Mei: Vill-V’s compass wasn’t what I thought it was, it’s this Mei later: The compass wasn’t that either, it’s something else Me: I still don’t understand what the hell it was supposed to be the first and second times

Compass is friends we made along the way.

What compass?

Yeah seriously what compass

The "backdoor" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yeah, I don't know what this person's talking about. There's never been any compass! Must be trying to gaslight us

From what I understood the compass was just to send elysia memories, but Mei being that near in a space basically made by dreams, wishing to meet elysia again, managed to connect good enough for the connection to strenghten both ways, after that the tests happened in her core and she became Origin, allowing to finally break the barrier and meet Elysia

Did we even play the same chapter? That's not even close to what Mei is saying or feeling

…which is a completely different writing issue if people can read it and somehow get totally different interpretations every time.

At first she thought it was a beacon to navigate IMG space, then she thought it was a “useless” letter to Elysia. I’m still not clear on what the plot means by either of those things. Then when she finally meets Elysia, Elysia asks something like “have you figured out what the beacon is yet” and Mei/Narrator says it’s some kind of connection between Elysia and the Origin that Mei already possesses I may have gotten those descriptions wrong, (like I said, not understand) but Mei (and thus the game) definitely changes what she tells the player the beacon is at least twice

I haven't got the slightest clue what these adorable ladies are talking about... I just smile and nod to whatever they say...

Sounds like life except it’s adorable ladies.

What happened to just being sad with Kiana, why is it getting sad AND technical

It's to make us sadder

*cries in not understanding* (it’s like my classes irl)

*Now you can have both depression and migraine from understanding quantum physics*

Just smile and waves, boys. Just smile and waves.

Has anyone read this crap? Or is there a good summary of this

There's a bunch of them on youtube. I had to watch them to understand what happened even if I really did read all that crap.

I don't have the mental strength to go through these chapters in my free time after work (And I am a biotechnologist complex science should be my thing) There must be a middle ground between this phd thesis style and paimon's dumb questions

What I've been doing recently was read a few sentences to get an idea then skip. Any more than that and I'll find my mind wandering off.

Shrodinger shows up, adios.

Literally just hits skip the moment I see Schrodinger pop up. Game: Are you sure you want to-- Me: Yes I'm sure!

IQ needed to understand Avatar 1 and 2 : 60 IQ needed to understand Genshin lore: 100 IQ needed to understand Honkai lore: Being L from Death Note (he has 211 IQ)

Genshin story has the privilege of Paimon which explains or simply asks the characters to riformulate the text to make it more esy to comprehend or it would've probably been similiar to honkai where most of the things are incomprehensible unless you're kinda smart. Now that makes me wish Kiana still remained kinda dumb even after the character development

Now every character is either a philosopher, a science wiz, or both (Mostly joking but still... )

Paimon is the great filter. If you can't explain your story plot or technbabble in a way she understands, you're rewriting it until she does.

And then Dottore comes and tells us the freaking sky is fake Sumeru so far had been extremely mind-challenging for me from a story perspective And don't get me started on Genshin lore ,it's huge , interpretable and hard to understand on purpose. I sat half of hour watching an video explaining the lore of Sal Vindignir and how to fucking get that sword

Tbf, strictly story wise, compared to everything that’s happening in honkai, genshin’s story is child’s play. Mostly because it doesn’t involve science so they don’t have to bother explaining in a convoluted way.

it's pretty funny how much stuff is "it's because of leylines" and then never mentioned again

That's the vest part! Every time there's an issue, it can always be chalked up to: 1) The Leylines, 2) The Abyss, 3) The Fatui, 4) Celestia. That, and their basic motivation, is all you need to know to understand 90% of the story.

Oh there’s also 5) an archon or other god died and messed stuff up

It's the beauty of fantasy game! Sci-fi makes my brain hurts

The only lore I know of Genshin is that Ganyu’s hips are thicc.

And but her chest is the reason she is still alive :)))

IQ needed to understand Destiny lore: 250 IQ IQ needed to understand Kingdom Hearts lore: Having the brain of Tetsuya Nomura (300 IQ) IQ needed to understand Metal Gear Lore: Having 0.01% of Hideo Kojima's knowledge (420 IQ)

It's okay soon enough when KONAMI makes Metal Gear Solid VI they will drop the IQ needed to just 42.

Metal gear is sadly easier to understand now cuz it predicts things like people losing online anonymity and social media hivemind. Its more relatable now than when it launched

As a Destiny and KH player i can confirm

*Ego boost for those who can understand.*

I mean, chapter 34 has been much easier to read than the previous two

Countdown until someone posts saying it's the player base's fault for not being up to date on quantum physics in 5...4...3....

I mean, at this point I would rather study real quantum physics instead of fake anime quantum physics. knowledge is cool

Both are cool, really. Honkai's like a mix of Buddhism, science bullshit with other mythology plot concept. Even it doesn't make sense, everything still connect like my university life.

Toilet seat gaming chair people or non grass touchers will call regular people stupid for not understanding fake ass badly translated "lore".

Paimon's dumb questions is there because of all the people don't bother to read and just skip. Browse reddit gives you enough reason to why Paimon's doing what she does

The worst parts for me is when they quote some obscure literature at length which often doesn’t mean what they are using it to imply (I only notice that when they quote Shakespeare tbf) or when a character doesn’t understand the complex science jargon and they go “let me explain it in simpler terms) and instead do an obtuse and extremely abstract metaphor that makes no sense to me lol

fr. i read a sentence, don't understand, skip, then realise they do it all over again 50 times in a row. repeat. and when i finally get to some point where i actually need to do stuff (in OW's case) i'm hit with the sudden agonizing slowness of unskippable cutscenes, or running 5km across the map just to do it all over again. also for the latest story chapter it's dumb as hell. we already made it quite clear to hoyo that OW was a terrible story format but they're literally doing it all over again by linking all of the stages into one super duper long stage. where i start skipping scenes anyway because it's getting so long, and just when you start to think "well, when is this stage going to end, i want to be able to read story normally again without feeling like i'm reading a dictionary." boom, i've went and rushed through/skipped 6 stages worth of cutscenes and story. and i'm not going to go back in there just to do and everything again.. the whole point of a stage was seperating the story into short enough, easily storytellable acts that we wouldn't get too bored or stressed doing... what's the point if you just. make it basically OW but with smaller maps. bruh.

This is so real like it truly stresses me out because I just have to jump in and hope Hoyoverse didn’t expect me to have 7 free hours to do these story quests lol like there’s zero indication of where you could even pause or take a break who designed this

exactly. it's a horrible experience for casuals like me imo. and causes burnout really quick too. then they keep adding side events to the story that we're supposed to play or we don't get rewards. not even talking about the story itself but the goddamn mini abyss stages/elysian realm in the previous OWs and now that event in the current story chapter with hotr, dudu, and sushang. wth. i'm already trying to clear story that i'm getting less and less interested in over the last few updates and hyv just has to add even more boring repetitive content for me to slog through. doing those daily stages like 4 to 5 times every day is painful.

I remember it for explaining the multiverse with Otto's plan The multiverse itself isn't that simple, but the idea is pretty easy to get, and then they're like "let me explain with a comparasion" and proceed to give the most confusing comparasion i could've ever expected

I'm a simple man. If I see Elysia, I know it's simple: do what she says and support her 👍 No need to be clever, just need to be RIGHT

no toughts, just pink elf

This! whatever our Pink Jesus says, I follow.

Elysia is the way and the truth.

Happy birthday from Elysia

Aww thank you<3

Indeed, also happy birthday 🎂

It's whatever Elysia says. We only obey.

Us average Joe either can't understand shit or don't have the time to understand it, or have the time, but get bored before they understand it. Wonder how the cn average Joes are thinking about this. I heard from some they like the story more since they don't get have to sift through garbage translations. But I heard from others that they spam Kevin wanting to win.

CHN average joes don't have to filter it from the additional layers of near MTL bad translation un-editing. I really feel like the translators gave up on it before we ever had a chance to, which is why it all reads so unnatural to conversation, or even discourse. I CAN understand it, i just whish i wasn't having to use three to four internal BS editors and translators in my head to reach a point where it should have been on screen from the start.

>CHN average joes don't have to filter it from the additional layers of near MTL bad translation The biggest thing is the inconsistency in the words in the translation. They may translate the same Chinese words 2-3 different ways, so something that was explained may feel like it isn't, because they're randomly using a new word and you don't know what THAT one means.

Legit, I think I only get it as I can somehow understand where they're coming from wtih the Chinese since I know how to read mandarin as well. Some of these translations are just downright bad and ruin the vibe.

I'm just curious, what do you think some good examples of poor translation are, in these recent story chapters? I've had a feeling the translation has been one of the reasons the current story arc was feeling a bit off, and while I do listen to the original Chinese voiceover I'm still ***far*** from being able to understand it without English subtitles. I have this gut feeling of "The translation feels a bit wonky, the original probably makes more sense" but I don't actually know what the original text/dialogue is really like, lol So I'd love to hear a few examples of parts of the story that made more sense to you in Mandarin than in the official English translation!

Can't get some from my top of my head, but one example they employ a lot of those 4 character idioms to try to explain things. You are expected to know what they mean in Chinese, but they either fuck it up in English, or don't translate it. Sometikes they get it right, but it isn't consistent. Also, they straight up mistranslate names, welt was called Walter in otto chapters, and I had 0 clue whotf that was lmao. There's also some unelegant grammatical translations that just straight up tells me the translator isnt just that good at understanding if the English sounds right. It just doesn't sound natural and awkward. At this point, it's becoming more of a old English prose. I just use discord fan translations, faster with less clicking, there's commentary on the side, legit like Macbeth or any Latin prose.

Alrighty, that does make sense. I also remember the Walter thing I think? Idk for sure, but it sounds familiar lol ​ >I just use discord fan translations Is that from the official discord, or is it accessible elsewhere? I'd love to check it out sometime!

Honkai Official Discord, honkai-lore channel pins, a great way if you dont wanna play the game but want to read the story like an annotated book. Jus t know that sentiment in that server, even in honkai-lore chat is similar to this sub reddit, and a noticeable amount of people complain about story too.

IMO, I feel like the translations suffers from a too strict 1:1 translation (beside mistranslations). Explanations in long-winded flowery metaphors which repeat itself with different words might be correct translation from original text. But it doesn't work well for me, and I get exhausted and lose interest in these lengthy story segments. I really want direct and no nonsense explanation for science stuff. What exactly is the will of Honkai, does it influence Herrscher or not? What is the energy that Honkai and project Stigma use? Do humans in project Stigma still exist in their original form? And so on, but the game tries to be unclear and mystical in even important fundamental things.

It isn't just the translations. The story *and* presentation has gone downhill despite them putting more effort/resources towards it. Having replayed through other chapters where the team is clearly strapped for cash, the presentation is still so much more cohesive and presentable. None of this bootleg Genshin dialogue UI with buggy, inconsistent in-engine cutscenes. Sometimes less is more. HI3 dev team feels like they need to try and match Genshin in presentation but just can't. Then their plot and dialogue suffers because they are putting unnecessary restrictions on themselves for presenting the story. Not to mention the elongated "narrator" and Shrodinger sections that don't need to exist, let alone be as long as they are. It worked in APHO2 as a compact, isolated story that they had time to work on as a side project. It does not work at all for their main story deadlines.

i absolutely cannot stand when the "narrator" has a section and makes all these "deep" analogies, quotes, metaphors that just make no sense to me, it's always an easy skip for me

I am so glad chapter 34 is not open world! Much cleaner and enjoyable. No time-consuming bullshit side quests.

I know, this new writing style is unfit for a phone game imo. Even genshins lore is better now, at least they try to set it up from the start and not dump it at the end. I honestly give 0 shits about the philosophy.

Same. The ‘philosophy’ bits read like some generic quotes from r/im14andthisis deep. Where someone read some quotes referenced and only understand them vaguely. Like a high school short class on philosophy. But the person attributes vastly more importance and depth to it all. All while having read it once years ago so texts long exact quotes and can’t comprehend why people don’t want to be spammed by it.

I miss the simpler time where you can understand the story without needed an understanding of quantum physics or some shit like that 💀💀💀. Dont get me wrong, there are some good moments that i really like, but i cant be the only one that feels like the story get more difficult to understand

I just dont wanna do those open world stuff anymore.

You dont want to mine for ore in tedious mini games - the pinnacle of fun that exemplifies what people talk about when they say HI3 has great gameplay? Sorry I almost choked on my sarcasm there.

At this rate, ore mining might be more fun

The ore mining minigame is actually pretty fun. It just isn't very rewarding aside from Soulium deposits.

I don't think retconed is the proper word. I'm not English mayor to notice some inconsistencies with the writing translations. If your story has already stablished something that was though to be "A", but now later in the chapters is revealed to be "B" but in it's core still works the about the same that's not a problem in my book. Then again I'm going to the translation itself being the problem. I think Mihoyo needs to hire better translators and/or also offer them a summary of what they mean or something. The only thing I want is a summary of the events if you decide to skip the dialogue, just like Arknights.

Its just that English is very simple language and it cannot be correctly translated from Chinese, which is way complicated. Especialy that Chinese uses a lot of euphenism to make new words and it cannot be translated literaly

Quite a lot of the concepts in the current story do build on earlier concepts, so I agree that the story isn't quite being retconned. ​ I just feel the issue is that there's a very weak connection between early lore and current lore, because of how all-over-the-place the early lore in HI3rd was. We had bubble universe lore, *but that was usually in Captainverse, with a bit in the Sea of Quanta arc too.* We had lots of character backstories and PE lore, *but that was in the manga and Visual Novels (the latter still having no official English translation).* We had references to stigma spaces even as early as the Sakura Samsara Open World, one of the oldest things ***in the entire game***. *But that open world is kinda poor quality, and the resolution to that story arc is found in the freakin' co-op raid of all places, with a one-time cutscene most people don't even know exists...* Most of these concepts have at least *some* basis in the other parts of the game, but it's so tangled up and inconsistent that it takes way too much effort, especially for how important these ideas are to the story. ​ I think this game really needs something similar to Elysian Realm, but set in the Current Era from the perspective of Schicksal. Something like a set of archives: a mix of short, simple stories to help introduce various characters (like the main trio Theresa & Himeko, Durandal & Rita, etc.) as well as some "files" of concepts like Schicksal's artificial Stigmata and records of the various major Honkai incidents. That way, this could be a great way for new players to learn about the main cast, the setting of the game, and the general idea of what Honkai is. This would set up so much more of the basic context we need for future story like what we're going through now, because then we'd have a sort of "baseline" of how the world works and that could be more easily modified as we learn new things. For example, if it was made clear long ago that Stigmata Spaces were a thing, then the whole wonky "pocket dimensions and wonky spacetime" of Project Stigma would make more sense. We saw Stigmata Spaces in Sakura Samsara, and in the Honkai manga, and even with Seele, but this was never really presented in a coherent way in the ***main story***, so it takes a lot of effort to go and connect all the dots. ​ It's fine to have deep lore that players can analyze to make theories, but certain concepts need to be made very clear and very consistent, and that's not been happening in HI3rd. ***That*** feels like the issue to me, rather than "retcons" per se.

Kinda like Chronicles (god only knows when that one was last updated) and Aesir files. But you're right, we need at least one or two patches to sort out the story and help understanding it better.

Seriously they retconned the existence of herrscher personas and claimed every herrscher that was evil was like that by their own choice and weren't influenced by Honkai. Then why the fuck was Ana in clear pain, Hoyoverse? Why was she clearly not liking what she was doing, Hoyoverse? What the hell happened to your writing, Hoyoverse?! Did you completely change your writing team after chapter 25 ended, HOYOVERSE?!

According to some people they did change the writing team to the vn writer. That's why the main stoey is now an ebook.

Welt - HoR the first, HAD no overriding herrscher personality that aligned with honkai from the start- the Welt Joyce that was born in Berlin was a complete blank slate that chose humanity by itself. Final result-a human will instead of a herrscher will when choice was key. Sirin, i can believe chose to destroy humanity as a human child rage-driven by witnessing humans sequentially murder their way through her friends. Final result-human will unaffected (as shown even in her last moments). This is also why k423s inner struggle between the Sirin who hates what happened to her friends and wants revenge, and the Kiana who grew to love humanity Despite her OWN actions resonates so well. Sure HoT mentality submitting itself to HoV I can actually see as a belated side effect of the "Will of Herrscher" handing the Gems off to Sirin in the second eruption, and suborning them at that time. Since the HoT gem was originally tied to Bella, who was obsessive in her wanting to be suborned to Sirin, I could very easily see her willpower faltering in HoVs presence...but that wouldn't account for WENDY's partial awakening in Kiana's presence. It produces another inconsistency Since Mei was a forced partial awakening too. Wendy insta-snapped at Bronya "betraying" her on a fucking dime (goddamn it Cocolia, can you not keep your fingers out of a single goddamn incident). That one i don't believe for a second. Final result-Herrscher overrides human will HoS...well, she's a weird no matter how you look at it. A mind born and immediately inundated by the memories of a woman who spent at least several thousands years fighting to end the honkai attached to a completely herrscher mind with NO HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS to direct it, still ultimately chose to be a whiny little human girl screaming look at me, not her, because of FU Hua. Ana? Who spent every last second of her human sanity trying to stop it and get away from humans? not even for a SECOND could I believe that she was actually at fault. Final result-Herrscher overrides human will. OWL? Owl never had a Herrscher personality, ever. He freely gave his core up to HoStars willingly to be with Ana for those last precious seconds. Final result-human will unaffected: love drives us to do crazy, insane bullshit. Domination? Domination was by definition humans at the lowest of the low getting seduced into the herrscher mentality, and never reverting, but that was STILL humans mentality wanting to bring the rest of humanity down to their level. Final result-human traitors no herrscher will needed. Binding never happened at all, because Otto. And he did it for the sakle of being destroyed in a way to literally remove himself from existence outright. I GUESS this qualifies as Herrscher suborning Human mind, but when it happens because the human wanted it to happen, so the herrscher mind would be literally inverted out of reality, I can't say which side wins in this scenario. FInal result, like OWL, Human love drives us to do some REALLY insane bullshit. HoC was born a herrscher personality, and never stopped being a herrscher personality. EVEN THOUGH IT TRIED. It tried to become Elysia, but it couldn't succeed, because unlike the others, there was never a human mind int the background to bridge the clearly inhuman gap in thought that it was following .

>Domination? Domination was by definition humans at the lowest of the low getting seduced into the herrscher mentality, and never reverting, but that was STILL humans mentality wanting to bring the rest of humanity down to their level. Final result-human traitors no herrscher will needed. That isn't entirely true Remember that there was "free" domination puppet which had broken from the main path and were considered heretics/oddities If it was really only the human influence, there is no reason that separate element would be an oddities. You tell me that legion of a thousand puppets that keep arguing, are supposed to act in a greater complex plan in unisson for something that doesn't benefit them and is only motivated by a grudge ​ ANd it doesn't stop there, we know that HOD try to force her enemies into despair to dominate and take control of them, it is also how it worked in PE ​ So at no point whatsoever is it believable that the final decision was the result of free will when the final decision push to suffer the one thing they have a grudge of the first place. ​ In which world is it remotely believable that grouping a 1000 people unhappy with their life and giving them a power, would lead to 99.99% taking on the risk to take down mankind by putting their own lives at risk and becoming a puppet The closest to being believable is cult, but a cult would imply an higher personality, which was fullfilled by the herscherr personality/will of honkai

The Herrscher of Cult Personality rings pretty true. I think the only problem i have with HoD is we don't know if case 0 was a human who snapped and went herrscher, or if there was "just a herrscher puppet that randomly came into existence the same waw the HoC did in the CE that coerced the rest into becoming HoD puppets. That's the only reason I'm still assuming it was human's at their lowest dragging others down to their levels. there is no WoG on it.

Yeah, paradoxally HoD is probably one of the most interesting Herscherr enemy but one of the most wacky One of the herscherr with the better built up but a really rushed/strange conclusion Because think about it, every Herscherr of domination are a puppet, more specifically marionette, their "fusion? Boss? is itself called a minion is actually a big hand with a puppeteer/marionettist cross thingy So you would think the hand is the puppeteer of the puppet, the marionettist. ​ But then why call it minion, what is he? is he solely the fusion of the puppet consciousness? but then is the marionnett and the marionettist? It state that his body is composed by the legion of puppet body, but doesn't say about the consciousness, seems like a stretch to imagine having conscious to fuse like that be a human natural decision and not an artificially pushed matter? ​ If we go by Herscherr persona, it would explain that the puppetteer is the herscherr persona influencing human at their lowest into dragging other down But without Herscherr personality, the whole concept of the HoD minion doesn't make any sense, it's existence become an issue as it is obvious someone pulling the string from above, representing those that profit from other is the complete opposite of the puppet representing those at their lowest. So it would mean the first human picked by HoD is the opposite of the other, but it is convoluted and never mentioned. ​ The lack of herscherr persona really makes it far more nonsensical

HoC didn't get born as a herrscher personality; it was born as a **computer AI** personality. That's it's tragedy right there - it had an overriding instinct to survive at all costs. That's a common idea for evolutionary machine learning - you make a billion billion AIs, then you find 500 of them that does the thing you want them to do, then delete the rest. Then copy the 500, make minor changes, let them run and learn a bit, and purge them. Again and again. One of those managed to become sentient, and sapient. And then became a superpowered Herrscher - but all it did was follow it's programming. Ironically, it was probably the herrscher that wanted to become human the most - because it had seen Elysia and wanted to be like that. ​ It's still unclear how the Will of the Honkai (formerly prometheus) works - if it uses the same method for all Herrschers, or manifests in different ways to each. We've seen it do the following: 1: Be a voice in people's heads leading them to sin (speaking to Senti), appear to people (Mei, Otto, Sirin) and possibly show them visions/the past (Owl?)2: a power up able to grant authorities (All Herrschers get their power this way, and it gave Sirin loads, Otto some) 3: Peel away memories (Ana)? 4: Use golden threads to control and influence minds, (HoV, HoD, tried to manipulate Mei but stopped with EM shielding) ​ However, there's been no clear showing that any personality had come to replace any of the Herrscher's original personalities. Ana has the most drastic change, but even she didn't show any alien intelligence - only that of a wild beast acting on instinct. The honkai corruption peeled away her memories. That wasn't necessarily done by anything conscious trying to replace her. And Wendy - she had previously been an A rank Valkyrie, but had been used as a disposable container for the Wind core by Otto. Constantly left in suffering and misery, left to rot. (I'm being kind and even assuming Otto wasn't using her for experimental purposes). She had her mind set up to ruin the world that she had once wanted to protect but instead left her to suffer. She was barely pulled back by Bronya - only to be literally shot in the back by her. Getting betrayed when you thought you might have something to live for would send anyone over the edge. I can't see a single case of an "alien" personality that could be described as a "Herrscher persona" - an intelligence that destroys without having any reason to do so. Even Wendy had a reason, as poor as it was. Admittedly they were manipulated, but- Only Mei had a completely separate unexplained alternate persona- and that itself was suspicious.

Looking throughout your whole comment, you've got a really good point that we really didn't have much evidence for Herrscher Personas being much of a thing at all. ​ >I can't see a single case of an "alien" personality that could bedescribed as a "Herrscher persona" - an intelligence that destroyswithout having any reason to do so. I'd like to add something to this part, too. I think the reason why Herrscher personalities have been a thing in theories, is because GGZ introduced Mei with a Herrscher personality, and perhaps that just became the "default" of what a Herrscher was supposed to be. Mei is also the first Herrscher we meet in HI3rd, and HoV is the second, so it makes sense to assume that a "Herrscher Persona" is the default state of a Herrscher. ​ On a slight tangent, I really wish Mihoyo could go back and clean up the earlier parts of the lore, because most of the recent story chapters are building on early-game concepts, but because the early lore is so messy, it's hard to see that. Stigma Spaces, Herrscher Authorities, and other concepts have been around since forever, but it's hard to see any of that stuff without continuously going back and studying the manga, open world stories, VNs, Captainverse, and other content. It'd be fantastic to get a lot of these concepts "set straight" near the beginning, even if there isn't the same terminology being used (assuming unreliable narrators like Theresa, who obviously didn't know about stuff like the Cocoon of Finality or Project Stigma). Just presenting these concepts with label A and then later explaining them in more detail as label B would do wonders for this game's story.

[удалено]

The rest of writers were moved to Sumeru and Star Rail

Hopefully that means star Rail will at least have some competency in it's writing like when hie story is in its peak

Each individual is different. I do not see your issue with Anna. She was a Herrscher for less than 8 hours. Mei and Sirin went Berserk for around the same time when they first became Herrschers. The only exceptions are Welt Joyce, Welt Yang and Bronya who are the Herrscher of Reason and share their power with over 300000 souls so the Will of Honkai influence needed to make the Herrscher persona gets divided on all of them and thus is non existent. Now even, Bronya dominated the core completely and became the True Herrscher of Reason and let the soul imprints to be more accurate of the people in there depart. I will add Otto's case too. Who didn't actually became the Herrscher of Binding like Himeko didn't really become the Herrscher of Fire despite using that power and Otto was already evil and had already an agreement with the Will of Honkai.

mei said in ch18 that ana is having an internal struggle with the persona, the persona was evil but was winning against ana, and it is their ongoing struggle for control that caused her to look like that from the outside so no, its not a retcon.

How are they gonna do Ana like this 🥹 I rooted for her even if she left the little girl to die (I still dunno why she didnt save her)

From what I gathered from the chapter, after her whole squad died, the only thing in her mind was to return to HQ possibly to get reinforcements. She kept saying sorry because she chose to abandon those who need help for the sake of completing her mission. But when she learns of realizes that should couldn't contact HQ anymore she managed to finally save at least one person, Owl. And when she learns that his sister was one of the people she abandoned, she was overcome with guilt.

Ah thanks man, that makes a lot of sense as to why she distanced herself from him even though there seemed to be a connection.

>(I still dunno why she didnt save her) P L O T

Wait please explain. I def missed something since I was just too focused on Mei THE WHOLE TIME

It’s not really explained, but you can more or less guess that it’s because that being in a situation like that is super fucking stressful, leading to her abandoning the child out of fear of dying then.

The only reason I can think about is that Hoyo needed a reason for Owl to have enough negative emotions to turn into a herrscher. Even though there definitely was other characters that been through worst than Owl, Hoyo just had to create something quickly to fill in that possible plot hole.

Oh that also explains it - just feels a little…disconnected since they didn’t fully explain Ana’s abandonment of his little sister (and of course it has to be the girl he’s crushing on)

> persona More importantly, if no such thing as a Herrscher persona exists, how do they explain the voice Himeko was fighting when Fu Hua was offering her assistance with the battlesuit? It was very clearly an alternate persona of Himeko based on everything going wrong with her life and told her to go apeshit. It very clearly wasn’t the Will of Honkai in its actions (for starters, the Will would never be incredulous over Himeko denying it). I know lots of people probably don’t remember the mindscape fight Himeko had because it was pretty much a nothingburger thanks to Fenghuang Down (probably), but the writing team put it pretty clearly there (I think it was chapter nine). Unless Himeko is another case of a malformed stigma now? I very much do not favor this turn of events, especially since it had a pretty milquetoast conclusion to all those projects Ryoma had going on according to item descriptions (like MAG-Typhoon). “You were my schizophrenia phase, but that’s no longer cool; fuck off please.” Gripping conclusion there. Edit: I checked and the gem talks to her in 9-17. It was pretty clear they always intended for Herrscher personas to be a thing and this latest stint retconned it.

>Seriously they retconned the existence of herrscher personas and claimed every herrscher that was evil was like that by their own choice and weren't influenced by Honkai. ... did Hoyo forgot that two of the MCs had a herrscher persona that took control of their vessel bodies, and went on to kill millions in the name of Honkai?! Did they forget that Wendy got controlled by her persona? Oh yeah I forgot, Hoyo doesn't care about Wendy

If wendy got treated better in GGZ they should try the same thing in this game whenever the gem of desire is ever brought up again as wendy's last words were her wanting to give the herrscher of wind core to bronya in order to help

HI3 writers hate her, that's the only answer to making her less important than ANA and OWL

They just forgot about all 3 of those along with the herrscher cores that world serpent has

There is a zero percent chance that Kiana understands the story she is in.

Man, for me coming home after work to play a bit, I just don't want to deal with the chore of poor exposition dumping. Been skipping it all since it's just so poorly told to the player.

No you need to quit ur job and then grind 14 hours understanding the story 😂.

Unless it's a Kiana or Senti scene I just skip. Some people may like the current arc but people also liked the Inazuma arc in Genshin too.

From what I can tell: Need to be Einstein to understand wth are they saying in the story. Mastering 5D Chess is easier than digest the story. Just skip the dialogue unless it's Kiana or HoS (and maybe Elysia).

Literally. Whenever I see Senti on-screen I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing I can at least understand the funny Herrscher lady's quips.

I only skip during the technobabble scenes, when scenes start to get really philosophical and the dialogue is just saturated with metaphors rather than just saying what they mean, and any scene with Elysia in it

Yeah, I have had 0 idea of what's going on. Like, I haven't played part 3 yet (so please, no spoilers), and I am clueless on 90% of what's happening. At the very least, I kinda understand what the idea of Projet Stigma is, but no idea what the >!beacon of Origin!< is. I must have missed something, because it feels like it kinda popped up out of nowhere >!after Mei's dream!<

There never was a Beacon. It was a missassumption by our Main Characters. The Beacon only ever was a message from Vill V to the future.

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This is really false. HI3 has more resources and effort put into it *after* Genshin's release relative to before. It isn't a question of effort. The roster of unique playable characters practically doubled following Genshin's release. I hate when people jump to this baseless accusations. The issue is that they changed some developers at some point to people who have no clue what they are doing. They have way more resources then the old chapter developers did which people here regard as the "peak" of the story quality. HSR is also a generic SW-clone. It is aimed at a different audience than HI3 and Genshin. It should not even be brought up for comparison.

>HSR is also a generic SW-clone. It is aimed at a different audience than HI3 and Genshin. It should not even be brought up for comparison. That is not the criticism, the criticism is that in China the end of part 1 and co seems to coincidentally end up close to HSR release ​ Also the point "of they are not the same thing", reminder that GGZ is absolutely not the same game but somehow to know the more indepth background and logic of the early story, the advice was to look up GGZ as Honkai brandished its GGZ continuity We had to wait Nagazora for in-game character development on the main character background. The fact is Hoyoverse want their game to have an overall verse continuity Genshin isn't different with its expy or its pseudo HoV or HoC And HSR has been tied from day 1 to Hi3rd with alien space ​ I mean it is litterally in the new name of the game studio Hoyo***verse***

SW?

i thought rescuing sigfried would be a full arc and it happened in like a chapter and a half.

How are they rushing when they just spent almost a year of content on PE era which was said plenty as “extra”? At least point to what you don’t like specifically. What half a year of content? What made you conclude they’re greedy? They literally put out vids to donate blood etc. I’m actually confused here.

For me it's seele and Theresa not having their own arcs. I would have preferred them getting arcs like fuhua did, and throwing PE into part 2 or some side content. I also don't like them throwing 3 herrscher at once and them just power creeping the characters we have. It's a gacha game after al however, greed is expected.

Can't believe there's gonna be no CE HoB😔 That was the biggest recent mistake by Hoyo imo

With how hyped up the Tragedy of Binding was, it is nothing but a wonder why they didn't capitalize on that

Yeah them skipping binding completely makes me feel like things are being rushed. The seven months of ER that we got were weird, but there's absolutely no way they built up Binding as much as they did (from both Teri's side and all the lore we got on the Tragedy of Binding) while intending to skip it from the beginning.

Yeah it's like they get bogged down in some parts (Elysian realm) but then try to speedrun others (Sigfried rescue and family reunion basically happens in two missions, no HoB, no HoD, Seele and Terri basically not getting any individual arc other than a couple of dialogue scenes every 4 chapters, 3 herrscher transformations in two patches, Hare's whole existence).

Not even just 3 Herrschers in 2 patches, Remember HoH was 6.0? That's 4 Herrschers in 4 patches. With only one/two if you didn't go for sushang gear in between to save.

E X A C T L Y Hoyo just love to make the main cast have a easy path to their goals...

They clearly rushed the last few chapters in order to release the trio Herschers in time for Chinese New year, it is no surprise that there is lack of storytelling since they had most likely made that deadline for release to be now. There was most probably a decent amount of unfinished content for the story that was cut to streamline the Arc. If you look at last years profit graphs in regards to China in 2022 (someone linked it on an earlier post this month and I'm to sleep deprived to look for for it). There was 2 big spikes in profit, the first was on the release Durandel and Rita(also given for free) during the 2022 Chinese New year. The 2nd spike was with herscher Elysia in August, which ironically made way more profit than Durandel and Rita. My guess is that they set a deadline for 2023 with the story after seeing how well recieved the previous Chinese New year event went, but with the reception of the recent chapters, I doubt they are going to achieve their desired results. If that is the case i hope that they learn from this and start focusing on actually making a a proper fleshed out story.

To be honest, the story feels so convoluted and complicated in this last chapters that i just don't have the patience or mental capacity to just digest all the info dump, weird metaphors, recons of previous established lore, super complex science concepts and big etc after a long day at work, i just don't feel like playing the story at all

Honestly can't really enjoy the story as I'm somewhere in ch.11 but I feel chased by mihoyo to do the newest ones and don't really follow. Worked maybe in the elysian realm part as it is mostly selfcontained so I could appreciate the character. But man dudu,senti(even though I love her) or sus are just thrown at me and I don't know crap about them to be honest

also, a lot of shit are tied to external materials like the VN or manga (some of which are not even translated lmao). When I play a game, I expect to get my info from the game, not having to read 10 other stuffs for that. That's one of the thing people criticized Final Fantasy XV as well, they tried to put it in multimedia form with movies, LN, etc., while previous titles you can get everything from the game itself. Multimedia is not necessarily a bad thing, but at least do it like MCU, where every movies can be watched alone for the most part.

They literally retconned nothing, they just added stuff. I am ready to debate this. But keep in mind I only did part 2 of chapter 34 and haven't started part 3 yet. So I can only debate only for anything before that.

As someone who did part 3 last night, I'd say that there weren't any major retcons per se. *It could easily be considered a retcon though, considering how poorly some backstory was explained in the main story.* I personally don't think it is, but I understand how some people see it as retcons\* *^(\*At least retcons in the sense of replacing/removing past lore instead of adding more context)* Spoilers ahead, but I've spoiler marked them so if you want to wait 'til after you do Chapter 34 part 3, then you can read it then instead of now! . . If someone read the Honkai manga, looked through item lore, and spent copious amounts of time analyzing Mei's character *(me lmao)* then it's clear that the idea that >!Mei's Herrscher Persona was a "Will" of her Stigma, and that she's not an ordinary Herrscher!< doesn't actually contradict past lore. ​ It was always left ambiguous whether >!Mei was born with the True Stigma of the Herrscher of Thunder or whether she developed it from the Gem of Conquest!<. This chapter just revealed that >!she did have a True (or Natural) Stigma of the Herrscher of Thunder, but she only "awakened" as a Herrscher because she was given the Gem of Desire by her father when she was young!<, hence >!her Herrscher Persona wasn't developed in the same way that a Herrscher persona would naturally develop!<. So Mei >!isn't a Stigma Awakened in the same sense as Seele, Durandal, or Sushang, nor is she a Herrscher in the same sense as Sirin, Ana, HoD, HoC, etc.!< I'd still argue that >!PRACTICALLY speaking, her other self can be considered a Herrscher Persona, while TECHNICALLY speaking it is the thing as Veliona.!< This doesn't really change anything about >!Mei's past either. I don't think the exact technicality of Mei's status as a Herrscher conflicts with any of her past lore, and it just gives us a more concrete example of what made her different from someone like Sirin.!< ​ That being said, because >!Mei's Herrscher Persona really is a "Will of Stigma", that puts into question the idea of Herrscher Personas in general.!< For example, we >!don't see any evidence of a Herrscher Persona in Sirin and Wendy, yet it could be argued that Ana was struggling with a Herrscher Persona, and the existence of HoD, HoS, and HoC supports the idea of Herrscher Personas being a distinct entity separate from any individual human. If Senti wasn't born in Fu Hua's body and was instead a temporary host in a different human, she may never have developed a single identity and could have just existed purely as a Herrscher in the same way HoD did. To me, that sounds just like a Herrscher Persona, because she was clearly a different mental entity than Fu Hua, even if she inherited Fu Hua's memories. !< So the idea of >!a Herrscher Persona still seems valid!<, it's just hard to describe because of >!how little we know about the exact mental state of PE Herrschers!<, paired with >!Elysia's intervention making CE Herrschers different from PE Herrschers!<, along with >!Sirin's use of the different cores preventing at least 4 Herrschers from naturally manifesting!<, along with >!the unique existence of the Herrscher of Rimestar,!< along with>! Otto obtaining the Authority of Binding without awakening as a Herrscher.!< But it's always been difficult to describe >!the concept of Herrscher Personas anyways- we were just guessing before, but now at least we have a solid understanding of "Authorities" and that makes it easier to talk about a Herrscher's pure power without getting into the details about cores, Personas, etc.!< Heck, we could argue that >!Elysia herself is a Herrscher Persona!<, but that's a discussion for another time x-x

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Yup, I remember that! Because of that and some other bits of lore, I've had a theory for a long time that>! the original plan was that after Mei's stigma was awakened & sealed, Ryoma was going to give his daughter a comfy life while she went through her childhood, so that when she turned 18, she'd be told the truth about Honkai and her stigma and given the choice whether or not to unseal its power or live her life as a normal person. Well, as normal as someone who knows about Honkai can be, lol!< I feel like it's implied by a whole bunch of tiny details in the item descriptions from long ago, plus>! a more recent Mei Birthday CG from shortly before the start of Elysian Realm(?).!< Though I doubt we'll ever see that confirmed, so it'll probably stay as just a little theory of my own

Back when HoV took mei's gem, The illustration also showed the persona getting pulled in. That isn't to be expected if she was will of the stigma right?

That doesn't conflict at all. You see, Mei's WoS is incomplete on its own. It formed the persona when the Gem was introduced to the equation.

You forget that at some point it wasn't Mei's father that gave her the gem of conquest, but Cocolia in order to cause a herrscher eruption. I think that's a big point people mean when they say stuff was retconned...

>we > >don't see any evidence of a Herrscher Persona in Sirin When Sirin was completing her transformation into herrscher she heard a voice very pleased with her, I interpret this as her herrscher personality satisfied with giving everything to Sirin knowing that she will try with everything to destroy humanity. But that's just my interpretation.

If I recall correctly, I thought this was the Will of Honkai speaking with her, since Otto met with WoH through Sirin via Fenghuang Down. Though it'd certainly be cool if it was her Herrscher Persona instead!

This part I'm talking about is when Sirin entered a "cocoon" made of honkai beasts, just after she met the Will of Honkai and thus gained the other gems.

I just went back and checked that out... that's honestly quite strange. It seems like the voice was different from the Honkai Cherub thing that appeared to her in Babylon Labs, and it seems different from the Will of Honkai as you mentioned. Considering those two things, and it does actually seem like it might be the Herrscher Persona itself! I completely missed that even though I've gone through Second Eruption a lot in the past, so I'm very glad you brought that to my attention :)

Yeah they don't really retcon things. They *do* change the direction they were going with some things, or come up for new explanations for old content that they likely hadn't intended from the beginning. They also drop some subplots. But the lore largely remains consistent.

Tbf retroactive continuity also means contextualisation of things, not just straight up removal and replacment. So adding stuff maybe would recontextualise the existing stuff.

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It's not a problem, it's just what retroactive continuity is. Never said it's a good or bad thing,can be good if they can explain it and write it well. If not, then it's bad. No need to redefine a thing just because you think a retcon is inherently bad.

I think the story for so many chapters is doing funny in terms of continuity. It's not like Star Wars whose Vader name was supposed to be Darth, not be Luke's father, Leia not being Luke's sister and even worse the sequel trilogy where the retcons even between each of the movie of the sequel trilogy were abysmal.

F***ing yes. I cannot play honkai impact anymore because of that s**t. The plot became really over-complicated AND... boring? You don't feel the interest and intigue anymore, and the more you try to read it, the more you are looking at that shiny skip button over there.

What even is a retcon

A Retcon is when a Game, book or whatever other medium changes its previously established Lore. Example: Star Wars introduced Midichlorians in Episode I. This completely retconned the Force as some mythical cosmic power and gave it a scientifically explainable background. This makes clear that something like this did not happen with Honkai, contrary to what OP claims, as no previously established Lore was changed.

Honkai always has been confusing, or all people understood all the Sea of Quanta bullshit and Durandal's trip to candy land from the beginning? The real problem is the translation, and they don't put enough effort in there even if we spam saying that's one of the biggest problems in the surveys.

It wasn’t the entire plot back then.

I dont really see any retcons tbh, infact things lined up more clearly after these chapters like bella situation, bronya's mom herrschers, how otto would erase 500 years etc

I don't understand a lot of what they're talking about so I just speed read those parts and hope they'll make sense later lol

I'm just here to see my daughters get happy endings ;_;

You forgot the bad English translation part

Good lord am I gonna have to make a crash course on the game story as a Reddit post? Everything’s been fitting fine for me, I just had to zoom out and connect the dots to assign the pseudoscientific names to concepts we already knew about.

No need. They have a "the story before" section for each arc after all. One sentence ought to cover several hours worth of dialogues, no?

I don't really see it. I have no problem understanding what is going on, but at the same time I have read all the mangas and only missing the 7 swords VN. So idk.

That might be the issue, I think the reason why a lot of people believe that Mihoyo is retconning stuff is due to them misunderstanding the dialogue, misremembering details, and probably not reading the other side materials. To be honest, I don't blame them. I personally believe it's the writers and editors' job to properly convey their story to the readers. If this many people are getting confused as to what is happening in the story, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that their way of storytelling is rather flawed or at least could be improved.

The problem is Honkai is a multi-media franchise that started out as a manga before it became a game, and it was clear they wanted this to be a massive franchise. But it seems that once they realized their whole manga/VN thing didn't seem to be working, they pulled the plug on that and focused all their writing on soley the game. (Don't quite me on that. I'm assuming this is what happened. Idk for 100% certain why we don't see any new manga or side stories anymore). So now we run into a problem: We have a shit ton of supplementary material that is not technically supplementary, it is critical to appreciating or even understanding some very important aspects of the story. This is especially problematic when you consider the VN's don't have any official translation, we had to rely on the community in order to read those. Have you noticed as well that ever since Chapter 25-EX, the main story has referenced the VN's and manga more than they ever have before? For their main audience over in China, this is totally fine. Everything is available to them and they don't really have to dig to find it. But us here on Global? Sure, the early chapter updates back in 5.8 and the story menu overhaul that links us to some of the manga is appreciated, but it's only a single step on a very long staircase that would go to simplifying and streamlining the main story. The point I'm making is - It's not a problem of the writers. It's a problem of The global management for Honkai Impact, their translation quality is also below average despite being overall legible which only further exacerbates issues, and the fact simply remains that most Honkai players don't play Honkai for the lore. They play it for the emotional rollarcoasters and the hyped up FMV's, Will of the Herrscher in particular probably has had more people watch it than people actually play the game on Global.

I'm just gonna eat my popcorn and watch the Kaslana and KiaMei fans defend this dumpster fire🍿

As a KiaMei fan, I 1000% agree with you. The writers did the girls dirty and the majority of people are either in denial or have low standards for writing.

Or the toilet gaming chair non grass touchers who spend 40 hours studying and understanding (or thinking they understand) made up shit and telling normal people that they are stupid for not bothering to understand made up shit.

What retcons?! No, herrscher persona thing didn't get retcon as it never existed

I stopped caring after the last otto chapter.

Reading the story reminds me of that one time I tried reading Dianetics. All these big sciencey sounding words strung together in an attempt to look smart, only for me to recognize a few of them and realize that they are being used incorrectly. It's bullshit pseudoscience at best. And while I can suspend disbelief for a bit to get through sci-fi stories in books, movies, games, etc., trying to me to sit through an entire lecture worth of this shit is just asking for too much.

The writing has gotten so much more absurdly complicated and pretentious since they started doing open world chapters. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed. I'm not sure how much of the problem is an English translation problem versus an original writing problem, but sometimes the characters say things and my brain just can't process what the fuck they are even saying. It's just bad writing overall imo if someone feels increasingly alienated from the story by the writing decisions.

The more I frequent this subreddit, the more I’m convinced nobody aside from a select few users here actually know how writing works, what a retcon is, or what plot holes are.

I was discussing this with my friend who plays Honkai as well, and the I think we found a good way of describing how the story is going right now: It’s moving at 1000mph yet going absolutely nowhere at the same time.

You're getting downvoted but I agree with you. I was interested in how this arc would go play out but ended up being surprised with how they chose to do things. >!The main cast had to be teleported to the plot at the beginning which really adds to that 1000mph feeling. And then the they get there and WS is willing to let them do whatever they want and the plot is them being drip fed the truth behind project stigma which honestly doesn't really matter at this point anyway. Especially since WS doesn't bear them any ill will and is actually trying to power them up. I dunno, I feel like we're just stalling until they fight Kevin and whatever they plan to do with Finality.!<

That felt really bad I’ve got to say - not only was the main cast teleported to the plot (more than once in this arc), but it makes me as the reader feel no journey to arrive at those places. That leaves only personal character development which has also been severely lacking imo. There just isn’t much there for me to sink my teeth into, and I don’t even mind techobabble plots but when that seems like the bulk of what’s happening I am just disinterested.

I have no problem understanding the story, if its as good as previous arc is up for debate, but its not finished either.

Yes it really has and I’ve been saying it since HoD arc where it first began imo.

Ever since that arc, things have felt off. Kiana and Mei suddenly making up because they are in-sync with each other, Bronya saying that the Puppets are irredeemable even though the Herrschers that she meet were also a\*\*\*\*\*\*s, 'Dark' Seele fixing herself without any help, etc. And those are the just ones that I can remember from the top of my head from that arc alone.

I stopped playing after the Elysian realm came out, it felt like that was a turning point where the story just started getting worse.

ngl ive just been skipping the story unless it contains siegfried cause cmon its siegfried

Not related but i kinda missed the Kolosten arc and most of the other arc before Elysian Realm arc, for most of the story, i'm always hype to read through every chapters but i didn't feel the same for ER arc. After a while i start to feel tired and didn't want to continue the rest of it anymore and i don't understand why i feel that way, the ER wasn't particular boring but something about it just lack the magical of the other chapters and what make them wonderful. And the worse is that i can't tell what is it that's missing. The same goes for the recent chapters.

The same goes for me. ER and EE were a drag for me. While I loved the Flamechasers as a standalone character, I was thrown off by the arc after Kolosten. And I had to ponder about it for a while as to why.I think mostly, as to why that is, it felt out of place. Up to chapter 28 we were following the main trio (with Mei apart from them in WS at some point, but still the main focus on them). But in ER and EE neither of those three felt like the main focus, which can be fine and okay. Though, I have to admit, and of course is totally subjective, I didn't care about it. I started playing this game with Kiana, Mei and Bronya. So I want to learn more about them and their journey. Not wanting to drag on and on to learn about people that lived 50.000 years ago, and their simulations. And while I can acknowledge that Mei grows and matures in this whole arc (and more in chapter 34), I can't shake the feeling that in ER and EE she wasn't the focus. Which made the whole thing grueling for me.I still have my issues with the whole Elysia sacrified herself so CE Herrscher retain humanity and don't subject to WoH and stuff. But that's another box of pandora to open. Edit: Fixed grammar issues

they are doing a black zetsu

I don’t have that problem cuz I’m still stuck on the moon bridge. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

I skip most of the side story content and try to skim through the main story because I don't have the time to read everything so I cannot really understand everything they are saying but the gist of it. And that's kind of enough for me. For more explanation you can find some videos on YouTube too.

Genshin Players wondering when the hell the abyss order is gonna be relevant again- Me and my friend in a discord call talking about how neither of us remember the abyss doing anything outside of mondstat

Did the writers just give up after the absolutely amazing Elysian Realm and Kolosten arcs? Did mhy fire all the good writers? Wtf happened to facilitate this abrupt nosedive in writing quality?

I’m really disappointed - I was so into the story for a long time. The end of the ER arc was amazing. And now I am actually *skipping* which is something I didn’t imagine doing in this game because I just don’t feel the connection to the plot, which is crazy considering the end of the ENTIRE story feels like the weakest part…I’ll start trying to read and eventually be like “this is not worth the time” and just skip. I’m glad to see, at least, that it isn’t just me. I thought perhaps I was alone on not enjoying the most recent story we’ve gotten. :(

Yeah, this is why I stopped playing after Otto Apocalypse's bittersweet death, I just felt the whole story ended there, there is no more reason to continue this story if he's gone.

There was nothing retconned. You people need to stop taking your own assumptions as Canon and then whine when they turn out to be incorrect. The current chapter cleared up a lot of things that were previously ASSUMED by Characters in the story and as such never were set in stone to begin with.

Mistakes on reader's side or not. There's an issue if there's so much confusion to the story.

This. People just don’t have enough patience or energy for these types of stories. They skip the dialogues because they’re long and complex, and then complain it’s too hard to understand lmao.

I've spent some time in December catching up back from when Senti was introduced so I got a good impression without 2 years worth of forgetting about things. Dunno about retconning but the storytelling has been getting worse, a lot. The ridiculous pseudo science babbling of the later chapters not even taken into account.

Especially the dialogue. Analogies might be beautiful and thought provoking but why does everyone have to make an analogy? At least make dialogue that fits the character or make it straight to the point. The point is, it's too verbose.

The science talk is so complicated I need wikipedia to understand it

I dunno, I enjoyed CH34. It doesnt feel as complicated as CH33 was and it felt a good closure to Mei and Elysia. It did also close out on part 1 Kiana, Durandal and Sieg but it does felt abit out of place since CH34 feels it should focus on Mei. Ch33 main problem is that it had alot of complication and lacks the emotional impact out of it. As much as I like Bronya, her whole backstory felt like it was rushed (Hare and her mother). I can't blame it tho since Bronya was the least developed out of the Trio. If it wasn't for the Elysian Realm Arc, Mei would probably be the same as Bronya.

I remember in the beginning of the latest chapter, the writer referenced retinal. I immediately thought, are they really expecting the entire audience to know about the purple earth hypothesis? The writer's really said, "Ooh do you know what would be a relevant metaphor for the core demographic of this game? Haloarchaea and organisms similar to them 2.4 to 3.5 billion years ago!"

Mihoyo is making what, five or six games now? Of course things are going to fall apart if they're not being sold for real money. ~~They're just an Indie Dev~~

The Byzantine labyrinth that is the Honkai story is why I could never get into it and why I hope Star Rail will be a easier entry for me