I don't know if this is a hot take, but i don't think the game needs to explicitly state or show Alice or Rhinedottir as evil
To expand more on the title, I have recently seen a lot of posts saying that they don't like the way Alice or Rhinedottir's crimes are ignored or glossed over and how in specifically Alice's case they don't like the way she is explicitly stated to be a "good person" in game despite her many horrific actions. Now I personally think that hoyo doesn't need to go out of their way to show whether these two are evil or not. In the case of Rhinedottir she hasn't exactly appeared in the game for there to be deep dive into her character. Now for Alice I have seen some discourse that there isn't much difference between her and Dottore, well there is a difference and a pretty big one- Alice has helped on numerous occasions while Dottore has been nothing but an obstacle. It has already been established that the Traveller doesn't have a straight and narrow moral compass, they are friendly with anyone who is helpful to them despite any moral wrongs said character has committed, case in point-Arlecchino, Sandrone, Childe, Scaramouche and so on. If Dottore was helpful to the traveler then the game would not treat him like a villain. Whether a character is a good person or not has never been the criteria for Traveller to be nice to them. Also as a side note Alice was called a "good person" by Paimon and as we know she is not the best judge of character.
A story doesn't need to hold your hand and explicitly state that oh this character is good that character is bad. I enjoy this morally grey aspect of some genshin characters and don't want it to change or be explicitly addressed
A story doesn't need to hold your hand and explicitly state that oh this character is good that character is bad. I enjoy this morally grey aspect of some genshin characters and don't want it to change or be explicitly addressed
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She knows about the fourth wall.
I'm positive she wrote the teyvat guide with explicit intention to mess with the playerbase it feel completely in character for her to mess with the player just as she does everyone else.
The only mention of crimes...is the guide she herself wrote. And we can't verify any of it with the other characters. Lisa doesn't mention the proposal, no one mentions the ruins of old mondstadt, all we get from albedo and others is that she is very strong that's it.
Heck I'd argue if they keep the 4th wall breaking aspect in trailer she's gonna reference to playerbase and their accusations just for the fun of it.
Its a chronicle of her adventures.
But that begs the question....how much can she exaggerate.
Also her suggestions are still just that...suggestions.
She pitched the idea of the hilichurls...but it never actually manifested.
She never actually did anything to them so would you really consider her bad if the idea was never executed beyond the proposal phase.
If i went out and told a brother hey, next time you play on my account I'm gonna thrash you.
Do you count it as me hurting him then because say so, no, I didn't thrash him at all. It's a threat yes but it's not assault.
It wasn't just a proposal - she actually did it, and got the Springvale folks so riled up that Jean had to send someone to keep an eye on her.
So, yes she HAS harmed Hilichurls.
This begs the question, why even have those characters commit those actions in the first place? The answer is once again not "because they are morally grey". Alice feeding hilichurls to a machine is not an attempt at making a morally grey character. It is silly humor that the game relies on you to just handwave as a joke. Rhinedottir indirectly causing mayhem and murder is not Rhinedottir being "morally grey", it is the game trying to create an omnipotent waifu while also relying on you to not give a f\*\*\* about the morality of it when push comes to shove. They will give you reasons why she did what she did and you will nod and accept the intended angle like a good fanboy. A decent story suffers from such lack of integrity, Genshin doesn't need it when their audience is people like you.
As for Alice, I stand by my belief that the story has no need to address any of her actions. As of now it serves no narrative purpose. I agree that the reason for the way she is portrayed is mainly marketing, but the story has not suffered at all so I see no reason for her actions to be talked about in game
And these two characters are not the only instances where we see this happen. Genshin operates on kids anime morality.
Just the same, China does have its own moral values that are different from the west's. That's neither good nor bad in itself, inherently. It's okay to object to and criticize another culture's moral framework, but ultimately expecting or even forcing them to change to your own is an expression of moral imperialism.
Ultimately, what this means is that if you were to ask people of different moral frameworks (particularly those of pre-enlightenment and old world frameworks) whether Rhinedottir's callous disregard for the safety and well-being of others evil, you'd probably get plenty of different answers that do not explicitly condemn her.
"A decent story suffers from such lack of integrity" is what you say, but ultimately what I see from you is just someone who needs the media they consume to reflect their own moral viewpoints.
(Also, I wouldn't normally do this, but the condescending way you end your post makes me want to: "Begging the question" refers to a logical fallacy, and using it in the way you did is akin to using "per say" or "for all intensive purposes" instead of "per se" and "for all intents and purposes," using a phrase without understanding its actual or intended meaning.)
It really isn't. Stop. Genshin is not engaging in moral relativism when it makes Sandrone mutilate a man and then completely shift the tone of the character and expect you to act like that never happened. It is the same "moral relativism" you see in an anime where guy kills his entire village due to "bad upbringing" and are sanitized after their redemption arc. No mythological or cultural references here. Just catering to kids. Please spare me the pseudointellectual mental gymnastics.
Begging the question is not just a logical fallacy term, it also has a colloquial use.
"If a statement or situation begs the question, ***it causes you to ask a particular question" -*** *From Cambridge Dictionary*
Besides that, I think Sandrone is the same person who did those things as she is in Nod-Krai. It actually makes plenty of sense: she did that to Jenck because of his attempts to interfere with and kill the Traveler, and her apology letter at the time even causes characters to speculate that she did not want to be enemies with the Traveler. In Nod-Krai, we've only seen her really interact with characters that she doesn't really want to make into enemies apart from Rerir, so I don't see the inconsistency nor any shift in tone. Maybe if, in the course of Nod-Krai's story, we saw one of her underlings screw up as badly as Jenck did, or a hated enemy she could actually overpower, but so far Nod-Krai has presented us with neither situation.
>Begging the question is not just a logical fallacy term, it also has a colloquial use.
>"If a statement or situation begs the question, ***it causes you to ask a particular question" -*** *From Cambridge Dictionary*
This is only a thing because people kept misusing it for years and years, and not everyone recognizes it in all dictionaries I bet. When I was in college I would have received a big fat F on my grades from my harshest English teacher if she saw me using that phrase like that.
Yes, people who were born and raised in Britain misused it for centuries, you totally didn't just self-report as someone who learned half of their lexicon through online discussions.
Read a book. Right now you are literally the "you need a high IQ to understand Rick&Morty" guy. You are only going to embarass yourself with an outlook like that.
Right and wrong, good and evil are universal concepts.
Everyone can understand morality based on their own self. They can understand that bad is when something happens which harms harm and good is when something happens that helps them.
Thus doing the same to another person as if that other person were the self is the same. Harming that other person is a bad thing and helping them is a good thing.
Those who wish to help others are good and those who wish to harm others are evil.
People, if they have normally functioning mental faculties, are able to understand whether their actions are helping or hurting others. By that knowledge they know whether they themselves are good or evil.
These concepts are universal.
The only thing that changes between cultures are the optics. People who know they are doing evil but want to trick others into believing they are not.
>Everyone can understand morality based on their own self. They can understand that bad is when something happens which harms harm and good is when something happens that helps them.
>Thus doing the same to another person as if that other person were the self is the same. Harming that other person is a bad thing and helping them is a good thing.
You're using an extremely limited way of thinking and acting as if that's the only way of thinking: a morality system based on harm. However, this kind of system is incredibly vague and struggles not to collapse under itself when you realize that degrees of harm is ubiquitous. Is harming another in self-defense wrong? What if by succeeding in any particular goal, you're causing harm to another inadvertently? Getting that dream job might mean someone else doesn't get their dream job.
It goes deeper than that. Punishing a criminal for crimes committed is doing harm to a human being. Many medical treatments, when you boil it down, are trade-offs: medicines are often very harmful, but what makes a medicine worth taking is whether the side-effects outweigh the condition it is meant to treat. And what even constitutes a significant harm is entirely up to societal perception as well.
Of course, I've also seen people who did not want medical procedures forced upon them "for their own good." Even some in sound mind. Who is in the right there? The one who did not want the procedure, or the one who administered it against the other's will? Not so simple, is it?
>Those who wish to help others are good and those who wish to harm others are evil.
This is a very childish way of looking at it. It is true in the vaguest sense, but what of helping people who would do harm to others? What of harming those that would harm others? What is a harm, what is not a harm? Ask different people across different cultures and histories these things, and they will come up with different answers. It may often sound alike, but often you find divergences and cultural norms that do not see harm in things that other cultures see as incredibly harmful.
A fine example of this is drugs and gambling. Is it harmless? Some would say absolutely yes, because no one is doing harm to anyone else, just one person is doing something with their own body or money of their own accord. Some would say it's incredibly harmful, and that it should be prevented. Some identify harm with the providers of the drugs and gambling, seeing it as exploitative, but no matter what side you fall on it is never totally clear-cut. Drug dealers or suppliers would not exist if there was not a demand to consume drugs, after all.
>People, if they have normally functioning mental faculties, are able to understand whether their actions are helping or hurting others. By that knowledge they know whether they themselves are good or evil.
People tend to believe they are good regardless of what they are doing. Mental faculties have nothing to do with it. They may know their current actions are not right, but will justify it to themselves in any way necessary. Whether or not it is just or not is why we judge each other at trials when transgressions (appear to have) been made.
>These concepts are universal.
>The only thing that changes between cultures are the optics. People who know they are doing evil but want to trick others into believing they are not.
Again, I think your view is incredibly childish. People are the heroes of their own stories. Even those that you and I would both agree *are* evil often do not view themselves as such. Yes, I do have my own sense of good and evil, but I also understand that sense of good and evil is my own, and that other cultures and ideologies will think differently than I do.
Also from the traveler's perspective, he only knows that the sinners consumed the Abyss and Deinsleif hates them. I feel they see the Abyss as harmful and dangerous, but not necessarily evil. Traveler's own sibling is the Abyss and they don't mind all that much...
And no, a lot of people don't care about morality when it's a fucking video game. It doesn't have to be morally perfect, it's *fiction*. Morality is often not the most interesting thing to talk about when it comes to fiction. But a ton of people hyperfocus on it and act like you're stupid or a horrible person if you don't explicitly state that bad action bad
I didn't insinuate and don't think that they are the first two. Just that last one.
>a lot of people don't care about morality
OP does. Hoyo writers do, as they place a lot of emphasis on it at various points. I am also not criticizing people not focusing on it or not caring about it. What is your actual point that is relevant to what I said?
You're right, I should make myself more clear. I meant plenty of people like having narrative and character discussions beyond portraying good morality and punishing bad morality. Like op and their viewpoint, and I'm sure plenty of Hoyo writers. But instead of meaningfully engaging with these viewpoints you assume it can only be marketing to dumb fans.
>relying on you to not give a f*** about the morality of it when push comes to shove. They will give you reasons why she did what she did and you will nod and accept the intended angle like a good fanboy.
You say that and then you say you're not criticizing people who don't focus or care about it. But you are actively degrading people who find different meaning in the work than you, and who like engaging with morality in a work differently than you
The other person to me is an absolute buffoon for trying to spin a pseudointellectual narrative and doesn't deserve the respect.
You could be bothered by the way I painted OP and people in the same aisle as fanboys and people who would gladly accept and internalize any slop without questioning when they are invested in a game, but that is my stance. If you have nothing to say about my stance other than how offensive it looks to you, I am not interested.
Who is the Genshin narrative cherry picking as evil? Could you point out? Are you saying Dotorre? Again as far as we know, his story and Alice/Rhinedottir's are far from over. Dottorre can have his reasons too and becomes "morally grey" or at least sympathetic - see Otto in HI3. It all depends on the audience's interpretation, and different people can have different views, which is okay.
Whether these characters are morally grey or not are irrelevant. My understanding is that the game is not adding these tidbits or segments where they do "dark" or questionable things with the purpose of making morally grey characters. The end result is not a "morally grey" character as you would appreciate in a story where that setting is properly explored. If you take an otherwise ordinary character from a book, change nothing about the story but add a footnote of "btw this guy killed like 5 people in a bar at one point", the character is not suddenly a morally grey character. It is just a lazy addition that makes the character's story awkward at best, and clashes with other themes in the book at worst.
This is like arguing whether the plankton in Spongebob is a morally grey or an evil character. Nobody cares where he lies on the alignment chart according to some arbitrary value judgement, including the writers. Genshin's writing itself doesn't care about these events, and expects you to not care in return. They just want you to accept that "this guy bad" or "this girl very cunning" when the neon signs above their head say so. Showcasing some "dark" themes to give the reader a certain impression, and then removing all consequences from that showcase diminish everything else you have done in the story where you *did* care about the consequences. Teppei's death, Tri-commision's betrayal behind the scenes, Sumeru Akademia's actions, Vacher's demise, etc. all hinge upon the consequences of immoral actions and push the narrative forward on those pivot points.
The story is selectively ignoring certain moral choices and putting way too much focus on certain others, whereas a good cohesive story would make the effort to make sure each of these actions would blend with the setting properly.
But I won't say for certain just yet that the story is selectively ignoring certain immoral choices and thus is bad writing overall, except for Inazuma, which the community has agreed was not well written. Perhaps at the end of the story we can revisit and see if the story was selective and inconsistent.
Oh and of course the mandatory "well we can't judge higher beings morals / story characters as mortals / real people ourselves" which completely nullifies any value judgement on any character in the game including Dottore.
In terms of "higher beings", for me it's not a point of whether we *should* judge them or not. I see it as more of philosophical question just as in real life religions. Like the gods and deities in Christianity or Buddhism, etc. are not exactly "moral" and you won't define them as such. Or similarly do you think humans killing pests are immoral and should be pointed out as such?
But that's just me. Other readers may believe that higher beings should be put on the same level as mortals, which is totally valid too.
This is the crucial part. The game itself relies on value judgements to make every character click. Gods, archons etc. that we interact with (or interact with people who are related to them) are not depicted as creatures of myth, to the opposite, they are humanized to the point where their god/adepti/archon etc. status is just a different (supposedly stronger, which is also not strictly elaborated upon) flavor of humanoid. It would be fair to say that mythical figures in-game like Deshret, Moon Sisters or Nibelung could be depicted that way as they are always referred to in past tense and through literature. Extending that to characters we see communicating in real time like Sandrone, Alice or Rhinedottir is only going to clash with the intended experience.
If you ignore that, and selectively decide that some characters are above our judgement despite the game or the writers making no attempts to paint them as such while in many cases doing the exact opposite, it is just a thinly veiled deflection of reasonable criticism.
Again I am not criticizing anyone other than the writers' choices. It is impossible to find fault in any story with your mindset. After all we are not the author, we don't ***really*** know why anybody does anything and why anything happens at any time.
You can have any discussion on any media, I wouldn't bring that forward as a good thing in and of itself.
Emphasis on "the game". Not Traveler or any other *specific* character, but THE STORY, *the narrative* (but ofc, the best way to show it is through characters reactions). For each character who's meant to be morally gray, there should be other characters in some way acknowledging the (im)morality of their choices. This is writing 101.
Everyone and their mother openly hates Dottore, but those supposedly morally gray characters are being friends with everybody and no one ever cares about their questionable deeds. This makes the whole situation look incredibly fake (and also calls into question whether the action is even considered a bad thing in Teyvat).
I don't want the game to straight up tell me "this person is bad" or "this action is wrong" (although it already often does, but only when it's about NPCs – curious, isn't it?), but the *characters* (not all ofc, but some) should react accordingly to other characters' deeds. If the Traveler wants to ignore it (because conveniently, all those morally grey characters' goals always *happen* to align with theirs), that's fine, but then *they* should also be treated as morally gray by other characters, not as the awesome, perfect hero whom everyone loves.
But of course, we can't have that. Traveler has to be loved by everyone, because they're *you* and this is a gacha game.
Let's not pretend that Genshin sweeping under the rug every playable character's questionable deed is anything other than cowardly writing. Hoyo loves to hold your hand in every other aspect and repeat stuff 5 times, but when it comes to marketing-wise uncomfortable topics, like the fact that your cute waifu might have done something bad, it's suddenly a no-go zone and we only get brief, instantly brushed-off mentions and/or additional context (yeah, she killed him, but he was a bad guy, so it's fine) that makes the deed not so bad after all.
Everyone who dislikes the traveler aren't usually made playable.
That's nothing new pal.
Many games before and after, always just had the playable cast be people who get along most of the time with the main characters. Very rarely would you ever get a cast of characters who didn't get along.
That's nothing new to gaming.
It's not mandatory that a game makes villains playable or have internal conflict between characters especially when said characters barely interact outside of events.
At the end of the day whether the villains or black morality characters are playable or not doesn't change if the story is good or bad. It's still entirely on execution.
You can still drop the ball on the villains.
Edmond the Archbishop of Canterbury: "You know Hell isn't really as bad as it's cracked up to be. The thing about Heaven is... Heaven is for people who like the sorts of things that go on in Heaven, like... singing... talking to God... watering pot plants. Whereas Hell, Hell you see, is for people who like the other sorts of things... adultery... pillage... torture. Leave your lands to the crown, and once you're dead, you'll have the time of your life!"
Does that mean she will always be a good person? Well she is insistent on calling herself a final boss. So long as our values don't clash, she has no reason to get in our way and would like her daughter to have a good life. But she still lets said daughter run around exploding things and doing serious damage while saying there is nothing wrong with that. In the meantime, we are basically just making her job easier and making the world a better place for her daughter to explore. They are not hiding her ambiguity. People just take a trait and think that means the rest don't apply imo.
Yes, you are supposed to be experimenting on volunteers or people who are afflicted without a better choice. A lot of "medical" practices of medieval Europe were straight up evil shit by the way and there were other corners of the world at that same timeframe where that same action would be condemned.
>digging up fresh graves and dissected them for science
Not an evil act, today you would get in legal trouble if you did it without permission but nobody would think you are a bad actor if it is proven that you were doing it for legit science. Legality and ethics are two different things.
It is not "western thought process", it is how the game literally conveys its story. "Different people have different morals" is not an excuse for narrative inconsistency, if it was, you would have no reason to declare Dottore evil either, but just a person whose goals happened to clash with our goals.
Also you seem to be missing a lot of lore on Dottore's background.
Dottore live experimented on people including children, some of which died painfully. He didn't "treat" Collei, he tried to infuse a god's remains into her, knowing that other children before her didn't survive it.
Tell me what your criteria is for you to decide that a character is immoral in a story.
Also could you tell me why Dottore is immoral? You don't know their end goal or motivation.