so uh, how about that new world quest huh? like i went into it expecting asmoday lore (which we definitely got) but i was not at all expecting the exploration of suicidal ideation from zeitlind and her sister. like the quest starts off like, "oh wow this old man thought there was a ghost at the sanitarium let's go investigate" and then zeitlind shows up and tells us that she came to see her sister's grave and that she "planned to say goodbye." like that caught me completely off guard when i was playing. each place we go to when looking for zeitlind's items from her suitcase, everyone we meet basically is trying to show zeitlind their own passions and their own reasons for living (ignoring the fact that everyone in the temple is technically immortal). honestly the entire quest feels more like it's zeitlind and raumhilda's story and it just so happens that the setting is the temple of a missing deity (this is not a complaint btw, i absolutely loved this quest).

zeitlind and raumhilda's choice to both sacrifice their memories very much feels like an allegory for suicide. one of the themes throughout all of hoyo's games is that the self = memory. your memories make you who you are, so a removal of your memories is the death of the self. for example in arlecchino's story quest she says explicitly says that is her opinion too, so her removing the memories of former house of the hearth members is no different than killing them. something i really liked about the quest was that zeitlind's problems aren't just solved by her time with the traveler. like that feels like a common trope, where someone who's depressed or even suicidal goes on some kind of adventure and that when they're done they're magically okay now. that very clearly doesn't happen with either zeitlind or her sister.

towards the end of the quest zeitlind talks about how saving yourself means you can also save the world.

this reminded me of what sandrone said about rene and alain, how their wish to save the world originally came from their wish to save themselves. it also makes me think that in a weird way, the opportunity to lose all of their memories was the perfect option for zeitlind and raumhilda because they both share similar ideas about having another life so to speak. you can see it with both of their epitaphs, "one lifetime isn't enough" for raumhilda and "to be continued" for zeitlind. like zeitlind's line "i'm not giving that chance to you" feels like she's both talking about the chance to save the world and the chance to "get rid of her melancholy."

It's been 5 days since the new area was made available.

Where Reed Miller's treasure is hidden, the Royal Court of the Seelie, and the Abyss-plagued Kipumaki Cliff... There are adventures aplenty wherever you look, whether in the air, on the ground, or even underground!

Let's take a look at the mysterious World Quests that await in the new area!

I don't think it's a bad version because there are important things here. We're finally getting a Mondstadt expansion with Dornman Port, something we've been hearing about for years and that felt long overdue. There's also the Temple of Space, which should give us more context about Asmoday, a mystery that has been there since literally minute 1 of the game. In theory, that should be enough to consider this a strong version, at least in terms of exploration and lore, which are not minor points.

And yet, I don't feel it.

The issue isn't what they're telling, it's how it fits into the game's current rhythm. Asmoday is central, yes, but she's been absent for so long that anything related to her feels more like additional information than immediate progression. Of course I'm interested, I want to know more and I'll do this world quest, but I don't feel that urgency. It feels like the kind of content I can leave for later without missing anything (not that that's a bad thing though).

Meanwhile, the archon quests involving Dottore have been completely frozen for 2 versions and that carries more weight than it seems. When the main storyline doesn't move forward, everything else, even if it's relevant, starts to feel optional (or like I can just do it later).

There's also something about world quests that I really don't like. If you're not up to date with the game, or you don't follow the livestreams or hoyoverse's communication channels, you can enter a new area in the game and suddenly get thrown into a long world quest with no context. You don't know what it's about, how long it is, or whether it's a good moment to do it. That significantly breaks the experience if you don't play consistently. It's not a content issue and I'm not even getting into world quests being voiced, it's about how they're presented in the game itself. They don't have the same structure or timeline clarity that archon quests do.

Then there's Seamus Pegg. I'm genuinely super happy to see him because he's Jean and Barbara's father, because he appears in the manga, because he's been part of the background of this world since the beginning… but the first impression is that he looks like an npc. Even so, I love Seamus and I'll be really happy to see him in game, but I can't ignore the slight disappointment of him being an npc.

Overall, Luna VI has interesting elements. With Linnea, we'll probably get more information about Snezhnaya and I do think whatever we learn in Asmoday's Temple will connect to what comes later with Dottore or future archon quests.

Not generating that sense of urgency isn't necessarily bad. I actually think it's fine for the game to slow down, to take its time to deliver strong narratives like it has throughout the 6.X versions. Still, this is the first one that feels a bit like a dip.

But I know that when I'm at Dornman Port and get to Asmoday's Temple, I'm going to be blown away and will definitely want to talk about it… but for now, I'm chill. I hope that makes sense.