Genshin Impact

I was under the impression "No morally grey characters" was a government enforced guideline

I don't think so. If anything Genshin is an outlier. Most gacha from anywhere feature playable heroes and villains.

It's definitely not government enforced when Arknights exists, Mihoyo is just bound to making their characters as palatable to a general audience as possible for the sake of marketability. Similar to why their handling of the dark skinned members of the cast is unfortunately the way it is.

Edited by Mami on May 6th 2024 at 7:48:59 PM

Which is why Raiden Shogun pulls a sword from her boobs and commits war crimes and that's fine because she's been in her sad depression room phase of her life.

La Signora suffers tragedy after tragedy but kicked Venti (who is implied to have done his own war crimes) and showed too much leg so she must DIE.

That's Hoyoverse marketing at work, don't bother trying to understand it. I don't even think the whole design censorship mandate even did anything after Mona, Rosaria, Amber, and Jean were re-clothed (personally I think they all look better). Meanwhile I keep begging for a guy with a beard, an amazon that's not wearing rags, and a non-human character like a slime or a hilichurl and the only thing keeping me going is the denial.

On the plus side I got Arlecchino's weapon so I may be a consumer whore but at least my OCD can shut up about her colors not matching. Now if we can finally get a red paraglider then I can sleep at night, can you imagine Perrie running around in a red-gray suit with a green spear (originally had the Jade spear on her) and a white-blue glider?!

Edited by Stage7-4 on May 6th 2024 at 3:12:46 AM

I mean…Signora herself is willing to cause mayhem and death in other places to serve her ends and then gets pissy when things turn against her. Ventis not perfect but he cares about his people and does come to them when they need him and he knows they’re in danger.

Signora does nothing to help while the Abyss was threatening her homeland and then jumps Venti when he saves it.

Raiden is kinda humorous in their handling cause it’s clear they did it since she’s based on a previous Mihoyo character and they handle her son the same way by just erasing his crimes.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 6th 2024 at 3:49:50 AM

I uh don't see any citations here. What evidence do you have that she wasn't playable because she "showed too much leg"?

Heck you yourself cited an example of a character with comparatively skimpy design, if Raiden and her cut down Kimono/boob-sword can past the muster why assume that La Signora couldn't? It doesn't seem like a justified assumption from where I'm standing.

La Signora was never made onto a player skeleton. She was never meant to be playable and never would have been able to handle player animations without a completely new model.

If we go back to the past, a younger model on the player skeleton is an option... one I am betting we will see in like 3 years.

(Sunday in Star Rail is the same... he is not on a player skeleton.)

I'm also intrigued by the "morally grey" thing people keep saying, since from what I can tell, Honkai has some absolute stinkers amongst its playable cast.

Sure, Tartaglia and Arlecchino are definitely less intense than some of the other Harbingers, but I think that's just a symptom of the Fatui becoming more nuanced in general c.f. the 9th Company.

also dori is a playable character

Edited by asterism on May 6th 2024 at 12:26:43 PM

For what it's worth Honkai Star Rail/3rd are very different games from Genshin. One of the ways they're different is that they're more willing to have much more gray or outright malevolent characters.

Genshin's leadership just doesn't seem interested in risking their marketability by adding characters who are more nuanced or darker in-universe.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 6th 2024 at 4:28:32 AM

I don't know how anyone could argue that Arlecchino wasn't morally grey, especially after her story quest and voice lines. The only thing she cares about is the safety of her children, and she can be ruthless to anyone who challenges that, up to and including the Tsaritsa. She's a monster, just a very paternal one.

Also the fact her quest ends with her promising that a red moon will rise over Snezhnaya is, frankly, ominous as fuck.

You missed the part where I said don't bother trying to understand it. I have no idea why Raiden is sexy-good and Signora is sexy-bad, and I really don't know what is going on in the heads at Hoyoverse at times. And while I can understand why Mona or Rosaria got new more modest outfits, I don't understand Amber and Jean's (although Jean's new outfit is aesthetically better). Especially when Skirk exists.

As mentioned above, not being one of the 5 playable character models seems to be the biggest clue to future playability. But then they turned a bird into a woman and have I mentioned that the Hoyoverse design philosophy makes no sense?!

Others are right that Signora isn't nice or even good but my point is that hasn't exactly stopped Hoyoverse before. So it's a mystery to me what traits have more moral weight to them in Hoyoverse's eyes.

Edited by Stage7-4 on May 6th 2024 at 4:47:09 AM

@ Omega Radiance

I would argue La Signora suffered from Inazuma's overall writing problem, her death is meant to show that the Raiden Shogun doesn't screw around but there could have been better ways to show that, or at least, needed far more build up to make it necessary like, I don't know, have her be the one directly handling the delusion distribution. The fact that she got a cameo in Scara's quest shows that even the writers know there was a problem.

On Raiden Ei's relationship with the original Raiden Mei, I think it actually detracted from the character overall than added to it, mostly because it constrained what the team could do with her characterisation within the Inazuma storyline in contrast to, say, Nahida.

What's sad is that Acheron -Star Rail's Raiden Mei Alternate Self- has enough character beats to be similar to the original while also having her own elements that make her a different character and not just a clone of her.

@ Memers

Called it.

@ asterism

For what is worth, both Honkais have the benefit of being less popular games than Genshin, which means the creators had and have more liberties in general. Like Mami said, it's an issue of marketability.

Now, they could take the risk to change that in Natlan and make it the Wham Episode of the game but that's not a certain thing.

Edited by raziel365 on May 6th 2024 at 4:47:45 AM

I didn't miss that, I'm saying that you haven't actually justified your position. Your argument assumes that they didn't include her because she was the "wrong" type of sexy but I'm not aware of reason to believe that? I don't think Mihoyo has been upfront with the writing choices that led them to kill off Signora.

Which is why I doubt this specific assertion, you handwave it as "inconsistency" but that doesn't mean it actually makes sense as a proposed reason. They've included comparably sexualized characters before, I don't buy that they'd just randomly decide that she crosses a line for no reason. It makes much more sense if this specific hypothesis is just wrong and there was something else motivating them.

@ asterism

I think the problem with Arlecchino is that the build up to her characterisation didn't match up with what we got.

She is morally grey but what others expected, myself included, is that she would be at best A Lighter Shade of Black, maybe as a mix of the Arlecchino we got with Crucabena, who basically has all the negative traits that Arlecchino was attributed to have.

Yeah, we had both Childe and Scaramouche talk about how she was a lunatic who couldn't be trusted and the House of the Hearth was trading excess children to Dottore for favors. All of which turned out to be a fairly large red herring.

It wasn't retconned per se but it's telling how all the information we got served to make her fundamentally lighter and more humane then what we thought. Which admittedly is a relative statement but it's still a dramatic recontextualization.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 6th 2024 at 5:11:39 AM

Let me be verbatim then: I have no idea why Signora isn't playable nor what factors led to that decision, whether they be sexy factor, war crimes, being too tall, or something else. The "showing too much leg" thing was sarcasm.

My "hypothesis" is that I don't have one, I really can't parse why Hoyoverse does what they do.

Edited by Stage7-4 on May 6th 2024 at 5:57:55 AM

I always figured the primary reason Signora never got treated as anything other than a monster and a villain is that, in the game itself, she's never presented as anything other than a monster and a villain.

That's something that's pretty important. Signora has a very sympathetic backstory, but it's entirely All in the Manual with none of it being in the overall plot that the average player is most likely to experience. You basically have to be seeking out her story to know what it is.

She's basically a victim of the storytelling model of the initial Mondstadt region, in which several characters relied on tie-in stories or other obsucre lore to tell their stories rather than putting those stories in the game (it also happened to Diluc).

So by the time it was time to end Signora's story, it was too late to insert any of those sympathetic points, so she just dies the way - as far as most players knew - she lived.

You can tell they learned their lesson, since Tartaglia - even though his reasons for being Traveller's friend are bullshit - at least gets an entire arc of being friendly before the big fight, and The Wanderer outright gets his sympathetic backstory built up over plotlines across several regions.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 6th 2024 at 6:07:18 AM

Agreed. You can even tell comparing Signora directly with Arlecchino, while Signora attacking Venti and Arlecchino attacking Furina are morally similar on paper the story presents one of these actions with clear favoritism. Venti gets kicked while you watch in a cutscene with all the gloating muahahaha evil witch act while Furina gets attacked as a still image presented after the fact. Even when Furina, the Traveler, and Arlecchino follow up on the attempted murder, the events are still framed pragmatically. Furina is traumatized, but Arlecchino is presented as justified as doing it all for Fontaine.

Here is the thing though. She was never intended to be playable, literally she couldn't be playable as she was in game as she was built as an NPC and that is all. There is no 'by the time', they never actually wanted her playable.

If they wanted to she would be on the tall female skeleton and be about 15 cm shorter than she is to fit that skeleton. As well as actually have attacks available to her with her catalyst in her fight instead of just sitting there with a shield while powers go off around her.

Edited by Memers on May 6th 2024 at 6:28:13 AM

I mean, if Arlecchino had done anything else to Furina, it would have ruined Focalors's plan and doomed everyone in Fontaine

Edited by asterism on May 6th 2024 at 2:27:35 PM

I'm aware of that. I'm just explaining why it would never have happened.

The writers not putting any of Signora's sympathetic backstory in plot of the game is a consequence of them having no interest in her being a sympathetic character.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 6th 2024 at 6:32:58 AM

Out-of-universe and in hindsight, sure. But what the players saw and Arle the character did was try to attack a powerful tyrant, and immediately spare her and try to be more diplomatic as soon as soon as she saw she was punching down on a weakling she could influence more peacefully.

I'm going to be honest: I think Signora was made sexy after being designed as the doomed started villain because that would make her stand out and seem playable, and they wanted a Sacrificial Lion to show that you can't expect everyone unique to join your side as a unit. It's the same in Star Rail, where another hot blonde evil lady is the first one killed off while objectively much worse people get added to the roster. Having artifact lore make her sympathetic was probably a way to make her complex after the fact because they didn't want to have their first baddie be so one-dimensional: the game still has nothing in anything but flavor text that makes Rostam or her conflicts actually matter more than a hallucination she had.

Edited by IniuriaTalis on May 6th 2024 at 6:41:11 AM

I wouldn't go that far. She mostly just comes off as a Femme Fatale in the game. Sexy evil lady with an imperious, aristocratic attitude is a pretty classic villain character type.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 6th 2024 at 6:41:07 AM

Yes, but that is pretty much the villain type with the most range of sympathy that I can think of. Just look at Lust vs. Lust.

Star Rail has a number of unique NP Cs that arnt playable.

Like Siobhan... who is just a standard NPC and model but... damn they should have made her playable instead of Gallagher.