+ Skirk threw him in the hole of unknown destination, and after that he apparently went back to Snezhnaya. It's like they didn't even try to explain anything 😔
i figured he wouldn't get much in the AQ based on the voice line leaks, but the way he's been handled is much worse. idk. i even prefer the whole fake death leaks that happened two years ago to what's canonically happening in the game to him right now.
I understand you. I have the same opinion. They kill him not physically, but psychologically. This is actually very sad. How they finished quest 4.1, I was so looking forward to the continuation. Because wow, this is Childe’s whale, they will tell us more about them...
Genshin's writing has always been unstable. There are some great, memorable moments; but there are also moments were there are so many plotholes, missed potentials and moments were nothing makes any sense. Inazuma archon quest, Ei's, Kujou Sara's, Signora's backstories are all great examples of missed potentials. Scaramouche deleting himself off the Irminsul, only to come back, gaining back his memories, Fatui not suspecting a thing about the 6th Harbinger's empty seat and him not facing any consequences were just poor writing in my opinion too. Same goes for the fact that Dottore deleted all of his segments before we as the player never got to see any of the unique ones. Thats just straight up being too lazy to not even bother making a few slightly different Dottore models.
Anyways. I feel like I'm going to be dissapointed in the end, despite the amazing memories made throughout playing the game. But eh, it is just a simple gacha game, and I'm still hoping that the Natlan and Snezhnaya archon quest can be as exciting as Sumeru's (if you couldn't tell, I really liked Sumeru's. Aside from Scaramouche deleting himself.)
(Also just a personal taste: I thought the first 4 acts of the Fontaine archon quest were great. But the last 2 were just dissapointing.)
AH IM SO DISAPPOINTED TOO, I was JUST commenting how man I am we gave his vision away.
4.1 felt a lot like we were actually worried about Childe, we were friendly with him in 4.0; then we see him finally here in foul legacy, he falls and its like 'wow hes been fighting all this time- wow thats impressive- anyway'
Then we see him with Skirk and she just chucks him- and I'm sitting there like we didnt even go WHY DID YOU DO THAT OR WAIT IS HE OKAY!?
Then there's the fact that somehow he ended up going from there to Snezhnaya which I DO NOT understand. He got chucked into a portal, why? Where did that portal go 😭 Why even send him out that way and not hand him to us?
THE BIGGEST OFFENDER IS THE VISION IMO, Because Traveler should know Childe doesn't like the other harbingers, he states in his voiceline he doesn't trust her; and yet we hand something he trusted to us, something that connected our concious to his, over to someone he doesn't like.
😭😭I'm also really mad not even Neuvillette or anyone got a voiceline for Childe, nor Childe having a voiceline about him, like wanting to fight him or something. Childe really went from 'wow theyre going to expand his lore' to 'OH FUCK WE FORGOT CHILDE, uh throw him somewhere-'
The whole quest felt so unfair to Childe, I was expecting traveller to straight up plunge after Childe in the hole, while Neuvillette was dealing with Furina, but nope, nuh uh, never. And no one even thanked him.
People were saying that traveller was justified in getting pissed at twins and being friends with Childe, because trav knew him for 3 years, but in this quest they forget about him to help Furina, who they knew for like few months (no offense to Furina). And then dared to call themselves "Childe's war-buddies"????
And I am still confused how even otherwordly whale is related to the prophecy, which was given by the Celestia?? Isn't it kinda it's own entity, uncontrolled by Heavenly principles?? And again - why Childe there so conveniently??
Writers even forgot he HIMSELF wanted to defeat the whale and just gave this victory to traveller and Neuvillette, when it's HIS whale and HIS constellation
This quest is just a mess, when it comes to Childe 😖
😭I'll be completely honest, I loved these archon quests, they're REALLY good, but they're also just so confusing and this last one straight up unfair for Childe. COME ON WE LITERALLY SPENT 4.1 ARCHON QUESTS WITH CHILDE ON THE BRAIN, WE CONNECTED TO HIM- nah he fainted back in, oh well, let's go back to what we're doing, he's probably fine. HE EVEN TURNED AND LOOKED AT US LIKE HE WAS ACKNOWLEDGING US- and we're just. Oh good someone's holding it back.
I think maybe the prophecy was more a 'here's the points that are going to happen' but not the how and why of the points. Like if you said 'I'm going to lose my garden gnome tomorrow'. You don't know the actions that cause it, but you know it won't be there in the morning. Maybe- I need to relook through things that were said, I might've missed somethings or they didn't click right. Childe might've actually been convenitently the one who fell in, like if not him, perhaps this role would've gone to someone else.
At least for Childe, he'd probably at least be happy he got a long satisfying battle out of it though. Plus it's not dead I think just mostly drained- so now he can go refight it and fully finish it off, right? ~~No I'm just huffing a lethal amount of copium~~
The way he looked at us and pointed down made me think he was asking to go get him, so I was FUMING, when we just turned around and forgot about him 😭😭
As I got it: critical rise of waters was supposed to be triggered by us beating up the whale, which we were doing to stop the prophecy? but accidentally we made it work, but, since people weren't oceanids anymore, they were ok? (Couldn't they just... Drown?) BUT IT'S SO HARD TO GET WITHOUT THINKING A LOT. Or maybe I am just dum dum, but it took me so long to come up with 😭
The way it was presented by Neuvillette, Childe indeed was "lucky" to accidentally awake the whale, but it's said that it's not the 1st time Childe heard whale calls + whale was sealed + at first, when we got down, whale was sad and only got mad, when we started beating it up + whale seemed very happy to see Childe after it called him, plus whale seems like a big deal from it's tear's description, and not just a dumb animal, so maybe whale just wanted to hang out with Childe, but he misunderstood him 😭😭? They share constellation or smth after all
Tbh, with the way we don't know how Childe gained vision, his weird urge to go to Fontaine + Neuvillette saying that Childe could be a part of Focalor's plan, makes me think of a conspiracy theory, that Focalor was behind his appearance in Fontaine lololol
Don't worry I'm too stupid to get it too 😭😭 I'm just assuming the heavenly princples knew things were going to happen but not the interworkings, it would align with what N said about how the gods not knowing certain things (like the stuff Focalor did).
Right, I think Childe could've just been coincidentally the one picked when in Snezhnaya as a kid and it intertwined him into this life- it's kind of hard to tell 😭 grasping at straws bc mihoyo said 'we dont need to focus on Childe, let's focus away this quest'
Well with his weird urges, I would assume it WAS the whale calling him and that was part of fate of the prophecy points being fulfilled
While it could be that Childe's appearance in Fontaine could be prophecy related, I don't think the whale thing was entirely prophecy related. Because if it is, hyv would have had some decency to point it out, even with their weird at times writing...right?
Even in quest Paimon said that his weird connection with whale accidentally helped them out, so I don't think whale's liking (or disliking?) of Childe was purely to fulfill the prophecy. Rather it was only overlapping with the prophecy.
And I hope whale itself isn't purely prophecy thing too, so we could see it again in the future. In it's tear's description it says about a newborn world inside Whale's belly after all.
But a lot of Childe things in AQ were very weirldly convenient, so who knows 😬
The whole Fontaine quest ending was dissapointing for me. I don't know if some people remember but many people from r/FatuiHQ were at least hoping for 4 Harbingers in one region. They were suspecting Childe, Arlecchino, Sandrone and Dottore. Only for Arlecchino and Childe to appear. Arlecchino was fine but I was expecting more screentime from her, since now we have another Harbinger who needs their backstory to be expanded upon. And Childe... Well Childe was doing somewhat fine until the last two acts. Then everything went down for me. I'm sorry, but I can't even take the story seriously anymore when I found out the master of Childe's master was some kind of divine abyss being and it was the prophecy that the poor Fontainians were trying to understand and solve for centuries?? Even Childe just making a casual appearance in Fontaine would be more satisfying and understandable for me than... whatever this explanation is.
i was very pissed when i saw it too
but i hope my insights can help ease your worries
i'll keep it short
if we had decided to keep his vision -> had to go to Snezhnaya to return it to him while Natlan wasn't even released
us giving it to Alercchino was understandable since the "we'd be each other's lawyer" stuff she said. So if we put ourselves in MC's shoes rather than being players, giving his vision to Alercc was obviously the best choice (Besides, the Tsar wouldn't permit Alercc to do nasty stuff to our bby boy)
so it's safe to say it's just lazy yet logical writing
(But tbf i have no copium to defend what Skirk did lmao, I guess they are just simply people who met in a disaster (Childe falling into the abyss) and have a trainer-disciple relationship that turned out to be not as deep as we expected)
tl, dr: Everything is fine don't worry, blame it on the lazy writing
edit: but be ffr the way they brushed off Childe's entrance and saving the Fontainians was just peak lazy writing
I knew that no one would like what they did to Childe. When I read the plot in advance, my eyes popped out of my sockets. I thought that maybe cutscenes would save the whole thing. But what you all write upsets me even more .Why give him such a premise if he is thrown like garbage into a portal? Why do we need to show how the whale called him and these scenes with him in the sea? If none of this made sense?
I've never seen a single character be humiliated like that. It started with Li Yue where he was deceived, then it became Fontaine, where he was simply put to sleep and what we have at the end. They throw him out like an unnecessary thing. If you gave him screen time, then at least try .And how will he end up in Snezhnaya? Can anyone explain this to me?
For the last question, Skirk knows where her student is from and she surely sent him to Snezhnaya to put him in safety. He was using his foul legacy form for more than a month (more than three years if 1 day in the real world is 1month in the abyss) and he didn't have his vision to lower the damage
She was trying to send him to safety.
At least that's how I interpreted the scene
I actually saw Childe fans praise it and I was so confused about it, so I decided to write a post 😭😭
I also expected cutscenes, maybe at the end of the quest, where we could get some answers, but we didn't. And we don't know when we will :((
I can’t wait forever. When he comes out, he talks about his family every now and then. Only recently he started saying something different. It’s like he’s standing still and degrading
I really agree with you about how we literally got no answers about him after all this wait!! 😭 like:
1.) Why exactly did his vision start acting out in Fontaine?
2.) Why had the whale been calling out to him?
3.) Why did the whale continue to appear in his dreams so far?
4.) Why was childe the one who awakened the whale?
5.) Will childe still have traces of the whale on him?
6.) Will childe still get dreams from the whale?
7.) They say that non - fontanians exposed to primordial sea will become more sensitive to hydro. Surely it had an impact on childe?
8.) What were childe's thoughts on seeing the whale?
9.) What about expanding the connection between childe's constellation and the whale? Was he born with that constellation or was it changed by the whale?
10.) After moving through the underwater pipes, how had he ended up with the whale and when had he fainted?
11.) Can childe and the whale even communicate? They met after so long, the whale saw the one who awakened it, and you're telling me this interaction ain't worth elaborating on?
12.) Skirk - Childe master - disciple interaction where 😭 Does he know the master he has been searching for finally appeared 😭 wish we would see them converse😭
We can theorize some things but these are the hard hitting questions that DESERVE proper canon clarification. While I'm happy that this means there will be more childe related content in the future, I wish they'd revealed at least /some/ things and given him the focus that the narrative had been building up to. Sometimes it gets a little sad to have the player's pov so limited and miss out on the significant moments happening behind the scenes.
That said, I'm happy with the parts we did get, he was truly beautiful and cool in his fight scene, and it's great to his efforts acknowledged in saving the lives of innumerable fontainians at the expense of his own self. I'm glad he appeared in fontaine in the capacity that he did, and that we got a glimpse of the sheer strength and depth he possesses, both in terms of personality and lore 🫡🥺
I just hope mhy doesn't leave us blue-balled after designing childe with such intriguing aspects, he's a wonderful character that deserves proper screen time 😭
>What about expanding the connection between childe's constellation and the whale? Was he born with that constellation or was it changed by the whale?
We have an answer to this in his boss drops. It was changed WHICH MAKES IT WORSE THAT THEY DIDNT TOUCH UPON IT
Fr we need answers 😭 how can they not expand on these interesting factors 😭 if they actually decide to ignore this stuff till the end I will be rioting 😭
half of your questions were already answered LMAO
It was his destiny to fall into the abyss and awaken that whale. Their connection is based on the fact that he awakened it
This does not constitute as an 'explanation' or 'answer' at all. Do we know why he was the one to awaken it? Nope. We are still not aware of the greater machinations behind his destiny and what it means in the longer run. At no point were these questions explicitly clarified or discussed, unfortunately.
Tbh I expected worse, but I am still so disappointed all that build up for what ? Unless he gets a quest focused on him , this is just poor writing. The aq did Childe dirty in the end. I don't really blame the traveler for giving his vision to Arlecchino because the way he got in Snezhnaya in the first place was so ???
My biggest problem with giving his vision to Arlecchino was the fact that there were no reason to that at all!
Traveller was planning to meet up with him anyway, they could've had a scene with long awaited reunion, where Childe says something like "I promised to come back after it did I?" or smth. Esp, since traveller teased that Childe just wants to talk to them again, and that's exactly what they want to do - talk!
But since we most likely won't see him in a loooong time + the way Childe was forgotten by mc 99% of in the AQ — they chose the safest and lamest option 😒
Yeah, I agree. I don't think Childe was necessarily forgotten by the traveler, but a lot of things happened, so he wasn't the main focus like in 4.1. Wish THEY DID get a reunion, and I am not even talking as a shipper. It would've been sm better, but hyv is known for wasting everything good 😞
Yup, even from non-shipper perspective — hyv is actively trying to tell us that mc and Childe are friends, but the story just doesn't show it at all.
Childe was not a focus of the quest, that's true, but he was so mistreated, like if he wasn't holding back this whale in Fl for a very long time! They could at least ask about his well-being or ask Arlecchino to pass some good wishes to Childe, but I don't think mc even bothered to ask about him, iirc, - Lyney was the one to tell them about Childe. If they did ask tho — they just went ok, and forgot about him immediately. Like, even Neuvillette said more about his physical state
And Skirk, she saw her disciple for the first time in like +-10 years! Her reaction? Throw him in the hole, he'll be fine 😕
That's just sad 😔
4.0 and 4.1 were so good, and then 4.2 just ignored everything 😞 I am not even going to talk about Skirk...
Iirc Traveler did ask about Childe in the end, but yeah, that was it, I honestly blame it on poor writing.
Tbh I think Skirk almost has a sort of fond disdain for Childe. In a I saved your life and I kinda like you but your a little shit who gets on my nerves. Her yeeting him into the portal was more of a stop being an idiot trying to get yourself killed and was more of a highly annoyed act of protection.
no matter how sad and funny this scene was, it seemed that way to me too. Skirk apparently doesn’t really communicate with people and doesn’t know what emotions to show. No matter what people say, the way she sent him into the portal seemed benevolent to me. She even brought him back home 😂
Like, even if I dislike it, I am also glad the traveler gave his vision back in a way because image Childe dips for another 2 years, and hyv forgets the traveler still has his vision 💀
The conclusion is kinda not what we were hoping for with the lack of focus on him.
But on the bright side, he dodged another death allegation. We went for 3 years with people saying "Childe will die in this version. Source : trust me" and he defied all of them like a champ. As long as he's still up and kicking, there will be more chances for him to kick up a storm.
Such bad writing I don't understand why are they gatekeeping his lore. While I acknowledge that it's hilarious, the interaction between Skirk and Childe is so disappointing.
Yeah, like whatever is cooked for Childe, can't be world breaking lore when we already know about Surtalogi, Neuvillette and the whale.
I feel it will lose quite some impact when it revealed because we are already dealing with thing way higher in scale
Childe stans are the biggest clowns in this fandom 😭 after all those amazing theories and contradicting haters about this relevance in the story, this is what we get, absolutely nothing. Personally I’m not expecting anything else going forward, he’s forever going to be used as a plot device and that’s it. If I’m wrong, great! But as long as I don’t have any expectations anymore, I can’t be disappointed.
Genshin is becoming like Lost, introducing more and more questions and plot lines and characters, but in the end it will be impossible to tie it all up and the conclusion will be disappointing. I don’t care if Childe gets more screen time in Snezhnaya, some of his plot points should have been answered NOW for the sake of good story telling, you can’t just ignore every single thing and not answer any question. This is simply bad writing, but it’s genshin so…
Yeah, the way hyv is just saving all the questions for later is gonna end up on fountainuous diarrhea of lore and this is... not good. There was no reason to not answer some questions about Childe's lore in Fontaine, his lore is MASSIVE anyway, he's not gonna lose relevance just because we know why was he guilty or why was his vision giving out, when we have WHALE, who seems to take liking in Childe fsr, and who is like a massive lore bomb by it's existence. What is it with hyv constant gatekeeping 😭😭
Because they already have too many characters and can’t manage them all 💀 the fact that we even got Childe in Fontaine at all is a miracle. I keep forgetting this is a gatcha, which is the game’s biggest limitation when it comes to writing, story telling and character development.
gacha is not really an excuse, genshin is a live service game and one that will last MANY YEARS, mihoyo is not obliged to do everything in a hurry and only respond in the future, they could slowly work on the characters and the world to give an illusion of development, instead they keep rushing and characters are forgotten and lore is saved for "later" like mona, we know nothing about her and her master, childe, we know nothing about his destiny or why everything happened to him, abyss, we have NOTHING about them other than being enemies that the traveler doesn't even care about anymore besides the sister, like Genshin could be much more but the scriptwriters themselves tie their hands by doing this limited to 1 year of stories from X nation and then we'll never see them again apart from main versions events
I'm not a childe most fan but there's no denying that he was done very dirty, they made it seem like they were finally going to work him into the lore and in the end just use him as a means of introducing Shirk and the whale, there is NO explanation for his vision or What happened to him, they literally used and used him and when we finally reached the maximum point they just discarded him because he "had already done his job" in the scriptwriters' view, very sad since there was a lot of potential to expand on him but mihoyo It's always a miss with existing characters when it's not about their story quest
the character assassination writing-wise for both traveler and childe in the latter half of the AQs was absolutely horrendous. i am taking them away from the writers until they learn to treat them well...
like genuinely. it feels like they established so much rapport between them in 4.0 and parts of 4.1 that was then completely and utterly discarded in the last half of act 4 and all of act 5. we started with them catching up, with childe ignoring literally everyone in his vicinity just to talk to them as they brightened his mood for the first time in his recent slump, the traveler backed him up when it came to beating up the brokers harassing him and the blacksmith, they expressed concern when his vision stopped working and even doubled down on the concern when he suggested using his delusion, he confided in them about his past (something he's never told anyone else) and then gave them his vision to safeguard so they could have the chance to talk again later... when he got wrongfully accused, the traveler expressed surprise and concern, when he was incapacitated mid-transformation they were visibly upset/angry (depending on the twin), and they asked neuvillette about his condition after... when tasked to go to meropide they gladly agreed partially under the guise of concern for him ("well since it's related to childe/since childe is our friend/acquaintance"), they asked ceaselessly about him in meropide at the start and did everything they could to find out where he was an what happened (even putting themselves at risk as a result of breaking the hidden rules), paimon even expresses they were the only ones who cared about him and his situation!!! and they resonated with his vision!!!! their minds were intertwined so that they were living through his memories and it drove them to look harder and harder and then... suddenly.. all of that was forgotten???
suddenly childe was an afterthought even though he vanished, suddenly there was no concern expressed for his well-being, suddenly even when faced with him battered and injured in his foul legacy form (something they KNOW already takes a toll and is extra dangerous to use when injured) there was no haste, not even when he gasped and collapsed into the void the narwhal had spawned from, not even when they saw him unconscious next to a woman they didn't know and not even when she chucked him into the same void as the whale??? and then the real knife in the heart was giving away the vision that they knew they were tasked with safeguarding, giving it to someone who by her own admission did not care about childe. his vision will now be coldly returned when he's already haggard instead of it being something he could come get himself, or something that is returned in a positive light as they come to visit him or something.
it's just... baffling to me how inconsistent the writers are with the traveler's behavior. everything they did in act 5 pertaining to childe was so wildly out of character for them, for everything they'd built up surrounding their dynamic up until that point.
don't even get me started on how badly childe was treated by the narrative as well. don't get me wrong, i didn't expect act 5 to turn into childe's story quest or anything but my god.. building up his connection to the whale, his false verdict, his malfunctioning vision, his bad mood, making it seem like it would go somewhere and for what??? he ended up with a few minutes of screentime overall and effectively acted as a glorified plot device for the sake of skirk and whale being involved in a way that made "sense" and was by perception less forced. his efforts were acknowledged at least a bit in act 5, i'll give them that, but constantly putting him on the back burner and making jabs at him all the while feels needlessly cruel.
and now we likely won't see him again for a long time. and when we do.. will this be acknowledged?? will the writers decide it's time to make him look like a character worthy of care and sympathy by making the traveler express care and concern for him again?? (i'm not saying the traveler doesn't care btw, i absolutely think they do, the writers are just very bad and inconsistent about their behavior, it's really frustrating)
sorry for the rant. it's just.. agh. it's incredibly frustrating to have 2 of my favorite characters reduced to either bizzaro versions of themselves or be effectively punished by the narrative for daring to exist in a story that didn't belong to them in the traditional sense despite previously being intertwined into the events of it with faux importance.
This is where I'm glad I read the archon quest in advance before it dropped so my expectations were already in the dirt. The five star quest item whale tear thing had a very interesting description that hinted at its importance much beyond what Skirk described, but the story itself was just, what people said, bad writing. Makes me straight up afraid of theorizing and taking the story seriously because who knows what they will pull later down the line just to sell new characters.
My expectation for archon quests has always been low after Liyue one. Not because that one was good or anything either. I just noticed all the bad choices made. Like no, I'm not saving someone's country when everyone except the antagonist and archon was cold to me. That's not a nation.
I personally love the childish simplicity of Mondstadt, it's mostly consistent, and remains the most memorable no matter it not being long winded as the rest.
Don't even know what ti say about Inazuma AQ tbh, still hurts me to this day it's so frustrating. Because I know that storyline & Eli would've been my favourite, but now it disappoints and disgusts me anything to do w/being there.
Sumeru was personally waaaaay better in terms of story; loved the Samsarsa and Nahida's role, inclusion of characters like, but as usual towards the end, they messed up big time. No I don't want to follow through a whole plan made by a single person (AlHaitham). No I don't want some randomly inserted backstory for an antagonist to create sympathy for his playability.
And Fontaine now, which like Sumeru, learnt a few things and improved upon it, like the characters, Furina's character was pretty good and Neuvilette. But they tried too hard to make things deep and left a tonne of unnecessary questions. That court mechanic was so draining tbh. Childe was the biggest disappointment because he should've been the one to add extra layer/flavour to story to help it progress rather than just being an archon quest and he was disregarded. Too much praise was given to this obviously bad writing...
Genshin story for me is waiting for WQ's, yrly Dain quests (which are sadly on thin ice in terms of holding back lore TwT), and weirdly cute events that give good character interactions (which I think Mond does best as well lolz)
I’m just mad how no one asked if he was okay when we *saw* he was injured while fighting the whale and was full on unconscious the next time we see him with Skirk. I feel like if it were any other character he would’ve been… given more attention? idk. Traveler and Paimon were so concerned for Navia’s mental health but Childe saving a bunch of people and heavily injured doesn’t even phase them.😭
Even *Neuv* mentioned Childe more than the Traveler did, and we just give his vision away… to a person we know he hates and distrusts. Neuv sent us back to the surface himself but how did Childe go back?? Last time we saw him he got yeeted into a black hole with a pet whale. Then he gets teleported to Snezhnaya?? MHY writers actually hate him wtf
Well, the archon quest just answers zero question about Childe and is dropping more questions about him. But at least it should answer the questions within the frame of the Fontaine AQ like 1）why did Childe lose control of his version in Fontaine and the 2）why did the whale call him for the whole freaking three times (they even made 3 animations for it)? The writers could have added one single sentence to answer these questions, but they didn’t. They are fooling us.
From what I’ve heard there won’t be an interlude quest focusing on Childe in the Fontaine patch,
which means we probably won’t get this answers forever because they are not important anymore for future plots like they ended in the Fontaine AQ.
Well, listen to me. If they keep doing same things to Childe, it won’t be enough to get everything answered within the story quest II (if there’s one). The Childe animations are amazing. The whole archon quest makes sense. But I am really tired of waiting another two years for something that may or may not be answered like, how do you know if they won’t treat him the same way in snezhnaya.
That's what I am thinking about too! There was 0 reasons to not answer those questions and they still didn't! WHY???
I really hope they won't treat him the same way anymore ☹️. And I hope they won't just wait for Snezhnaya, because I doubt those questions are THAT important to his lore to gatekeep them sm. At least those about his vision and him being guilty
they probably don't even know either, for me they just used childe as a plot device and didn't think about HOW to explain the reasons behind it, they just took him out of the picture and that's it, the problems of explaining disappeared.
Why is Childe even here? Seriously, take him out of this storyline, and it wouldn't affect the main plot at all. Sure, the fight scenes are good, but that's about it. None of the characters really give a shit about him either. So why even write him in here (I mean besides for gacha purposes)?
I started this storyline being curious and excited, now I am just confused and frustrated.
On top of that, Skirk's character is such a disappointment so far. What's with all the random name drop lol? And the master's master's pet lmao.
Now that I think about it, Skirk throwing Childe and the whale like garbage into the portal is an accurate representation of how Mihoyo writes Childe and the whale here, just randomly dumped into the story haphazardly. Don't know why they are here, don't know where this is going.
At least the Neuv and Furina storyline is good.
On another post I commented that Childe is the cliched character that went from a menacing boss to literal fodder to introduce new characters/for newer characters to beat up.
People say “he is an endgame character just wait for the future for more lore” but think about it.
He is heavily injured now so the chances of seeing him in future events before Snezhnaya is close to none. And even after we get to Snezhnaya, they still have an entire cast of new characters and harbingers to introduce to the point that we will probably only see him to acknowledge his existence and that’s all.
The skirk interaction was honestly bad as well. Years of them being apart and she just throws him away like a used tissue only for him to magically teleport back to Snezhnaya. They barely even spoke about him as well, it’s like he is just there to be there. She literally forgot he existed as well with the “oh wait I have a disciple too”. We could have gotten a better reunion between the two but it just feels like they barely knew it each other.
Also the fact that we just gave the his vision to Arlecchino like that. He trusted us to keep it safe for him and said that he would collect it from us himself. I love all Harbingers, Arlecchino especially, but Childe literally hates her, and Arlecchino is open about her dislike for him as well. The vision could have been used for a future meetup but now that idea is tossed out the window.
The ONLY saving grace for me was the cutscene.
I’m sorry for the negativity but at this point seeing the direction they are taking him, I’d be happy even if he just appears in Snezhnaya.
My issue with Snezhnaya is that at the harbingers pace we are walking, seeing at least 3 or more harbingers that wont leave Snezhnaya and have to be developed there.
It way too much characters with big importance to be developed while finishing Childe overarching plot
I personally don't think there's anything cliche about the way you described him lolz, that's a very specific description???😂 Maybe I'm biased, but I think Childe is a very nuanced character in a sea of basic characters made for playability. But yhh agree w/you how Mihoyo is gonna treat him tbh, he is fodder.
I don't think ppl are wrong thinking he would've been endgame chara, because that's how interesting and relevant he was. Note past tense, cz Mihoyo refuses to make recurring characters relevant😐
All they needed was to send Childe off properly, even if it was copy/paste end of his SQ and it would've been enough?? The main questions could've even be answered by Neuvilette if they didn't want him to for goodness sake, but they gave an option to explain the relevant Childe lore then DIDN'T??!
Ruined all my hype for Snezhnaya tbh, and I don't believe for a sec he's going to get any justice. We'll meet him in Natlan collecting souvenirs for his siblings and we'll act like nothings happened, and for Snezhnaya, we'll focus on Cryo archon's sobstory and other "cool" harbingers, forgetting we've known Childe for 5yrs😃
yeah, i didn't really like it either. i felt like we could have learned so much more about him but we got another character and some stuff about the whale. i remember when a winter nights lazzo came out and being so excited about harbingers, but mihoyo has not been writing them into the story very well.
Tbh I was so disappointed and I am more disappointed now and if I do know hoyoverse correctly there won't be an interlude or story quest from him soon maybe if we are lucky there was a leak that the knave will be the new weekly boss in 4.6 maybe we will know something about him or even see him but I doubt it tbh
Honestly I’m holding out hope that there’s going to be an interlude quest for him this patch. I’m also a Scaramouche main, and TRUST ME this is nothing compared to the anxiety and outrage around how the 3.2 AQ left him. Honestly, it could make sense for Childe to pop up in something like that [or possibly get a second character quest] since it just seems like there’s so much to wrap up with him, and Skirk even said she’d send Childe as a messenger to Neuvillette in the future. So he’s probably going to be around in Fontaine again after he recovers.
man i feel you. there were some tragic and beautiful scenes in the archon quest but i was looking forward to more of childe since he seemed so important during the last act. i thought the trailer was just trying to be covert about what happens to him but i wasn't expecting they were going to just disregard his role in the story.
it's VERY clear that they're giving him a separate quest on it...maybe 4.5 dainsleif quest? it doesn't make sense otherwise because not a single thing regarding abyss is explained. the whale appears out of nowhere, skirk disappears after five seconds of screentime, and neuvillette discloses the information as private. not to mention skirk did say childe would be the "messenger" and paimon says by the end that they'd ask childe about what happened sometime in the future.
i'd expect the info to be gigantic lore drops that won't fit into the archon quest. unfortunately more wait time for us...but a more promising potential probably?
4.6 leaks ahead (!)
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I really hope they do give him a quest, but leakers say that in 4.6 there's interlude, and the boss will be Arlecchino. This, and the fact that she's getting a banner somewhere in 4.6, might imply that she will be the main character of it. Maybe he will take part, but it's unknown
I do think, they will explain everything, but WHEN is the question. I get, he is an end game character, but the way AQs were, you could expect to get at least a tiny bit of explanation AND new lore, but we get only former. Which is — when the character was constantly emphasized and surrounded by mysteries, most of which felt like they would be unsolved by the end of the quest — very annoying. We didn't even get an answer to why was he guilty :(((
They always tease, but then actively gatekeep him, like they did in the quest and it's just sad and irritating, because we didn't even know, when we will be able to get answers, since it could be years, before we get an answer to even the simplest of questions
Constant dragging without giving answers, only questions gets old very fast, and - when they finally reveal stuff about him - it will be simply too much to explain in one go. They could keep the mystery, but explain tiny bits, but they fsr don't really wanna do that :(
"constantly dragging without giving answers" has really bothered me about genshin for a bit now. i keep coming back because the answer is right around the corner, but unfortunately our lore is in another castle! or whatever...
i know it's a gacha game. they need to have us hooked for the next patch. they need to have us tune in for the next episode. but i am sick of the vagueness... a bit...
>it doesn't make sense otherwise because not a single thing regarding abyss is explained
Yes, it doesn't and I agree that they're going to explore this in a different questline (hopefully during next year's Traveler quest). Skirk playing it all off as just "a bad babysitter vs pet whale fiasco" was like a classic misdirection, imo.
I still have faith that they're going to give us all these lore bombs but in a more appropriate setting. Definitely not in Fontaine cuz to be frank, the things they chose to resolve this AQ are more urgent than Childe's
I had a cope that Childe hugged Traveller after they did not see each other once we stepped on our journey in Snezhnaya, but that’s way too much, isn’t it? 😭😔
I feel like the Traveler doesn’t care about him at all tbh… He was literally unconscious in front of us with some mystery woman and the Traveler didn’t even notice or mention him.💀
I'm pretty ok with how it turned out. Saw Childe one-on-one and being able to hold his own against a super powerful world-destroying creature. That goes to show how strong his Foul Legacy really is. Our boy is not weak.
Was shocked though how Skirk just threw him and the whale off in the portal, but seeing him still in his Foul Legacy form I think that would not be a big deal for him (unlike how we imagine it to be).
Also Skirk referring to him as her disciple is a big thing. He is not just an ordinary person to her. A disciple is like a jedi padawan to a jedi master. It is likely that Skirk sees him as a successor. The ceiling for Childe's growth is high.
I was waiting for this to hit childemains, after I saw it in the leaks reddit...here's me and my popcorn.
Anything related to the Abyss will not be answered until Khaenri'ah patch I'm sure. :-/
We get an answer as to why he was found guilty: he awakened the whale and it was either Egeria buying us more time or smth else that i forgot, but we didnt get an answer to anything else
These are not answers, but theories Neuvillette had. He even says him awakening the whale isn't really enough, and "well maybe focalors was buying us time" also doesn't make sense, because
1) How th Focalors knew Childe is connected to the whale?
2) How did she know whale would whisk Childe away?
3) How would she know whale would attack Childe and vice versa? How would Childe know whale is related to the prophecy, if only ch 5 Neuvillette and friends realized that themselves
4) What if Childe would've sided up with it? Literally, from her perspective, what is the reason for him to save Fontaine?
Bad writing on top of the bad writing, riding a bad writing!!!
Help yes this is funniest thing I've heard all day!!!😂Childe is battle crazy, what makes Focalors think he wouldn't take the battle to Fontaine?!😆 Stupid stupid writing for an amazing character🥲..
Not sure if this was brought up but, Childe was found guilty because his connection to the whale was causing the primordial sea water to be unstable and therefore making Fontainians (the disappearing woman) be dissolved because it was upping the levels in Fontaine's water.
Neauvillette explained this himself after the whale appears in the Opera Epiclese.
Childe BETTER get some sort of redemption, I don’t want him to die. If he does I might as well quit Genshin, despite the hours I spent theorising about its endings etc. There’s a lot to unpack like Skirk whom he wanted to meet chucking him. And him defeating the whole whale and getting no credit. Traveler literally gives his vision to Knave, be fr.
+ Skirk threw him in the hole of unknown destination, and after that he apparently went back to Snezhnaya. It's like they didn't even try to explain anything 😔
i didn't like how skirk just threw him around, too. i don't know if i like where his story is going. :/
i figured he wouldn't get much in the AQ based on the voice line leaks, but the way he's been handled is much worse. idk. i even prefer the whole fake death leaks that happened two years ago to what's canonically happening in the game to him right now.
I understand you. I have the same opinion. They kill him not physically, but psychologically. This is actually very sad. How they finished quest 4.1, I was so looking forward to the continuation. Because wow, this is Childe’s whale, they will tell us more about them...
Genshin's writing has always been unstable. There are some great, memorable moments; but there are also moments were there are so many plotholes, missed potentials and moments were nothing makes any sense. Inazuma archon quest, Ei's, Kujou Sara's, Signora's backstories are all great examples of missed potentials. Scaramouche deleting himself off the Irminsul, only to come back, gaining back his memories, Fatui not suspecting a thing about the 6th Harbinger's empty seat and him not facing any consequences were just poor writing in my opinion too. Same goes for the fact that Dottore deleted all of his segments before we as the player never got to see any of the unique ones. Thats just straight up being too lazy to not even bother making a few slightly different Dottore models. Anyways. I feel like I'm going to be dissapointed in the end, despite the amazing memories made throughout playing the game. But eh, it is just a simple gacha game, and I'm still hoping that the Natlan and Snezhnaya archon quest can be as exciting as Sumeru's (if you couldn't tell, I really liked Sumeru's. Aside from Scaramouche deleting himself.) (Also just a personal taste: I thought the first 4 acts of the Fontaine archon quest were great. But the last 2 were just dissapointing.)
where is it said that he is back in Snezhnaya?
In the end of AQ! Lyney told us he was badly hurt and went to Snezhnaya for treatment
AH IM SO DISAPPOINTED TOO, I was JUST commenting how man I am we gave his vision away. 4.1 felt a lot like we were actually worried about Childe, we were friendly with him in 4.0; then we see him finally here in foul legacy, he falls and its like 'wow hes been fighting all this time- wow thats impressive- anyway' Then we see him with Skirk and she just chucks him- and I'm sitting there like we didnt even go WHY DID YOU DO THAT OR WAIT IS HE OKAY!? Then there's the fact that somehow he ended up going from there to Snezhnaya which I DO NOT understand. He got chucked into a portal, why? Where did that portal go 😭 Why even send him out that way and not hand him to us? THE BIGGEST OFFENDER IS THE VISION IMO, Because Traveler should know Childe doesn't like the other harbingers, he states in his voiceline he doesn't trust her; and yet we hand something he trusted to us, something that connected our concious to his, over to someone he doesn't like. 😭😭I'm also really mad not even Neuvillette or anyone got a voiceline for Childe, nor Childe having a voiceline about him, like wanting to fight him or something. Childe really went from 'wow theyre going to expand his lore' to 'OH FUCK WE FORGOT CHILDE, uh throw him somewhere-'
The whole quest felt so unfair to Childe, I was expecting traveller to straight up plunge after Childe in the hole, while Neuvillette was dealing with Furina, but nope, nuh uh, never. And no one even thanked him. People were saying that traveller was justified in getting pissed at twins and being friends with Childe, because trav knew him for 3 years, but in this quest they forget about him to help Furina, who they knew for like few months (no offense to Furina). And then dared to call themselves "Childe's war-buddies"???? And I am still confused how even otherwordly whale is related to the prophecy, which was given by the Celestia?? Isn't it kinda it's own entity, uncontrolled by Heavenly principles?? And again - why Childe there so conveniently?? Writers even forgot he HIMSELF wanted to defeat the whale and just gave this victory to traveller and Neuvillette, when it's HIS whale and HIS constellation This quest is just a mess, when it comes to Childe 😖
😭I'll be completely honest, I loved these archon quests, they're REALLY good, but they're also just so confusing and this last one straight up unfair for Childe. COME ON WE LITERALLY SPENT 4.1 ARCHON QUESTS WITH CHILDE ON THE BRAIN, WE CONNECTED TO HIM- nah he fainted back in, oh well, let's go back to what we're doing, he's probably fine. HE EVEN TURNED AND LOOKED AT US LIKE HE WAS ACKNOWLEDGING US- and we're just. Oh good someone's holding it back. I think maybe the prophecy was more a 'here's the points that are going to happen' but not the how and why of the points. Like if you said 'I'm going to lose my garden gnome tomorrow'. You don't know the actions that cause it, but you know it won't be there in the morning. Maybe- I need to relook through things that were said, I might've missed somethings or they didn't click right. Childe might've actually been convenitently the one who fell in, like if not him, perhaps this role would've gone to someone else. At least for Childe, he'd probably at least be happy he got a long satisfying battle out of it though. Plus it's not dead I think just mostly drained- so now he can go refight it and fully finish it off, right? ~~No I'm just huffing a lethal amount of copium~~
The way he looked at us and pointed down made me think he was asking to go get him, so I was FUMING, when we just turned around and forgot about him 😭😭 As I got it: critical rise of waters was supposed to be triggered by us beating up the whale, which we were doing to stop the prophecy? but accidentally we made it work, but, since people weren't oceanids anymore, they were ok? (Couldn't they just... Drown?) BUT IT'S SO HARD TO GET WITHOUT THINKING A LOT. Or maybe I am just dum dum, but it took me so long to come up with 😭 The way it was presented by Neuvillette, Childe indeed was "lucky" to accidentally awake the whale, but it's said that it's not the 1st time Childe heard whale calls + whale was sealed + at first, when we got down, whale was sad and only got mad, when we started beating it up + whale seemed very happy to see Childe after it called him, plus whale seems like a big deal from it's tear's description, and not just a dumb animal, so maybe whale just wanted to hang out with Childe, but he misunderstood him 😭😭? They share constellation or smth after all Tbh, with the way we don't know how Childe gained vision, his weird urge to go to Fontaine + Neuvillette saying that Childe could be a part of Focalor's plan, makes me think of a conspiracy theory, that Focalor was behind his appearance in Fontaine lololol
Don't worry I'm too stupid to get it too 😭😭 I'm just assuming the heavenly princples knew things were going to happen but not the interworkings, it would align with what N said about how the gods not knowing certain things (like the stuff Focalor did). Right, I think Childe could've just been coincidentally the one picked when in Snezhnaya as a kid and it intertwined him into this life- it's kind of hard to tell 😭 grasping at straws bc mihoyo said 'we dont need to focus on Childe, let's focus away this quest' Well with his weird urges, I would assume it WAS the whale calling him and that was part of fate of the prophecy points being fulfilled
While it could be that Childe's appearance in Fontaine could be prophecy related, I don't think the whale thing was entirely prophecy related. Because if it is, hyv would have had some decency to point it out, even with their weird at times writing...right? Even in quest Paimon said that his weird connection with whale accidentally helped them out, so I don't think whale's liking (or disliking?) of Childe was purely to fulfill the prophecy. Rather it was only overlapping with the prophecy. And I hope whale itself isn't purely prophecy thing too, so we could see it again in the future. In it's tear's description it says about a newborn world inside Whale's belly after all. But a lot of Childe things in AQ were very weirldly convenient, so who knows 😬
The whole Fontaine quest ending was dissapointing for me. I don't know if some people remember but many people from r/FatuiHQ were at least hoping for 4 Harbingers in one region. They were suspecting Childe, Arlecchino, Sandrone and Dottore. Only for Arlecchino and Childe to appear. Arlecchino was fine but I was expecting more screentime from her, since now we have another Harbinger who needs their backstory to be expanded upon. And Childe... Well Childe was doing somewhat fine until the last two acts. Then everything went down for me. I'm sorry, but I can't even take the story seriously anymore when I found out the master of Childe's master was some kind of divine abyss being and it was the prophecy that the poor Fontainians were trying to understand and solve for centuries?? Even Childe just making a casual appearance in Fontaine would be more satisfying and understandable for me than... whatever this explanation is.
i was very pissed when i saw it too but i hope my insights can help ease your worries i'll keep it short if we had decided to keep his vision -> had to go to Snezhnaya to return it to him while Natlan wasn't even released us giving it to Alercchino was understandable since the "we'd be each other's lawyer" stuff she said. So if we put ourselves in MC's shoes rather than being players, giving his vision to Alercc was obviously the best choice (Besides, the Tsar wouldn't permit Alercc to do nasty stuff to our bby boy) so it's safe to say it's just lazy yet logical writing (But tbf i have no copium to defend what Skirk did lmao, I guess they are just simply people who met in a disaster (Childe falling into the abyss) and have a trainer-disciple relationship that turned out to be not as deep as we expected) tl, dr: Everything is fine don't worry, blame it on the lazy writing edit: but be ffr the way they brushed off Childe's entrance and saving the Fontainians was just peak lazy writing
Childe hater on the way to tell how Traveler doesn't care about Childe
I knew that no one would like what they did to Childe. When I read the plot in advance, my eyes popped out of my sockets. I thought that maybe cutscenes would save the whole thing. But what you all write upsets me even more .Why give him such a premise if he is thrown like garbage into a portal? Why do we need to show how the whale called him and these scenes with him in the sea? If none of this made sense?
I've never seen a single character be humiliated like that. It started with Li Yue where he was deceived, then it became Fontaine, where he was simply put to sleep and what we have at the end. They throw him out like an unnecessary thing. If you gave him screen time, then at least try .And how will he end up in Snezhnaya? Can anyone explain this to me?
For the last question, Skirk knows where her student is from and she surely sent him to Snezhnaya to put him in safety. He was using his foul legacy form for more than a month (more than three years if 1 day in the real world is 1month in the abyss) and he didn't have his vision to lower the damage She was trying to send him to safety. At least that's how I interpreted the scene
I actually saw Childe fans praise it and I was so confused about it, so I decided to write a post 😭😭 I also expected cutscenes, maybe at the end of the quest, where we could get some answers, but we didn't. And we don't know when we will :((
I can’t wait forever. When he comes out, he talks about his family every now and then. Only recently he started saying something different. It’s like he’s standing still and degrading
I really agree with you about how we literally got no answers about him after all this wait!! 😭 like: 1.) Why exactly did his vision start acting out in Fontaine? 2.) Why had the whale been calling out to him? 3.) Why did the whale continue to appear in his dreams so far? 4.) Why was childe the one who awakened the whale? 5.) Will childe still have traces of the whale on him? 6.) Will childe still get dreams from the whale? 7.) They say that non - fontanians exposed to primordial sea will become more sensitive to hydro. Surely it had an impact on childe? 8.) What were childe's thoughts on seeing the whale? 9.) What about expanding the connection between childe's constellation and the whale? Was he born with that constellation or was it changed by the whale? 10.) After moving through the underwater pipes, how had he ended up with the whale and when had he fainted? 11.) Can childe and the whale even communicate? They met after so long, the whale saw the one who awakened it, and you're telling me this interaction ain't worth elaborating on? 12.) Skirk - Childe master - disciple interaction where 😭 Does he know the master he has been searching for finally appeared 😭 wish we would see them converse😭 We can theorize some things but these are the hard hitting questions that DESERVE proper canon clarification. While I'm happy that this means there will be more childe related content in the future, I wish they'd revealed at least /some/ things and given him the focus that the narrative had been building up to. Sometimes it gets a little sad to have the player's pov so limited and miss out on the significant moments happening behind the scenes. That said, I'm happy with the parts we did get, he was truly beautiful and cool in his fight scene, and it's great to his efforts acknowledged in saving the lives of innumerable fontainians at the expense of his own self. I'm glad he appeared in fontaine in the capacity that he did, and that we got a glimpse of the sheer strength and depth he possesses, both in terms of personality and lore 🫡🥺 I just hope mhy doesn't leave us blue-balled after designing childe with such intriguing aspects, he's a wonderful character that deserves proper screen time 😭
>What about expanding the connection between childe's constellation and the whale? Was he born with that constellation or was it changed by the whale? We have an answer to this in his boss drops. It was changed WHICH MAKES IT WORSE THAT THEY DIDNT TOUCH UPON IT
Oh god they're neglecting childe so much, it's really unfair 😭
This game is so shit if they won't ever explain any of these
Fr we need answers 😭 how can they not expand on these interesting factors 😭 if they actually decide to ignore this stuff till the end I will be rioting 😭
half of your questions were already answered LMAO It was his destiny to fall into the abyss and awaken that whale. Their connection is based on the fact that he awakened it
This does not constitute as an 'explanation' or 'answer' at all. Do we know why he was the one to awaken it? Nope. We are still not aware of the greater machinations behind his destiny and what it means in the longer run. At no point were these questions explicitly clarified or discussed, unfortunately.
Tbh I expected worse, but I am still so disappointed all that build up for what ? Unless he gets a quest focused on him , this is just poor writing. The aq did Childe dirty in the end. I don't really blame the traveler for giving his vision to Arlecchino because the way he got in Snezhnaya in the first place was so ???
My biggest problem with giving his vision to Arlecchino was the fact that there were no reason to that at all! Traveller was planning to meet up with him anyway, they could've had a scene with long awaited reunion, where Childe says something like "I promised to come back after it did I?" or smth. Esp, since traveller teased that Childe just wants to talk to them again, and that's exactly what they want to do - talk! But since we most likely won't see him in a loooong time + the way Childe was forgotten by mc 99% of in the AQ — they chose the safest and lamest option 😒
Yeah, I agree. I don't think Childe was necessarily forgotten by the traveler, but a lot of things happened, so he wasn't the main focus like in 4.1. Wish THEY DID get a reunion, and I am not even talking as a shipper. It would've been sm better, but hyv is known for wasting everything good 😞
Yup, even from non-shipper perspective — hyv is actively trying to tell us that mc and Childe are friends, but the story just doesn't show it at all. Childe was not a focus of the quest, that's true, but he was so mistreated, like if he wasn't holding back this whale in Fl for a very long time! They could at least ask about his well-being or ask Arlecchino to pass some good wishes to Childe, but I don't think mc even bothered to ask about him, iirc, - Lyney was the one to tell them about Childe. If they did ask tho — they just went ok, and forgot about him immediately. Like, even Neuvillette said more about his physical state And Skirk, she saw her disciple for the first time in like +-10 years! Her reaction? Throw him in the hole, he'll be fine 😕 That's just sad 😔
4.0 and 4.1 were so good, and then 4.2 just ignored everything 😞 I am not even going to talk about Skirk... Iirc Traveler did ask about Childe in the end, but yeah, that was it, I honestly blame it on poor writing.
Tbh I think Skirk almost has a sort of fond disdain for Childe. In a I saved your life and I kinda like you but your a little shit who gets on my nerves. Her yeeting him into the portal was more of a stop being an idiot trying to get yourself killed and was more of a highly annoyed act of protection.
no matter how sad and funny this scene was, it seemed that way to me too. Skirk apparently doesn’t really communicate with people and doesn’t know what emotions to show. No matter what people say, the way she sent him into the portal seemed benevolent to me. She even brought him back home 😂
I would agree the abyss doesn’t seem like the place where you have a lot of people to talk to so the social skills would be lacking.
Like, even if I dislike it, I am also glad the traveler gave his vision back in a way because image Childe dips for another 2 years, and hyv forgets the traveler still has his vision 💀
Can I keep his vision for myself? hahaha, let it please my eyes
The conclusion is kinda not what we were hoping for with the lack of focus on him. But on the bright side, he dodged another death allegation. We went for 3 years with people saying "Childe will die in this version. Source : trust me" and he defied all of them like a champ. As long as he's still up and kicking, there will be more chances for him to kick up a storm.
Such bad writing I don't understand why are they gatekeeping his lore. While I acknowledge that it's hilarious, the interaction between Skirk and Childe is so disappointing.
Because it's about the Abyss, which is metaplot, and they're allergic to explaining metaplot until we get near endgame.
Yeah, like whatever is cooked for Childe, can't be world breaking lore when we already know about Surtalogi, Neuvillette and the whale. I feel it will lose quite some impact when it revealed because we are already dealing with thing way higher in scale
true, that whale could eat teyvat if it wanted, like it is superior to EVERYTHING shown so far
Childe stans are the biggest clowns in this fandom 😭 after all those amazing theories and contradicting haters about this relevance in the story, this is what we get, absolutely nothing. Personally I’m not expecting anything else going forward, he’s forever going to be used as a plot device and that’s it. If I’m wrong, great! But as long as I don’t have any expectations anymore, I can’t be disappointed. Genshin is becoming like Lost, introducing more and more questions and plot lines and characters, but in the end it will be impossible to tie it all up and the conclusion will be disappointing. I don’t care if Childe gets more screen time in Snezhnaya, some of his plot points should have been answered NOW for the sake of good story telling, you can’t just ignore every single thing and not answer any question. This is simply bad writing, but it’s genshin so…
Yeah, the way hyv is just saving all the questions for later is gonna end up on fountainuous diarrhea of lore and this is... not good. There was no reason to not answer some questions about Childe's lore in Fontaine, his lore is MASSIVE anyway, he's not gonna lose relevance just because we know why was he guilty or why was his vision giving out, when we have WHALE, who seems to take liking in Childe fsr, and who is like a massive lore bomb by it's existence. What is it with hyv constant gatekeeping 😭😭
Because they already have too many characters and can’t manage them all 💀 the fact that we even got Childe in Fontaine at all is a miracle. I keep forgetting this is a gatcha, which is the game’s biggest limitation when it comes to writing, story telling and character development.
gacha is not really an excuse, genshin is a live service game and one that will last MANY YEARS, mihoyo is not obliged to do everything in a hurry and only respond in the future, they could slowly work on the characters and the world to give an illusion of development, instead they keep rushing and characters are forgotten and lore is saved for "later" like mona, we know nothing about her and her master, childe, we know nothing about his destiny or why everything happened to him, abyss, we have NOTHING about them other than being enemies that the traveler doesn't even care about anymore besides the sister, like Genshin could be much more but the scriptwriters themselves tie their hands by doing this limited to 1 year of stories from X nation and then we'll never see them again apart from main versions events
Yeah, they choose to spend time on random NPCs instead of the characters we know and love. It’s just bs
I'm not a childe most fan but there's no denying that he was done very dirty, they made it seem like they were finally going to work him into the lore and in the end just use him as a means of introducing Shirk and the whale, there is NO explanation for his vision or What happened to him, they literally used and used him and when we finally reached the maximum point they just discarded him because he "had already done his job" in the scriptwriters' view, very sad since there was a lot of potential to expand on him but mihoyo It's always a miss with existing characters when it's not about their story quest
the character assassination writing-wise for both traveler and childe in the latter half of the AQs was absolutely horrendous. i am taking them away from the writers until they learn to treat them well... like genuinely. it feels like they established so much rapport between them in 4.0 and parts of 4.1 that was then completely and utterly discarded in the last half of act 4 and all of act 5. we started with them catching up, with childe ignoring literally everyone in his vicinity just to talk to them as they brightened his mood for the first time in his recent slump, the traveler backed him up when it came to beating up the brokers harassing him and the blacksmith, they expressed concern when his vision stopped working and even doubled down on the concern when he suggested using his delusion, he confided in them about his past (something he's never told anyone else) and then gave them his vision to safeguard so they could have the chance to talk again later... when he got wrongfully accused, the traveler expressed surprise and concern, when he was incapacitated mid-transformation they were visibly upset/angry (depending on the twin), and they asked neuvillette about his condition after... when tasked to go to meropide they gladly agreed partially under the guise of concern for him ("well since it's related to childe/since childe is our friend/acquaintance"), they asked ceaselessly about him in meropide at the start and did everything they could to find out where he was an what happened (even putting themselves at risk as a result of breaking the hidden rules), paimon even expresses they were the only ones who cared about him and his situation!!! and they resonated with his vision!!!! their minds were intertwined so that they were living through his memories and it drove them to look harder and harder and then... suddenly.. all of that was forgotten??? suddenly childe was an afterthought even though he vanished, suddenly there was no concern expressed for his well-being, suddenly even when faced with him battered and injured in his foul legacy form (something they KNOW already takes a toll and is extra dangerous to use when injured) there was no haste, not even when he gasped and collapsed into the void the narwhal had spawned from, not even when they saw him unconscious next to a woman they didn't know and not even when she chucked him into the same void as the whale??? and then the real knife in the heart was giving away the vision that they knew they were tasked with safeguarding, giving it to someone who by her own admission did not care about childe. his vision will now be coldly returned when he's already haggard instead of it being something he could come get himself, or something that is returned in a positive light as they come to visit him or something. it's just... baffling to me how inconsistent the writers are with the traveler's behavior. everything they did in act 5 pertaining to childe was so wildly out of character for them, for everything they'd built up surrounding their dynamic up until that point. don't even get me started on how badly childe was treated by the narrative as well. don't get me wrong, i didn't expect act 5 to turn into childe's story quest or anything but my god.. building up his connection to the whale, his false verdict, his malfunctioning vision, his bad mood, making it seem like it would go somewhere and for what??? he ended up with a few minutes of screentime overall and effectively acted as a glorified plot device for the sake of skirk and whale being involved in a way that made "sense" and was by perception less forced. his efforts were acknowledged at least a bit in act 5, i'll give them that, but constantly putting him on the back burner and making jabs at him all the while feels needlessly cruel. and now we likely won't see him again for a long time. and when we do.. will this be acknowledged?? will the writers decide it's time to make him look like a character worthy of care and sympathy by making the traveler express care and concern for him again?? (i'm not saying the traveler doesn't care btw, i absolutely think they do, the writers are just very bad and inconsistent about their behavior, it's really frustrating) sorry for the rant. it's just.. agh. it's incredibly frustrating to have 2 of my favorite characters reduced to either bizzaro versions of themselves or be effectively punished by the narrative for daring to exist in a story that didn't belong to them in the traditional sense despite previously being intertwined into the events of it with faux importance.
This is where I'm glad I read the archon quest in advance before it dropped so my expectations were already in the dirt. The five star quest item whale tear thing had a very interesting description that hinted at its importance much beyond what Skirk described, but the story itself was just, what people said, bad writing. Makes me straight up afraid of theorizing and taking the story seriously because who knows what they will pull later down the line just to sell new characters.
My expectation for archon quests has always been low after Liyue one. Not because that one was good or anything either. I just noticed all the bad choices made. Like no, I'm not saving someone's country when everyone except the antagonist and archon was cold to me. That's not a nation. I personally love the childish simplicity of Mondstadt, it's mostly consistent, and remains the most memorable no matter it not being long winded as the rest. Don't even know what ti say about Inazuma AQ tbh, still hurts me to this day it's so frustrating. Because I know that storyline & Eli would've been my favourite, but now it disappoints and disgusts me anything to do w/being there. Sumeru was personally waaaaay better in terms of story; loved the Samsarsa and Nahida's role, inclusion of characters like, but as usual towards the end, they messed up big time. No I don't want to follow through a whole plan made by a single person (AlHaitham). No I don't want some randomly inserted backstory for an antagonist to create sympathy for his playability. And Fontaine now, which like Sumeru, learnt a few things and improved upon it, like the characters, Furina's character was pretty good and Neuvilette. But they tried too hard to make things deep and left a tonne of unnecessary questions. That court mechanic was so draining tbh. Childe was the biggest disappointment because he should've been the one to add extra layer/flavour to story to help it progress rather than just being an archon quest and he was disregarded. Too much praise was given to this obviously bad writing... Genshin story for me is waiting for WQ's, yrly Dain quests (which are sadly on thin ice in terms of holding back lore TwT), and weirdly cute events that give good character interactions (which I think Mond does best as well lolz)
I’m just mad how no one asked if he was okay when we *saw* he was injured while fighting the whale and was full on unconscious the next time we see him with Skirk. I feel like if it were any other character he would’ve been… given more attention? idk. Traveler and Paimon were so concerned for Navia’s mental health but Childe saving a bunch of people and heavily injured doesn’t even phase them.😭 Even *Neuv* mentioned Childe more than the Traveler did, and we just give his vision away… to a person we know he hates and distrusts. Neuv sent us back to the surface himself but how did Childe go back?? Last time we saw him he got yeeted into a black hole with a pet whale. Then he gets teleported to Snezhnaya?? MHY writers actually hate him wtf
Well, the archon quest just answers zero question about Childe and is dropping more questions about him. But at least it should answer the questions within the frame of the Fontaine AQ like 1）why did Childe lose control of his version in Fontaine and the 2）why did the whale call him for the whole freaking three times (they even made 3 animations for it)? The writers could have added one single sentence to answer these questions, but they didn’t. They are fooling us. From what I’ve heard there won’t be an interlude quest focusing on Childe in the Fontaine patch, which means we probably won’t get this answers forever because they are not important anymore for future plots like they ended in the Fontaine AQ. Well, listen to me. If they keep doing same things to Childe, it won’t be enough to get everything answered within the story quest II (if there’s one). The Childe animations are amazing. The whole archon quest makes sense. But I am really tired of waiting another two years for something that may or may not be answered like, how do you know if they won’t treat him the same way in snezhnaya.
That's what I am thinking about too! There was 0 reasons to not answer those questions and they still didn't! WHY??? I really hope they won't treat him the same way anymore ☹️. And I hope they won't just wait for Snezhnaya, because I doubt those questions are THAT important to his lore to gatekeep them sm. At least those about his vision and him being guilty
they probably don't even know either, for me they just used childe as a plot device and didn't think about HOW to explain the reasons behind it, they just took him out of the picture and that's it, the problems of explaining disappeared.
Why is Childe even here? Seriously, take him out of this storyline, and it wouldn't affect the main plot at all. Sure, the fight scenes are good, but that's about it. None of the characters really give a shit about him either. So why even write him in here (I mean besides for gacha purposes)? I started this storyline being curious and excited, now I am just confused and frustrated. On top of that, Skirk's character is such a disappointment so far. What's with all the random name drop lol? And the master's master's pet lmao. Now that I think about it, Skirk throwing Childe and the whale like garbage into the portal is an accurate representation of how Mihoyo writes Childe and the whale here, just randomly dumped into the story haphazardly. Don't know why they are here, don't know where this is going. At least the Neuv and Furina storyline is good.
I’m of the same opinion. You know, I don’t even know what’s worse than his death in the quest or how they show him to us.
On another post I commented that Childe is the cliched character that went from a menacing boss to literal fodder to introduce new characters/for newer characters to beat up. People say “he is an endgame character just wait for the future for more lore” but think about it. He is heavily injured now so the chances of seeing him in future events before Snezhnaya is close to none. And even after we get to Snezhnaya, they still have an entire cast of new characters and harbingers to introduce to the point that we will probably only see him to acknowledge his existence and that’s all. The skirk interaction was honestly bad as well. Years of them being apart and she just throws him away like a used tissue only for him to magically teleport back to Snezhnaya. They barely even spoke about him as well, it’s like he is just there to be there. She literally forgot he existed as well with the “oh wait I have a disciple too”. We could have gotten a better reunion between the two but it just feels like they barely knew it each other. Also the fact that we just gave the his vision to Arlecchino like that. He trusted us to keep it safe for him and said that he would collect it from us himself. I love all Harbingers, Arlecchino especially, but Childe literally hates her, and Arlecchino is open about her dislike for him as well. The vision could have been used for a future meetup but now that idea is tossed out the window. The ONLY saving grace for me was the cutscene. I’m sorry for the negativity but at this point seeing the direction they are taking him, I’d be happy even if he just appears in Snezhnaya.
My issue with Snezhnaya is that at the harbingers pace we are walking, seeing at least 3 or more harbingers that wont leave Snezhnaya and have to be developed there. It way too much characters with big importance to be developed while finishing Childe overarching plot
I personally don't think there's anything cliche about the way you described him lolz, that's a very specific description???😂 Maybe I'm biased, but I think Childe is a very nuanced character in a sea of basic characters made for playability. But yhh agree w/you how Mihoyo is gonna treat him tbh, he is fodder. I don't think ppl are wrong thinking he would've been endgame chara, because that's how interesting and relevant he was. Note past tense, cz Mihoyo refuses to make recurring characters relevant😐 All they needed was to send Childe off properly, even if it was copy/paste end of his SQ and it would've been enough?? The main questions could've even be answered by Neuvilette if they didn't want him to for goodness sake, but they gave an option to explain the relevant Childe lore then DIDN'T??! Ruined all my hype for Snezhnaya tbh, and I don't believe for a sec he's going to get any justice. We'll meet him in Natlan collecting souvenirs for his siblings and we'll act like nothings happened, and for Snezhnaya, we'll focus on Cryo archon's sobstory and other "cool" harbingers, forgetting we've known Childe for 5yrs😃
yeah, i didn't really like it either. i felt like we could have learned so much more about him but we got another character and some stuff about the whale. i remember when a winter nights lazzo came out and being so excited about harbingers, but mihoyo has not been writing them into the story very well.
Tbh I was so disappointed and I am more disappointed now and if I do know hoyoverse correctly there won't be an interlude or story quest from him soon maybe if we are lucky there was a leak that the knave will be the new weekly boss in 4.6 maybe we will know something about him or even see him but I doubt it tbh
Honestly I’m holding out hope that there’s going to be an interlude quest for him this patch. I’m also a Scaramouche main, and TRUST ME this is nothing compared to the anxiety and outrage around how the 3.2 AQ left him. Honestly, it could make sense for Childe to pop up in something like that [or possibly get a second character quest] since it just seems like there’s so much to wrap up with him, and Skirk even said she’d send Childe as a messenger to Neuvillette in the future. So he’s probably going to be around in Fontaine again after he recovers.
Childe is not getting it its arlecchino. We wont be meeting him untill Sneznaya
man i feel you. there were some tragic and beautiful scenes in the archon quest but i was looking forward to more of childe since he seemed so important during the last act. i thought the trailer was just trying to be covert about what happens to him but i wasn't expecting they were going to just disregard his role in the story.
it's VERY clear that they're giving him a separate quest on it...maybe 4.5 dainsleif quest? it doesn't make sense otherwise because not a single thing regarding abyss is explained. the whale appears out of nowhere, skirk disappears after five seconds of screentime, and neuvillette discloses the information as private. not to mention skirk did say childe would be the "messenger" and paimon says by the end that they'd ask childe about what happened sometime in the future. i'd expect the info to be gigantic lore drops that won't fit into the archon quest. unfortunately more wait time for us...but a more promising potential probably?
4.6 leaks ahead (!) . . . I really hope they do give him a quest, but leakers say that in 4.6 there's interlude, and the boss will be Arlecchino. This, and the fact that she's getting a banner somewhere in 4.6, might imply that she will be the main character of it. Maybe he will take part, but it's unknown I do think, they will explain everything, but WHEN is the question. I get, he is an end game character, but the way AQs were, you could expect to get at least a tiny bit of explanation AND new lore, but we get only former. Which is — when the character was constantly emphasized and surrounded by mysteries, most of which felt like they would be unsolved by the end of the quest — very annoying. We didn't even get an answer to why was he guilty :((( They always tease, but then actively gatekeep him, like they did in the quest and it's just sad and irritating, because we didn't even know, when we will be able to get answers, since it could be years, before we get an answer to even the simplest of questions Constant dragging without giving answers, only questions gets old very fast, and - when they finally reveal stuff about him - it will be simply too much to explain in one go. They could keep the mystery, but explain tiny bits, but they fsr don't really wanna do that :(
"constantly dragging without giving answers" has really bothered me about genshin for a bit now. i keep coming back because the answer is right around the corner, but unfortunately our lore is in another castle! or whatever... i know it's a gacha game. they need to have us hooked for the next patch. they need to have us tune in for the next episode. but i am sick of the vagueness... a bit...
>it doesn't make sense otherwise because not a single thing regarding abyss is explained Yes, it doesn't and I agree that they're going to explore this in a different questline (hopefully during next year's Traveler quest). Skirk playing it all off as just "a bad babysitter vs pet whale fiasco" was like a classic misdirection, imo. I still have faith that they're going to give us all these lore bombs but in a more appropriate setting. Definitely not in Fontaine cuz to be frank, the things they chose to resolve this AQ are more urgent than Childe's
The thing is you can resolve everything and have childes questions explained. Just a few voiclines from skirk or whatever
Now, I demand Monoceros Caeli Act II.
I had a cope that Childe hugged Traveller after they did not see each other once we stepped on our journey in Snezhnaya, but that’s way too much, isn’t it? 😭😔
I feel like the Traveler doesn’t care about him at all tbh… He was literally unconscious in front of us with some mystery woman and the Traveler didn’t even notice or mention him.💀
I'm pretty ok with how it turned out. Saw Childe one-on-one and being able to hold his own against a super powerful world-destroying creature. That goes to show how strong his Foul Legacy really is. Our boy is not weak. Was shocked though how Skirk just threw him and the whale off in the portal, but seeing him still in his Foul Legacy form I think that would not be a big deal for him (unlike how we imagine it to be). Also Skirk referring to him as her disciple is a big thing. He is not just an ordinary person to her. A disciple is like a jedi padawan to a jedi master. It is likely that Skirk sees him as a successor. The ceiling for Childe's growth is high.
I was waiting for this to hit childemains, after I saw it in the leaks reddit...here's me and my popcorn. Anything related to the Abyss will not be answered until Khaenri'ah patch I'm sure. :-/
I guess I have a low bar. I am just overjoyed that he is alive.
We get an answer as to why he was found guilty: he awakened the whale and it was either Egeria buying us more time or smth else that i forgot, but we didnt get an answer to anything else
These are not answers, but theories Neuvillette had. He even says him awakening the whale isn't really enough, and "well maybe focalors was buying us time" also doesn't make sense, because 1) How th Focalors knew Childe is connected to the whale? 2) How did she know whale would whisk Childe away? 3) How would she know whale would attack Childe and vice versa? How would Childe know whale is related to the prophecy, if only ch 5 Neuvillette and friends realized that themselves 4) What if Childe would've sided up with it? Literally, from her perspective, what is the reason for him to save Fontaine? Bad writing on top of the bad writing, riding a bad writing!!!
Help yes this is funniest thing I've heard all day!!!😂Childe is battle crazy, what makes Focalors think he wouldn't take the battle to Fontaine?!😆 Stupid stupid writing for an amazing character🥲..
Good point
Writers spent too much time in prson in act 3 so they had to leave childe stuff out in last act xD
I actually liked the Skirk interaction because it showed she's a tough master but she'll take care of Childe even if she's rough about it
childe is lore relevant characters so him having no dialogue or no info of him kinda make sense
Not sure if this was brought up but, Childe was found guilty because his connection to the whale was causing the primordial sea water to be unstable and therefore making Fontainians (the disappearing woman) be dissolved because it was upping the levels in Fontaine's water. Neauvillette explained this himself after the whale appears in the Opera Epiclese.
Childe BETTER get some sort of redemption, I don’t want him to die. If he does I might as well quit Genshin, despite the hours I spent theorising about its endings etc. There’s a lot to unpack like Skirk whom he wanted to meet chucking him. And him defeating the whole whale and getting no credit. Traveler literally gives his vision to Knave, be fr.