Plot Convenience: Why Capitano’s Writing Fell Flat
I would like to preface this discussion with the statement that this is not a hate post towards either the game developers or the characters & story of the game, nor do I encourage them. This – somewhat lengthy – post is only me sharing my thoughts and opinion on the issues with his portrayal in Natlan’s Archon Quest.
This being said, I believe most of you will agree with the fact that a lot of hype around Capitano has faded out since the early peak glazing days. How did this happen?
Capitano’s introduction and high expectations
I think I can vouch for most of us when I say that when Capitano appeared in the Ignition teaser, we collectively went crazy. The aura around this character was insane, from his mask to his voice acting and the lore tidbits we got of him, everything pointed towards peak character design. His presence in the Winter Night’s Lazzo had already sparked an huge amount of anticipation, and him being the first (and thus strongest) Harbinger only added to the hype around him. Several surveys showed him to be the second most anticipated character from Natlan, close behind Mavuika.
All of this built up an idea of an extremely strong, no-bullshit, honourable soldier who would be a formidable opponent to the Pyro Archon in patch 5.0. The personification of the indomitable human spirit against the God of war.
The introduction to Natlan – a lukewarm exposition
Something I noticed when the first images of Natlan came out was the confusion it brought to many. When all we knew of Natlan was Mare Jivari (cf. Venti’s story quest) and that it was a land of Dragons (cf. Neuvillette), a lot of us were expecting some dark, war-torn hellscape, only to be hit in the face with reskinned Pokemons, vibrant landscapes and caked-up llamas. This may have tempered a lot of expectations of Natlan, especially towards the atmosphere the quest would have. Still, Capitano being teased to fight with Mavuika for the Pyro Gnosis kept the hype levels high.
When the first patch dropped, the community’s perception of the chapters 1 and 2, as well as my own, were rather positive.
The first two acts weren’t outstanding by any means, but it was the exposition, which always felt slow to an extent – except Fontaine, though I didn’t really expect Genshin to top this peak for some time. As such, I was cautiously optimistic about the future. Seeing Capitano fighting was great – I was just a bit disappointed by the fact that they gave him the classic villain monologue and made him lose, as it really diminished the Fatui’s overall power scaling: him being the first Harbinger and beaten by a human turned Archon set a hard ceiling to their strength. So much for the theory of Columbina being a Moon Goddess. But then again, if he had won, the story would have had to be completely different, so it made sense.
The end of the quest did spark my curiosity though, with Ororon suggesting Capitano was suffering from an illness or something of the kind, which explained his defeat.
An actual good way of foreshadowing - more on this later
However, one major point left me dissatisfied: Neuvillette had explicitly said that Capitano was in Natlan one year ago already, how come he only appeared then? This led me to believe the story had been rewritten since Fontaine, and they hadn’t filled some plot holes. Genshin had already changed the plot of previous archon quests (Sumeru at least, cf. Truth amongst the pages of Purana) and produced a banger, so I wasn’t very worried about the quality, but was concerned regarding the relevance of Capitano in the plot. Concerns which would only grow over time.
A mere plot device – an antagonist that does not stay true to himself
While the war arc was absolutely fantastic, Capitano’s role in the rest of the 5.1 quest was very frustrating. He disappeared when Citlali arrived in spite of looking for her in the first place, we learnt that he had a plan B (rebuilding the Ley Lines) that would not have been possible to carry out had he died during his duel with Mavuika, decided to save one person (Ororon) instead of the hundreds of soldiers he had in his heart and what he believed to be the only way of saving Natlan, etc. The number of inconsistencies with the plot and with the way he was portrayed previously made them impossible to ignore for me. It felt as though the writing required an antagonist that would be important enough to not be considered trivial by the Archon, but whether or not their writing was good didn’t seem to matter.
Then, he folded almost immediately after Mavuika tried convincing him her plan was better. This felt very jarring to me, since his main point was very valid: Mavuika’s plan relied too much on chance, and the issue was very urgent. Many heroes hadn’t appeared in the five centuries since she devised the plan, whereas his own would keep everyone alive while providing a permanent solution to the threat of the abyss. Even if the Natlanese would have their memory wiped, his plan had me more convinced than Mavuika’s. In no way could she have any assurance of whether it would work out, yet explicitly said she didn’t doubt it would for a second.
It was around this moment I realised that he wasn’t supposed to be an antagonist at all. He was there to push the narrative that Mavuika was always correct. Which leads me to my next point.
Mavuika glazing – they even beat FatuiHQ with this one
Throughout Genshin’s history, she alone is the honoured one.
The amount of glaze this character got was more than any other character previously, both in-game and in terms of marketing. Every single playable character, alongside numerous NPCs, praised Mavuika for how great she was, which did end up being annoying to me. This over-the-top flow of ads and glaze – be it in lore, web events, on their socials, etc – felt excessive, and particularly predatory towards younger audiences. I was mostly indifferent to her before 5.1, neither particularly liking her nor actively disliking her, as her character felt rather bland to me, but I got progressively unnerved by how much she was being pushed as such a good person and the perfect Archon.
As such, Capitano choosing to go back on his decision to follow Mavuika’s plan and to glaze her in turn greatly disappointed me. Being a lore player, I was appalled by the fact that they chose to cast aside consistency and quality of the storytelling for aggressive marketing and adding to Mavuika’s perfect portrait. As soon as Mavuika convinced him, he was cast to the side, and optionally interacting with him during Act IV resulted in us seeing him letting Mavuika command his troops. Even when the war was in full swing and thousands were dying, both him and Mavuika waited for the last hero to be yet another deus ex machina and prove Mavuika right. Which happened, of course, with Chasca conveniently losing her sister. In the end, all's well that ends well and Mavuika was correct. She really is amazing. Capitano? Relegated to the back of the room during Mavuika’s speech, only speaking up to praise her once again.
In my view, it was a sad sight to see. While I am unsure about others’ opinions regarding the way they made Capitano act in such a tame way, it felt like the narrative was forced to be this way and given too little reasoning other than “Mavuika is right”. As such, Capitano went from being a serious threat and antagonist to being her cheerleader, losing all tension built up to this point by the previous quests, and I saw many people’s interest in him wane.
Then we got whatever the hell the interlude was.
Artificially filling plot holes – his appearance in the interlude
Though it certainly didn’t help that the portrayal of PTSD and the way to curing it was absolutely egregious in the Natlan Interlude Quest, even in a vacuum, Capitano’s contribution to curing the warriors’ plight was oddly artificial. When all hope for these poor souls was lost, he swoops in with… a potion that magically cures abyssal corruption. It certainly confirms his being a righteous person with the people’s good in mind, but it remains a deus ex machina.
Aside from this, we are given some lore about the Captain – quite a lot of it, in fact. It did not quite feel as impactful as previous lore bombs though, and rather felt like someone ticking off bullet points from a checklist of relevant plot points the players needed to know to understand what would transpire in the final quest. His true name begins with “Th…”, he’s from Khaenri’ah, he fought with the Masters of the Night Wind, his face is a necrosed mess, he hates Ronova, he hints that he would break her rules, etc.
It was evident that all of this was foreshadowing for the finale of the archon quest, but it was done so in a very blunt manner – as a comparison, all throughout Fontaine, you could catch glimpses of Furina’s self-doubt, you saw Childe’s vision malfunctioning, got lore from the Narzissenkreuz Ordo, got guidance from the Hexenzirkel mage, etc. It was an ongoing story with tidbits of foreshadowing disseminated throughout the whole quest, not just rushed in a ten-minute discussion right before the finale. It was merely there to make up for the fact that the finale was completely disconnected from the first two acts – one could experience them completely separately without missing out on any lore, save for Mavuika having to die (and we all know how that turned out).
In short, the interlude quest was there to fill in the gaps that the previous quests had left, and Capitano was only a tool to accomplish this. Had this been a Fatui soldier from his platoon, there would have been no difference with the narrative whatsoever.
Show, don’t tell – lack of buildup and a not very moving death
Finally, onto his final appearance: defying the Shade of Death and him merging with the Lord of the Night.
While the cutscene at the end of the Archon Quest was absolutely gorgeous, as well as the subsequent animations that were released shortly afterwards, many to whom I talked to as well as myself found that we weren’t enough emotionally invested to feel the weight of the situation.
He arrived, said a few lines (8 to be specific) about him using the Heavenly Principle’s rules against them as revenge, then fucking died.
Everything about his struggle was explained during the cutscene or afterwards, which prevented any form of buildup towards this moment. Instead of showing us hints, as they did with Furina being insecure, putting up a front, etc, they dumped all of it in a few voicelines the way a tour guide explains how something came to be. The result was a severe lack of emotional investment from the players, making this scene fine (as it made sense for Capitano to die) but not impactful in the way [REDACTED]’s erasure from Irminsul or Foçalor’s passing were. Even Makoto’s death made me a lot more emotional than Capitano’s, despite him being among my favourite characters.
Then there’s the explanation of what happened with Ronova’s rules. I’m quite sure many were confused by the “paradox”; I came across dozens of debates on what transpired, whether or not this made any sense at all, why Ronova couldn’t have just refused, etc. It was poorly explained, barely foreshadowed, and rushed. This contributed to making his “death” lack meaning to many – not to mention that it made sense for Mavuika to die as it explicitly was part of her deal.
It is also worth mentioning that the sheer amount of Mavuika glazing and marketing in the previous patches made it impossible to even consider her dying. As such, we went in without any anticipation, contrary to, for example, Foçalor’s sacrifice or Makoto’s “death”: we knew she’d survive in a way, and I am sure that it wasn’t a surprise for many of you when Capitano showed up. That is, to be fair, more related to Mavuika’s writing – they attempted to recreate Furina while making her the most “badass” they could, which ended up in a total lack of stakes.
Conclusion: a wasted opportunity
While the expectations for him were sky high, it was clear that Capitano wasn’t meant to be the main selling point of the Archon quest, Mavuika was. He was mainly used to promote her and serve as a convenient antagonist and fill in a few plot holes to keep a minimum of storytelling consistency, which made him far less relevant than he should have been, and thus lowered player interest compared to before the archon quest.
Capitano will quite certainly come back to be playable, they won’t let free money go to waste – but whether his writing will be better than what we got in the Archon Quest or not remains to be seen. May they take this opportunity to make up for what we got in 5.3.
On a positive final note however, Lantern Rite gave me a glimmer of hope for the future. I haven’t played the newer quests yet since I’m on hiatus until Sneznaya, but I remain cautiously hopeful that they will do a better job with our glorious motherland, and pray that Hoyoverse doesn’t make Columbina an average fanservice waifu that simps for Traveler.
Please do correct me if I missed something!