#the whole point of the quest was for xiao to shake this mindset of a warrior's death and that he has to be alone and die alone

[osmanthus-dandelion-wine]

genuinely shocked at the amount of people that think character death = good story. In most circumstances, character deaths seem like an easy way out for shock value rather than meaningful development (Signora for example). Some of the best character arcs are those where the writers had to figure out how to develop the character in the arc of the story rather than just killing them and moving on

#genshin impact #genshin impact spoilers #xiao #la signora #criticism #hyv has done good jobs when a character had to die and it was a satisfying end to their arcs (himeko or otto more recently) #and they flubbed it before with signora #the whole point of the quest was for xiao to shake this mindset of a warrior's death and that he has to be alone and die alone #that is exactly why yelan was there to challenge that point since she hates the idea of self sacrifice and being the only one to survive #both suffered survivor's guilt and had two completely different ways they went about coping #and the end of that quest was genuinely one of the only times xiao did not degrade himself as a slaughterer #and he was proud to be a yaksha #because his duty was to protect the people #so why set all that up for him to die #it would have been sadder but after a while you'd think 'that made no sense' #ffs he didn't want to die either he tried to bring a rock to make bosacius' shrine #idk i guess getting older just made me see how much harder it is for writers to write development than killing the character off #and another series did initially kill their character off and it was not satisfying #so when they redux their game and had that character finish their arc what do you know they had one of the best character arcs