Back before Penacony launched and we still believed the Annihilation Gang had a chance to be our major antagonist faction for the region, Constance was the character that caught my attention the most. And it wasn’t even about the horns and the tail!.. At least, not completely.
I have loved the idea of the Garden of Recollection since their early introductions in the 1.x era, and the possibilities seemed endless. A whole group of people who can read and collect memories, and a section of radicals that even go as far as to alter or outright delete them? Yes, please, that’s like an unreliable narrator cranked up to 11.
Alas, the wild Acheron appeared, and the Annihilation Gang got turned into relics, both narratively and quite literally when it comes to Duke Inferno. But now, Constance has a second chance in Version 3.8 since we return to Penacony and finally meet the elusive Cremator face to face… and also learn why wishing for unreliable narrators just might backfire.
In the early Penacony story, it felt like the Trailblazers stumbled upon a whimsical murder mystery. Not only that, but the characters we’ve met up in the first couple of patches – Black Swan, Sparkle, Aventurine, Acheron, Firefly, Sunday – were all there for their own reasons, goals and gains, and it felt like they could switch sides at any point. In fact, that even happened a few times, making the Express’ position quite precarious.
However, around V2.2, this type of narrative was left behind, and the game embraced a more philosophical approach with Sunday’s motivations, Charmony Dove, and Ena the Order. Some attribute it to a rewrite that happened due to a massive story leak, but the fact remains: the game changed its approach mid-way, and some stories have suffered as a result.
Here are a few of them for you: who killed Robin? The popular (and quite logical) assumption had been Gallagher, however, he never claimed or admitted to have done it himself. What was Firefly doing on Penacony besides going on sweet dates with the Trailblazer (which received its fair share of complaints)? Most of her story, much like Robin’s, happened off-screen. Sparkle, this wild loaded gun, ended up never really firing – off-screen she had been working as an agent of Elio, ensuring Firefly’s journey stays relatively safe while adhering to Elio’s Script. Similarly, the rest of the Stellaron Hunters worked off-screen, mostly Silver Wolf.
What about Mr. Gopher Wood, aka the Dream Master? After Acheron’s clash with Aventurine, he ended up banishing her from Penacony’s Dreamscape, but she got swept off her feet by Black Swan and into another off-screen dancing adventure before finally meeting Boothill.
Finally, Aventurine himself. Saved from Nihility off-screen by Argenti, and came to a certain deal with Boothill regarding the IPC’s Oswaldo Schneider. Off-screen, of course.
That’s quite a few off-screen resolutions, don’t you think? And that is what Version 3.8 aims to solve – the developers have revealed as much during one of the early 3.x livestreams, introducing the new kind of Finality missions. Did it manage to succeed in this lofty aspiration? Yes, somewhat. But also not at all, having muddled things up even more. Let’s dive right in and see what Version 3.8 had in store – story and gameplay-wise, within the confinements of the patch itself and when considered with the previous Amphoreus storytelling.
In Version 3.8, we learn that the Trailblazer’s memories of Penacony had been tempered with on the request of the Stellaron Hunters. Allegedly, retaining the memories of how things turned out, would have invited Nanook’s attention to our space-faring raccoon too soon, leading to a bad ending for Amphoreus and the entire universe.
Constance, the new character and a habitual traitor, was the one to burn away the protagonist’s memories. And, although she is unable to restore them, her aid comes in a different form: she narrates Elio’s Script and uses her powers to help the Trailblazer reconstruct what happened. While Stelle and Caelus were Trailblazing across Penacony, Firefly had been going through her own journey of Finality. And, once the two paths collide and reality unveils itself before the Trailblazer’s eye, they will no longer be able to hold onto the imagined ending of Penacony that we saw in V2.3.
Throughout the story that uses a massively improved camera work, we learn some of the information that slipped from our attention previously. Robin gets her shiny new backbone and prepares to start beating people up with it: following Firefly and the Trailblazer around, confronting and threatening Sparkle, and more. The story also goes into detail as to what kind of problems she had with her voice and how they were resolved.
Firefly herself got surprising depth in the beginning of the story: through her own quest, we got a chance to learn more about the Iron Cavalry of Glamoth and their connection to Tayzzyronth. As it turned out, Glamoth was using the power of the Path of Propagation to fight against the Swarm. That also explains the importance of the Empress to the planet and the Knights: she was acting as the “mother” of the swarm of Knights, and losing her influence meant losing the sense of self. And it gave a darker, more sinister meaning to Firefly’s illness and SAM’s visuals, such as the wings.
Other characters that received hefty work include Sparkle herself, whose tricks were more or less on display this time, and Aventurine, who managed to pull off just one more gamble while no one was watching. Black Swan had her time in the limelight to exchange snippy comments with Constance and very resolutely refuse using the Cremators’ powers for her own gain, proving Evernight’s assessment of her to be true.
If you had a gripe about Dream Master, the potential Big Bad of Penacony, being unceremoniously offed off-screen, you’d be happy to know that he was made into an actual character in this version. Backstory, motives, schemes, crimes, regrets… Mr. Gopher Wood has it all.
Having been punished by the Family for his supposed failures, he has fused himself with the Dreamscape of Penacony and started working on bringing back Ena the Order. His goal was to use the Stellaron to bring back the Swarm Disaster – albeit only in the sweet dreams of the Planet of Festivities – and see as terrified dreamers call out to Ena, thus bringing back the Order.
His plans spun across years and involved plenty of people: AR-214, the lost Knight of Glamoth, Firefly, Robin, Sunday, and more – and we have played right into his hands. However, the combined might of the Nameless and Stellaron Hunters, the Emanator of Nihility, two Stonehearts and the IPC Fleet, a Memokeeper and a Cremator, and some others, was enough to simply smash through it and knock some sense into Sunday who had almost become an Aeon with his sheer willpower.
In the end, Firefly uses the Script and the Stellaron to sacrifice herself to pull off the impossible victory, leading to the Trailblazer pleading with Terminus to undo such an unfair outcome. In addition to the loredump on the Aeon of Finality, we have also learned an interesting fact about the Stellaron: unlike the popular belief, the cancer of all worlds is not the product of Nanook the Destruction, but rather Xipe the Harmony.
However, not all things have received the same amount of attention or gotten their resolution. Despite the heavy character development work done for her, Firefly still slides right back into the waifu mode in the very end. It feels almost jarring after seeing the badass Glamoth Knight side of her in action, but is admittedly explained by her simple, heartbreaking wish: to be ordinary, and to fulfill her promise to the Trailblazer that the two have made before the beginning of the game, while the Raccoon was still with the Hunters.
Constance, despite being the writers’ Swiss army knife for all plot holes and missed opportunities, doesn’t reach any kind of resolution for her own character arc and just… fades away despite all of her screentime. The talk between Black Swan and Acheron at the end feels almost nonsensical if you look at the Cremator’s involvement in the plot and the treatment she’s given to other characters, Black Swan included. Considering the whole patch feels like The Dahlia’s fanfiction with Canon Compliant and Alternative Ending tags, I think that was the one scene where she was simply too unsubtle.
Similarly, Sparkle didn’t really benefit from the extra time as she had failed her way to success, being busted by Black Swan and Sunday (in the main story) and by Constance and Robin (in 3.8) – fitting for a Fool, I suppose. Aventurine’s rescue also didn’t get any deeper than “random Argenti apperance!”, truly Mr. Worldwide, surprised he didn’t manage to show up on Amphoreus somehow.
Now, let’s talk about game-wide meta reasons why I feel the patch had been buried despite the good it tried to bring. This is not so much the faults of V3.8 itself, but rather issues accumulated over time and continue popping up repeatedly, the newest update not an exception.
First off, the type of storytelling that Honkai: Star Rail had been going through over the last two years: a dream world, then a dream within a dream that is leaking into reality, a switch to a simulation with time loops, resets and data anomalies. And, considering the radio broadcast on the Express at the end of 3.7 and the briefest teaser in history referring to Planarcadia, we’ll likely go to a “painting turned real” or “virtual reality of Aha” world next.
And don’t forget about the “oops, you’ve actually remembered it all wrong” – Enigmata and Fuli are the best weapon of a bad writer. At any point when it’s convenient, it can turn out that anything and everything had been fake from the beginning, the stakes dramatically raised or lowered at the drop of a hat – just look at Amphoreus that is chilling as the world of Memoria after its supposed destruction, just waiting to come back and introduce a number of Chrysos Heirs SP.
Additionally, the story of Penacony had been over for a year and a half. Even those who had been very engaged in the lore and characters are likely at least a bit hazy on the plot right about now. Jumping from PoV to PoV, scattered over multiple patches, various stories and locations, and told by the most unreliable narrator that lies as easily as she breathes and can actually change memories, forcing you to continuously analyze and consider and recall every little bit? This was not the way to go about it.
Characters like Constance, amusing and refreshing as she is, are only great in small doses and secondary roles. Perhaps if she had actually been there in 2.x and her involvement had been split among 3-4 patches, it would have been one thing. But as it is, you have a ficwriter’s favorite OC that managed to deceive Firefly, dampen Robin’s powers, outfox and outplay Sparkle, out-Memokeeper Black Swan, outdance Acheron, threaten Aventurine, work for and betray the Dream Master, work for and get ultimately fired by the Stellaron Hunters for the future betrayal, oppose Sunday, destroy the protagonist’s memories, and more, all tightly condensed into just a couple of hours of screentime in a 5-hours long update.
Frankly, some of these plots could and should have instead been split among the actual cast of Penacony and the off-screen participants to give them more time and involvement. The whole “your memories are wrong” plot could have easily been handled by Black Swan herself – or even partially by the Trailblazer. With the patch being in production and development for months, the team could have started adding hints to things being not exactly right after the end of Amphoreus, with the protagonist now having the power of Remembrance and perhaps having a chance to notice the tampering but not restore the memories themselves.
Even then, some plots have remained without any attention – such as Acheron knowing entirely too much and even being familiar with Elio. What has she done after attacking Aventurine and being banished by the Dream Master? How did her and the rest of the characters wake up and meet? What about Boothill? Who tipped him off about Acheron, and what did the Rangers do after arriving on Penacony? What did Jade ask of Robin to free Sunday, and how is the IPC handling its newfound power on the planet? Are we going to be going back for Penacony Finality Pt.2 to get the answers to these, as well?
In fact, how ARE the things on Penacony now, some time after the whole Ena’s Dream and the revival of Order incident is over? What is going on within the Family with Sunday gone and Robin acting on her own? That would have been a perfect thing to explore over the course of an event of sorts, something like Wardance or A Foxian Tale of the Haunted, won’t it? Perhaps have a run-in with Robin who’d also just returned from Amphoreus, maybe ask Black Swan’s version of events and whether what Constance said is the truth, no? Yeah, about that…
Over the course of 1.x and 2.x, Honkai: Star Rail had a nice balance when it came to its events – a big, plot-driven and engaging event followed by a bunch of mini-games, and then a big event again, usually awarding a 4-star weapon or character. Some of them include: Belobog’s Museum restoration, Aurum Valley’s Hustle and Bustle, A Foxian Tale of the Haunted, Saga of Primaveral Blade, and the aforementioned Wardance that also tied into the main story of Hoolay and Feixiao.
I could see that it would be hard to create such an event on Amphoreus, as it was going through dire circumstances that were repeatedly getting worse from 3.1 onward – though that didn’t prevent the developers from putting in vibe-killing Seals or Chimeras in silly mobile-like match 3 PvP mini-games – and the same can be said about 4-stars. After all, all our Chrysos Heirs are the heroes of the prophecy, it would have been rotten to reduce one or more of them to a 4-star.
But now we’re back to Penacony, in an unusually long and dry patch that had been planned for months in advance – announced as far back as 3.2. This would have been a perfect opportunity to reintroduce a long, plot-driven event that would have helped players to go over what happened on Penacony since… and perhaps let Mr. Reca out of the unplayable basement he shares with Screwllum as the newest 4-star. After all, there has not been a new 4-star since the release of Moze in September 2024.
Instead, we’re back to more Chimeras in a largely AFK event. Admittedly, this is not HSR’s unique problem – the prevalence of low cost, finished-and-forgot type of mini-game driven events is widely spread in the gacha space overall, the same could be said about Genshin (though it still gets large events, some of them actually plot-driven like the Mikawa Flower Festival or Iktomi Spiritseeing Scrolls), ZZZ or WuWa.
Another thing that Star Rail shares with its siblings is the flavor of the month waifu. With the Amphoreus wife, Cyrene, currently unavailable, it’s time to go back to the Penacony wife, Firefly. The idea and the approach themselves are not unexpected in any way, shape, or form – we’re talking about gacha characters, there will always be just enough baiting for the protagonist and the player behind them.
However, outside of the few noticeable exceptions who you’d likely be able to name, HoYo gachas always managed to walk the fine line between baiting, character development and lore – even the more fanservice-driven Zenless. That was what favorably set them aside from other gachas for me, and why I keep playing all of the big three while dropping titles from other developers within a year. But over the last two months, all three games had four characters who are head over heels for the protag (Cyrene and Firefly in HSR, Columbina in Genshin Impact, and the upcoming Ye Shunguang in ZZZ).
Not only that, but all of these girls revolve around the same few concepts: a promise of some sort, the importance of memories, self-sacrifice, and, of course, love – with some timey wimey shenanigans involved. I have to wonder if there’s a new narrative lead or a manager who has been pushing for it, or are the writers simply out of fresh ideas and falling to the ol’ reliable to fish for cheap connection with the player?
In fact, both HSR and ZZZ have spending events to go alongside the newest waifu – V3.7 for Star Rail and the upcoming V2.5 for ZZZ. Running another one in the bare bones V3.8 would have probably been too much, too fast, so we’re off the hook for now. But that also begs the question whether Genshin will capitalize on that as well.
Your bet on the Planarcadia wife? Could it be Yae Sakura, whose distinctive shadow could be seen on the initial teaser? Or maybe Firefly SP now that we know she has survived and will ultimately be fine? I will readily admit that baiting is a spectrum, and there’s a huge difference between Genshin Impact and, say, Snowbreak: Containment Zone or Love and Deepspace, and all three HoYoverse games are still keeping to the PG-rated, family-friendly and cute ways rather than having characters outright salivate and attempt to jump your bones. But it is a slippery slope, especially when similar situations occur across multiple games at once.
Ultimately, Honkai: Star Rail – Version 3.8 is an interesting experiment in storytelling that has been dragged down by the narrative approach, how much time has passed since the end of Penacony, and the typical end of the expansion content drought.
The idea of seeing a different side of the story is an intriguing one, but to do so through an extremely unreliable narrator that feels like writers’ self-insert who explores missing memories in a dream within a dream might have been too much. Even without the least reliable narrator in the Honkai-verse.
Additionally, it introduces a certain precedent when it comes to story retcons – who is to say that in a year from now we won’t have Finality: Amphoreus that would turn things around completely? Or maybe Finality: Xianzhou? Directed by Mr. Reca, real events, no extra special effects, only the usual tricks of the Garden of Recollection and a touch of Finality.
When it comes to it, I hope that future Finality missions would simply be a PoV different from that of the Trailblazer, revealing some things left unexplored during the main story – think of Version 3.4 that was focused almost exclusively on Khaslana’s PoV from the cycles we had no chance to see for ourselves. The protagonist does not have to be omnipotent or omniscient, it’s enough that we, players, will know the hidden story and will be able to form a coherent picture, no retcons and memory shenanigans needed.
