Pre-Release Arknights was VERY INTERESTING... 

Petition to bring back the old cute Amiya Chibi...

The Doctor, W were supposed to be characters for Girls frontline created by lowlight by the time he was still working for MICA team but his ideas were rejected along with Kal'tsit and 12F being Lowlights OC characters back in 2015 when Arknights wasn't a thing yet.

Hearing that Arknights ops have no voiceline way back when inspires me somewhat, like dayum how far has this game went, to having dozens of ops fully voiced and more to come

There's something cursed about seeing Silverash and Exusiai as 5* units instead of 6*

"Imagine ten big bobs running at you how fun would it be to fight that". Chalter : Yes

Here's some insight from a Chinese speaker and an artist. 1) "Set sail." Rhodes Island is a landSHIP. Arknights's name also has the word Ark in it, which is a type of boat, and this isn't a stretch either, because Arknights's Chinese name, Ming Ri Fang Zhou, roughly translates to "the ship facing tomorrow." 2) The timers on the home screen. The one with the timer was the Base (Infrastructure), and the other was the Depot (Storehouse). 3) Regarding the chibi sprite differences: Ifrit's eye color didn't change, the style in which her chibi is drawn changed. This is the same for Estelle and Meteor's chibi sprites. Their designs didn't change, since the designs are done by the artists, but it's clear the directors weren't satisfied with how the chibi sprites looked and had them redone. Artists are commissioned YEARS ahead of time. Windflit was commissioned over two years before his release on CN, which the artist commented about because of the resemblance of pose in his E2 to La Pluma's E2. Some additional comments: Hai Mao used to work on Girl's Frontline, and left because of creative differences regarding character death. Concept art of a female Doctor exists, but not a male Doctor.

The current gacha animation is iconic for me, its simple but can give u major heart attacks when flames pops out. The old one just wouldnt hit, its looks kinda boring too so im glad they changed it.

What surprises me the most is that, apparently, Red had different skills back then. Look at 1:03 she is invisible. And that kind of makes me wonder what other operators got their kit rework or even scrap entirely.

I need that Original Kal'tsit skin from Fantasia to be brought back on today's Arknights and my life is complete

maybe Estelle's scar healing is part of her lore and gameplay

Kal'tsit's MON5TER art is primordial art from a few years before Arknights was conceived, she predates Terra by an entire era lol.

I was thinking "Are you not gonna talk about the username "Theresa"!? And then it hits me "oh right he didn't read".

The "set sail" was probably because arknights in chinese can be translated to "ark of tmrw" or "tmrw boat" - Sauce i forgor but its probably Qaiser

I'm surprised you thought the "Storehouse" would be the base. Sounds pretty straightforward what it actually was.

Wait, Texas isn’t a Guard?

Doctor: fast Big Bob isn't real, It can't hurt me Fast Big Bob: 01:10

5:30 notice the little Easter egg. The doctor's (or account's for that matter) name here is Theresa.

Honestly, old or new, the graphic designers of Arknights are on a godly level. Every designs were so detailed, and clean and just so badass wth. I'm just really glad Recruitment cost a lot less now than before. 19k for single recruitment is no freaken joke.💀

5:25 doctor's name is Theresa...that really hit me in the feels

Something I’m surprised about is at 12:26, the game didn’t have orundum to spend for pulls but rather originite prime

I missed the days when OG Ch'en was a must have boss killer aside with SA and Eyja. The old days were wildly chill but now we're getting more and more Doktahs which became more lively in a good way! It's crazy how popular Arknights has become to the point that we got an anime, it's like watching a child grow up, they grow up so fast.

Conviction is interesting because, AFAIK, back in the beta they where a Legit operator rather than the april fools meme we ended up getting. Also I remember reading about Kal'tsit at some point in the past. she was in the early prototypes of the game as an op, and was *pretty* similar to what we ended up getting, albeit she was nerfed significantly given her beta form was busted as all hell.

6:17 The "infrastructure" actually must've been the base, since "command center" would very likely pertain to what we call "Control Center" now in AK. The storehouse probably was the depot, and my theory would be that they set a storage limit back then, which is 200 and is upgradable via account level-up.

Dude that old version of Shirayuki looks sick.

Surprised how no one mentioned Silence's weird name (10:28) being "Olivia Hermer" (while her actual is Olivia Silence, and only Silence is displayed in the game, but Chinese is already 赫默 which is Silence's actual name in game). i'm glad they went for all code names instead of some having their names, some code names

Those old chibi designs, Kal'tsit's old design, and development designs in general would make a cool skin line. Maybe call them "Vintage" or "Proto". 5:30 I really like that Rhodes Island is visibly under construction in this early version. It's both amusing and a little heartwarming. We should get that for one of the background options. Additionally, the account name on that screenshot is Theresa. A very good lore reference.

Fun fact: Kal'tsit's module which is only available on CN version right now is called Mon2tr. This is a clever and quite hard to understand reference to her original design from 2015 on Lowlights pixiv account where Mon3tr originally called Mon5tr. To sum it up: Mon2tr + Mon3tr = Mon5tr

Other things that I found interesting was the design of the Doctor and a few ops were originally drawn for girls frontline. I'm not too sure if the source of my info is correct tho so forgiv if I got somethings wrong

14:20 I remember that original Kal'tsit, first time I saw her is among pixiv fantasia artworks (it something like Collab among artist's and their design really look good)and her artist is Lowlight Kirilenko, also you should be able to see the original concept design in the pixiv.

Ah steparu, good to see the shout-out from you Steparu really deserve it for doing lots of gameplay for games that yet not been released

Dobermann hitting drones!?

0:49 the UI menu design is like GFL back then

6:48 Red had a black mask covering her face why they remove it, it looks so cool.

old chibis were more sticky Ig, but old rarity looks interesting

The old chibis are so fuckin weird, with all of them standing in the same stance, with those twisted legs and fucked up heads. I'm so glad they went for this new style and rig. You can just do so much more with a rig based model like this than those original ones.

For the early UI, i think the left one is actually base upgrade timer because if you remembered, base upgrade cost drones and drones = fast forward system so basically old arknights probably didn't use drone as a MUST HAVE requirement for upgrades. As for the right one it's probably the storage/depot where it had limited material storage

I like the old map design, it's really simpel and easy to understand. I would love it if they implement it to the global version but you can click on it to see the details of the stage like the feature we have right now

the 2:26 comparison frame really tells you that the team wanted to give true Identity to the characters. it wasnt simply a change in model pose but they wanted the operators to be retoned, colored, and completely FEEL apart from one another with their independent identities

I really like the black exp from 11:11,and the crystals from 11:38 hope they'll reimplement these in future

Looks like the Alive Until Sunset group were intended to be more prominent as they are in the background of the promotional art at 14:09 (just to the left of the Doctor).

9:12 Seems like the double Kroos was just a glitch where Rangers got replaced.

i mean set sail makes sense if you consider the "ark" in arknights. also the cn name just being "ark of tomorrow"

The timer on the base makes sense, you can see vestigial signs of a timed base upgrade mechanic. If you upgrade or construct a building, before you tap it even once, go into the zoomed in view by tapping another room, then scroll over to is and you’ll see a “construction in progress” screen over it

Something fun to note; in that old menu ui thing the account name is under the name "Theresa"

one thing u can also tell thats definitely intended by the devs and thats the home page background its almost like the landship we use is still in construction almost or making repair works about 6:16 bottom left on the right side of the screen thats the base we have now but it was less refined than the one we have now, the one on the right is just storage, all the mats and stuff however, am not sure whats the red pop on the base icon is....since its directly translated as "Danger - 2" we have similar pop up icons but they're for collecting resources and stuff nowadays, so not quite sure whats the danger there is it might be because the landship was destroyed and being repaired, so danger for those places?

Great job with covering this topic

I found the lobby art changes really interesting, if you compare that to the new one, in the old one looks like our Landship still under construction. Makes me think that our current Landship is the upgraded version of the old one. In my opinion that's a genius way to show us how the game and story has progressed

I love the lore and the likeable characters in Arknights also the gameplay is easy to learn but hard to master type of tower defense game, the only negative I can say about arknights is that sometimes the story can be a bit "long" in that make make me say "Get to the point!"

3:18 I'm a meteor user and i like ponytailed girls, so i do hope that HG makes a skin of Ponytailed Meteor. Her old design just looks so cool

one another thing i notice in all those chibi desgin is that, in old one all OPs are standing in front while they looking on side but in new/current one OPs are both seeing and standing on side. since in old their legs are facing front while current one they on side.

Imagine a time line where lowlight never quitted GFL and we got W as a character on that series Damn arknights felt different those days but i think the free chen thing would be a nice implement for current game so players can be more willing to play it

i forgot where, but some1 mention (on YT comment or discord) that the reason current AK still have "DP recovery" tag on recruitment eventhough "vanguard" tag practically do the same thing because it is a leftover from the alpha where generating DP was part of the guard class

I so glad there is no storage limit in Arknights or else I’d have real trouble keeping all my saved materials, also it restricts peoples progression which is not fun. Of the 2 pulling animations I’m certainly more in love with the bag idea than the “sliced folder?” Lastly the chibi didn’t really strike me as high quality as now so I’m glad that changed as well. Overall there was a lot of changes and I enjoyed seeing that for myself.

Shirayuki looking soooo good tho

Gloabl Loved the video man you are underrated 👍👍

Yes, back in early arknights there were no vanguards. We can actually see 2 remnants of this in the game to this day. The first is the DP recovery tag. Its a tag which is quite literally synonymous with vanguards, to the extent that every single vanguard in the game has it (except yato). It exists solely because in old arknights, you'd pick guard and DP recovery to get your vanguards. And the second is actually our darling seige. Specifically her third skill, which is the only vanguard skill in the game which doesn't generate DP, a consequence of her kit being designed when vanguards weren't a thing, so she got to have a full guard skill as well as her 2 vanguard skills. Tis unfortunate, as it makes her S3 pretty bad, but isn't unexpected.

at 5:52 it looks like the old Sanity icon was the same as Shining's skill 2 instead of the brain we have today

4:57 You can argue this one quite hard tbh. It was made by the man himself Lowlight himself many years prior to arknights creation as it was one of his OCs used in the fantasia pixiv.

fun fact: there was a gamma test before the official release in cn, and that gamma test wasn't well received, so lowlight nd rua did a live stream to apologize for it 😂

Steparu really our big bro

"Set Sail." Is probably referring to the Rhodes Island landship, which in itself is an allegory to the Noah's *Ark* .

is that the pantheon login theme at the start of the video? omg it is thank you for reminding me of this thing.

Some thoughts: - The original chibis look more like something I'd expect from a western tower defense - I love that we essentially saw every cut unit/design make it into the final game eventually; Conviction, Kal'tsit, and the most drastic redesign Astesia just as her sister (I guess May counts too) - Also the set sail might just be a reference to Rhodes Island as a "ship", even though it's a landship - And IIRC Kal or was it W wasn't even originally an Arknights character essentially

about the ui, the one on the left is the base, and the one on the right is the "storage"

Alpha phase is a good find because on that phase is where game studio do major changes before beta and released

What suprised me the most is seeing Conviction like I didn't even know she existed until recently and even then I thought she was a collab character because her art style is so different compared to the usual, If you asked me what year was Conviction added before I saw this video I wouldve guessed 2020 - 2022 at best

im playing since Hellagur Debut and i must say I LOVE ARKNIGHTS! sadly since i was never good with holding phones and always and the thought of "im gonna make my transfer data tomorrow" everyday... i already lost multiple really good Accounts that were like over Level 50 just a few months ago after my tablet i lost my Nearlter Acc where i also pulled Ling and since then didnt played AK but i will probably gonna start again on my new phone when Specter Alter is out and she is my favorite character in Arknights together with Skadi, Lappland and Mostima! AND THIS TIME IM GONNA LINK MY ACCOUNT DIRECTLY ON DAY 1

why they didn't retain projekt red's invisibility...

Another interesting thing to talk about would have been beta Kal’tsit. I’m the footage you showed she was there and it looked like monst3r had a ranged attack too

I remembered seeing Kal'tsit being able to place Most3r anywhere on the map without the def reduction, and that it had lifesteal on their skill 3.

Locking could be used to lock the character in the squad so when you remove all the other members and just keep those you lock to build around it.

It’s not so related in the release but when I downloaded the game back in 2020 I think I still saw the old opening animation for the operators when your pulling for them, and one of the reasons I dropped the game (but I’m playing it consistently now) because I’m really bothered by the “Submitting to the headquarters” thing, no matter what function you pick, that will always show up, making the game feel slower, so I dropped it, but the recent hype made me play it back, thank god i didn’t delete it in my phone for those years that passed

2:42 peko face

13:00 Shesh that's a lot of *May*

Some of the ftp rewards in the beta might have just been there as a thing to help people along during the beta also while i do prefer the newer chibi designs the old one do have a certain charm to them though that old shirayuki art is amazing and I want it

I knew this before but its funny/interesting how vanguards didn't exist/were a subclass of guards, and that's probably why both Vanguard and DP-recovery are recruitment tags.

so the vanguard class just added at the second beta.. so interesting, a very important class created the last

10:36 thats a Big Adam. Big Bob has a yellow chainsaw.

I think "Infrastructure" was meant to be the Base, and Storehouse was meant to be your item list. Knowing what I know about old Arknights, I wouldn't be surprised if there was originally a limit to item storage.

I hope they return the being able to have more than one copy of a unit but only for croos

I kinda like that recruitment animation

I wish we had that original Ifrit chibi she is so cute!

One question, was there a Yato skin in Arknights Beta?

I actually love how some of operator looks like they actually prepared to battle.

I think at the Time 6:32 on the left under side means, Event-Period Endtime.

It would be very cool if Shirayuki's old design becomes a new skin for her, probably of Epoque skin line. The goth ninja girl style is too cool to be scrapped like that.

6:35 isn't that the store ad placement? Like the one that now is on the bottom left and shows us skins and furniture

I really, really do not know if it's just me - but the fact that Basepoint's theme has 'Eye for an Eye' as one of its lyrics and a callback all the way to Blade in the form of its boss... Sorta makes me wonder if the former is on purpose, and what other little nicks could be hidden in the theme and event themselves.

The old chibi reminds me of the GFL ones. Makes sense

I remember seeing the post for the test of the old version, unfortunately I don't have Smartphone back then and still use old Nokia phone, also busy with my College.

That's why I love Arknight and interesting story❤️

For Estelle's art, E2 more often then not shows an Operator who is older, so the scar likely healed. She's implied to be the chosen one of a cult after all

The Pantheon theme hit me so hard

Did not even know AK was a concept for that long. I didnt know about it until 2020 global launch

There was a stage that dropped recruitment permits. Just imagine the possibilities...

Shirayuki is the first playbale character they made.They have talked this in a stream.

Yo where i can buy that sweet shirt & doctor coat? Looks awesome 😊 great video 😀

Love the may pun

The most surprising for me is when you up the operator from e1 to e2 it added 1 more star

kalsit have mon5tr before beta. which begs the question, where is mon4tr?