Wuthering Waves' 1.4 update allows the writing to shine

Wuthering Waves, like many gacha games, is a fascinating thing. Taking place in a dense world with a bunch of different characters and some pretty insane mechanics and lore, the opening hours can feel like an almost unbearable word salad.

Now, this is not unique to Wuthering Waves. I play a lot of these types of games, and they all suffer from the same problem where it often feels like the story exists to justify the mechanics. This is actually true to a degree. Gacha games require certain mechanics like summoning characters, upgradable weapons, and time-gated resources, and those elements dominate the early hours of the story and exposition.

The first five to six hours of a gacha game can often feel like one long tutorial as you are endlessly introduced to the systems that have been carefully created and balanced to take just enough of your time to keep you hooked without taking so much that the time-sink pushes you away.

What is very interesting about Wuthering Waves is what comes after all the verbiage and the glossary of terms, the finding of the feet and the laying of the land, because there is some pretty neat, focused, and effective writing hiding away in this beast of a game.

For the last two expansions and recent character reveals, Wuthering Waves has been catching me off guard a little bit. I’m not sure where I expected the writing to go, but gently exploring the subtle echoes of everyday worries that we all experience wasn’t at the top of the list.

A couple of months ago, we got Zhezhi, a shy, retiring artistic type who likes nothing more than to spend time painting. She wants to interact with other people, but we slowly learn that she suffers from a low social battery and just can’t really do it the way we would expect the average person to. 

The temptation to just magically cure her of this issue would be strong for many games, but instead, the writers decided to have people accept this aspect of the character and learn to engage with her more on her terms. In the new 1.4 update, we revisit Zhezhi as part of a new event, the Somnium Labyrinth, watching her face her fears that the only thing that matters to anyone is a very narrow aspect of her art.

This is a common fear for creative people, especially people who experience rapid success in a small niche. It is beautifully summed up in the game when Zhezhi realizes that she is not just the work she does; she is the person who does that work. She is more than just the paint on the canvas and the brush in her hand; she deserves respect for the person that she is, not just the value of her art.

It’s some lovely character growth, a great way to revisit and move her character development along and tie it into an event that could have just been a bit of run-of-the-mill monster-mashing to gain some resources.

We also have a new character arriving, Camellya. It is easy to just write Camellya off as waifu-bait, but she is actually an interesting and complex character in her own right, and this only comes to light as we manage to dive into the game and spend time with her.

Camellya is the leader of the Black Shore, a dangerous fighter, and a powerful figure. She is also interestingly coded, often speaking more like a villain than a hero, aggressively insulting toward her enemies, and obsessed with power. These traits are often displayed in a soft way for hero characters, but there is an edge to Camellya that implies something is amiss.

Put the pieces of the puzzle together, and you’ll soon realize that Camellya is running very close to the edge, pushing herself far too hard, and is already suffering from her efforts by essentially splitting her personality in two. Camellya, it seems, is dangerously close to a state called overclocking, where these powerful characters become exhausted and start to lose control of their own connection to the forces they wield.

It’s an interesting exploration of the extreme stress that people can put themselves under to try and help others and how damaging those stresses can be. On the other hand, it’s a fun way to explore if the end justifies the means and how obsession with small ways to gain progress, no matter how important the task, can come at a cost that is not worth paying. 

We have seen the overclocking concept explored in the game before, but never as such a central trait of a character, as if the need to live on the stress of the situation and never take a step back has become addictive to Camellya, despite its destructive potential for both her and those around her.

So, as one character develops further, a new one is introduced, and all the signs point to a very interesting tale that will develop over time for them, too. This careful writing with a mind toward a long-term payoff makes Wuthering Waves well worth getting past those first few hours, for anyone looking to add a new gacha game to their library.

Aidan O'Brien

Contributing Guides Editor

Hailing from Ireland, Aidan has been conditioned by local weather conditions to survive hours at his PC grinding through whatever game is offering the lowest possible drop rates for loot. He thinks the easiest way to figure out what fans of games want to read is to just be a fan of games. You can normally find him logged into Warframe, Destiny, or a gacha game. You can reach out to him on X @scannerbarkly.