This! As a person, obsession with mythology and religion playing genshin is like a minimalized version of becoming an archaeologist, which was my dream when I was little.
Everything is amazingly complex and scattered like some of the most amazing stories in real life.
I love genshin, even though the representation could be better, the lore is fascinating and so immersing
ok, so no one talks about it, but i truly adore how genshin presents its in-game lore as real life mythology and history is! you discover tevyat's history, culture, mythology by actually going through scattered texts you find while exploring, or reading descriptions of items you find, or in namecards, and even in tcg card descriptions! and a lot of these sources aren't fully reliable, are hard to make sense of, and are given to you in absolutely no chronological order.
EXACTLY LIKE REAL LIFE MYTHOLOGY. most cultures' mythologies are passed down orally until one wise person decides to actually write it down! and those become our only sources of insight into those myths and ancient stories. norse mythology, for example, has only like two viable texts and those were written after roman christians took control over the area. like the sources are scattered and one tale has many interpretations and endings. you have to become an actual scholar to decipher all of it.
and the fact, the mere fact, that genshin has been able to mirror this in a game is absolutely insane to me.
like, oh, you wanna learn about nabu malikata, the goddess of flowers? here are your sources: an artifact set, a weapon description, a npc dialogue, a world quest, the description of a flower (padisarahs). and all of these are scattered throughout the world of tevyat.
you have to work, like a damn archeologist, to figure what the fuck is tevyat truly and understand its history.
like god, i have never played a more lore-rich game. from old mondstadt, to the hexenzirkel, to dragonspine and durin, to the yakshas and adepti, to baal and beelzebul, to watatsumi and enkanomiya, to the chasm's civilisation, to khaenriah, to elynas, to remuria and remus, to apep and nibelung, to deshret and nabu malikata, to the combined civilisation before the second descender.
it is SO fleshed out. and i haven't even mentioned like 40% of wtf is going on in tevyat.
anyway, this was my love letter to genshin lore!