Speaking of Genshin Impact, it’s been awhile since I actually played any of the main quests (story, archon, world). I longed stopped logging in daily and usually just do an event towards the tail end once all of the time gates have been unlocked. While Fontaine’s main questing isn’t as gated behind having to complete a whole lot of previous regions questing, it still required completing the main archon quest for Sumeru. And that was an honestly long one (taking several hours to complete).
Often times in the past, various event quests required having completed some main story quests (future patches allowed starting the event quest while you acknowledge there may be some spoilers or inconsistencies in your future playthrough). But it couldn’t account for every dependency (especially if you had a lot of older quests that hadn’t been completed yet).
So after I finally wrapped up a bunch of Sumeru quests (main story and main archon quest), I began clearing some of outstanding world quests that had piled up from Liyue, Inazuma, and Sumeru (I still have Octave of the Maushiro from Inazuma to do) and that’s only for the ones that I had accepted (there are probably more I haven’t yet picked up from the NPC’s yet).
What I don’t like about Genshin Impact’s character story quest system, is that you need to unlock them with those story keys (you get a key for completing every 8 daily commissions, and can only hold 3 keys at a time). This is in contrast to the streamlined system in Honkai Star Rail where you get a lot of these companion quests from the messaging system. While they’ve also been a lot more careful about having too much story related dependencies blocking progress in HSR, it still happens (there’s a point where the system is unable to suspend those dependencies if you have too many of these quests not completed).
To give an idea of just how far behind I am on Genshin Impact, I hadn’t yet even started act I of Historia Antiqua (Zhongli’s story quest) that was released in late 2020. And that applies to most all of these character quests since that period (some of these need to be completed in order to unlock newer character story quests). I did complete some of these on my other account (which I played a bit differently from the one I always considered my main) up until Inazuma. But after 2020, I pretty much abandoned this crazy game play (of playing two other accounts) while also decreasing the amount of time I played Genshin Impact on my primary account. So it became inevitable that these all of these different quests just piled up.
Over the past weekend, I managed to clear out part of this backlog so that I could at least get the Fontaine main archon quest to popup, and to also at least be able to unlock the character story quests that are piling up (if they weren’t dependent on this key system, then I’d probably just leave thing as is).
I will say the character stories have been good while the main Sumeru archon quest was really great (the best one so far IMHO). It definitely shows the progression in their story telling while also building up to dropping more information about our main character’s journey (and their missing sibling). This makes sense since there are only two more nations. But this is one of the hallmarks of this game for me; this main story, the exploration, and the music. The combat (needed occasionally for some of this questing) is just the icing on the whole cake. The only downside is all of these different questing types (where most of the world quest ones are not voiced) are competing for playing time along with the ones they introduce as filler material for events. There’s a point where “too much, is too much”. And if you don’t keep up (like what happened with me), it’s a constant catch up (you also want to take a breather in between).
So while I spent several hours getting through these various quests, it still feels like I have hours more to get through. And I know there’s going to be a point soon where I just want to take a break from this constant questing (where I’m going to fall behind again since the next major update is at the end of this month with 4.4). As I’ve noted before, games like Genshin (with it’s gacha monetization and designed mechanics) are ones that I prefer playing occasionally to avoid that burnout feeling (as that is the inevitable part given how this game and its systems are designed). Like I hadn’t done daily commissions in forever, but had to start doing them for the story keys. The pittance of Primogems you get from completing these aren’t any motivation for me either (I also feel the same for most filler events they throw in between).
This is one portion of the design of the game (and thus its calculated release cadence) that I don’t care for because it feels too formulative. But it is what it is (so I just don’t fall into the trap of forcing myself to play to try and keep up). The point is that I would find the game more enjoyable if it weren’t so blatantly methodical with major content/story/zone expansion/new character banners being mixed in with time gated events that have long in the tooth filler quests.
