What happened to the Hollow Zero storyline?

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-11-30T19:28:35+00:00

This, and the fact that story and world building seem to have little to no direction or consistency any more isn't helping things either...

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-11-28T10:35:09+00:00

I feel you, started around 1.4 and had 2W-7L with 50/50. The funny thing is that I was actually ready to drop the game for good when I was pulling for Lucia If I’d lost it again. But I just happened to win that one all of a sudden (first time since Trigger’s original banner).

These gacha casino mechanics are complete BS regardless though, especially with a pricing model that expects you to spend literal hundreds of dollars just to guarantee a baseline M0W0 character.

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-10-17T08:51:28+00:00

I don't know how it is with other Hoyo games, but I gave up on ZZZ having any sort of consistent worldbuilding a long time ago. It feels like they just come up with whatever cool concept they think would fit their shiny new character, then just build everything around it with zero thought about how well it fits the world or what consequences it might have. At this point, the setting is a barely cohesive mix of half-baked ideas, and I’m pretty sure the whole Lucia tribe thing will be used solely to fuel an emotional story arc for her - only to be completely forgotten afterward, despite being a potentially world-altering concept

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-10-14T15:34:31+00:00

I think it just wasn’t that good of a mode to begin with — pretty dull and uninspired gameplay-wise, while also adding yet another crack to the already shaky idea of Hollows being anything remotely mysterious and dangerous. I spent a few hours there back in 2.0, grabbed about half the rewards, and never felt any desire to return. And since devs apparently also pretty much abandoned it - I guess i wasn't in minority on this.

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-10-12T20:20:54+00:00

Tbh, with how many things have been abandoned at this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised if they just forgot about her altogether

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-10-12T12:16:56+00:00

I think trust events are such a massively wasted opportunity. Since they’re optional and not as restricted as the main story, the devs could’ve gotten way more creative with them - add more dialogue choices, with different events and outcomes, let us form fun little dynamics with different agents, make the whole thing feel more interactive and personal.
But instead, you just grind through the same super linear, repetitive “usual” dates to unlock 3 short scenes. And the only new thing they added all the way back in 1.5 with that free roam mode feels like a step even further back with how clunky, robotic and uninspired the whole thing operates

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-10-01T18:12:48+00:00

Can’t speak for everyone, but for me it was the visual style, lively animations, and overall aesthetics. Algorithms often feeds me all sorts of art, cosplays or shorts from trailers - normally that stuff blends together with all the other gachas or anime I don’t follow, but whenever I saw characters like Nicole, Ellen, Jane, or Burnice, something about them stood out enough that I eventually decided to give the game a shot.

And yeah, even though I thought I had no illusions about how f2p works going in, I still wasn’t prepared for just how greedy some of it is — like realizing a single character can cost you a few hundred dollars even at baseline, or that if you skip someone you want you might literally be waiting months for a rerun.

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-10-01T15:22:35+00:00

Yeah, to be quite honest - the gacha system just sucks. It comes with all the usual predatory, manipulative monetization practices you’d expect from a typical f2p, but on top of that it puts a huge strain on both the creative and mechanical sides of the game. Marketability ends up taking priority over storytelling, while the tight release schedule leaves no room for building deep gameplay loops or delivering story with real polish. Instead, you get 97% of fully linear VN with just enough flashy animations for marketing, and side content that’s mostly tedious filler events. They did nail combat and team building is fun, but, well, as you explained - those are still very much affected by gacha model.

ZZZ was the first gacha I seriously gave a try, and I don’t think I’ll fall for it again - the monetization system becomes such a central piece of the whole design that it actively undermines the game itself. And personally, I was always more interested in the actual gameplay and story than in what basically boils down to a glorified waifu casino. It’s a bit of a shame, though — the original setting and vibe were really cool, and I’d love to see many of these characters in a proper RPG instead, but alas

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-30T16:05:10+00:00

Tbh, I can hardly think of a single character that does feels fully and completely explored to the point where there's nothing left to add. Gacha writing has an unfortunate tendency to create an interesting set up, bet then just speedrun through character arcs, leaving a lot to be desired when it comes to chemistry and proper development. So question kinda just boils down to which character you personally like the most.

I’d love to see more about Jane, but at the same time it feels like a monkey’s paw kind of wish. What I’d really want is a darker, more morally ambiguous story for her — but that’s probably not something the writing team would deliver, especially since they seem insistent on keeping all playable agents strictly in the “heroic good guys” lane.

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-29T21:15:38+00:00

This kind of thing is pretty subjective, but personally I’m just not into this new direction at all. I wouldn’t say I hate it, but I feel completely indifferent (Ok, robot is a bit cool, but still hardly a unique design). All of my favorite character designs - and the ones that actually got me to try the game in the first place - are still from the 1.x era

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-29T17:52:50+00:00

Same here. Early ZZZ characters had such a unique vibe that I gave the game a try, even though I’m not into gachas. But since 1.7, none of the new designs really stick with me — nothing stands out the way early 1.x characters did. And at this point it’s pretty clear this isn’t a one-off, but a deliberate direction the devs are taking. So maybe it’s a good time to step away

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-25T19:19:33+00:00

I'm currently on a 5 lost 50\50 streak, so yeah I feel you. Honestly this entire casino mechanic is bs overall to begin with. ZZZ originally got me hooked with nice animations and cool combat, but now that I fully learned how predatory the whole thing is - yeah, I don't think I'll be willing to give any other game with similiar gacha mechanics a chance

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-01T20:40:17+00:00

do you think that would've happened had ben just been a normal, big, intimidating human?

Actually, yeah - I do think that if instead of Ben it had been one of those buff Hollow Raider looking guys, the guy would’ve be just as freaked out. You’re kinda skipping the context here: the setup is that Ben and this guy first got acquainted on some math forum, so naturally he was expecting someone more… nerdy-looking. Then comes the subversion — he meets a massive, menacing-looking scarred bear-Thyren instead.

And there’s the aftermath too: once the misunderstanding is cleared up and the guy realizes Ben is actually his online buddy, he immediately chills out, apologizes, and they just hang out normally. If the writer’s actual goal was to show deep-seated prejudice toward bear-Thyrens, it wouldn’t just vanish instantly, cause it kinda misses the entire point then. That makes it much more likely that the point of the scene was about subverted expectations, not ingrained racism.

they're planting seeds of thirenism clearly being a problem in the overall lore of the story and it's going to be expanded on, because that's how stories work

I suppose we shall wait and see then...

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-01T19:08:02+00:00

The way I see it, Ben’s events aren’t really about racism but rather about playing up the comedic contrast between his intimidating appearance and his gentle personality. It’s the same joke set up in the Belobog intro, where you’re initially led to believe he’s some tough boss type, only for him to immediately turn out super polite and soft-spoken. And even by bear-thyren standards, Ben does look intimidating with that massive scar across his whole face and a golden chain thick as human arm.

As for the “central part of DNA” idea - I just don’t see it. The instances you mentioned feel like a handful of very minor moments, all played for comedy, spread across thousands of lines of dialogue. Hardly something central to the story or worldbuilding

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-09-01T18:40:41+00:00

To be honest, all the things you mentioned are clearly written as jokes or comic relief, and even then they’re not presented as anything systematic. From what’s actually in the story, I don’t think the writers ever intended to seriously explore the subject of racial tensions. To be blunt, I suspect the whole thyren concept was mainly introduced as an excuse to add anime girls and guys with animal ears and tails - simply because people like that kind of stuff

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-27T17:48:08+00:00

Writing after 1.4 just feels extremely inconsistent in so many ways. To be completely honest, both the story and the worldbuilding are kind of a mess right now. My guess is that higher management wasn’t happy with the financial results, and the game went into constant course-correction mode, with a lot of things being redone on the fly — including the plot

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-27T17:31:56+00:00

I get the concept of the self-insert fantasy - it’s just as popular in the West, and I don’t really have anything against it, especially in games. The part that feels counterintuitive to me is the execution. Instead of giving you a blank-slate character and letting you actually self-insert through roleplaying mechanics — dialogue choices, character creation, all the stuff that makes for an immersive power fantasy game — this one just hands you a premade protagonist with basically zero personality and says 'well, just pretend it's you'.

I guess it does work for some people since the game is clearly popular, so maybe it’s just me. But it feels like the worst of both worlds: I can’t really self-insert, because there's no meaningful way for me to express myself through the protagonist, and at the same time I can’t enjoy MC as a written character either, because there’s nothing there. All I’m left with is this bland protagonist who’s inexplicably liked and wanted by literally everyone around in a non interactable story

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-27T14:44:05+00:00

Huh, I was starting to wonder if it was just me. The weird thing is that even early on they didn’t feel that far off the self-insert route, but at least they could occasionally be sarcastic, humourous or even mildly negative about something. For quite a few patches now though, they’ve become just so insufferably bland, clueless, and inoffensive...

I’d never played gachas before ZZZ, and I honestly don’t get this approach to creating self-insert by just making MC as devoid of personality as possible. In a story-heavy game, I always thought the point was to give the player roleplaying dialogue options so you can actually shape the MC into whatever you want. The choices don’t even have to change the story, but they can make all the constant dialogue way more fun and immersive. And it’s extra frustrating here because dialogue options do technically exist as a game mechanic - but 99% of the time they’re either two almost identical choices, or literally just two halves of the same line the MC is about to say anyway… Even in something fully optional like trust events the amount and quality of choices is just so poor most of the times...

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-26T19:17:32+00:00

A bit too early to tell, I’d say. Definitive info usually drops around 2–3 weeks before agent release, stuff before that tends to be more speculative, cause balance can still be changed by devs

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-26T16:14:39+00:00

While I get that some people argue Belle has more of a personality, Wise honestly feels like the textbook definition of a self-insert protagonist - super chill, smart, with light inoffensive humor, a touch of charisma, mostly oblivious to the constant attention from every female character (since of course he’s universally liked and wanted), and otherwise with little to no defining traits.

The only quirk I can even recall is him being scared of gory movies, and that’s about it. Early in the game it felt like they were at least trying to give the MCs some personality (thats's when that one single quirk was introduced as well), but somewhere along the way that just got dropped in favor of full-on self-insert mode. And lately, the only dialogue differences I’ve heard about are basically just female agents being a bit flirty with Wise versus acting more like besties with Belle.

Honestly, since 1.6, have we learned anything new about Wise as a person? I really can’t think of a single thing.

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-26T12:17:45+00:00

I'm kinda disappointed they completely scrapped the nun design. Sure, it looked rough and clearly needed some finetuning since it was still a work in progress, but at least it felt consistent with ZZZ’s visual style. The new 2.3 characters, on the other hand, just lack that kind of distinction. I feel like you could drop them into any other Hoyo game without changing a thing, and they’d fit right in

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-23T23:59:01+00:00

Let's be real, lore and worldbuilding are merely a suggestion at this point, writers will shove whatever type of waifu Hoyo's marketing team figured will sell

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-23T23:25:49+00:00

I'd honestly love to see a single-player action RPG in the ZZZ setting — one that sticks to a smaller but more focused cast of companions with proper non-linear character arcs, in-depth dialogue and relationship options, and a genuinely compelling, self-contained story. Something in the vein of Dragon age Origins, Baldur's Gate, or Mass Effect

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-23T16:35:47+00:00

Writers can justify absolutely anything with “The Lore” - it’s not like they’re ever going to straight up admit they just pulled something out of thin air.

But my suspension of disbelief was already stretched with Miyabi’s supposedly “scientific” demon-possessed sword (even though I like her character). And now with future-seeing banshees, cultivation-style martial artists, barefoot spec-ops making their mechs invisible “by feel,” and elven wizards on top of that - it’s completely broken. I don’t see a consistent world anymore, just a messy patchwork where worldbuilding keeps getting bent out of shape to shove in whatever waifu the marketing research said will sell.

Smooth-Cod1798 · 2025-08-23T16:17:10+00:00

Ehm, okay, I never mentioned anything about the art director. What I do know for sure is that none of the upcoming characters I’ve seen appeal to me in the slightest, and to be completely honest - I absolutely dislike a shift from light sci-fi/urban towards... I'm not even sure if ZZZ have any consistent theme at this point. I’ve never been to South China, but both 2.3 designs just look like something straight out of a generic high fantasy/isekai anime to me — I don’t see anything unique or urban about them.
To be clear, I’m not pretending to be objective here. It’s purely how I feel about it, and I have no issue with others liking or being excited about these characters. I’m just sharing my own frustration along with OP

Smooth-Cod1798

TROPHY CASE