Can an adaptation be better than the original?

[inotia-king]

Hi guys I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!

I've mentioned this before but miHoYo tends to unintentionally back me up on things. I think it's already well known that I didn't like the ++original story++ ++of the Fontaine++ ++Archon Quest.++ Many angry commenters raised their pitchforks that I would dare claim to know better than miHoYo about their own story. Well out of miHoYo's own story just a single patch later we had Furina proclaiming the same thing. Yes in fact an adaptation can be better than the original work. All a good story needs is to be told consistently and just like how Furina believed she had a better idea for the Two Musketeers than its original author so too will I attempt the same for the Archon Quest. I put my money where my mouth is.

Naturally with five acts to get through there was no chance of this being short. So what I've done is create separate topics for each act and link them to this one. And this topic still being a lore topic and all, I've included my notes on why I made any of the changes I did below with respect to the information miHoYo had previously provided us. But of course for more details you can always look back at my Fontaine review topic.

++++++Act I: Prelude of Blancheur and Noirceur++

++++++Act II: As Light Rain Falls Without Reason++++++

++++++Act III: To the Stars Shining in the Depths++++++

++++++Act IV: Cataclysm's Quickening++++++

++++++Act V: Masquerade of the Guilty++++++

Notes:

• I formatted this topic after the ++quest summaries in the Genshin wiki.++ But without actual gameplay to go along with the summary I had to add more detail by comparison. (and still somehow I found that only my Act V was longer than the wiki’s) Also to provide a little familiarity, I took some lines from the wiki itself. It probably won’t help you guys much but I figured I’d try to make reading this as comfortable as I could.
• I wasn't actually counting on being able to keep the names of the acts but serendipitously they still worked. The only difference is that rather than the the Stars Shining in the Depths being about Meropide it was instead the unlikely coalition. Rather than the quickening of the cataclysm being the rupture of the sluice gate it was the Fatui operation. And my masquerade had so many guilty parties, actually more than what I had originally intended too. I was pleasantly surprised by that because it wasn't intentional and truly made it a masquerade.
• The first thing I think people will notice is that I flipped the story in v4.1 with the one in v4.0. I also shortened it so that both Acts III and IV took place in Act I and Acts I and II took place in Act II. I've said this before, I found the Archon Quest to be full of filler which wasted the additional time miHoYo had to tell a more comprehensive story. As you guys can see I freed up two extra Acts worth of story to add additional information linked with information we'd previously gotten from miHoYo.
• Now originally I thought like many people had that we would arrive in Fontaine through Chenyu Vale. There were enough hints about the region's release and its connection to Fontaine. But I'm sure we can all agree Chenyu Vale's later release was suited for Lantern Rite. However because I wanted to flip the acts around I needed Meropide to release with the Court of Fontaine so I figured it'd be a good idea to have the region release backwards in my version. As such we still do get to Fontaine through Chenyu Vale in a way. It's just that it works like Inazuma where the only way to get there is via "a ship" and we just unlock a waypoint while we're there, in this case Meropide's. Check out my poetry theory to see why this was coincidentally a good thing.
• Also I didn't really get why miHoYo decided Fontaine would be when it would start giving us last minute farewells from the previous region. Not to mention Dehya is a controversial character. So despite having personally enjoyed that scene since I love Dehya I figured it made more sense (especially since I started it from Chenyu Vale) that the cameo scene went to Mona instead. We'd known Mona's connection to Fontaine since before the game even officially launched. Also since new players don't get the Dehya cutscene anyway and can play Fontaine's quest right after Mondstadt's it makes more sense to give it to Mona.
• The next thing is that Meropide not only happens early but also not in the same way. Their prison sentence is legitimate because I mean to show the underbelly of the region, the class disparity based on the French Revolution which had been alluded to many times by information we got throughout the post-Sumeru period.
• As such rather than have Childe make only three cameo appearances and not really have any agency in any of them I opted for Childe to show us around Meropide instead of Wriothesley. This affords him more screen time to develop his character while also further developing his relationship to the Traveler.
• Also this is where you guys can see the first piece of filler I removed: the quest to find the hidden rules. Seriously what was that? We had a whole act dedicated to finding out useless information that only played out as a way to show how in control Wriothesley is of Meropide. Unnecessary. The only part of Act III I chose to keep was the Persona format because it was nostalgic and worked out as a way for them to find ways to escape Meropide instead. I even used it in place of the hidden rules thing to still show off Wriothesley's control.
• Doing this also set up more competance out of the Fatui. In the quest we got, Wriothesley outsmarted Lyney. In my version he still does outsmart Lyney but Lyney has a contingency which also plays out in the overall plot by Arlecchino. It shows layers to the Harbinger's planning.
• I also made sure to change everybody's attitude towards the prophecy. Rather than only Lynette worrying about it in Act I, I made it a topic on everyone's minds and then coupled it with the resentment by the lower classes to show different opinions. This played out in my Acts III and IV before concluding in Act V. Honestly the original story made it feel like until the big whale was already attacking the Opera Epiclese nobody really considered the consequences of the prophecy coming true. (I suppose that's more true to real life though as we saw in recent years.)
• Act II then keeps going with the class disparity because when you have people living in the sewers they shouldn't really be satisfied with that life like they were in the quest we got. There were hints about it but Fleuve Cendre and Poisson are still just the places some Fontainians live. They even had Mona "take a stroll" and end up hanging out in Fleuve Cendre. Keep in mind to get down there you have to drop all the way down a long sewage pipe. I don't know about you guys but no stroll I've ever taken has included that so far lol
• I also made the serial killings more realistic. Instead of it going on for 20 years I looked at Joseph Vacher’s actual run which lasted only three years and took anywhere between 11-27 lives. Even the most famous serial murderer Jack the Ripper only lasted 11 years.
• Similar to the official Act III I have Lyney purposely get himself put on trial in my Act II but now this time it was for the sake of his mission in Act I, to investigate the Oratrice core. This mission was important to the overall plot in Fontaine as was the next trial for Vacher. But all of the drama with Navia and spending two acts just to resolve the Vacher thing was excessive so I removed most of it. I'm pretty sure you could have gotten the same information from Navia's Character Stories, Voice-Overs and her Character Quest so there was no need to take up so much of the Archon Quest's time on her personal story. (miHoYo would do this again in Natlan with Act III being all about Citlali and a full Interlude quest in the middle all about Iansan.)
• There's an element of drama when it comes to Fontaine's trials. In the quest this played out with the trials going back and forth between prosecution and defense. I decided instead to play off the drama in an underdog struggle where the Traveler's side had to keep providing more evidence to prevent an unjust verdict. As such you get the typical sudden arrival of more evidence as seen in fiction. I mean it’s even more of an homage to Phoenix Wright then, right? “Take that!”
• One thing that I couldn't fit in though was the larger role of the Sinthe trade in Acts I and II. But since this didn't really extend after that it could still be seen as filler in the original telling and I expanded on it in the freed up Acts III and IV in my version.
• On the other hand I added in a connection between Alain's Arkhe System with the information about pollution we'd previously gotten from NPCs. "The air in Fontaine, by contrast, is practically toxic fumes..." It falls in line with steampunk technology, tech inspired by the industrial period which is known for pollution. It's essentially an imperfect human substitute Fontaine can use in the interim as they develop just like how it worked in our real world.
• I keep referring to Arlecchino as the Knave right? I don't know how many of you guys know this but miHoYo actually changed something in v4.2. Where in Act I Lyney eventually calls her "Lady Arlecchino" it's been updated so that he just calls her the Knave and now there are zero lines in the Archon Quest where she's referred to as Arlecchino. I can't be sure of their purpose but I figured I'd go along with it.
• I also drew more attention to Poisson and Fleuve Cendre and decided to connect them. I wondered why Eduardo Baker would go to Poisson after the Purge of Fleuve Cendre. I mean with how it is officially he could have gone anywhere and a pit out in the middle of nowhere sounds suicidal. But what if Fleuve Cendre was connected to Poisson? Seeing how Fleuve Cendre is a sewer it would be much more difficult to fight his way out and back into the city just to escape than to just follow the pipes out to where they lead. Also it makes more sense for the impoverished to happen to live in both those places if Poisson was only established when the people of Fleuve Cendre figured out the system led there. And again setting things up like that helps give the poor Fontainians more to take issue with the rich.
• The same line of thinking went into having Wriothesley and Arlecchino interact which miHoYo had had Wriothesley deny in the quest. With both of them being orphans mistreated by the aristocrats it gives them common ground but also sets them up as foils, Wriothesley still hoping to do good while Arlecchino is justifying ills.
• I had used the comparison before when I was predicting what role Arlecchino would play in the Archon Quest with respect to the French Revolution. Meropide is clearly meant to represent the Bastille, a massive fortress where the corrupt justice system sent all its criminals. It became a symbol of the Bourbon Monarchy's tyranny. However in Genshin Meropide was built by the criminals as an act of repentance. So I decided this would be a great way to turn the reference on its head. What if most Fontainians including Arlecchino knew the part where Meropide equated to the Bastille while the truth was that Meropide was a symbol of the people's love of their homeland and Archon? This made the difference between wanting the prophecy to drown the aristocracy versus refusing to abandon Fontaine in exile while trying to prevent the prophecy at all costs.
• On top of all of that, having freed up Acts III and IV I was able to explore the state of the Fatui. We have had many quests now showing us Fatui that were mistreated and ones that wanted to escape the life including those from the House of the Hearth. Fontaine was the first time we built relationships with very loyal and happy Fatui Agents in Lyney and his siblings. At the same time it gives us the dynamic for the organization, not the craziness of Act V's Arlecchino telling us not to focus on sides but instead that the Fatui is a complicated organization with unforgivable villains like Dottore, Scara and Signora but also honorable members like Childe, Capitano and Arlecchino. Just like the Abyss, even though we oppose them there are still victims and innocent people to account for.
• I made Yvesroch the Captain of the Special Patrol during Chevreuse's rookie years because it wasn't specified who he was so I took advantage of that. We know Grizzetti was the Vice Captain and I figured the story could go that both of them were friends with her dad. Yvesroch taught her the technical skills in a healthier way than her dad had and then Uncle Grizzetti taught her the true meaning of justice.
• I bumped up Mona and Nicole's scenes and added a little more to the Egeria story. We had lore about the Oceanids since Rhodeia back at the start. In v4.1 we would get even more with Callirhoe the Spring Fairy and something that was consistent was that none of these Oceanids could remember why they fled Fontaine. Based on how I ended my version of the story it explains it. As familiars they were affected by the same trauma that befell Focalors.
• On top of that the unjust legal system, the resentful people in Meropide, the exile, the communications network and the fleeing Oceanids were all attempts by Egeria to protect her people by having them distance themselves from Fontaine and therefore the Primordial Sea. Again this was part of my theories and another thing that went unanswered by the actual quest.
• It might be a little on the nose to have them find Fatui intel about Egeria and some direct operation using the Sinthe to "drug" the aristocrats but it does fit with an act titled "Cataclysm's Quickening." And to be fair is it any crazier than farming the minds of scholars driven insane by Divine Knowledge? We even find the place the Eremites were keeping them and it felt like human-trafficking. Also the World Quests we had in both the Sumeru Desert and Fontaine's Narzissenkreuz still did much worse.
• I felt that the attack on Furina from miHoYo's quest painted Furina in a much worse way. Her lines start off with her trying to play with a cat and then getting angry at it for rejecting her. And then she's totally caught off guard by the attack. Granted she was meant to be a simple human in this version but even humans have some self-awareness especially after having been alive for 500 years. As such my attack was much more direct and leads into the revelation which then leads to the quest's conclusion.
• On top of that having Furina actually know even something, anything made her feel more sympathetic in my mind compared to just the misery porn/bully bait version we got from miHoYo. As I pointed out when it comes to Genshin, being alive for 500 years while pretending to be someone you're not isn't that bad. I'd much rather fake being the celebrity Hydro Archon for 500 years than a hilichurl. Or Capitano. In fact, we're even told how much better her QOL was as Archon than now as a human. She ate much better food than macaroni for example.
• It might not be the most emotionally impactful to have Furina explain her state of mind right at the start of the act compared to building up the drama into a crescendo like in the original. However that's also because mine is partly a farce. My Furina didn't know the full story until she was meant to. She just knew her part which included giving this explanation.
• Also I understand many people sympathized with Furina because of the scenes showing her breaking down over her 500 year tenure but again a human living powerlessly for 500 years isn't the worst fate in Genshin. I mean miHoYo showed this themselves recently with Capitano's fate. Therefore I kept to my Seele prediction where Focalors was split and was suffering the trauma of losing part of herself. This both feels much more horrifying to me as well as fits with the lore we know about elemental beings. As we saw in Sumeru any major loss of elemental energy can drastically change them, including memory loss.
• There was something I changed from my own suggestions. Which eye represented which Archon? Originally I said the darker blue eye was the "Veliona" eye for Furina and the lighter one was Egeria. But as I was writing this I thought it might be more dramatic to say the darker eye had lost its elemental glow that Archons have and so that was the missing Egeria.
• I had Freminet investigate the Sinthe facility from the official Act II but it was greatly reduced to accommodate my combining Acts I and II together. So I figure rather than the Domain in Act V which was only used to set up red herrings with Navia's dissolving and then the prophecy slates, I'd bring the Sinthe facility back instead and use it to reveal the true culprits of the operations.
• Additionally, it set up a way to explain why there were so many of Arlecchino's Fatui Operatives hanging around the Meropide area in v4.1 which was never mentioned officially. They were just a new enemy for the new area. This also let me pace the prophecy better. I took issue with the inconsistencies like Furina looking into the rising water levels 500 years ago but then Lynette and Wriothesley saying that they only rose recently and then it was revealed that it was just being caused by the space whale. So in my version the prophecy was going to take much longer and so the rising water levels wouldn't have been noticed. Instead Arlecchino was trying to jumpstart the flood through Meropide and the prophecy instead became a symbol of revolution for the commoners and an omen for the aristocracy.
• The original plan was that Arlecchino would take the Gnosis and become a god. She'd then use her power to hold back the flooding waters just for the Spina and Meropide who would have all been evacuated to Poisson or board the Wingalet. Then the flood would "wash away the sins" of the aristocracy leaving a new Fontaine free of their abuses. But that was just what Pulcinella wanted her to think. Instead he was pulling off a larger scale version of what he did with Childe, holding Fontaine hostage to force their loyalties to Snezhnaya. The Fatui knew the prophecy was in no danger of coming true yet and they could make use of their technology and scientific research (like Rene's research and Alain's Arkhe System) while Dottore was interested in understanding why they dissolved when put in contact with Primordial Seawater. Just like in Sumeru he would have wanted test subjects.
• Following the revelations my version doesn't waste any time. There's no planning for several days and then taking a stroll to interview a bunch of people about the prophecy they aren't really worried about. There's no fake angry mob to drive Furina into a trap to set up some trial about how she's not the real Archon or any of that other Scooby-Doo nonsense. That said my version may not appeal to some of you. I just wanted the prophecy to actually be a threat and for the Fatui to be consistent instead of the suddenly honest and helpful version we got which culminated in Arlecchino telling us not to focus on all the horrible things we know they've already done before.
• So that leads me to Riqueti. He is an actual NPC in the game. You can find him right outside the Steambird. But that's it. He's just a minor character. Now if you look it up Riqueti could be Gabriel Riqueti who was a prominent figure from the nobility during the French Revolution. He actually supported the Third Estate. However the reason why could be that he was an opportunist. Early on he gambled and fell into debt that followed him most his life, he was violent and got sent to prison several times, went on smear campaigns against royals of other countries and he even tried to solve his debt problem by forcing a marriage with an heiress. So that's where my Riqueti came from with specific reference to his troubles over debt. Also the part about him being from "Mondstadt" is a reference to Riqueti's Italian ancestry.
• Égalité is a reference to Louis Philippe II who was a royal that supported the revolution. As a royal he was able to use his property to give revolutionaries a place to meet. And then it became a hub for illegal trade. He was accused of a plot to assassinate the king alongside Riqueti so the Marquis de Lafayette eventually got him to go into exile out of fear his actual intentions for supporting the revolution was so he could replace the king, his cousin. Later on he did indeed vote to execute said king. For my purposes I thought someone undermining the regional power from within sounded similar to what Dottore did in Sumeru and Inazuma and using Philippe's property as a hub for illegal trade worked nicely with the Sinthe trade.
• Finally Yvesroch or actually Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier (yikes) is more commonly known as that same Marquis de Lafayette I brought up just before. Not only was he a hero of the American Revolution but after that he went back to France and became a hero of the French Revolution. But late in his life he also set up Louis Philippe I the son of Égalité to become Frances's citizen king and he was a terrible king lol. The good marquis also fell out of favor during the Reign of Terror because he was a moderate and wanted France to adopt Britain's constitutional monarchy which Robespierre used against him. This is why my Yvesroch is an honorable person but sided with the Fatui.
• Yanfei once said Fontaine's legal system is complex. Real world legislation is also pretty weird sometimes like convicting Al Capone for tax evasion instead of pretty much any of his other much worse crimes. So for me this was Furina proving Pulcinella was impersonating Riqueti which therefore means all actions related to Riqueti were performed by Pulcinella. As a diplomat (in real world terms) he is prohibited from using his station for personal gain. He had used his position to gain an audience with the real Riqueti and then by impersonating him he then conducted business like selling Sinthe for personal profit (Riqueti's) which is a conflict of interest. The thing is had he only been convicted of murdering Riqueti or performing espionage to undermine Fontaine (you know, his serious crimes) all Fontaine would be able to do is consider him persona non grata and then send him home to Snezhnaya for prosecution. So since he conducted business as Riqueti, Pulcinella voided his diplomatic immunity which then made him any visitor to Fontaine and subject to the local laws and nobody allows espionage, murder and acts of terrorism in their borders. Taken together they are a capital offense and grounds for the death penalty especially during Bourbon France. (It turns out that murder, espionage and even an act of terror where no one was killed aren't typically punished by death but instead just long prison terms. Espionage only qualifies for the death penalty during wartime. Also France today no longer even has a death penalty but had had one up to 1977 long after the revolutions and the Long Nineteenth Century.)
• Childe collecting debts was shown in his Character Tales where he collects from the Yanshang Teahouse. Javert was originally going to take a normal payment but Childe used the debt as a pretext to get the Sigil of Permission that was needed to revive Osial. So by using this I wanted to show Pulcinella's conniving personality and how he planned far ahead of any operation. The debt in Liyue helped with their operation there and now the debt in Fontaine helped his own operation which was only undermined with the help of two other Harbingers and that Dottore abandoned him by this point.
• In my predictions I suggested that the Primordial Sea is essentially a processed version of the Sea of Quanta. This is based on the theory of ++how the Imaginary Tree grew its universes from it.++ This explains why an Archon like Egeria would not be able to create life from it. The Imaginary Tree is far beyond the Archons and even the Dragon Sovereigns. Next, we know Neuvillette aka the Hydro Dragon served under Nibelung during the war against the Second Descender and had agreed to rely on the Abyss. It stood to reason that Abyssal Corruption could become its own conscious being and become Childe's whale just like it had created monstrous creatures and the warden inside of Apep. So once that corruption was removed what was left was pure Dragon Sovereign elemental energy which Neuvillette could then absorb and regain much of his dragon powers. But it still wouldn't be enough to control the Primordial Sea. Therefore he'd be able to hold it for a while. Then he needed the Gnosis which would make him a full dragon. This would have been enough power to control the sea and stop it from flooding but not enough to make the Fontainians real humans. To do that would have killed him so Focalors had used the Oratrice to collect the Oceanid elemental energies of all of Fontaine for 500 years as Indemnitium, the people's own indemnity against the prophecy that would kill them. By using all of this collected elemental energy Neuvillette would finally have enough power to turn them into true humans but it would still cost most of his power and return him to the same level he was normally. This shows how precious true life is compared to the version we got where it just takes a dragon at full power, which also necessarily meant that the dragons are as powerful as the Imaginary Tree and therefore should not have lost to Phanes.
• Actually I think I know where miHoYo's going with this but I don't know if that's a good thing. I may come up with another topic to discuss this one day. (it turns out miHoYo went in a new direction starting with Fontaine so now the Dragon Sovereigns all command some kind of older foundational thing in Teyvat with the Primordial Sea representing life itself.)
• Yes I stuffed the second verse of La Vaguette into the Archon Quest. I love that song and when I saw the translation I thought it fit so well with this version I came up with. I mean seriously "love is not enough, only a farewell will flower" and the play was about an Oceanid sacrificing herself to save the people even after they turned on her?
• A few final changes are: Childe ditches his Delusion rather than temporarily somehow removing his Vision and then having the Traveler dump it on Arlecchino to give back to him, Skirk's cameo responding to the earlier mention about Childe's malfunctioning Vision rather than it being left to guesswork by players (like the theory that the whale punctured his Constellation during the boss fight being the reason) and how the other ending cameos played out. My favorite was Sigewinne's. Arlecchino also more accurately warns about the other Harbingers just like Childe and Scara had before her instead of her saying not to focus on sides. (no I'm not getting over that lol) She also warns about Columbina just like Scara and Childe in their Voice-Overs because I thought this would further promote the danger she poses.
• I again took issue with Furina being capable of both Pneuma and Ousia as your typical allogene. There were theories suggesting her Vision was special because it came from a dragon not an Archon but that doesn't make sense considering the Visions are granted by the user's ambitions not the power of the Archon that bestows it. In fact earlier theories had pointed out how the Visions might actually limit the allogenes natural ability to wield the elements which follows the lore we'd gotten about Celestia which has actually kept up. In Chenyu Vale we learn even more. Anyway I had theorized that Furina was capable of it as all of the lore about her worked with this dichotomy like how even her sword has two different stories about the same event. The remaining details would play out in her Second Character Quest which would take her back to the Amrita where the new Weekly Boss would be the collected Abyssal Corruption, though it doesn't necessarily mean Egeria would return to Furina by the end. Speaking of the dichotomy, while miHoYo didn't make it clear I still hold that "Focalors' Divinity" means Egeria and what that all actually means is that Focalors is the name of both of them, Egeria and Furina. Focalors is an Ars Goetia demon name. Egeria and Furina are both not so it stands to reason that they are both Focalors. It'd fit with either version of the Inazuma story where Baal was the Ars Goetia name for both Makoto and Ei despite Ei getting Beelzebul. (Beezlebul which is based on Beezlebub is just another name for Baal)

Whew! And that's all my notes! So if somebody actually managed to get through all of that I hope you guys can better see why I had all the issues with Fontaine's Archon Quest that I did. There were so many pieces of lore that were left unaddressed and so much time was wasted on unnecessary things. Even if you didn't like my Acts III and IV or you didn't like my addition of the other Harbingers you can't deny that I successfully squished miHoYo's Acts I-IV into half the space. There was just so much filler it was easy to cut the fat.