fight, and part of that was the length. It was short, sweet, and to the point. IMO, Genshin would benefit from less yapping not more.

[@antihmota4625]

My problem was not so much with the story telling because I am used to get dissapointing results from Genshin but I hated the dumbness of Lyney and fluctuating "power". I mean Lyney is my favourite character from Fontaine (personality wise) and everyone tells us that he will be the next kin of HotH and we obviously see that he is not the strong character, but he should be the smart and manipulative mastermind, SO WHY THE **** YOU MAKE HIM DUMB??? You feature him with almost no achievements and feats, during the Arle fight where he should have proven at least that he is competent enought to fight Arle, he just gets his ass whooped, Lynette and Freminet did more to defeat Arle than him. I am not saying that he should have fought her but made some cool trap to gain time for Traveller and his siblings but nothing. They should have shown us that he is competent at his field as ruler of HotH but instead, the whole quest he is just like: "Father PWEAAAASE, forgive us:!!!!". He doesnt seem as someone worthy of being Arle succesor, he just looks like incompetent kid... And as for Traveller... why the heck we did get whooped by Knave??? I mean we beat Raiden, Signora, Scara mecha god etc, I know you can get argument that at all those fights we had external help, but you know where you cannot say that? NARWHAL. NO, neuvillete didnt help us, we beat him by ourselves. That just have to mean that Narwhal is far weaker than we thought, but it seems inconsistent when he should have been the "nation destroyer..." I hate powerscaling in this game..

[@volfawott7417]

The one thing that annoyed me personally about Lyney carrying the stupid stick. Was that the entire mystery Clervie could have been solved on there by Lyney asking one question. However before I reveal this question let me remind you Lyney specialises in intelligence gathering. He said so himself in the quest. So please explain how on earth when asking Clervie if she had someone who could back her up and then when Clervie said Perrie. Why didn't Lyney ask what does Perrie looks like. Oh I know because Clervie's description of Perrie would be a girl around my age and height, with white and black hair, black/onyx blue eyes with red x's for pupils oh and sometimes her hands might go black if her curse is flaring up. Where it would immediately cause them realise she's talking about Arlecchino and when they inform Clervie that she is the Knave, Clervie would have corrected them and said no it's her mother Crucebina. Which would have caused Freminet to immediately realise she's talking about the previous Knave and explained that Arlecchino killed her and took over then made the house a much better place. This one simple question that someone who specialised in intelligence Gathering should have asked would have completely shut down the mystery story arc on their end.

[@eastonair]

Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, the motive for his behavior was “can’t have Lyney reveal the mystery too early” not anything logical about his character.

[@joromedowner3274]

Paimon is cute but annoying most time hearing the main character talk is great but rear

[@davidjohnson8273]

I skipped Arlecchino in part because the story was pretty bad. But in addition to the animation spoiling it, from a lore point of view it was even worse because they spoiled it two years ago in an Inazuma world quest. And the actual story turned out to be exactly the same despite it was pretty boring and made no sense. That is to say, who or what Arlecchino turns out to be, was pretty boring nonsense as lore. And at this stage in the game that's not good enough. She's just a homeless kid grabbed off the street, who has a weird "curse" that makes her as powerful as a god so she kills the previous 4th ranked harbinger, who's supposed to be incredibly powerful, but inevitably comes off as a flake because all we know about her is she lost to a kid she herself trained. There's nothing at all special about Arlecchono beyond her magical power / curse. And it makes little sense. Also I think people were expecting her to connect to the lore (Khaenri'ah) and she isn't. She's not from Khaenri'ah, she's not from the Crimson Moon dynasty and she knows pretty much zero about either. So apparently it's just a thing in Teyvat that random homeless girls can be almost as powerful as a god and dunk of a 4th ranked harbinger. For no particular reason. Just because they have a random bloodline. And then they become amazing at looking after an orphanage and being a diplomat, even though they have no ability to have emotions like a regular person? That's a huge disqualification for looking after kids or diplomacy. The story just doesn't make much sense. They should have made her 500 years old, a survivor of Khaneri'ah somehow, with the potential of knowing many things and her long life experiences explaining all about how she can be a good diplomat despite her emotional disability. They gave her the free "depth" of a 500 year old when she's only, what? 27 years old? It feels cheap. She's only got one special thing going for her and that's a fighting power. But she's not just a fighter like a more powerful version of Childe. Only knowing or caring about combat. Her story would be fine if she was rank 11. Her story is actually quite similar to Signora's at rank 8. Random girl with one weird combat power (that doesn't relate to the lore) and a stunted emotional life. Signora works earnestly when she has to but nobody's pretending she's a great diplomat. Nobody's putting her in charge of raising a bunch of kids. And Signora really was 500 years old or close to it. Signora makes a lot more sense than Arlecchino.

[@trexkiro9200]

they are idiots . they are ruining the game

[@Chihaya_Anon]

LOL...Not that boring yapping session quest with Azdaha which is one of the worst Story Quest in Genshin...Did everyone forget that Arlecchino's final cinematics against Lyney, Lynette, & Freminet was one of the coolest cut scenes in the game. Plus how Arlecchino transformed before he almost killed the traveler, who always win with his plot armor even against Raiden, Childe, Signora, Scara, & many more? Plus our final interaction with Childe before he will be a sacrifice for Project Stuzha? And the revelation that Arlecchino was not a Fontainian, & Crucabena collabed with the Dottore? We also learned that Clervie was not a ghost, but a Living Fragments of Memories made from the Blood-Flames of Arlecchino, which can be also used to erase the memories of those children who betrayed the House of the Hearth....instead of killing them literally, but killing them spiritually. All of those were not shown & revealed on the Animated Trailer...so its just a minor spoiler.