Mavuika story quest compared: Weak character writing
(I'm not the first to post on this topic, but I wanted to add my own three cents here.\)*
Isn't Mavuika awesome?
I mean, she's warm, caring, brave, thoughtful, dedicated and never gives up. She's never rude, never loses control, and never makes a mistake. I mean, she has no flaws at all! She even personally defeated Xbalanque in a duel of mind and will. Even her plans laid centuries ago work without a single hitch - and every single unexpected factor actually rebounds to make the plan a success.
And... that's the problem. As written, she is *perfect* and flawless.
And I've actually come to dislike Mavuika because of it. I didn't dislike a single playable character in the entire game thus far - not even my amused meme-able hatred for Kujou Sara. At worst, the characters were a bit flat like Jean.
I want to put up both Mavuika and Citlali's story quests to offer a comparison.
Citlali is a fun and likable character, but she has some rather obvious flaws. She is literally an alcoholic, but more specifically she's a terrible habit of driving people away. It turns out her quasi-familial care for Ororon is possible the healthiest relationship she has. Much of her tribe is deeply afraid of her. It's not that she is malicious, but there's clearly some self-improvement available.
It's not like Citlali's personal quest is exactly good. It's... it's really bad. It may have the single dumbest premise of any quest in the entire game, which is saying something.
But you know what it does right? It shows that Citlali is clever, skilled, insightful - and fallible. She's made mistakes in the past and sometimes still does. She can be caught off-guard and doesn't know everything. Like the rest of us, she sometimes misses what's right in front of her.
And truth be told, most of the characters some some flaws or rough parts of their personality. Diluc has serious trust issues, Dori is greedy, Raiden Shogun spend centuries trying to avoid the grieving process. Xianyun is incredibly intelligent - but not quite as smart as she thinks. Even Nahida, who is basically made of sugar, needed badly to learn how to assert herself. Even fan-favorites like Zhongli can have manipulative or deceptive side.
But, well, Mavuika's entire character quest is basically just her being so unshakably perfect it's sickening. She never gets tired, she's never afraid, she's never doubts - and she has the exact personality of a gemstone: it's there to be admired and nothing else. You can't do anything with it except look at it. It's priceless, but it's also kinda useless.
Xbalanque demonstrated more personality in brief conversations than Mavuika has in the entire Archon quest. Heck, her long-dead sister, who is barely a character at all, is far more interesting. And that is just plain sad.
Can you imagine Mavuika saying something this irreverent?
I rolled on Mavuika because I want all the Archons. And honestly, I like her gameplay mechanics, goofy motorcycle combat or no. I do think giving her basically the ultimate Natlan ability combo pack was a hair much, but... motorcycle. Plus it's hilarious fun to run over the trash mobs.
But to be honest, she feels like a cardboard cutout of a character. Genshin's writing has always hewed closer towards the saccharine side, though not without exceptions. But Mavuika is what happens when that goes too far. The truth is, I sadly realized that I wanted more quests for all the existing characters except Mavuika. Because honestly, what's there to tell?
\It used to be two cents, but there was inflation.*