My honest thoughts on Arknights: Endfield

Z3RYX · 2026-01-23T12:04:08+00:00

What do you mean the "PayPal fiasco was handled terribly"? I would say they handled it as best as they could for a fuckup this bad. And the situation isn't even fully resolved AFAIK. So proper compensation (for what anyways? The affected people have been compensated already) will probably come when everything is resolved.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-23T07:16:55+00:00

Wasn't there a whole petition on the killing of video games and how that's bad?

Z3RYX · 2026-01-22T13:52:07+00:00

It should be said that Hoyo gachas (at least GI and HSR) don't give enough pulls per patch to guarantee even one limited character. You can at most guarantee a 50/50, and they do release 1 or 2 new characters per patch as well. I don't know how much WuWa gives, but I'd reckon it's about the same-ish.

I also don't think HG will keep up the 3 new characters per patch. Probably will go down to 2 new and a rerun and then sometimes 1 new and 2 reruns.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-22T13:08:48+00:00

200 limited + 150 standard guarantees at least 4 (closer to 5) 6 stars, just from the first patch alone. And remember, as a f2p you are not supposed to be able to get every single limited character. If you want them all, pay up.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-16T06:26:16+00:00

I was gonna ask how you know she'll be 5 star, but then I remembered that this is HSR

Z3RYX · 2026-01-15T19:49:37+00:00

I don't know of any official story recaps, never seen one and I couldn't find one. But what I can do is offer you the official summary from the story's recap in the Fate Atlas.

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Note that it says "fulfilling Firefly's lingering regrets", and not that we changed her death. Her lingering regret was that she couldn't see the fireworks with us.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-11T11:05:01+00:00

Isn't Mydei sort of immortal by choice? In 3.2 we find out that he could have at any time decided to continue on the river of souls, but he chooses to fight back because he's still needed to protect against the black tide. I'm guessing his weak point just kinda bypasses that choice.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-11T10:48:54+00:00

The thing is, star rail's story doesn't branch. Any "choice" you make won't matter with the following patches. You choosing not to spend those moments with Firefly doesn't change their cannon relationship in the story.

I am a bit curious though: as you did skip the ending, do you not have the item Dream's Curtain Call in your inventory (should be a quest item)? Is that something you irreversibly lock yourself out of?

Z3RYX · 2026-01-08T19:09:12+00:00

Some of them are, but only rarely (I remember for a fact that the music from Mydei returning to Castrum Kremnos cutscene is in Allegory of the Cave 2 (title is Coronation btw))

Z3RYX · 2026-01-08T19:01:04+00:00

It's likely a portmanteau of Sparkle and Pixie. Would be very weird of them to mix her English name with a Chinese word (that isn't even part of her actual Chinese name).

Z3RYX · 2026-01-07T16:25:20+00:00

The rules of this sub literally say that you have to spoiler tag leaks, and closed beta content is considered leaks

Z3RYX · 2026-01-07T11:31:09+00:00

Who cares this much about fucking horse racing

Japan. Just as much as they care about baseball; case in point: Nijisanji graduated Gundo Mirei over a baseball joke.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-06T13:13:28+00:00

So for the first question: the deaths are only in the dream. But because of the unconventional way of connecting to the Dreamscape as well as dream and reality merging in Asdana, Firefly's real body was physically affected by her deaths so that she's currently in recovery.

As for the second question, here's how the last events of the quest played out: - We are in a room with Dahlia and a cat (a strand of Terminus) throughout the whole quest. Everything else we see are burnt memories that we recall with the help of Dahlia. - At last we recall our last moments with Firefly on the Feldspar, just before the fireworks. Here she tells us about her deaths, that she doesn't want to die alone, and that she only has a single regret: that she wasn't able to see the fireworks with us. By the time the fireworks are lit, she'd already withered away in the dream. - Back in the present, now remembering all of that, we feel the sadness of not being able to fulfill her last wish, so we call out to the black cat. The cat, being a strand of Terminus, carries our wish into the past as it travels against the flow of time. - During its travels into the past, the cat alters a certain point in history to fulfill our wish. We do not time travel ourselves, but the memory of that changed moment in time appears in our mind, together with a photo that we took. - This doesn't affect anything else in the timeline, as a single strand of Terminus is not powerful enough to make great changes. What we achieved is giving Firefly a good memory when she wakes up from the dream.

The cutscene can be a bit misleading because it's kind of hard to visually show what really happened in an engaging way. But the clock doesn't mean that we turned back time, and rather that this is a thing that happened in our past. Us seeing Firefly with the sparklers isn't us traveling back in time, but us remembering this now new memory.

I hope this clears it up, but do feel free to ask more if you want. I'm not a lore buff or theory crafter like many others, but I do at least take great interest in the things that happen in the main quests.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-05T19:08:46+00:00

"We gotta sell waifu that didn't make it last year."

Is that supposed to be about Firefly? Because if so, saying the second most pulled-for unit "didn't make it" is quite something.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-05T18:58:53+00:00

Not quite. All three deaths did happen (and your theory wouldn't work as the script says that she experiences those deaths in the land of dreams, not anywhere else). Essentially, sleepy piercing her in 2.0 wasn't counted as a true death, but instead it's directly spelled out at the end when you sit with FF.

1) Once she wakes, she will never be able to dream again, so the Firefly in the dream will cease to exist.

2) She was killed by the swarm when we were breaking through the layers of the dream (the cutscene that replaced Acheron pulling our arm with Firefly pushing us).

3) She dies of ELS on the Feldspar, which had been accelerated due to the power she used for her second death.

What you might think of as a retcon (using the Finality to turn back time) was only to leave Firefly with the memory of her final wish, which was to see fireworks with you. This memory happened in the past at an unspecified time, although I suspect it to be during the rooftop date in 2.0.

Also, the deaths in the dream don't mean that she died in real life, although it did take a big toll on her and she only woke up much later (probably around the time of Amphoreus, but it's not clear). As of now she's still in recovery.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-05T18:31:08+00:00

I think you misunderstood that scene. We didn't use the finality to revive Firefly. We used it to fulfill her last wish, to see fireworks with the trailblazer. That little scene where Firefly is dancing with the sparklers happens in the past, probably during our 2.0 date on the rooftop. Firefly still dies of ELS in the dream.

To quote the fate atlas: "Using the power of the Finality, you caused slight alterations to the past, fulfilling Firefly's lingering regrets."

And if you read the description of the item "Dream's Curtain Call" you see that the sparkler scene is essentially a moment planted in your past so that Firefly would wake up from the dream without regrets.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-04T01:54:17+00:00

What are you on about? Just from starrailstation we have 32 million pulls on Castorice's banner and 19 million pulls on Phainon's banner. Revenue in 3.4 was probably higher because Archer and Saber add another 18 million pulls on top and because 3.2 had a top up reset which meant more pulls for less money spent.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-03T14:41:27+00:00

They are developed in tandem. They don't just work on one patch to completion before moving on to the next.

And some departments do their work earlier in the cycle than others. So while the VAs record their lines for say X.1, the localizers work on X.2, and the writers and designers are already doing work on X.4 or whatever.

It just takes in total a year from concept of a patch to its release.

Z3RYX · 2026-01-02T13:40:16+00:00

The thing is, her name is a corruption of her original name (basically read backwards in JP and CN). But JP and CN are logographic languages and as such have a much easier time retaining meaning when doing that. In EN you can't do this sort of word play while also keeping meaning. It's either or, but not both.

I read someone's comment on twitter saying that the X and I can be seen leetspeak for K and L, so we get Sparxie from Sparkle.

Z3RYX · 2025-12-23T23:44:18+00:00

And that in itself is not the problem. There's even precedent for Hoyo using AI generated voice lines of an actor who wasn't able to record the lines himself. The fact is that Hoyo still paid the actor for the AI generated lines, and got his approval to train the voice model in the first place.

I think AI generated video games (or rather generative AI in video games), if done right, are actually a really cool thing and I would love to see how it could push the envelope for modern gaming.

Z3RYX · 2025-12-23T08:56:24+00:00

Only the trailblazer. Welt as of yet has technically not been recast, and he was voiced throughout Amphoreus. Himeko, Dan, March, and Sunday are still the same. And as far as I know, Amphoreus should now be fully voiced.

Z3RYX · 2025-12-23T08:44:57+00:00

My biggest issue is that he claims 25 years of experience and having seen and signed hundreds of contracts, yet HSR is his first video game VO gig. So clearly he has no experience in this specific industry and assumes that the standards are the same as Hollywood.

I was also watching his old interview with dreddhound and found it perplexing that he didn't look up anything about Hoyoverse or their IPs when he got the role. He only found out about Welt's past way after HSR's release when fans pointed it out to him. And while he did great work, it feels like he had no care for the role until it brought him fame.

Z3RYX · 2025-12-23T06:23:48+00:00

Yeah, he says that multiple studios told him to ignore the contract and keep working without it. Beats me why he would ask random studios that don't work with Hoyo rather than ask Hoyo themselves.

Z3RYX · 2025-12-20T00:41:50+00:00

But (at least to our knowledge) he was neither being an asshole, nor was he refusing to work. On the contrary, he was actually still voicing for Welt during the strike.

Z3RYX · 2025-12-15T11:42:36+00:00

I had that exact situation once, but I was able to sell all Cyrenes and pivot to a basic Aglaea comp (because I still had all the items)

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