Thoughts on Genshin Impact's Natlan Archon Quest (Spoilers)

About the Lyrics#

If a song I love has lyrics, I have to understand what they mean.

In Swahili ↓

1
Shujaa
2

3
Unasafirini kwa matakwa ya watu wako
4
Mnachagueni vita kwa majina ya shujaa
5
Mwishowe mnaunguweni tena majivuni
6
Mwishowe mnaunguweni tena majivuni
7

8
Ukuu ukuu
9
Kwa wanao ona yajayo
10
Tutaimba wimbo wa mwanga moto, usiku wa giza

The official English translation registered as subtitles on YouTube ↓

1
Hero
2

3
You embark on a pilgrimage, for the wishes of the people
4
You choose to battle, to earn a glorious name
5
In the end, you rekindle in ashes because of a dream
6
In the end, you rekindle in ashes because of a dream
7

8
Glory, oh glory
9
To those who look into the future
10
Song of the light, fire of the night (Light and fire, the light and fire bestowed to us)

The Japanese translation I had Gemini make (why is there no official Japanese subtitle?!), put back into English here ↓

1
O hero
2

3
Thou dost set out on a pilgrimage, for the wishes of the people
4
Thou dost choose battle, to win a glorious name
5
In the end, because of a dream, thou shalt rise again from the ashes
6
In the end, because of a dream, thou shalt rise again from the ashes
7

8
Glory, O glory
9
To those who look upon the future
10
Song of light, flame of the dark night (the light and flame granted to us)

I had a feeling these lyrics rang a bell, and what do you know, they reference the flavor text of a Pyro character’s level-up material.

That item has been in the game since the very beginning, and they paid off that foreshadowing like this?

At this point I’m past thinking “what a good song” or “how moving”, and the level of dedication honestly scares me.

About Christopher Tin’s Influence#

“Natlan”, Natlan’s main theme, which I listened to while I was at it after “Anthem of the Savannah”, clearly shows Christopher Tin’s influence. Not just the Swahili choir, but the structure of the piece, and even the 6-4-1-5 progression in the chorus(?) section that Christopher Tin loves, are all unmistakable.

But I only truly felt how wonderful “Natlan” is after going through the Natlan Archon Quest. More on that later.

How “War” Is Portrayed#

When I heard that Natlan was the nation of war, the first thing I thought was, “How on earth are they going to express that theme?”

Unlike the themes of the other nations (freedom, contracts, eternity, knowledge, justice…), with war there’s simply no way to avoid depicting its negative side. If you glorify war too much (especially in times like these), it ends up extremely shallow.

But the negative side of war is far too heavy for a game like Genshin Impact, whose whole purpose is to make you pull cute characters from a gacha.

Since there’s a stadium, I figured the sensible compromise would be something Olympic, or a shonen manga tournament arc. But ever since the Fontaine days, Genshin has clearly stopped hesitating to kill people in the game. You can’t let your guard down.

That was my state of mind as I went through it.

Acts I-III were, well, the usual fetch-quest festival. Honestly, I followed the story while surfing the web in another window.

That said, it’s not like the first half was totally boring either. The relationship between Kachina and Mualani was extremely precious.

I also really liked how the story portrays a culture where concepts like war and death are part of everyday life. Rather than just being blanketed in tragedy, they’ve adapted to those things as an ordinary part of daily life, and that feels realistic (although I don’t know what’s actually true).

I found an opinion that speaks to exactly this from the point of view of someone who’s been there.

To me, war was just something that existed. In my home country (Nicaragua) before my family fled, there were bullet holes even in the place that’s now an internet cafe, and you could see a John Lennon mural.

I just wanted to share my experience. Maybe Hoyo will see this. Maybe it’ll get buried. Who knows. But honestly, I wanted to share all of this, because I was truly happy that a game could portray war from a perspective that isn’t just a string of violence but a part of life for many people.

The way war gets depicted in fiction, and especially in games, tends to be too glorified or too focused on the tragic side. It’s hard to imagine how it feels to someone for whom war has been close at hand since birth, but I think Genshin did a pretty good job of balancing the two extremes.

Act IV#

This is the party I played most of the Natlan quest with. I gave up on the Fischl Hyperbloom setup and brought in Barbara, whom I recently went on a date with, as the healer. I like the food system, but opening the menu to eat a meal in the middle of a heated fight just felt off to me. It was the right choice.

Barbara’s Hangout Event Made Me Feel Philosophical

The Traveler came from Fontaine, so she has no choice but to use Hydro. There’s absolutely no combat advantage to it. It was a choice to stay consistent with the lore, but unexpectedly it’s fast at chipping down the Void Ward gauge, the new guard gauge introduced in Natlan. It turned out to be practically useful.

Now, when the quest marker is on a bed, a long, heavy development usually follows. I steeled myself and went to sleep, and sure enough, that’s what happened.

The game system introduced here did the best possible job of heightening the immersion of “I’m in the middle of an all-out war against the Abyss right now.”

Considering that you need to convey a large-scale battle while there are strict limits on how many characters can be shown on screen, I think this system, while not perfect, was the best choice. It reminded me of Ace Combat 6.

The way they depicted the worsening war situation was clever too. When this screen first appeared, I just thought, oh, it’s like the usual combat events, where buffs and debuffs get attached to ease the monotony of back-to-back fights.

Then, before long, it started saying “Battlefield effects unknown” for each outpost. At that point it no longer had any meaning in the game. The system explained at the start, where you receive the latest info from a Messenger at each outpost and update the map, stops functioning properly, and eventually nearly every location ends up as “No updates for a while, so the situation is unknown.” That presentation was truly terrifying.

Though I did think the “Monster count” and “Casualties” counters were a bit too direct.

The Shift from Knowledge to Love#

In my date with Barbara I (probably) experienced the shift from “love (personal knowledge)” to “knowledge (impersonal knowledge)” described in An Inquiry into the Good, but in this quest I experienced the reverse.

Chuychu’s death was shocking in itself, but the way it was depicted was brutal too.

Her body laid out on a mat, flowers placed beside her, and a woman beside her offering a Buddhist-style chant (a prayer?). Quite a few people have died in Genshin so far, but this was a whole different way of depicting it. Seeing it, I thought, “Whoa, they’re going this far,” and instinctively reached to take a screenshot.

…But then a powerful sense of resistance welled up from somewhere inside me. It was a moral feeling, a pang of conscience, that it’s wrong to photograph the deceased at a funeral.

Feeling that hesitation was itself another shock. This is a game, and what’s on the screen is nothing but pixels. Even if I raise the level of abstraction a bit, the 3D model should be no different from how she looked when she was alive. And yet I had recognized that object as “a body that shouldn’t be casually photographed.”

That was when I finally realized that I had developed a personal interest in this world, in other words, that I was quite deeply immersed in the story.

That’s why, although it was the most memorable scene in the Natlan quest, I have no screenshot of it.

Act V#

After the counteroffensive, on to the final battle.

So many of the cinematic moments were so hot that there’s no single element I can pull out and say “this one!”

But the moment the Traveler finally became able to use Pyro here, I was genuinely thrilled.

And the fact that all the Constellations are effects limited to this battle is quite a bold commitment. True, if Pyro gets unlocked in the final stretch of the Archon Quest, the “Constellations unlock as you progress through the quest” system becomes meaningless, so it feels like they cleverly abused the game system and went all in on the presentation.

I suppose from now on, when fighting this as a weekly boss, the Traveler will be mandatory in the party.

The Fontaine boss, the whale, felt tacked on, like it was missing the finishing touch, but in Natlan they kept the heat building properly all the way up to the boss fight.

About Paimon#

I really do like Paimon. Seeing her become able to endure the parting from the Traveler made me feel how much their bond has deepened since the Sumeru days. In the final phase of the boss fight, I almost cried, much as I hate to admit it.

I had her muted while I was fishing nonstop for the “catch” quest, though. Sorry.

The Music, Once More#

And what played an important role in heightening that feeling was, after all, the music. Every time the Anthem of the Savannah motif or the Natlan motif played in the stadium, in the Speaker’s Chamber, and everywhere else in the field and in the story, my patriotism for Natlan grew.

What shocked me most about the music was that Natlan, Natlan’s theme, was the in-story “Ode of Resurrection”. When the song started playing during the incident with Kachina and I realized it, I got goosebumps. With the background info that it’s a poem meant to bring the dead back to life, I was finally able to understand the meaning of the lyrics.

And now that I’ve finished the Archon Quest, this poem has also become a symbol of the Natlan people cheering on Lumine. I’m Lumine, so I get buffs from this song too.

This is a personal memory, but when I was in junior high, there was an event called a school camp trip. Basically a group overnight retreat, and on the last night we held a campfire where each group had to put on some kind of performance.

In my group, for some reason the idea of an air-ensemble performance of Baba Yetu (miming playing the instruments) got approved. I took responsibility and sang the lyrics reading them out as romanized Japanese. There’s no way anyone but me was playing Civ4, but the greatness of the song seemed to come across regardless of the game.

The adventure in Natlan reminded me of that primal excitement from back then.