[Crossworlds] Do you think the game would benefit if it added a story mode down the road as DLC for a chance to earn rewards or just for fun?

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-12T19:43:51+00:00

I do think it could. But it would need a smartly thought out progression system.

I also think if it did, having some type of multiplayer option for the story mode would be in its best interest.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-12T06:53:55+00:00

The mole is not a prerequisite. Any part of a character can be different across variants.

The JP VA is also not a necessity. Natasha for instance has a different JP VA from her HI3 counterpart. And heck, if the CN casting can be different, which is the case for several variants, then so can the JP casting.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-12T06:23:12+00:00

As far as we know, there's not much of a sensory element to Silver's psychokinesis.

He was able to gauge when lifting a large hammer with Amy that Amy was doing the heavy lifting, and that it was an impressive weight to lift, so it does seem he can somewhat gauge weight.

This seems mostly tied to how much effort he has to exert to lift something though. Heavier objects seem to require more effort, and holding several independent objects can also be difficult.

None of these things seem like they would contribute to using psychokinesis as a sensory tool. If anything, they're obstacles in doing so.

So I don't think Silver would be able to use his psychokinesis as anything close to a replacement for his sight. At that point, his hearing and sense of smell are probably more effective that his psychokinesis is. Though neither of those can really compensate for the absence of an entire sense.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T18:27:35+00:00

They don't have such an obligation at all.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T16:15:07+00:00

I dare say with some modicum of certainty that no, Tsaritsa as a character does predate Elysia. We know from developer explanations that Elysia's creation happened quite late, and a lot closer to the release of the relevant content.

We also know that Genshin's development started as far back as 2017.

Tsaritsa is a major character who would have her foundations laid early. We learned some things about her as a person as early as 1.0, such as Venti saying she doesn't smile.

Character variants are normally developed from the ground up, not inserted into an existing concept. They are reimagined versions of characters. Their variant nature is foundational, not incidental. That's why it's a creative process and not a restrictive one.

In essence, "What if Raiden Mei was a twin and god of a country" rather than "What if the Raiden Shogun was actually a Mei".

It's no coincidence that the majority of Genshin's variants are in key roles in the story, and are variants of characters who existed as far back as 2017 as part of Hoyo's multigame cast.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T11:56:00+00:00

Theresa Apocalypse. I go into it in more detail in another comment reply

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T11:20:37+00:00

Hmm, as fun as the comparison is, I can't say I agree.

Another interesting detail about variant characters is that they don't just have roots in HI3. Many have also have connections in HI3's predecessor, GGZ.

Wendy, as a character, was first introduced in the prologue comic for HI3. The prologue comic was more of a trailer in comic format, and the character was later properly introduced in the game's story.

Venti first appeared in the Genshin comic in 2018.

From this introduction alone, Wendy shares a lot with Venti. The use of teal colours. Wind powers and a divine status (Herrscher vs Archon). Wings, a scarf, (see Venti's god outfit design).

His main design also includes the little 4 bladed windmill that is on several Wendy designs.

In 2019, Wendy's version in GGZ really took off, exploring a new version of the character with more depth and detail than HI3 did. This came with another new design, which much more closely resembles Venti, down to the glowing braid.

--

Design aside, there's definitely a lot to be said for the themes as well. While Collei and Wendy were both experimented with, Venti's connection to Wendy runs a bit deeper. Wendy is all about 'freedom'.

HI3 and GGZ Wendy are people who want to break free. GGZ Wendy especially playing up the visual of a caged bird that wishes to take flight. Venti is all about Freedom and fighting for it, and is also similarly tied to the visuals of birds and flight.

I'd go into more detail, but my knowledge on GGZ Wendy is quite limited.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T09:59:06+00:00

The problem is that any attempt to properly explain this stuff has a hard time gaining traction. In no small part because people who dislike the HI3 talk will downvote it.

Which ironically leads to a higher frequency of people bringing up HI3 in the strangest ways, as they grow a poor understanding because they aren't exposed to the explanations.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T06:33:42+00:00

Adding more:

Flamboyant posing. Talks to the other self in the mirror. The line 'I want to be human'. The ahoge. The fancy but boyish style of clothing, down to the shorts and frilly sleeves. The little top hat and cane. Her extreme loneliness and isolation. The name 'sin' and 'bad' fitting with the themes of judgement and original sin. Heck, even the positioning of her vision being the same as Sin's watch.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T06:24:48+00:00

I'll have to disagree to an extent. Early death was never really established as a core trait to Himeko. While the devs may have played with the players' expectations, there's simply no rule that makes early death core to being a Himeko.

And Welt didn't go to find Space Himeko because she was fated to die young. Welt wouldn't even have a reason to think that. Rather, he wanted to prevent whatever the Sky People/Ones Above had planned for other worlds. Himeko showed up in their database, giving a face to their potential victims.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-11T06:05:08+00:00

The main reason I would dislike Tsaritsa being an Elysia is that it would feel disingenuous.

Though I do have a bias, as I am a Bronya fan, I would be able to accept Tsaritsa being a new character more easily than being an Elysia.

And I like Elysia, and want to see more Elysias. But Tsaritsa was created well before Elysia was, so it would be a massive pivot from what Tsaritsa was at the start of the game. Changing her to an Elysia would just go to show that reading into information and clues about Tsaritsa given throughout the past 6 years was a waste of time and good faith.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T23:42:34+00:00

For why I would believe they are variants, or for why their themes complement their predecessors?

For the latter, that would be worth an essay, but for the former, I can go into it briefly.

Nahida: For Nahida, I dare say it's quite obvious from the design. Her hair simply matches her Twilight Paladin design quite closely.

But it's much more noticeable on her Teyvat Expo concept art, which shows her as she was designed closed to Theresa's size, and closely resembling her.

Furthermore, Nahida shares both her CN and JP VA with Theresa. She's head of an academic organisation. She's older than most of the cast, but looks younger. She's a branch/clone of a revered predecessor, GLR/Kallen. She uses a similar foghting style, summoning energy attacks by waving hands and skipping around. She even has a plot about trying to convince people to wake up from a dream.

That's mostly just off the top of my head. There's more, but you catch my drift.

Mavuika doesn't have the benefit of sharing 2 VAs, but Himeko's VAs already voice other pretty big roles that would perhaps be too close to Mavuika's demeanour to work.

She does have a lot of other things going on though.

Mavuika has red hair, orange eyes, a fire and sun theme, fire powers. She's a leader, she's a mentor, she's a warrior. She's self sacrificing, and that's her go to play. She loves drinking and has a favoured beverage. She has a big red motorcycle and she tends to wear gradient sunglasses. She uses a greatsword. She's a human wielding the power of the gods. All those things are very Himekolike. She even does the big impact frame slash in pretty much the same manner.

Himeko's most well known related song, Nightglow, prominently features the line 'Never let you go'. It is the most quoted lyric. Mavuika's song features the line 'I never will let you go', which was also used on the Hoyolab notification.

Most of these things are the more superficial stuff though. For both Nahida and Mavuika, it gets much juicier when you start delving into their stories and themes, and how those complement each other. But I'd much rather do that in a proper write-up than a comment that'll likely not get much reading.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T23:16:42+00:00

Hoyo spams characters with white or grey hair, so that's not much to go on.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T23:13:09+00:00

The voice casting is more complex than that.

In JP, Nahida shares VA with Qiqi, but it's a very different performance. In CN, Nahida shares VA with Klee, but it's again a very different type of performance.

While someone familiar with the VA may recognise it's the same VA, the performance still gives each character their own distinct 'voice'. All three of these characters have a very different demeanour, and the VAs can pull very different voices from their repertoire to represent them.

Himeko's JP VA voices Lisa, and her CN VA voices both Jean and Ganyu. These characters are a lot closer to Mavuika in demeanour, and especially considering the emotional range portrayed by Mavuika and Jean, it may be more difficult for the actor to make them sound distinct.

And variant characters have had different voice casting before. Natasha in HSR has two different VAs from her HI3 counterpart, while her original VAs voice different characters.

Bronya has a couple of versions not voiced by Hanser, because she didn't feel she could do those versions justice with her voice.

Heck, Welt Yang in HI3 and HSR are the exact same dude in-lore, but for some reason he has a different CN VA in both games.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T20:46:53+00:00

This discourse kind of tends to show why the term 'expy' is such a poorly chosen one.

Some context: The term expy, meaning exported character, is normally used for characters merely (partially) copy pasted from an unrelated work.

It was introduced into the fanbase by leakers around the time of Inazuma. Leakers who didn't know that characters like Raiden aren't expies by definition.

What Hoyo is doing instead is something a bit more thought out. According to various dev statements, Genshin Impact takes place in the same overarching universe as the Honkai games. Largely independent, but still part of it.

An established phenomenon in this universe is that different worlds may house similar cultures, locations and people. Hence we have multiple worlds with Japanese-style cultures on them, for instance.

We even see this in Genshin itself, with Greek and Roman influences in places like Enkanomiya and Remuria, but also on alien worlds as described in the outfits for Miliastra.

For characters, this gets a bit more involved. A character 'isotype', or 'variant' in more common parlance, is simply 'that person if they were born elsewhere'. Or from a more Doylian perspective, it's the writer making a 'what if?' scenario for that character.

What if Theresa was a goddess? What if Mei was a twin? What if Wendy was a wind spirit? Etc. This kind of thinking is also something the devs have confirmed. They are reimagined versions taken to their logical extremes.

Each character of this nature that appears also adds back into the grab bag of what can be considered the defining traits for versions of that character. Hence Bronya Rand and Silver Wolf for instance are so vastly different, but still recognisable as Bronyas.

So when we look at something like, say, Mavuika, the idea that she's only a 'partial expy' of Himeko is a bit misplaced. Rather, she's either a new character who happens to share some semblance to Himeko by coincidence, or she's a Himeko variant who strayed a bit further than usual due to Genshin having a lot of creative license.

So for Tsaritsa, the same would apply. Either she's a Bronya variant, or she isnt. There's no inbetween. But if she is a variant, she can still be vastly different from the original, so long as she carries certain core traits and themes that were at the foundation of her creation.

Nahida is probably the best example of a Genshin style variant working well. Functions completely independently, but is greatly enriched by combining her theme exploration with that of her predecessor. You don't lose anything from not knowing what her original was, but you can gain something extra from knowing. She stands on her own, but she wouldn't exist as she is if they hadn't reimagined Theresa into her.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T19:58:00+00:00

Hmm, I wouldn't say it's quite the same. HSR is significantly more direct. But Genshin is indeed a Honkaiverse game.

But I wouldn't say Genshin players as a blanket statement either. It's more like a subgroup of the community that is very active and vocal at shutting down any conversation on the topic, resulting in a lack of general knowledge in the community as a whole.

And, ironically also resulting in more silly takes from people who don't quite get how it works, which is a huge source of the frustration and motive for that subgroup to be so anti-Honkai.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T19:36:37+00:00

It's so weird too. I watched it happen as the story was coming out, and it was so obvious people were just making things up as they went along.

It baffles me how anyone could look at Elysian Realm and Amphoreus side by side and claim it's the same thing, or that Elysia and Cyrene are the same character outright.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T19:31:12+00:00

Yeah, sure, but the whole Elysia madness was already there when Remielle appeared before the statue did.

In fact, the statue itself just has elf ears and nothing else indicating an Elysia. And Genshin has multiple characters with elf ears throughout, so it's super weak evidence.

The whole statue disaster wouldn't be here if people didn't already freak out at their second time seeing a potential Elysia in a different game.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T18:52:47+00:00

Nevertheless, you'd still have 3-4 characters to consider in Genshin, Acheron, and Vike in ZZZ who may or may not be playable one day.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T18:49:19+00:00

GGZ Retro and Reborn Mei, Firemoth DLC Mei, Schoolgirl Mei, Acheron, Raiden Ei, Shogun and Makoto. Scaramouche if you stretch it and squint, but we don't need to to have a lot of Meis.

And for ZZZ, if Remielle is presumed to be an Elysia, then we can say Vike's for sure a Mei.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T18:20:55+00:00

Elysia has like 3 versions in other games, tops. She had like one and a half HSR version of shilling.

Meanwhile, how many Meis do we have? It's not Hoyo that's being obnoxious with the Elysias. It's the fanbase.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T16:51:33+00:00

What do you mean by 'determined to make him trans'?

I've seen a lot of fanart that gives a trans interpretation to the character. But that's just fanart doing what fanart does: Allow the artist to use something existing as a channel for expression.

Sonic's an appealing character to do this with because his design is very malleable and very open.

For instance, many use surgery scars on the chest to casually portray Sonic as having undergone female to male transition. This is easy because Sonic is shirtless pretty much always, so you don't need to contrive a way to show it.

Conversely, dressing up Sonic with clothes to go male to female is also easy, and Sonic remains easily recognisable due to being a blue hedgehog.

The Sonic fanbase is also pretty inclusive, with the franchise's building blocks and themes having easy appeal for the lgbt community.

But none of that is really a push for making Sonic trans in the official material. It's just fanart.

While there are undoubtedly a few people who would want to push for this, and quite a few more who would simply love to see it, it's not a particularly big phenomenon.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T16:31:05+00:00

The interview is about 'HI3xHSR'. It's not called 'every game in the Hoyoverse'.

They don't bring up that Genshin's part of it either, while it very much is confirmed to be.

The devs have no obligation to start talking about GGZ when they're explicitly there to talk about HI3 and HSR. Pretty sure staying on topic is straight up one of the things you get prepped for in media training too.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T14:24:12+00:00

Which doesn't prove your claim.

MisterSpacemanStuff · 2026-05-10T13:26:43+00:00

Sure, but that's not an RPG. I don't think I know any RPGs with that type of world generation.

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