I'd still argue Herta is better, shes neglectful sure...but at least shes doesn't act well meaning and pretend to be innocent. Like Ruan Mei forces you to eat the cake that would drug you. Herta just straight up just tells you as it is.
@@rushalias8511she’s also more ethical. Sure she leaves behind the space station but the place is independent. They don’t need her. She doesn’t try to do experiments that will actively hurt the subjects. If it results in that, she will intervene (ex. Falling into nihility in Simulated Universe)
iirc because of the emperor wars people heavily distrust robots so screwllum kinda has to always act nice (not that he isnt just a nice dude in general tho)
Personally, I actually prefer the ending to Ratio's Continuance Mission. The Space Station's researchers have always seen the Geniuses like living gods, beings to praise and worship on a pedestal. They're not looking for change, and are in fact looking for every reason to excuse their paragon. It makes Ratio's quest to correct that ignorance a Sisyphean one, which strengthens his character far more. It turns his story in one of a David vs Goliath tale, where despite possibly being as smart and (definitely)as prideful as the Geniuses, he's still at a massive disadvantage, but doesn't let that stop him from trying to correct the world's ignorance. It turns him into a fool who lets his heart overthrow the logic and reason that the Geniuses use to brush the world aside. As Screwllum says, he's closer to a Doctor than a Scholar.
That's a fair point, and why I think it's great for his character, but it is also a great excuse for the writers to return the Station to the status quo, which I find a little disappointing. With all of these worlds, Jarillo 6 seems to be the only one moving forward from the place that we found it when we arrived. And he's basically The Doctor from Doctor Who, and nobody can convince me otherwise! Lmao 🤣
@@StrayMaverick although, doesn't that make sense? Herta Space Station is full of fanatics too set in adoring the Genius Society. Fixing that would take more than an invasion or two. As for the Luofu, a race of immortals, what happened there (while out of the ordinary) was just another day out of millions for its residents. I do wonder what Penacony has to offer, especially after meeting Duke Inferno.
Ruan mei was just boring.........unless u do ur HOMEWORK and go through every little page in the space station and find out how f"cked up she is and she is intresting then.............and then Dr ratio comes around and makes me interested in the story again cause it felt more involved and like it matters, and Dr ratio is interesting CAUSE WE GOT TO SEE HIS PERSONALITY UPFRONT and it felt nice unlike ruan mei who did NOTHING
@treasure9342 Ruan Mei's whole thing is that she hides her true intentions. She even says as much in her trailers that by hiding your emotions, you can also hide your true intentions. She's the kind of genius that Herta warned MC about.
I personally like how well Ruan Mei's character interacts with Herta's. They both have traumatic experiences that resulted in them both placing the people around them at an arm's length. However, they express their trauma incredibly differently. Ruan Mei tries to exert control over people, so that accidents don't happen again, while Herta likely focuses more on "controlling" herself. I find this comparison to have made Herta's puppets a stronger plot point, as it's an extension of Herta trying to solve her trauma, whatever that is, by giving her the capability to be in multiple places at once. With Dr Ratio's story, I think people are placing too much faith in Screwllum, coming from someone who was 100% a fan of him from the beginning. He never intervened in Dr Ratio's lesson, and I don't believe he has returned the Phase Flame to Herta. He's still very much a part of the Genius Society.
I’m 90% sure he never intervened because he just wanted to see if Ratio would figure out that most of the staff of the space station were too set in their genius-worshipping ways to not idolize them. He’s still a good dude, he’s kinda like the inverse of Svarog in the sense that he’s hoping for an external unaccounted variable that may be what’s needed to fix an issue, Dr Ratio just wasn’t the variable he sees himself to be. As for the Phase Flame, I personally trust something that volatile more with Screwllum than with Herta. Screwllum likely knows how to better contain it as opposed to Herta who would essentially just chuck it back into her curio storage and hope it doesn’t blow up again. Most of the universe doesn’t trust mechanical life after the Emperor Rubert incident, idk why Screw would do something to make it worse.
Both Ruan Mei's quest and Argenti's quest have pacing so utterly bizzare that I felt genuinely confused at several points. They'll spend 100 years on inconsequential nonsense and then have actual plot important stuff happen off screen or within seconds. So weird. That being said, I did find Ruan Mei's unrepentant asshole-ish-ness to be very refreshing. I also found Ratio unexpectedly compelling. It feels like his attitude is to simply act as a socratic dialogue partner, pressuring people to find the answers to his questions. His more collectivist view of knowledge is very different from our other Erudition-aligned characters, and I'm curious to see where that goes. Can't wait to see what he gets up to on Penacony!
One thing I never liked about Ruan Mei is not her character itself, that's fine. Rather it's the fact the MC is somehow okay with what she did to them. I never understood why at the very end, after she sent you keelhauling yourself in a derelict part of the space station and you killed her giant bug, fixing HER mess, after getting drugged by HER cake, you're not even a little bit angry at her. HOW??? WTF????
I feel like part of the reason they didn't want to continue that whole "distrust" thing is that they didn't want to change the layout of where people (NPCs) are and their dialogues. They want to keep everything where it's at and not change too much. Kind of like how ALL OF FONTAINE flooded, yet the entire region looks EXACTLY THE SAME afterwards. I hope to see more of that "horror" element in the future. Maybe we explore an abandoned space station or ship we find while riding the Express.
Or is the whole reason that doing something so global is a bit too much for a filler patch? They will obviously remember the existence of the Herta Space station more than once, and I think they will continue this topic with disbelief. It's just that the story wasn't about that at the moment.
I knew Ruan Mei was gonna have a 'unique' personality from the teasers and the fact that her true goal is to become a god, so I wasn't really bothered by her sociopathy that much. Let's just hope they do something with her genuinely very interesting character.
It’s funny. Before version 1.6, I thought that I’d be more interested in Ryan Mei than Dr. Ratio to the point that I planned on pulling for her and not him since I gotta choose my 5 stars wisely. After 1.6, I find that I like Dr. Ratio a lot more while I find Ruan Mei to be pretty despicable in her actions while taking no accountability
I don’t agree with the suggestion that characters need to be morally superior for me to want to pull them. I actually like the fact that her peaceful and kind exterior clashes with her scrupulous goals as a scientist. What I didn’t care for was the flimsy nature of her quest. It wasn’t very well written imo, was over in a second and didn’t make much sense at all. Felt like a let-down and I’m worried that this is it, that we won’t get resolution later on. This is becoming a repeated occurrence, with me pulling Luocha and Argenti and being left with flimsy, unfinished and superficial story lines.
@@leedevee same here, for me myself i love both of them for a different reason. Ofc Dr Ratio quest is better objectively to show his character, Ruan Mei story on the other hand feels bad ? not because of the Ruan Mei herself but the pacing is SO BAD altho we can see her true personality but it's not well written....
@@leedevee For me a character doesn’t have to be morally superior but for her it’s factors that not just with the character but with the narrative that just don’t sit right with me. For all intents and purposes, she basically roofied the MC and sent them on a suicide mission to clean up her mess which could have caused countless innocents to get hurt entirely with the intent that we would forget about her and thus she just gets to walk Scott free. All the while, there are no consequences for her to her amoral actions; we can’t even so much as give her a negative response over what she put us through and that continues beyond the quest with the texts. At very least in the case with another morally grey character like Topaz, her actions had consequences and she owned up to it and took responsibility for them. With Ruan Mei, she wasn’t even so much as mildly inconvenienced in spite of everything. That bit doesn’t sit well with me because at that point it makes me question what Mihoyo’s intentions towards the player are in regards to her While unlikely to happen since she seems to have at least learned from this that creating the Emanator was a mistake, I find that the best thing that could happen for the sake of her character development is that one of her experiments results in innocent people getting hurt, something that she can’t just hide and walk away from the consequences of. She has to be made to confront the weight of her actions so that she can truly find the ‘should I?’ rather than just the ‘can I?’
Tbh Genshin's interlude quests also kinda act like a character story quest because it has a specific character being the main focus, it's just that it also reveals more lore that lies beneath other stuff. The Crane Returns on the Wind - Focuses on Shenhe's backstory but also how Liyue has moved to a new human-ruled era (which also may be the reason for CR's going human) Perilous Trail - Mostly focuses on both Yelan's ancestor and Xiao's yaksha comrades but still gives closure to Bosacius's story Inversion of Genesis - Literally scaramouche's story quest lets be fr, but also gives a deeper dive into how Irminsul works AND ALSO INTRODUCED NICOLE Compared to that, HSR's continuance do feels, lacking in a way
I view the Inversion of Genesis as a way to also introduce the concept of fate, which underlies the entirety of Teyvat. I think for Genshin, the Interlude quests are are just a way to name quests that are: - Not bound to one specific character (each of them have at least 2 key characters, unlike story quests) - Not regional Archon Quests - Not the Dainsleif Archon Quests The HSR continuance quests do feel very.. filler-y. They do pad out the world a small bit. Belobog's Topaz quest: Introduces the IPC directly to the player, which is one of the most powerful factions apparently. We actually do learn more about them as an organization, not just the individuals Xianzhou's Huohuo quest: Introduces the concept of the energy lifeform. Not sure how this might be important because it feels quite minor Space Station's quest: Supposedly introduced the Genius Society further, and also the Annihilation Gang. Honestly not sure how this might be relevant, because we merely became acquainted with individuals.
@@zackang4731The Annihilation Gang will literally be a big part of Penacony story though? Duke Inferno is one of the characters leaked to be invited to the banquet plus Dr. Ratio was invited too. Continuance quests are clearly more of a setup for future quests.
After the quest, I do not feel there's any change to my expectations of Duke Inferno at Penacony - I don't have new ideas about what he might do, or his and the Gang's aims there, other than destruction. Honestly, I feel the same way about Mr. Ratio. And our meet-and-greet could have easily been done over a few minutes in any future quest. A setup would be.. introducing a new idea, or a foundation to the player. I think Topaz's quest is a nice setup, because we learn about the inner workings of the IPC, so we have new ideas about the IPC's involvement in the universe.
@@zackang4731 yeah but it sets up what exactly is the Annihilation Gang and what their purpose is. If they didn't set that up then we would not know more about them and how Nanook doesn't really acknowledge them and stuff. They also set up the different race with the fire demons which were referenced from Kafka's myriad trailer during the "Jepella Rebellion", especially since Sam was there and he will be in Penacony as well.
NGL the only story that I prefer in Star Rail are the lore of the Aeons and their paths, they are pretty interesting to delve into, yet I barely see any content creators focusing on them. Hoping that we could investigate some of them in the future, Tazzyronth the Propagation's lore is pretty dark and wild.
I think the 1.6 Trailblaze Missions were interesting in terms of two aspects: 1. More nuance to the Genius Society: showing how fickle/frivolous the ones we've seen so far are. 2. Duke Inferno: this is probably bias, but his voice and design are hard not to like (also tied in Phase Flame Curio). I will say one critique, for me, is that knowing about the boss prior does take away most of the suspense; they should've misdirected it as an invading Swarm remnant, which would've made the knowledge that it was Ruan Mei's experiment a bit more shocking. [P.S. This Mission made me like Dr. Ratio more than I had anticipated.]
@@patrickcarter2829 dont jinx it. Surely with huohuo's fire tail and screwllum unique robot face they can make Duke inferno fiery skull a possibility right..... right
When himeko said that "because of his own view of beauty if he saw real adrillia he may not be able to recognize her" is a foreshadowing maybe march 7th is the real adrilla.
@@Yuki_Ika7 She has to be her color scheme is very sus pink represent imaginary because it does not exist and blue represent cold void, and her technique is called freezing beauty so maybe.
My friend loved Dr. Ratio, but then I heard her say something about him “turning bad”. After hearing that, I thought of every worst case scenario. I had in mind that it was going to be a Tingyun situation or something and I was seriously preparing myself emotionally for him to suddenly become a boss battle you have to kill. I love him too and the idea of doing that was making me completely worried about what happened. Nobody wants to have their favorite character die, much less *kill them.* Then the reveal came along and... I saw no issues whatsoever and completely understood where he was coming from. There’s a bunch of genius obsessed weirdos that worship Herta and them like they’re the Archons in Genshin and they don’t even try to put their own skills to the test against them. Meanwhile there’s Ruan Mei. I already hate the premise of “I already know what you’re going to do and there’s nothing that you can do to change the outcome that happens” with Kafka, *I don’t want it to be present in another character that gets away with everything.*
With Kafka she’s a character who appears to be on the darker side of morally gray but is in reality she’s one of the good guys a well written anti hero. While Ruan mei appears to be just a sweet kooky scientist then goes down into this menacing dark morally gray woman willing to do anything for science
@insertnamehere1398 My main gripe was the lack of ability to do anything to go against what Ruan Mei wanted. Kafka’s a character that gets away with things after doing some messed up stuff, but I was okay because there wasn’t another character to do the same thing to you. In fact, I can’t wait for a day when there’s a chance to deviate from her script and finally prove her wrong about “it’s inevitable what’s going to happen and you’re going to do this”... But as stated, one of them is the maximum I can deal with. I don’t want it to be a reoccurring thing to be a tool for characters in that way and I don’t want to just watch as nobody reprimands them for their actions. Even Kafka gets chewed out for what she does. Hoyo either did this intentionally so that we all developed some form of hatred towards Ruan Mei for whatever reason or they found out that maybe they shouldn’t do this as a way to introduce a character
He aint bad at all , is just hard for some ppl to understand and appreacite him, jokes or not those ppl are the fools idiots he is calling out in the quest 😆 ruan mei give more dark vibes surprisingly i hope she wont go in that path
@fufu-jh Yeah. I’m hoping that something happens in the story that’s supposed to follow after this one have Ruan Mei be found out and face the music for doing all of these things, but the last thing I want is for it to turn into an instance where we have to kill a character or something. Since this is Honkai, it’s definitely going to happen again whether we want it to or not, but I’m hoping it’s not one of them. Ruan Mei dying before getting to be held accountable for everything would leave me feeling a little empty since there was room for better improvement to her character and I would feel *genuinely broken* if Dr. Ratio dies because god dammit, he’s the only douchebag genius that has others in mind and he’s my favorite character in the entire game.
I hope they do Penacony well. The Loufu was a bit of a mess, so there’s the possibility they take a similarly messy approach to Penacony. However, I do have faith in the writing team that they will handle Penacony better. Especially after the Belabog Continuance quest which was really good.
@Omnislash7 our memories were related to her though, she was using the phase flame as a part of her experiments, which was the curio Herta got us to look for.
It's funny that when you got Ruan Mei, she will chat and find it strange that the effect hasn't taken it's effect yet, pretty sure we are immune to memory loss now LMAooo
A lot of the things in the entirety of 1.X suffers from whay I call dangling keys syndrome. They point to some big dramatic moment down the road at the expense of the current narrative, making them all fluff and no substance.
yeah i agree 100%. most of the recent quests feel like they're setting up for smth, but because it's going to be some time before we actually get that thing, i kinda cant bring myself to care. like im thinking "wow this seems like it might be cool later" but thats it
This is Genshin’s story to a T. They keep kicking the can down the road. They keep introducing plotlines that are supposed to be interesting later on but we never get any conclusions for any of them.
Here’s my interpretation of us forgetting our memories and the cut to black that happens when we go into Herta’s office: From the group chat, we get informed that Herta’s puppet got “kidnapped.” When we go to investigate, it goes to static and we wake up inside the interrogation room. I think that we weren’t drugged, but Dr. Ratio basically knocked us out as the mc was a suspect in his eyes. Us forgetting what happened wasn’t because of some drugs (though maybe Ruan Mei’s drugs did something to us idk). We just forgot like normal human beings.
I do agree with the rating! Even with the slow first part of the quest, the interrogation part was pretty fun honestly, but made the Ruan Mei mission look even more clumsy (I loved the mood they set but the story was not that well executed) Watching videos about Ruan Mei made me realize the tone/ mood set by the VAs transformed the perspective I had with her. My game is in japanese, but hearing the other languages and EN I noticed that her vibe was different, in EN she seems more Sly with her words and in the others it seemed more apathetic than anything. So it was really interesting noticing this. Dr. Ratio really made me like him, he seemed to prefer a natural progression and not directly teach others and makes me eager to know more about him, so I don't think it had no impact in the station, but IMO this quest is just a build up to the topic you mentioned in the video, at least for me they are going to repeat this a few more times, "little inconveniences" that corrodes the image the genius have. Ratio wants for them to think and stand up for themselves and not create a conflict between them. Ignorance is a blessing for the fools but a burden for the Wited. But that could go out of control and create a riot, I can imagine a quest with Herta being the center point of this story as she is the main genius of the station. May be the opportunity for her to appear with her real body and launching a T5 of her!
what i really don’t like is that the game forces you to act nice with ruan mei at the end of the first story mission. like she drugged us and forced us to do her bidding, before telling us that she is slowly erasing our memories (which can be countered by a pen and some paper, not the smartest plan tbh). why do we have to be nice to her? why can’t i tell her that i don’t want to work with her ever again? with this, the story plays down what it had previously set up by showing how uncaring she is. the dialogue options that imply that you forgave her could still be there, it just would’ve been nice to have an option that shows less of a "water under the bridge" attitude.
This one didn't spark joy. The main issue for me re the last few character introductions (Argenti, Ruan, Ratio) is that although it's nice that we get to spend some time together with each new character, they are mostly devoid on any emotional or narrative meaning. They feel completely disjointed and inconsequential to me personally. And funny thing is, they've already figured out it the correct formula with Belobog/Luofu continuance quests. Belobog continuance is short and sweet, serves as a character intro for Topaz and then seamlessly flows into the (completely optional) Aetherium Wars event, where we learn about some new characters and connect with the old ones. At the time when it came out and nothing much was going on in the game, Belobog continuance without the Aetherium Wars would've most likely felt very subpar bc of how short it is; new players who are trying to catch up, on the other hand, can choose to either do them together or leave Aetherium Wars for later on. It's a complete win/win. Luofu continuance, although it's longer than Belobog's, is really not that bad in terms of playtime. I feel like some people collate it with the Gui's social media event, which is not part of it and can be skipped/played separately. And even if it is a bit much for a new player who just wants to get on with the next world, in my opinion it's absolutely worth it with how story-rich they've made it. Not only are you introduced to Huohuo, you also get an amazing group dynamic between the ghost hunters, learn about Luofu lore (in a way that, I would argue, handles it much better than the main arc), and get a nice little follow up with pretty much everyone from the Luofu cast. Could be a bit shorter, but overall - it's great. By comparison, it feels like they were grasping at straws with the last few intros. Argenti's quest felt so raw it gave me indigestion, and I really wanted to like the character. The addition of that NPC was the most desperate thing I've seen the whole game - like they KNEW it's good form to characterize a person through someone else's relationship with them, but went about it in the most pathetic manner. The story script itself barely made sense. Ruan Mei's was marginally better only because she's been sort of present in the game through SU since day one and because they gave her an amazing Myriad celestia trailer days before the patch came out. The concept is so so intriguing but execution fell completely flat. Same for Dr Ratio's quest. There was absolutely not enough done or said, not enough time to let the story breathe, no opportunity to process what went down. It's just over before you know it. I understand that they want just quick intro to sell a banner and it's not very easy to pull off a good story right before the next big patch, but come on... They managed it just fine with Topaz. Because she was on her own. Do that 3 times over and the flaws in this kind of story telling approach come to light ten-fold. If anything, they could've at least made a joint coherent story update for Ruan Mei and Dr Ratio. Why do they never meet face to face? Why did they not play some twisted manipulation game to lure Traiblaizer to their respective sides? Ratio literally has beef with Genius society already, Ruan Mei supposedly was the one who lost the phase flame on the station in the first place - why not create a full fledged conflict around that? Forget Duke Inferno, make Ratio sabotage the station because of how pissed he is with Ruan Mei's agenda; shake up Ruan Mei's ivory tower of solipsism, force her to connect back to her humanity to rescue station's personnel or something. A little bit of evil within the good, a little bit of good within the evil and all that. The drama between the values of these two practically writes itself. Hell, throw in there Argenti's introduction as well. He's down to fight some bugs, right? Why couldn't they have been connected to Ruan Mei's previous failed experiments, which led him to the Herta station in the middle of the crisis? And he's so antithetical to whatever is going on between the geniuses, he could've been the perfect comic relief/MC's sidekick. But I guess you can't afford to spare characters any screentime unless there's a banner to promote. Lots of wasted potential, the lot of them ):
Oh thank god I'm not the only one who felt Argenti's quest was so lackluster, the stakes were there but then Argenti just went ima deal with it and he did it in the most flat way possible. The express crew were just standing around for most of it lol I love your suggestion, I really thought Ruan Mei and Dr Ratio were going to interact with eachother and it really seemed like they had a sort of dynamic with Dr Ratio disliking the geniuses and Ruan Mei well being Ruan Mei. I like the idea of slotting in Argenti's introduction along these two quests as well, it definitely would've been a massive improvement as well as providing a perspective of someone who isn't familiar with the workings of Herta's space station he's just there to slay some bugs for real
I think it’s a lot different with ratio. Cuz him and the duke are (according to the 1.6 special program) are HUGE plagers. As for Ruan mei.. they put some of her big whoopsies in easy to miss logs. Like feeding experiments abundance seeds and driving an experiment to suicide. They went easy on her
Oh damn. Your idea actually sound so sick. Couldve been a TB main quest tbh. But they are working around banner releases. It is first and foremost a gach game after all.
I feel like the intention behind making Ruan Mei so morally dubious is that she's supposed to be an example of what Dr. Ratio talks about at the end of his quest. Ruan Mei is that blindingly adored genius; beautiful, graceful, and a beacon of the Genius Society. Her own creations, born yesterday, want nothing more than to be loved by her for reasons they don't seem to understand. Yet for all of her majesty, all of her experiments have ended in failure by her own admission. She isolates herself from the community, hoarding her research and information from those who could benefit from such knowledge. She literally takes away Trailblazer's ability to be critical of her for pete's sake. It almost makes me wish that both continuance missions were combined into one just so the both of them could interact. Maybe then the pressure of calling her out is not put only on Trailblazer's shoulders. March and Dan Heng's coldness to Sampo went a long way in establishing how the narrative frames him too. Speaking of calling her out, I definitely understand why some people feel that Trailblazer is a little too okay with her at the end. While I loved the ability to express my Trailblazer's annoyance at nearly dying to the giant monster bug as well as not so subtly call her out on being an absentee mother by pressuring her to visit her creations more often, the ability to not press her more as well as a lack of other people to call her out too makes the whole thing feel a little weak.
I love these videos!! Not too many channels that analyze the story of HSR. I would love to see more. Anything related to the story. Character analyses, Gold&Gears story (which I wasn't able to grasp fully just from playing), main quests, world quests and also thoughts on world building for different worlds. These kinds of videos literally help me enjoy the game even more and pointing out the flaws can also be potentially useful for the devs (coping)
Traiblaze Missions are not equivalent to Trailblaze Continuance, you can see it based on the color of the Markers. Traiblaze has yellow markers while Continuance have orange. Continuance seem to be a continuation of the story from the planets we've visited and completed before. The Trailbaze Missions are the Main story we follow. You don't need to complete any of the Continuances to reach Penacony considering that the pre-requisite quest for all 3 of the currently existing missions are the last Trailblaze Mission meaning if you haven't played from 1.3 onward you can do all 3 of them in any order. The Continuance missions seem to be like Character mission but for the entire planet not just the characters involved. edit: if you think this will break story continuity the Devs said they'll be releasing a timeline of the quests so while you can do them in any specific order there is a canonically correct one.
I mean honestly. There wasn’t really much story here. It was just a whole helluva lotta set up and some expansions on things we already knew, however. . . It wasn’t to substantial. Now that I think about it. . . Did we ever actually find herta?
It's just like he said, Ratio is there just to plant the 'question' (seeds of doubt towards the geniuses), it is up to them to answer it (whether to just forget it or keep the doubt alive and do something about it).
great video^^ also a bonus info that I think you missed, in 0:40 I don't think you actually need to do them in order and I feel like they are completely optional, however I do think that some of them are very great quests like the belobog one is a great sort of epilogue to the whole belobog arc and its a great way to introduce Topaz (and sort of mention Adventurine) since she will come to Penacony as she said in the quest with him iirc; The space station question was a bit out of place in my opinion, don't get me wrong I do liked it, but as you said, it felt a tiny bit random, I like how Ruan Mei essentially used the data she saw from the swarm disaster in the SU to create this "emanator", unironically enough I felt like Ruan Mei's portion of this quest (and sort of Dr Ratio's) could have just been moved as a companion quest since its not really advancing the story in any way, but I suppose they wanted to sell her with a main quest since she is quite important, I think this whole quest saga was more or less to introduce Dr Ratio and sort of Duke Inferno for Penacony which was fine imo; however..the luofu quest with Huo Huo was a disaster.. like it did not deserve the title of a continuance quest, it felt like a long long long event, but at this point we are used to the loufu writing being mediocre at best I fear aaa Edit: with all of those small build-ups, I HAVE REALLY HIGH HOPES for Penacony and I hope it will be belobog level of story quality
While I acknowledge that Dr. Ratio's half of the continuance was pretty good in hindsight, during my playthrough I was so incredibly jarred by the sudden cut to the interrogation that it put me in a sour mood for the whole playthrough. The entire time I was so insanely confused. Like I didn't remember doing any of the stuff the trailblazer was trying to remember that I legit thought I had forgotten hours of gameplay. I think they could've done a better job setting up that transition because as of now it comes out of nowhere.
Listening to this video made me want to have the continuance missions to be side quests while they focused more on how each planet moves on from each and introduce each playable character in a less rushed version, e.g., the topside and botside of belobog learning to talk with each other, the xianxou essenially quarantining parts of it as they clean up, etc. They could then work on making these quests flow more easily into the continuance quests like references to the great machine currently being repaired and the heliobi
I don't think there was message in Ratio companion quest in first place. Hertas authority was NEVER questioned, Astas was. And it's not like there is no reason behind that worship. Herta stations is full of researchers and scientists. They came to station to be like her. Other thing is, that obviously things would calm down when missing researchers were found. Things were going out of control because people suspected leadership killing or kidnapping their oppositon and with them being found, it became obvious it's not the case. Opposition still exists, that didn't change, but there are no more any martyrs.
For me its one of the best patches, simply because of those little critters. They are so adorable! Ashy Bean Paste being the one critter I would like to take to the Astral Express the most.
The problem with memory loss in the Ratio quest... Isn't it because of the serum that Mei gave us? This is just my guess, but it may be that the serum didn't work the way it was supposed to and deleted the wrong memories.
That's definitely possible. That's the only thing that makes sense there. Weird how she messed up tho. Or maybe her intent was to never actually have you forget her? Who knows. Lol
@@StrayMaverick that actually makes sense, as Mei had the fire originally. so if her poison was ment to make us forget that day timeline wise it make sense ish.
@@F1ash1056 There's a slight... 4th wall breakage with the trailblazer. Hoyoverse acts as consistantly, that anything WE know because they have told us, the trailblazer knows. always. which is why they consistantly make reference to stuff not in the game, but the general consumer knows. because WE know it. It's weird, but they have been generally consistant with it.
@@TheJasperMage this applies to gameplay elements such as builds, etc., but not to story elements, for example, Dan Heng's side story where he met Luocha, since when he first met Luocha on the train, Trailblazer did not know who it was, so here either it’s just that the scriptwriters didn’t come up with a way to explain the loss of memory, or Ruan Mei couldn’t calculate what and how much Trailblazer would forget
I think these quest were alright. Ruan Mei’s was more appealing to me personally, at least in the 2nd half. The first half of Ruan Mei’s was…eh. Dr Ratio’s wasn’t my favorite to play, but the writing felt better to me. They all fail and succeed in different ways.
I think the dialogue at the end of ratio's quest suggests we're going to see a continuation with this. As he mentions Asta specifically as one who should be influenced. So I exspect a continunce of some sort in the future, as I don't think Asta worships Herta like the other researchers. I'm also replaying the game atm, and you can easily do this quest line like straight away. It's actually way more acsessable then most the others. You have to complete the loufu main quest to touch ANY of those ones. which is just PAIN. it ment I missed out on the last light cone.
There is a bit more about the ending I think people maybe over looking being it is a reflection of social norms and how negatively certain ones can affect the majority. The ending showing how the status quo is still maintained just shows how strong it is. As Dr. Ratio said, majority of the people who follow and worship these geniuses are basically cults at this point. Stuck in a way of life they themselves are content with never learning and expanding their own knowledge so those Genius people can do that for them instead. It is a reflection of society itself when something has become the Norn of society. People are so use to the way things are that despite a great event either negative or positive, they end up defaulting back to the norn again because they become too use to that way of life. A certain reflection of the common saying "the crisis is over and things return to normal" which we see what "normal" is with this society.
Researchers still trusting the Geniuses felt like a safer choice considering the game as a whole. And it does make sense since they do worship the geniuses after all. It's like a cult as you've said and we all know how fanatics go at it. However, it would be indeed more interesting for future plot points to have that sort of discord in the space station. Silver lining is that we can always have that uprising opportunity with the introductions of the other geniuses especially those who are not really seeing eye to eye with Herta and the others. Who knows? Maybe another more unreasonable genius would just show up again and give us the party we wanted.
I think the ending was a satus quo ending because of the scheduling of the story updates. it had set up and interesting parts of it but couldn't go further because it had to end this way so players wouldn't be hung up on the space station when Penacony releases Its unfortunate it end up like, as it had a lot of potential to go forward in a satisfying way. The structure of updates is clearly hindering the storytelling in this case
I'm still a little confused about something: Why did Ifrit teleport Asta? Like I get they were trying to incite chaos, but how was Asta the "spark to ignite"? They were teleporting researchers that were upset with management are the ones going missing. How is teleporting someone WITHIN management supposed to help?
i feel like people were distrustful of management and if the top 1 in charge vanished after Herta was attack, it would make others think she did it. and spark a revolt/chaos is my guess?
I agree with your analysis, Dr. Ratio’s quest was pretty cool, but Ruan Mei’s story (the character I actually pulled for) was quite disappointing and disjointed. I’m a very invested day one player and I absolutely adore HSR, but the character development, especially of characters who aren’t an integral part of the main story, is disappointing imo. Luocha, Argenti and now Ruan Mei, they have such potential and mystery, but I feel we’re getting only a little superficial taste, only the suggestion of an interesting story, with little to no pay-off. Remaining optimistic one could assume this is just the tip of the iceberg and we’ll get more in the future. But with the insane amount of new 4 and 5 stars being released, I find it hard to believe that all those characters will get the attention they deserve. And that makes me worried. I have paid actual money for several of these units and I’d like my money’s worth. Not just in gameplay and cool animations, but also in terms of story and screen time. I’ve learned a tiny bit about Ruan Mei, but not much more than I’d already seen in the short film and her trailer. It felt very superficial and over before it started…
@@theconman6505I agree that we will probably see more of Luocha, because his storyline at least intertwines with JL. I do however really worry if HYV will manage to give every unit the attention they deserve, for the simple reason that they are cranking out a new 5* every 3 weeks and don’t seem to stop anytime soon. With the small amount of story we get each patch, I feel naive for hoping we will revisit most characters anytime soon…
I find losing your memory from ruan mei anticlimactic because it makes mc relationship pointless with her in the first place. Ngl 1.6 update are good but not the story itself, for some reason i didn't find it engaging.
I was gonna pull ruan mei but after her story quest i couldnt stand her, the hsr meta moves so fast there's no point in building someone you dont like I will probably build ratio because hes annoying but interesting
Ruan mei's quest was weird, TB experiences and witnessed how much of a bitch RM is, but is just strangely ok with it not even upset. The TB is extremely subservient to RM, not even having any inside monologue of why they would act like that, like seriously? They kept pushing and pushing this narrative of how sympathetic her situation is, despite the terrible thing she do and force you to do, it doesn't make sense from a story telling perspective. It could've worked if they deliver it in a certain way, but It's being executed in a completely jarring and callous way, it makes me feel like the game is trying to gaslight me into believing in her narrative, like playing with a Dungeon Master on a complete power trip. It almost completely kills my hype for it, only saved by how busted her gameplay kit is. There is also the fact that the summary of her quest is just a pathetic, "yo stranger, i messed up, clean these shit up for me, you should be honored", its most likely a set up for something, but until that something is released then RM's story is just weird. Dr Ratio's quest is good tho. His introduction already established that he's a fancy narcissistic asshole. He's so blunt that you can get concussion when talking with him, and he basically looks down on you the whole mission. But despite all that, we can see that he is trying to accomplish something with this, it makes sense. There's also the fact that Ratio's twist completely exploit and criticize RM's "blind worship" of a quest prior to his quest, which makes it even better. We experienced his story in a properly open manner, we can expect to see more of him, friend or foe doesn't matter, but it will be entertaining if they keep it this clear.
You put into words what i couldnt when it comes to Ruan Mei's quest. She seems to have an interesting premise and i wanted to like her (or at least feel something for her) after her quest but it just left me feeling weird and made me more disinterested in her for some reason. Its the complete opposite when it comes to ratio though. I cannt wait to meet him on Penacony again
*Yes. This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to say, but I always get off topic into a Ruan Mei defamation high.* I’ve recently realized that when you can only give characters affirmations and praise in dialogue, I end up hating them; especially if they’re treated like they’re wonderful. It happened with Ayaka in Genshin. If it weren’t for having no choice but to consistently choose positive options for her and everyone giving her praise in game, I would have liked her... But she is, quite literally, perfect. Ruan Mei has open flaws, but none of those seem to matter to MC and there’s no way to call her out on her BS. All you can do is just... Be nice and do what she wants. You physically could not do anything to go against her and nothing happens to her in the end. To top it off... She seems to do the same kind of “I already know exactly what you’re going to do, so it’s pointless to try to do anything different” that Kafka does that makes me feel irritated... However, Kafka is leagues different. I hate her one day, and then I like her another. She’s done right in the “you’re going to do this” regard because you can have an *actual choice* to hate her or like her. I can only handle one of that kind of character in a game though. If there’s more than that, it makes me think: “If everything I do is something that’s already expected and nobody’s surprised that I did this thing, why am I even doing all of this?”
@@MetaGiga I'm definitely the same in that way. It happened in the recent story, it felt like we had so many hours being told to our faces how smart and complex Aventurine was that, even though I don't think he's written particularly badly, I'm sick of him and never want to see him again.
I actually have not played the new story since the Huohuo one. I think everything to do with the Xianzhou is pretty... bad. The story for that area is so disconnected and confused, very few characters actually have personality and depth, and the overall quality was evidently lacking. I think I will come around for Penacony to see how that turns out. I will come back for this quest, but I am currently considering dropping HSR if Penacony isn't Belobog-tier awesome. Shame too, because everything in Belobog has been great and I don't want to miss out on anything involving my girl Kafka.
It's funny because the moment Ruan Mei leaves the story becomes more interesting. It's the Luofu curse, where anything story related coming from it is rushed/bad
At this rate Penacony will be the "sinister six" phase where one certain person will invite all these villains and antiheroes to team up against humanity and that certain person will be a close friend to the trailblazers 😅
i play genshin for the story and the characters, and i tried to do the same for Starrail, but man sometimes the story is so hmm idk how even to describe it, silly? long? to complicated? disconnected? lost in the sauce? meaning lost in artifacts, books and such .. idk aside from main story all the other story bits dont really entice me ... the ghost event, skipped the whole story, the cat cake event skipped the whole story, Argenti story was nice and i liked the Duke Inferno stuff at the end of Dr. Ratios story ... in general i feel like HSR has the most potential to have the greatest and coolest stories cause of the way they have build that universe ... the funny thing is the stories of the eons and their eminators you read in books and stuff are cooler then the actual main story itself ..all the cool story bits are set in the past ... maybe we still are to early into the game and the real story has not started yet ... for now i shall play for the cool characters and cool storybits from the past ... lets hope they pick up the pace in Penacony
Really interesting video, and I agree with most of your points! I'd like to see a video about the 1.5 event story someday, because that was my favourite by far.
recently started playing the game again and legit thought they where character quests, it had no overall world or a plot moving forward story feel. filler arc, i enjoyed it but the huohuo stuff dragged on a bit
That makes sense. I think the reason being only the Trailblazer is a part of most of these, with the Astral Express being absent. That probably explains why the Belobog Continuance felt natural: March and Himeko were physically a part of it (other members of the Express).
with the 2.0 updates it's revealed that the trailblaze contiunece missions are not required, you can go straight to penacony after finishing the loufu.
I’m kinda happy because tbh I just enjoy any new story quest because I don’t nitpick nor do I care about the tiny details, I just love playing the game lol Though this is all absolutely fair I am not saying it is exempt from criticism, I just enjoyed it either way especially dr ratio lol
As a person with Abandonment issues irl, the first continuance mission this patch was hard to go though, but at least it is implied she will take care of at least Molten Cheese Tart and Ashy/Grey Bean Paste and said she will visit the others eventually, and i actually like the exposition dumps because i love the lore, but i like both of these quests, could they be better? yes, but is it good enough for now? yeah, I'd say so. Also By the time i get Black Swan on my main team, said team would consist of 3 Dangerous Mommies (Black Swan, Kafka and Ruan Mei) and 1 Stressed out child/teen with a Father figure literally attached to her (Huohuo and Mr. Tail), if you can't tell i like women who make me scaroused and i can relate to Huohuo in the constantly stressed aspect, also they seem to have good team synergy (at least in theory).
Definitely think that Jarillo 6 has consistently had the best stories with the most intriguing characters. The best character on the Luofu to me was probably Huo Huo, and she wasn't even in the main arc. Lol
@@navalhabr I dont even remember topaz story just that she dropped in the planet to get her money and the pkmn event which honestly was pretty fun but pointless in the end
Overall the story are not bad tho, i would like to have a well-written depth story, what they did here was setting up everything; and then the "honkai style" begin tho when there is more flags. Just like honkai impact 3 built up
All things in HI3 are connected due to one planet. And Luofu and so on isn't "build up", we won't see relevant plot points about regions outside of them, I think.
The first quest was just Ruan Mei appearing out of nowhere, forcing us to do errands for her and casually leaving. The second quest was good overall, mainly because dr Ratio was actually doing someting. Sadly, because of the amount of characters they're releasing in future patches, they don't focus on characters currently available
Star Rail storytelling kinda feels like "and then this happened" without much connecting it. I skipped past the Luofu Huohuo stuff, so I could be completely wrong here, but it's like we've strayed far off from Phantalia, the Stellaron Hunters, and the bigger stuff set up to random filler that's going on for way too long. It feels like character quests masquerading as story quests
I mean, that's nothing new for genshin either. More than half of their filler main quests also basically act as character quests and usually the closest thing that connects the regions is "and now they visit each other", and Belobog/Luofu didn't actually focus solely on the characters and also had a good showing of the actual societies of both and other background/world building, so you're at least semi wrong there.
The Huohuo event actually goes really deep on the backstory of the Heliobuses (which Phantylia is known to be one), how they behave, what they want and what relationship they have with the Luofu citizens. While it is still pretty much filler content, what it brings is not irrelevant at all and indirectly helps us understand Phantylia's motives
On the one hand, I agree that really taking the time to develop the internal politics of the Space Station would be interesting. On the other, it feels like every single time Asta is involved in a quest, it's about people questioning her running of the Space Station. The main problem I have with Ruan Mei's quest is that we never really get any dialogue options that call her out on what she's doing wrong. I love her as a morally questionable character! That's really cool! But there's next to no *commentary* on the fact that her specific actions are morally questionable! The game's just like "yep she's like this hope you're fine with all that : )". Of course, that's not to say the game doesn't make it obvious that her actions are pretty deeply concerning; you'd have to be living under a rock to miss it and it's part of the broader criticism of the geniuses that Dr Ratio touches on. But you just don't get to properly acknowledge that fact as a player and it's... a little jarring. Dr Ratio is definitely an extremely compelling character though and I hope we see more of him.
I think you hit the nail on the head with these quests. This video is really well put together too, you definitely deserve more views. In my opinion, I feel like you didn't give the ending to the Ruan Mei quest more credit, since the players really got to see the magnitude of her mistake with the boss fight at the end. I feel like they built anticipation for this discovery pretty well too. The rest of that quest, though, was pretty uninteresting. I want to see Star Rail really make you experience the story in the future. They don't need to explain these events to us, they need to show us what's happening. They might have put themselves in a corner though with the engine for star rail and whatever budget they might have set for the developers.
Thank you for validating me lol I have a really big issue with Star Rail overall that is the lack of direction due to the nature of the game's setting. Everything is so disconnected that it has more of a "monster of the week" flavor than Genshin's overarching plot tied around each nation's problems in Teyvat. That and their latest quests have been... questionable for me. Everything beyond the first half of the Xianzhou was very disappointing and borderline nonsensical, especially anything regarding the high cloud quintet. I's a shame, cause the game is great, but they really need to step up the writing
Duke Inferno is the leader of the Anihilation gang who are known for indiscriminately attacking in the name of Nanook even though he never looks their way. This is LORE we already know
Sure, maybe some people did. But also Star Rail decided to have like 3 paragraphs of exposition to explain him and the gang. So they absolutely did not expect that people knew this already. Lol
Huh? That's not how any of this works. If they have to "spell it out" then they've been incompetent in properly setting it up for the general audience. Either tailor your story towards those who play everything and then just move on assuming they know, or put your most important information naturally in the main story quests without dumping it all on the viewer's face in a terribly written way. It's really that simple.
For what HSR does right, and they do so many things right, the story is the worst part of this game. Belobog storyline was the only one I thoroughly enjoyed.
I think the fact that nothing changed in the space station is intentionnal, it's supposed to show how hard Ratio's objective to "cure foolinshness" is succeed. He do what he can every times but it probably rarely work, fools mostly chose to stay fools. (I like to think that it will help Asta in the future tho)
just gonna say this because I just randomly saw it,but I don’t think continuances besides maybe Belebog’s are required or at least you can start them early if you want as I randomly watch a bit of a video on someone coming back to the game and they were able to start Ruan Mei’s story quest a bit after starting the Luofu’s quest, but Idk. I personally think thats more of a problem then requiring to do them as context for the missions is slightly needed (and though I skipped forward) I don’t think they touched Swarm disaster so context was lost for them. I would say this though, I don’t think all of the continuances will be needed to go to Penacony, only Belebog as that does plant the idea of the major game player of Adventurine. Then whilst finishing the video I also remember that Dr. L + Ratio will also be a game player in Penacony’s narrative. I don’t want for the two missions (Ratio and Topaz’s [Not Ruan Mei]) to gatekeep people out of Penacony but I do think that if they are needed, its mainly to introduce and build an idea on either a plot point or character for later quests. Most characters which are going to be in Penacony that aren’t specifically from Penacony have been mentioned here and there (besides Sparkle I think) and or blatantly seen and slightly fleshed out so maybe we’ll have mystery in Penacony where a character that we’ve gotten to learn slight bit. Either way great video and while some things I don’t agree with, I think this message is too long and I’ll stop now.
I can't find 100% confirmation of this, but from what I understand, Trailblaze Continuance are not mandatory for continuing the main Trailblaze Quest path. Again, I'm not a new player so I can't 100% confirm this, but from what I understand Trailblaze Continuance unlock after completing certain necessary story steps, and then can be completed at any time.
Except for Belobog part, EVERY story quests is full of exposition and pointless endeavor. Every characters is already perfect with zero development to keep the status quo the same no matter what. By the way Ruan Mei is not "grey" she is just a bad person or borderline EVIL with zero morals, distrusting and disregarding of every life except for herself. In conclusion 1.6 story is pointless except just introducing of characters, the same with EVERY story after Belobog. I hope the Penacony story would improve.
@StrayMaverick hey it happens. It was their inazuma. Surely penacony will be good. (Even though I enojyeyw lauofo if only for how cool they made the cutsceans lol)
The overall patch was fire, but this trailblaze continuance was, uh... yeah. Very rough. The ending with Ratio and Screwllum was good, but too much fluff for a tiny bit of payoff. And while I love Ruan Mei as a unit, her overall character was definitely a bit disappointing to me. VA was great, but the character is cold and honestly not that interesting. They did make me really like Screwllum and Ratio tho!
I'm sadly struggling at the last bit of Ratio's one, the characters I'm using are level 50. But struggle due to lack of ceartin elements they are weak too, due to bad gatcha luck.
Ruan Mei quest felt so random, being drugged, forced to run errands for her and then just leaving? Just felt that she was forced into the story for no payoff. Ratio's actually felt like he was doing something, there was some narrative to his and overall decent.
I kinda gave up on HSR story and lore after Belobog arc (the whole thing with Abundance and Blade and General..) i just don’t understand anything at this game anymore xD
Y'know, if you liked debating Ratio, you should definitely go play the Ace Attorney franchise if you haven't already. The debate mechanic is pretty much directly lifted from those games and the idea of having Dr Ratio orchestrate the events of his continuance story on his own is definitely reminiscent of those games. Also Star Rail doesn't have lawyers yelling at each other, bad game/10 /j
@@StrayMaverick Do you actually think that these story quests+ will be mandatory to continuing the main traiblaze missions? I cannot confirm 100% that they will not be mandatory but this is the most likely scenario
@@kostas214pro The thing is.. the trailblaze continuance missions did not introduce any new concepts or even factions, other than Topaz's one where we are introduce to the power of the IPC directly. So yea I can't feel that they are mandatory at all.
i don't think you should rank these 2 quest together. i mean sure, what make Dr.Ratio take root from how the researcher in the space station has been portray so far, but it the meat of the quest is entirely different. that being said. i'd rank Dr.Ratio quest above Ruan Mei's. the reason being pacing and how enjoyable the character said quest supposed to explore. i agree with the reason of Ruan Mei quest pacing is all out of whack. it feel so weird, however the meat of her quest which is the implication of her trying to recreate the already dead Emanator of the dead Aeon is got me excited. no way they are going to brough this massive setting changing potential up and leave it in the air(and of course Ruan Mei being more shady than Kafka of all people is nice to see too). for Dr.Ratio just comes down to his character of no nonsense a-hole teacher/professor. he is the carry of his own story and that's weirdly fitting for him.
My headcanon is that Nous does not recognize Dr. Ratio on purpose because his insecurity is core to his drive to pursue knowledge and truth. He would further the cause of the Erudition as a mediocre much more than if he were named a genius.
I personally think it's much purer than that. All the Genius Society members actually don't care for being called geniuses by others(yes including and especially Herta). They merely pursue whatever scholarly interest they currently have for the sake of their own curiosity. I believe this is the quality that Nous notices. On the other hand, the Intelligentsia Guild as a whole is more interested in elevating humans than actual pursuit of the boundaries of knowledge. In fact, this is my guess for the main source of discontent from the Intelligentsia Guild towards the Genius Society. Few of the Geniuses spread their work, or even actively record them. Once they found the answer to their current puzzle, they will just move on to the next one. Also, apparently HSR has never used the word "blessed" with Nous. Unlike the Hunt, Abundance, or even Elation, no one was mentioned to have been blessed by Nous. I suspect Nous just doesn't care, just like the Genius Society members they gazed upon.
HSR story is just not that good in general. The world building is solid and every patch seems promising but end up being disappointing. I don't think they're putting that much effort in the story right now, which is sad because the potential is there, but the fact is the majority of the player base is happy enough with more gameplay.
Ruan Mei isn't a morally gray character! If she was, she would show that she knows her actions are bad, but she does them for some noble reason. She is downright evil and posses no ethics. I'm pretty sure she'd blow planets with "boring" life if she became an aeon. Dr Ratio owes to his actions and doesn't pretend he's some "uwu I don't understand emotions uwu" type of type - unlike how Ruan Mei tried to excuse herself.
Bro ruan mei isnt even trying to excuse herself she did warm up to her creations a bit but she is still going to be an insane mad scientist no matter what
I didn't like the quest. My opinion was Ruan Mei's part was fine. - It played the memes and comedy that HSR is fond of - Ruan Mei's behavior is.. actually interesting. She is highly manipulative and she knows it. Not Kafka kind of manipulative, Ruan Mei feels like she's constantly applying some kind of Pavlov training to us. It's quite clear she is not seeing any of us as individuals, only her end goal. Which to note is not malicious, it's pure curiosity. - The only part I felt very off-putting was.. Mr. Ratio's appearance. There was no reason, it didn't add anything (not even anything non-meaningful), and it was completely ignored. I really disliked Mr. Ratio's part. - His line of reason was nonsensical and stupid. It all comes down to, "well it can only be you, so it must be you" - And I was very unsure throughout what I'm arguing against, and so has to redo the argument section many times. The points don't match up meaningfully - The introduction of the Annihilation Gang doesn't serve any purpose here. And too conveniently resolved. It's like they're just dropping by to say hi. For story purpose it would be so much better to use an existing threat than a new one, like another curio or new phenomena from the fragmentum. Or even purely office politics. - The ending of Mr. Ratio being "more a doctor than a scholar" is.. given the earlier happenings, quite vague. Actually I have no idea what is the "ignorance" he is trying to "cure" after playing the quest.
I'm kinda worried about the direction these quests are taking, they've been lacking the quality that was left behind in Belobog, nothing they put out so far was able to recreate the feeling from that quest. I had no idea it was a requirement to get to penacony and as much as I enjoyed Huohuo's story, I can't imagine being forced to go through that roadblock just to continue the main mission, I hated having to go through Ayaka and Yoimiya story quests to continue Inazuma's archon quests lol these should be completely optional imo I also didn't like the way they shoe horned Duke inferno in this, if he's going to play a major part in Penacony, I'd much rather have his introduction happen there instead of a half assed one here. It would've been a lot more interesting to see the effects of unrest in the space station with their trust in the geniuses waning, I wish they focused on that aspect a lot more instead of presenting it in text message form lmao, it's worse than having npcs, these guys don't even have faces at all lmao
Kinda wish theyd make characters just straight up bad Even genshin refuses to make some of the supposed main villains be totally bad just because they are likely or already are playable
Best case scenario is that ZZZ has this since they operate outside of China. Outside of Hoyoverse, you're more likely to have playable villains if Western Media makes a gacha.
I mean, that demon guy who showed up in Dr. Ratio's quest seems pretty bad. The fact is, most people aren't just plain BAD so it makes sense. Ruan Mei's morals are questionable, but it's not like she has a goal of taking over the world or destroying anything so it wouldn't make sense to just make her bad for the sake of it.
As someone who didn’t like belobogs story for like 90% of it I feel so out of place here lol. Honestly this quest was super fun for me but I know it’s an opinion, because hey I love the luofu story (as a setup) so uhhhhhh lol
@@StrayMaverick yeah I do understand that feeling. These quests in general I feel will always be kneecapped because they aren’t the main story, even if I enjoy them I can see that they are held back by that fact. I hope they can find a way to circumvent it someday
I've stopped playing HSR a while back cause it's been boring, and now my only contact with the game have been your videos because you take it from a snoozefest to something i actually look forward to. Banger videos keep em coming.
It feels weird to call these quests as "Trailblaze Continuance", since as you said, they were more like character/companion quests. After finishing both, my impression of both Ruan Mei and Dr. Ratio didn't change much; they were just as I imagined them to be. When you mentioned that these could've been a like a Halloween event, it made me question the direction of the quests or even the overall game. Ultimately, Ruan Mei's half was just to introduce an new Echo of War that we can farm for new characters. Honestly, it could've been a different character quest with a different associated boss and very little would change. Like what if Argenti and his quest came in 1.6 instead and this new Echo of War was what he was fighting and the entire Astral Express helped out? It is also kind of hard to consider this direction without looking at Genshin's. Zhongli's Act 2 and Azhdaha, Raiden's Act 2 and her Puppet, Nahida's Act 2 and Apep's Guardian. Their bosses were directly tied to their character/history and some level of importance could be emphasized. While Ruan Mei just wanted to learn the biology of an Emanator so she made a clone of one? It might be a much to say one feels more inconsequential than the other (but then again, this is also my personal opinion). While there are criticisms with how Genshin initially approached Trounce Domains, they have made adjustments to allow players (at rank 40) to tackle the bosses even if you hadn't reached story points.
