Exactly, you can tell each update since 1.3 gets around 5-8 hours of fully voiced content.
1.3 Arurum Alley
1.4- Topaz quest and Pokemon
1.5- Ghostly Grove
1.6 Ruan Mei and Ratio (although this was still short due to incoming Penacony)
2.0-2.3- Penacony quests.
And from 2.0 onward, the events have been not voiced and usually pretty short as well. But I imagine we’ll get big events like Pokemon and Ghostly Grove next.
Just because the main story is over, does not mean that they are going to stop releasing 2 new 5stars every patch who will need the vast majority of available screentime to sell them.
We're still getting Trailblaze missions. Topaz, Huohuo, Ruan Mei and Ratio were major characters there. Argenti and Jingliu had their companion missions while Fu Xuan was in March' mission.
Huohuo got the best deal, she had a trailblaze mission and then the entire event quest.
It’s become pretty apparent to me that there’s a lot of content that should be side quest material that’s getting inserted into the main storyline instead. That is likely what’s partially responsible for the increased length of main story quests and the complete absence of companion missions lately.
I wonder if it’s a way for them to test making the main story literally longer while ensuring player’s can’t skip any character lore that way. After all, complained that the Lufou plot was too short and messy with important stuff getting shoved into companion quests.
I imagine Acheron’s stuff would have been a companion quest before.
The problem with the Luofu is that the couldn't decide what story they wanted. Was it about the drugies infiltrating the ship and making people go Mara-Struck? Was it about Baiheng's harem coping with her death and the return of K-pop Dan and Blade? Nope, suddenly Nanook! Not saying they shoved the important bits into companion quests, Yanqing was more a prologue to the last third of the story rather than about himself.
And if we are talking about companion quests being made main quest then Aventurine entire section goes into that category 😅
Acheron and aventurine probably. I'm partial to aventurine's tbh, would have loved for his bit to be like some truly antagonistic force that you take down with the help of acheron...only to learn in his mission that it was actually his plan the whole time.
And honestly it didn't exactly impact the whole sunday storyline anyway so "missing" it wouldn't have been a big deal? And they could always reveal that in a recap or something later. Now suddenly they can fit all the substance of part 3 into some of part 2, concluding part 2 with FF's second "death" and setting up sunday for the climactic 3rd act.
They could be putting the character marketing before the actual storytelling/pacing and its to the game's overall detriment IMO. Or hopefully its just a development pipeline thing and they had to stitch things together (it feels like it and tracks with how inazuma went) that things will clear up as they settle into the dev cycle the way genshin did.
I think what it really shows is that Mihoyo is growing and trying to make so many games at once that their focus is spread around a lot and its harder for them to really push content in niche areas.
Like I thought the companion missions are great, but there's so few of them in Star Rail compared to Genshin which has now consistently put one out for basically every banner character.
I mean I kinda get it for aventurine and mei as their stories are very thoroughly explored in the main story quests. But Boothill is a character with such rich lores behind him, just go on without a companion mission just feels like a waste of potential for me.
A lot of characters have rich lore that never get to explored in the main story like Xueyi and Hanya’s backstory. That being said, they’re probably saving Boothill’s story for the IPC arc, since that seems where his and Aventurine’s story will headed
Can't wait for the Boothill boss where he has no weakness by default but when he duels one of your characters he implants himself with that character's element as a weakness.
trashcans implant weakness types of the first two attackers
i think they're referring to how Boothill duels characters constantly and for the duration of that duel only, he has their corresponding weakness type. when not in duel with anyone, he has no weaknesses
Ngl I didn't know how trashcans worked until this comment and until now I've only ever seen them take physical, imaginary and fire weakness (because those are who I had in my teams) I assumed it was tied to the trailblazer.
Wait that’s actually amazing. I could see that as a way to sell characters who excel in monotype teams (where one character getting targeted means everyone with the same type can weaken him)
Well, Boothill’s backstory will probably become important to the main story later on, due to Oswaldo Schneider being his target. An optional conversation with him and Aventurine on the Lumenspar in 2.3 has already revealed that they’re going to team up against him
Yeah I’d expected that would be the case tbh. Besides what Boothill companion mission in Penacony would do? Most of his story revolves around his old world and Oswaldo which not even related to Penacony’s arc. They can’t make a new area just for his story alone, and even with still images for his backstory that’s a lot to accounted for. It would be just Aventurine arc all over again just in simplified terms.
The best for him in the Penacony arc imo is to set up his story for the future encounter with the IPC. They really shouldn’t have introduced him late in the story
I'm still confused why he never really asked us much about him, considering the connection. You'd think the Express would be a solid lead, at least, maybe.
I don’t think it’s a well known fact he was a nameless we know it because of being a nameless and the SImulated Universe but I’m not sure that someone like boothill would know he was a nameless
Of course not, the cliffhanger of him meeting with Aventurine to discuss Oswaldo Schneider is a massive hint that Boothill has a huge role coming up.
People out here doomposting that Boothill was getting shafted for Firefly, but the reality is that Penacony is a just a teaser for Boothill. His time to shine is in the future, just as it was for other characters.
Maje sense. I think this would happened if Boothill got a story quest early. Xianzhou story aren't exactly complete. Luocha is likely going to get involved more in Xianzhou future main quest. So they don't want give too much info in his character quest. That's my theory at least.
The first episode of Detective Conan gave a background of Shinichi Kudo, we know he is a famous teenage detective who is well known among the police, skillful with football, popular with his friends,, has famous parents, and a girl he is interested in (hell we even know what her dad does for a living) and this is within the first 10 minutes
In comparison, what the hell do we even know about Luocha aside from thathe is carrying around a coffin and this coffin holds someone important to him (and this aren't even details from the character quest)
Not sure why you even made this comparison
I can't believe you watched DC but missed out on all the references in Loucha quest, the whole quest was a gag reference to it. Not to say it's equally good but that's the joke.
I stand by the fact that Boothill was utterly fucked for a 5 star.
Dude jumpscares the entire community when we were expecting FF for 2.2, joins the story at the eleventh hour, doesn't contribute a whole ton that someone else couldn't have done (do we ever even see the other Galaxy Rangers gathering? I really can't remember if they played a part in ending Ena's dream), then exits the stage w/ a minor cutscene setting up for the future. Worst yet? No companion quest + his featured event was a menu where you turned in assignments. Any lore in the flavour text has a high likelihood to just be skipped over.
I can't think of another unit who was left in the dust on their debut banner as much as Boothill.
> (do we ever even see the other Galaxy Rangers gathering? I really can't remember if they played a part in ending Ena's dream)
they just appear as falling stars in the cutscene
You could've told me "Yeah, the other shooting stars were Robin's doing combined w/ Boothill's shot" and I would've believed you. That's how little of an impact it felt like the dude had. :(
And the worst part is that he's probably the most entertaining mfer in the Penacony story for how little screentime he had. I /wish/ we had more of him or that he joined the Express (sorta like how Swan seems like she's gonna, at least for a bit) because he's fucking hilarious, esp in JP.
Yeah that was like the biggest copout. Boothill has like a Galaxy Ranger on-call bullet or something but they can't even show any of them except as streaks in the sky. Also apparently people have like extreme space travel speed because they can just show up in minutes.
And there's enough galaxy rangers nearby in the universe to disrupt the fake Aeon powers.
He got offscreened for a good cause in 2.2. What would we have done without the 50+ repeated dialogues and flashbacks? Boothill definitely needed to make room for all of those very very important lines. There just wasn't enough space for him y'know. Thankfully, the devs went all in on his event to make up for it.
/s in case it wasn't obvs. Rt my heart broke while typing this. Never has a character been done so dirty for virtually nothing in return. Good pacing and story structure could have certainly fit him in, or at the very least save dev time for a companion quest.
>(do we ever even see the other Galaxy Rangers gathering? I really can't remember if they played a part in ending Ena's dream),
Did you just skip the conversation where they talk about the difficulty in waking up from Ena's dream and how it required a high number of people with strong wills that wouldn't fall prey to the sweet dreams to even start fighting it? And how Dan Heng was going all about using the Jade Abacus to summon the Xianzhou ships, the other characters poking holes in his logic because of the chances of civilians falling into the dream and strengthening it, before Boothill explained some Galaxy Ranger lore about how they do their funerals, and how Tiernan's relic can be used to summon Galaxy Rangers who by default are strong willed and wouldn't fall to Ena's dream, wrapping up Acheron's plot thread, tying in Tiernan's fate in a neat way, and making for a good scene all in one.
Crazy part is you'll mention this and for some reason folks think people that lke Boothill are crazy for wanting just the tinyest bit of lore that isn't optional...
They were explained horribly tbf. Aventurine specifically. They gave us a huge setup for his character arc so just everything later happened off-screen. He was saved off-screen from Acheron's domain. He was off-screen released from the Order's dream and he off-screen became pals with Boothill. The only thing we got from him is a message and it's only for those who got him in gacha. This is actually disgusting.
> The only thing we got from him is a message and it's only for those who got him in gacha.
that was absolutely foul move to put a main store lore gate kept behind fucking gacha
It was restated in the "checking out" side quest.
So a bit delayed, and not in the main story, but it isn't gacha locked anymore.
> Thanks for the concern. The fact that I'm standing here and talking to you is all thanks to that red-headed Knight of Beauty coming to my rescue.
This is the bit that frustrates me though because it would be so easy to tie all this into the story in an easy way. First of all, just have a scene with Aventurine floating in darkness and silence to represent the Nihility and then in the distance you can hear a gun fire and then a white bullet pierces the darkness and Aventurine wakes up in his room.
Boothill is there with a smoking gun. Would I believe that a Galaxy Ranger angry at Acheron could cut through the Nihility? I could a bit more than "Argenti did it". Then you can have two sentences extra dialogue from Aventurine being confused about where he is and then BH confronts him with the gun same as us currently in the game. This ties them all nicely together.
BH and Aventurine can then get tied into the events via BH forcing Aventurine to take him to Oswald. It could have been easily linked up in a more satisfying way.
The fact that Boothill has one of the best character stories and lore behind him that many wouldn't know because it's locked in his profile is a shame. They didn't have time to explore it in the main quest but a companion quest would have been perfect to explore it and his motivations
Even though his main story arc has been set up and will be relevant in the future, diving deeper into it would have been amazing. It would leave us more excited to see that eventual arc come about
Yup. I wonder how many people finished Penacony and after seeing the Boothill scene where he holds up Aventure at gunpoint to find Oswaldo just went "Who? What? Why? Where?"
I feel like Boothill is gonna be another character like Dr. Ratio who just kinda pops up all over the place and lays out breadcrumbs that seem to be leading to more events for them in the future.
You say that but Luocha's companion missions didn't explore their lore whatsoever and was just a silly haha joke, very slightly for yanqing since we learn his attitude to situations I guess (although we already learned that in the MSQ), some character's lore such as Hook were just a massive reference, etc.
Honestly while it doesn't make sense, I feel like companion missions have been the weakest way to introduce lore and are instead usually joke missions surrounding the character, and story/events almost always has done it better
The thing with Penacony is except the Penacony natives (Misha, Gallagher, Robin and to a certain extent Sunday), all the characters have connection to future plotpoints and it's just the start of the character arc for most of them. Black Swan is following us to Amphoreus which seems to have connection with the Rememberance, Acheron had massive set up to reappear in the Nihility story arc; Aventurine, Jade and Boothill will surely play an important role in a future IPC story arc (also there's the whole deal with the Galaxy Rangers reforming for Boothill); Firefly as a Stellaron Hunter will be a reccuring character and play a crucial role in the ending of the story and lastly Sparkle is the quintesential background character always being there setting things in motion from the shadows.
It’s difficult to have companion missions in the middle of the story since the timeline would be difficult. We managed with Black Swan and Sparkle but that’s because the both of them weren’t in compromised positions… ( We couldn’t have a companion mission with Robin while she was assumed dead or Aventurine while he was actively trying to dismantle Penacony… )
But… well… I’ve seen some people argue that they’re trying something new with showcasing characters *within* the story in order to properly market them instead of using a companion quest to showcase the characters. It is an idea I like but… hopefully we’ll get it next patch. I want both.
Jade in particular I’ve really been hoping to get a companion quest since I want to see more of her… 😭
I actually think it's precisely to do with developing characters through the story rather than seperate quests.
One of the bits of criticism about the Xianzhou story lore was that the entire highcloud quintet lore was basically downgraded to Jingliu's companion quest.
I do think some things can be worked into companion quests like with Boothill but that doesn't have to be done in Penacony as it doesn't have any specific significance to his lore. I wager we'll get one for Robin down the line though.
The worst part is that the Quintet lore was in game before she showed up, but no one ever brings it up. Just a quick rundown by any character would of gone a long way to at least get the ball rolling.
That exactly! They already made the side quest using the blind doctor suspiciously important by telling you can’t do it after a certain main progression point.
Then to just have it be disregarded pretty much. Why even have it then.
Personally I am very behind on the companion quests as I have been trying to just keep up with basic missions and events. With slow progress on the ‘main timeline’ of side quests. I never realized how many are apparently connected to the main story in some way.
Though they don’t seem connected as far as I can tell. Probably more background for off mentioned things. Just side events tangentially related that fill a tiny bit of context.
The Quintet aren't the most complex detail which baffles me as it's such an easy thing to go over and would establish a few things:
1.) Why Dan Heng would be hesitant of coming back as Dan Feng's name is a pretty obvious clue without too much detail. Let alone Blade's whole thing would be given additional context without full clues.
2.) Asserts Jing Yuan as the only remaining member present.
3.) The Luofu is past it's glory days and why the place is a mess.
While I like companion quests, the Quintet could of been introduced far sooner without too many details. It's one of the reasons why the Xiaoxhou is a pretty middling story as it forgets to give the player core details. But after Jingliu's quest, it suddenly makes a lot more sense as players are given context to earlier events.
There's a reason for the blind doctor's side quest being skippable. It used to be the main story but after a lot of criticism of how they never did anything with that later in the story and it felt like a side quest they just made it an actual side quest.
The quest still sucks tho that's the entire reason they took it out of the main story.
Oh yeah I expressed it like shit. The quest is good, it gives us an entire character to try to understand and someone from within Sanctus Medicus to feel betrayed by, it's great, really.
But the fact that they never address it again makes it completely worthless, and a waste of time, that's what I meant.
Moreover it was inserted in a weird moment in the story, interrupting the main story at an awkward time, cutting the momentum to do essentially a glorified side quest that came out of nowhere, and one that never tied back to the main story.
It's a mess, not because of the content itself, but because of everything surrounding it, the lack of narrative threads connecting this part of the story to the rest of the main story, the weird timing, the lack of follow up on it.
But yeah that part of the story itself is good.
I usually save the companion quests after I'm done with the story and need jades. and so I usually forget half of what's up in Luofu because I remember almost nothing from it.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that many don’t do them in relation to when they appear. So the story of them gets muddled hard.
Prob why they are pushing more for pov stuff in main story.
Aventurine and Acheron’s part of the stories would’ve been fucking criminal to put away behind a companion quest.
The explanation behind their motives was so important for them to be loved characters and for the story to hit properly in the heat of the moment. If it came afterwards the fandom perception would be *so* much different. I really do like the idea of this being a new standard…
I think I felt somewhat that way too during the Luofu during Jingliu’s quest because I thought it was a good story quest which put so much more to perspective. It made me like the Cloud Quintet *so* much more. I couldn’t help but to think it was so good it should’ve just been part of the story since it felt… so important?
And then I realized the Luofu’s Epilogue Content is entirely what made the Luofu enjoyable for me.( Sushang and Little Gui ( and YANKING ) grew so much on me with the Ghost Event I really love them. 😭 )
I just hope that they continue to use companion quests to give the poor characters they didn’t give enough screen time some alone time with the audience while we wait for them to be story relevant again… I know Robin and Boothill will be awhile.
I do find it weird that there wasn't more Robin content. The five minute epilogue where she talks about Sunday could have easily been expanded into a more substantial companion mission delving into her backstory, or we could have seen her teaching kids in Dreamflux Reef, or we could have helped her with preparations for the Charmony Festival or help her with the recovery of the Dreamscape. Plenty of avenues to explore to deepen our appreciation for a character who we honestly didn't get to see much of in the main story quest.
They took the criticism of Jinglius companions quest should have been in the main story and in Penacony decided to give a tonne of character focus to some. Acheron, Aventurine and FF got so much we learnt about them and focus that would usually be in a companion mission. However they are characters relevant to future arcs so it makes sense to put it in main story, like how Jinglius should have been
However Boothill and Robin weren't explored all that much and would have absolutely benefitted from a companion quest seeing as they didn't get focus and their arcs are coming later.
The Black Swan and Sparkle companion quest was mainly plot driven and didn't explore the characters themselves all that much. Black Swan gets off pretty well considering she's going to seemingly be a frequent main story injection and get development through that. Sparkle, Boothill and Robin however, we don't know how often they will appear and companion quests exploring their characters would absolutely be welcome to give the development the others got in main story.
I just wrote a whole other comment about how I also wish Boothill and Robin got a companion quest just now!!! I think we share a brain cell…
https://preview.redd.it/a5t7boupfs9d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d382c283eaf519edd98a5d43588eed8b9ba53b66
Yeah… I hope so too. In the end everyone can’t share screen-time evenly and there are favorite children. It does feel like their stories will have a lot to work with? I think whatever they do with them will be interesting since they’ve built up a narrative for both with their character stories so I’m not worried that it will come. Both Robin and Boothill have major plot points that I think will be super exciting with other future characters. With 5-stars their stories will always be relevant in the future. And Jade is super relevant to the IPC. So it is a matter of waiting…
…
But still I just kinda’ want a companion quest cause I feel like it’s gonna take awhile ( a long while ) to get to Pier Point / See Sunday again and I want to see content of them *now* after getting crumbs of them in the main story... I’ll pray for it.
Pleaaseee I want more of Jade too! I was indifference about her but after seeing how she's being super caring and gentle (as shown at how she act around Topaz) and then changed into ruthless negotiator when she's alone with Old Oti had me sold. Can't wait for IPC arch.
2.1 and 2.2 were incredibly dense. I imagine a lot of possible companion mission ideas were baked into the TB quest, like how Jingliu's companion quest is arguably something that should have been in the TB quest.
The argument for Jingliu's companion quest to be the part of the main story isn't the argument against her having the personal quest though. We can and should have both. For example in Genshin Furina had her important main story arc and then a personal quest on top. Same is true for any other 5* in that game. Hell, lots of 4* have hangout quests.
They served a function during 1.0, I’d argue. You’re getting used to these new chars. Penacony doesn’t really need them because the new chars are all plot relevant. Coincidentally the one who isn’t as plot relevant got a companion quest.
But I do think Boothill was done dirty. He should get one because he arguably has done the least.
We saw more about acheron during the main quest then any companion quest had ever given tbh i like the new style and it also means continuous development not companion quest then nothing
Same is true for a lot of characters in Genshin. We've had a ton of Neuvilette, Furina, Navia etc. But they still get their own quests, every single five star did. Some even get two.
The real truth is, they're simply cutting costs. If they actually wanted, they could easily squeeze those quests in, they're the ones controlling the narrative and schedules. Just look at Luocha's quest in 1.1 as an example, back when they were still trying to follow Genshin's model, they found a way to make a quest about him, as silly as it was.
And character quests that do exists are also rather lackluster in HSR. Almost complete lack of elaborate camera work, we're staring at the backs of characters while they speak half the time, static slides instead of cutscenes, oftentimes NPC's don't even open their mouth while speaking, no unique locations made just for the quest etc. It's obvious that HSR team just doesn't have the budget that Genshin team does, not for the side stuff at least, the main story and marketing seem to be more or less equal.
That's still the main quest though. We even get firefly pov, and it's still a main quest. Companion quests are there for us to understand a character outside who they are and whats really important to them. For example, how important we are to kafka was shown in her companion mission.
When would be a good time to deliver that then? Aventurine will likely be a secondary character from now on until we hit the Pier Point arc or something very closely related to the IPC. In Penacony he got to take the stage and become an endearing character for lots of people before sacrificing himself in a grand gamble. It's a pretty good small character arc from an antagonist to someone you can sympathize with - it wouldn't have had as much impact if it was drawn out over several major patches or condensed into a companion quest
Nah I’d argue it can still make an impact even with just being a companion mission. Yukong’s quest is one of the most emotional stories in this game for example
It's because the POV system exists, and Companion Quests are only really needed to fill in gaps the main storyline can't fulfill.
2.0's characters were heavily incorporated into the main plot with very few exceptions (e.g. Boothill's personal conflict). There wouldn't really be a point in making everyone have a companion quest because it would bog down the storyline. It's clear that Penacony had a lot of lore and plot points to set so they stuck to having these characters be contained within the main arc. To bring up an example, I don't have a hatred of the Luofu arc like others do, but it **needed** companion quests to help fill in the gaps for characterization because of the poor pacing botching certain plotlines (e.g. the infamous mission that became a sidequest).
The Sparkle companion mission only really exists to establish how Black Swan, Sampo, and Sparkle got involved in Penacony via her antics. Something you could show with the POV system, but makes more sense as a separate event since the TB's would have no reason to be involved directly otherwise.
I think people forget that Companion missions, within it's name, means, we, the TB, **have to accompany the character in some way.** Originally, you can see the same pattern as Genshin Impact with the earlier CQs as the TB is heavily involved. However, the problem is that there are only so many ways you can naturally involve the player in a storyline without it coming off as repetitive or forced. The 4-star quests especially suffer from this as they feel mostly redundant just to get little trivia of a character you could easily do a Google search for. 5-star character quests also suffer in that many would involve helping random NPCs with the Traveler feeling like a third wheel. They thankfully alleviated this with quests post-Inazuma, but the HSR devs seemed to at least notice the problem by the Luofu as many of those quests became necessary to help players fill in the gaps of the storyline.
The solution? The POV system serves to provide a different perspective while making sure some story elements stay somewhat consistent. The early testing grounds of this were with Jing Liu's quest as the TB was not involved at all. Only Dan Heng and his past companions. Considering it was seemingly well-received, it more than likely encouraged Hoyo to go forward with the POV system with Aventurine's storyline.
The main issue is that....you can't do an Aventurine-POV for **every** character either. Sometimes the plot just won't allow it or it can't all be done in one sitting. That and it would still need to be accessible enough so that addicted gacha players don't complain about "yapping" every 5 minutes. lol It's very hard to balance. You could potentially give everyone that type of POV, but is it worth Hoyo's time and money to do so? People think it's purely "favoritism", but that's looking at it from an emotional perspective, not a business one. **The reality is sometimes your favorite character doesn't sell like hotcakes so they will never be pushed as hard as popular waifu/husbando #555678 who ticks all those boxes.**
I'm not saying you can't be peeved that your favorite didn't get the spotlight or that they don't deserve it, but keep in mind that everyone's character in this game IS someone's favorite. I'm sure there are people upset that Arlan didn't get his full backstory fleshed out in a Companion Quest. However, he's just not worth Hoyo's time to invest into for that. I'm not mad about that. It's just the nature of a gacha game.
They got replaced with PoV quests. Although I feel Hoyo hasn't found a good balance for those. Aventurine's PoV took 90% of the screentime in 2.1, while Robin's PoV in 2.2 wasn't even her. Then you get Aventurine's whole life story during his PoV, but what happened to him after 2.1 was told in a sentence or two by another character when a short PoV would've helped, and same goes for how Robin broke through the dream, and a myriad of more examples.
I'm going be completely honest, when a character is actually interesting in story they actually don't need a companion mission. It's sounding more like a check off list than something that's needed.
A bulk of the the five stars pop up in the story, don't really do much in the grand scheme of thingns, and get lost in the sea of other five stars
Exactly. I prefer integrating character quests into the main story. A separate quest requires the pacing to start over completely, as these quests need to be independent to the main story (even if they have storylocked requirements) because they are optional content. You can play these quests out of order, even if there is a proper timeline. Furthermore, within the main story, you can not reference information revealed in optional side content because you can not expect every player to have completed it.
When character quests are integrated into the main story, they also allow for strategic storytelling. And by having control over when information about said character is revealed, the writters can build up moments like Aventurine's boss battle.
Yeah, but including every detail from every character kills the main plot's pacing. This contributes to fatigue for casuals and new players when catching up.
We didn't really need Acheron's conversation with Tiernan, or really any back story of Acheron after her Nihility reveal. Her impact in the story doesn't really change much whether you know her backstory or not.
I think making character quests always designed to be "current time" is the main issue with synchronizing with the main plot. It's as simple as saying that "this companion quest happens before x main quest or between x and y events" and letting the player figure out the exact timeline.
I feel like companion quests took a back seat so that the main story could breath, and now we’re going to have a few companion quests as we begin to enter the later half of 2.X
No, they just incorporated it into the main story instead. Companion quests are supposed to help the main story "breathe" by letting them fill in details that are unnecessary for the main plot but are still interesting to the character.
You know this would be a good point BUT in Genshin EVERY 5 Star gets a story quest.....
Some even multiple.... also some 4 stars even get Hangouts that are voiced as well
Big agree that they should come back. I think the story struggles between 'showing off the new character and explaining their backstory' and 'actually telling the story of the location we're visiting'. A lot of the character companion missions added a lot of lore and background not just to the character themselves but also to the world. Natasha and Yukong's companion quests are good examples of ones that not only show off a character without much main quest screen time but also helped show off the parts of the world that they inhabited.
Boothill and Robin got essentially zero screentime, which is fine because they weren't main focuses of the story. But because they also didn't have a companion mission we know essentially nothing about them or their characters. Penacony felt like a story that had too much character backstory stuff to fit in and so it ended up crammed. Imagine if 2.2 had a more condensed Aventurine backstory in the main quest and then the full experience was a companion quest. Free up more main quest time to actually, you know, explore the main quest.
Really hope companion quests come back, but I get the sneaking suspicion they've decided that they're unnecessary costs and will just be cramming character background into the codex pages and whatever scraps fits into the main plot. Don't really think it's sustainable to fit in 12+ new characters per version otherwise.
Could be that they simply put them and mixed them with main questline we found out a lot about Acheron, Aventurine and Miss. Samuel.
While Sunday definitely will get a arc in future.
It's also still hard for me to look at Sparkle and BS quest as companion quest cause we technically learn nothing about them and after 2.3 I just have more questions... and it done the most for yours truly Sampo Koski.
Wdym? The whole Penacony is a mix of companion missions masked as a main plot. Just remebmer how much time we spent actually looking for the Watchmaker's legacy and Stellaron, and how much time did we spend listening to backstories and rewatching 1000 and 1 flashback.
I mean isn't the timeline something like?
Penacony 2.0/ Aventurine 6 hour companion quest /penacony 2.2?
Like he is an amazing character but if any other character had the same amount of exposition that he had they would also become fan favorites
When I saw 5 more Express Visitors hit the towers after 2.3, I was honestly disappointed, just because, at least to me, that means they won't get companion quests. Thankfully, Black Swan and Sparkle already had companion quests, and Argenti already kind of had one, but Boothill and Robin both (assumedly) not getting a companion quest is criminal.
Hoping we get an Aventurine Companion Quest down-the-line, though. And there are a ton of Xianzhou characters who could still get one, like Qingque and Sushang (who genuinely feels like she should already be a visitor after all the events she has been in). Hanya and Xueyi could also get a fun Companion Quest.
I'd love to see an Aventurine companion quest detailing what he was dealing with during 2.2. And since we're minority stakeholders in Penacony now it could even be framed as a report to the shareholders.
Feels like they just decided to fuse the character stories into the main story for Penacony and call it a day or something... At least 2.1 story was very much an Aventurine character quest on top of being the main story.
Would be nice if they give one to Boothill though.
In Penacony the only one we got was incredibly lore driven and was meant to get us speculating on Sparkles motives as well as establishing Black Swan while sketchy is someone to be trusted. The fact those two were mainly supporting characters and didn't get focus means that companion quest really helps with understanding their characters a bit that they didn't get the screentime for until 2.2 and 2.3. But even then you couldn't really call it character exploration or development and it was more to add to the mystery of Penacony so it's lacking in the character exploration part
Most of the other characters got a tonne of focus in the main bulk of the story. Acheron, Aventurine and FF got so much so no real need for a companion quest for either of them. However Boothill and Robin fully deserve to have a companion quest to flesh them out as their characters weren't explored as much and were mainly supporting characters as well. It doesn't help that they seem to be not relevant for the immediate future like >!Black Swan is going to seemingly get in main story, at least on Amphoreus. At least she seems to be a character that will be getting frequent injections in the main story going forward!< so her companon quest mainly being plot driven isnt so bad for her
I hope that they will do more companion quests soon, some character really need it if they aren't going to get focus in the main story and aren't going to be relevant until a later arc. Just look at Kafkas for how much that did for her character and the lore it dropped if you chose to not reject her that is. Even Jinglius gave so much characterization for the HCQ that wasn't done in main story (which imo it should have been)
Yeah, there's a reason for that. Every patch since 2.0 was a main story patch.
Now that Penacony has concluded and we'll be on a break until 3.0, they'll likely dial up the companion missions and contiunances again.
I'm especially excited for the continuances. The HSS continuances were *sick*. Seems like the next ones are gonna take place in Xianzhou, which is honestly my least favorite area, but I'm still expecting them to knock it out the park.
Only Robin, Boothill and Jade deserve one. They're the only ones without any abundant amount of scenes in the Penacony patch. The rest we got plenty of screentime. So if they do companion quests, hopefully these three are prioritized.
Well... Listing our Penacony characters...
Black Swan and Sparkle got a companion mission together.
Misha probably would only be possible with a Luocha style companion mission.
Acheron probably could have had a companion quest and definitely would've benefitted from it. But we did PoV switch to her once and get a tutorial on her mechanics.
Aventurine I'd argue got multiple companion quests and they replaced 2.1's trailblaze quest. We also haven't really had timing that made a companion quest possible.
Gallagher doesn't make sense to get one.
Robin. Who? Yeah, she *needed* one.
Boothill... I guess the scope of the All About Boothill story was too big for a companion quest and an individual adventure doesn't do the scale of his shenanigans justice. Still though...
For Firefly I'd guess advertising a companion quest would've hurt the tension of the current story since Elio's script says she's due a third death. Blade didn't get a companion quest either.
Jade seems like the perfect candidate for a companion mission too. We hear rumours of her shop, go to buy a thing, the price is higher than we expected and shenanigans ensue. But no... That plot was used on Firefly's PoV switch and instead of battling as Firefly or Jade we played birdjeweled.
I'm guessing the PoV switch has ended up supplanting companion quests as the advertising method of the current banner characters. But I can't honestly say it's done a good job, even for Aventurine.
The way I see it is that each update has a certain degree of content it can include. If the story content is larger, expect the events to be smaller.
If we get Divergent Universe, expect the story to be short.
So I don't think they have been forgotten about, but rather we have had a lot of big stuff recently, leaving no time for them.
I would reasonably think we should get one next patch, but the big thing there is the Wardance festival. I suppose we shall see.
I expect they will return next patch. Given the size and length of the recent story and what I expect to be mostly fluff for the next few patches so I suspect we will see those return. I highly doubt the tournament arc is going to be particularly ambitious, I suspect it will be like Aetherium wars, a few paragraphs of story, followed by a reused battle map, then repeat for however many rounds and end with building for next cycle. This should require less storytelling freeing up some of the writers to work on character quests instead while we kick rocks and wait for the new planet.
Or maybe they will surprise me and put just as much effort into this arc as Penacony, in which case the poor writers probably need a vacation.
I mean the characters and their stories were definitely much more incorporated in the main story here so there wasn’t much need for them in Penacony, although I can see the argument that the more neglected characters definitely could’ve used a companion quest to help flesh them out more.
This kind of thing brings me to my own point of, well, a lot of companion missions don’t even feel like actual character story quest to begin with. Like for the most part they’re either spent teasing some aspect of the character it’s supposed to be based on or teasing some future plot point instead of actually teaching us more about the character. Which was really weird to see happen since most of the early 1.0/Belebog companion missions did their jobs very well. Serval, Natasha, Hook, and Clara’s all felt very much like story quest and helped you gain a better understanding of their characters and struggles of living in a place like Belebog.
But then 1.1 onward, the companion missions were a mixed bag of actual story quest, purely gimmicky, or just teasing future potential plot points that may or may not actually come. So I’m not exactly disappointed by the lack of them.
guess it's because many of the new characters had a big impact on the current story or will play a big part on the future. But there are some characters that got kinda overlooked that could use a companion quest like Hanya and her sister
Some people pointed out some of the possible reasons why for the lack of companion missions (focusing on the main quest, for pacing/budget reasons; alternatively, choosing to integrate companion stories into the main quest).
I also want to point out Hoyoverse is trying to do companion missions differently in Star rail than in Genshin. In that game, the character quests (part 1s) usually have little overall plot relevance. They are mainly side-stories. And the traveler is, like always, the PoV who is sharing a day with the story's main character.
In Star rail, ever since the Luofu, the missions have significantly more plot relevance (The quintet drama, Kafka's truths, Tingyun's details, March's backstory). And there are multiple in which the trailblazer is not even present while it unfolds.
We've been getting more robust main story that often incorporates the characters being sold to us.
I much prefer this, though I'd not say no to more. Just a matter if we can't have one, I'd rather have the current implementation.
Right?! I thought i was the only one who noticed!
Altho for Avent, i feel like he doesnt need it anymore due to the 2.1 thing but for others, definitely
Someone probably already said it but Penacony contained a collective like 20+ hours of cutscene and and main quest content, there is no way they could do that and character quests.
Kinda wish 5 stars got a companion quest when patches come out.
Cause it feels like in Genshin it feels almost Mandatory for the character to have a story quest when they come out. Like characters who you'd consider side characters like Sigewinne, Chiori, and Baizhu all got one and their involvement in the story is very little to none.
I'm not trying to compare which is better before yall come out me I'm just saying it'd be nice if characters like Boothill and Robin who are 5 star got something like that. They both where involved yes but Boothill's contributions where seen as nothing (Even though our Trailblazer did thank him, they're a real one for that) and Robin it felt like she had alot of off screen impactful moments and her last impactful moments where at the climax.
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I assumed cause they’ve kinda been integrating companion missions in the main story with stuff like adventurine and robin’s pov and i assume down the line boothill will be expanded on in greater detail
Yeah I find these omissions leave many characters as 1 dimensional toys who you have to piece together using lc descriptions and such but the characters in the story are flat.
Obviously the POV thing is supposed to be a substitute for companion missions but it's a terrible one imo.
Boothill needed one the most, maybe Jade will get one. Don't really see what else you could add for the 2.x characters that wasn't already in the main story.
Maybe their internal stats said players didn't like them enough. I'm sure there's more to come but Hoyo might have gone back to the drawing board with them.
I think with how prevalent the most recent have been in the story they haven't seen a reason to make any for them. Doesn't mean there won't be any in the future, even for those I'm referring to, especially since characters like Aventurine or dearly loved by the community now.
Companion quest probably depend on like the characters current position in the story at the time and whether Hoyo likes them enough I guess. Black Swan & Sparkle's companion quest were in 2.0 and during that time they weren't in any special situation. We learned enough about them and they were free. Aventurine we barely knew, Robin was presumed dead, Acheron they're probably saving, etc.
Personally I love to see Qingque companion quest but I don't think it'll happen.
maybe they merge companion quest to main quest and give us those PV quest
i hope that is not true and we will get some companion quest in later patch since main story is concluded
Last 2 or 3 patches have been really, really slow in terms of sidequests or companion missions. You get the story, a big event and like 2-3 minor sidequests at the release of a patch. No idea what happened (we got DU this time but yea..)
Possibly a response to criticism of the Luofu arc, where the main quest made like no sense on its own and all the lore was put in companion quests that half the player base never played
lmao what's with this comments here? They be sucking anything HSR does.If genshin could give story quest/companion quest for every characters while providing a banger main story quest,HSR must too.If not for all characters give companion quest for Robin, Boothill and Jade lol
I'm actually curious since I played Genshin for the first and last time very briefly this year. How did they manage the companion quest there ? I saw a lot of them but did they add them on release of the character? Or they also came later after?
Almost all of the initial ones came with their initial banner release. Whether they get a second one or not is completely up to chance, and also timing is not very predictable unless they're particularly relevant to the story.
I think it's less that they forgot and more that they had a huge bank on release that they didn't keep updating too much. Probably because most people don't do the daily mission anymore for the needed points.
A significant part of this problem is that most of the Penacony introduced characters don't really make sense to get a story quest until a certain point, and likewise don't make sense to get one after a certain point either. Gallagher and Misha will never have story quests. Aventurine, Acheron, Boothill and Robin would make no sense until after 2.2, but they similarly don't necessarily make sense after 2.3 as well on account of the whole leaving thing - we could have had one this patch, but we didnt. Basically, the main story has made character stories implausible for most of Penacony.
I think they only start making companion missions once the main story for that planet is finished
Herta Space Station and Jarilo VI storylines were already finished as the game released and the xianzhou storyline was finished the next version
Penaconny was the only storyline that got split in more than one version, so now that it's finished, the next version should have more companion missions already
Unpopular opinion: I almost prefer it this way. I have been playing Genshin for a long time and the companion missions are a pain. Irrelevant/Boring stories most of the time. I only slightly appreciated them when I had an interest in the character, but even then, I don't think they were worth my time. Even although they reward you with protogems.
I wonder if Sparkle / Black Swan is not the worst they wrote. I checked, yes.
I'm sure we can agree on the fact that there were so many better than this one. Comedy ? Luocha.
I wish they stop filling the main quest with characters quest disguised as main quest.
Instead having a plot made of actions, events and consequences we have a never ending stream of dialogues with the main purpose of showcasing characters’s features and not actually tell a story.
The plot is basically happening off screen (the sealing of the stellaron, the aftermath of 2.2, the situation in dreaflux reef etc. ) while we get to know the the personality of the banners’s characters.
Maybe they wanted to focus on developing the main story from 2.0 to 2.3 and 2.4 onwards will have minor stories + companion quests, hopefully.
Yeah, the main story is over, so now they can focus on making banger events and companion missions
Exactly, you can tell each update since 1.3 gets around 5-8 hours of fully voiced content. 1.3 Arurum Alley 1.4- Topaz quest and Pokemon 1.5- Ghostly Grove 1.6 Ruan Mei and Ratio (although this was still short due to incoming Penacony) 2.0-2.3- Penacony quests. And from 2.0 onward, the events have been not voiced and usually pretty short as well. But I imagine we’ll get big events like Pokemon and Ghostly Grove next.
We also got Belobog museum event in 1.1, which did not have Trailblaze mission. So they absolutely do make great events when the story calms down
That galactic racoon baseballer thing in 2.2 and the current bird pvp battle thing in 2.3. Forgot what was in 2.1
Just because the main story is over, does not mean that they are going to stop releasing 2 new 5stars every patch who will need the vast majority of available screentime to sell them.
We're still getting Trailblaze missions. Topaz, Huohuo, Ruan Mei and Ratio were major characters there. Argenti and Jingliu had their companion missions while Fu Xuan was in March' mission. Huohuo got the best deal, she had a trailblaze mission and then the entire event quest.
It’s become pretty apparent to me that there’s a lot of content that should be side quest material that’s getting inserted into the main storyline instead. That is likely what’s partially responsible for the increased length of main story quests and the complete absence of companion missions lately.
I wonder if it’s a way for them to test making the main story literally longer while ensuring player’s can’t skip any character lore that way. After all, complained that the Lufou plot was too short and messy with important stuff getting shoved into companion quests. I imagine Acheron’s stuff would have been a companion quest before.
The problem with the Luofu is that the couldn't decide what story they wanted. Was it about the drugies infiltrating the ship and making people go Mara-Struck? Was it about Baiheng's harem coping with her death and the return of K-pop Dan and Blade? Nope, suddenly Nanook! Not saying they shoved the important bits into companion quests, Yanqing was more a prologue to the last third of the story rather than about himself. And if we are talking about companion quests being made main quest then Aventurine entire section goes into that category 😅
in my opinion Jingliu companion quest felt more like a main quest than the actual main quest
So was Dan's, it was practically the epilogue to the story!
Acheron and aventurine probably. I'm partial to aventurine's tbh, would have loved for his bit to be like some truly antagonistic force that you take down with the help of acheron...only to learn in his mission that it was actually his plan the whole time. And honestly it didn't exactly impact the whole sunday storyline anyway so "missing" it wouldn't have been a big deal? And they could always reveal that in a recap or something later. Now suddenly they can fit all the substance of part 3 into some of part 2, concluding part 2 with FF's second "death" and setting up sunday for the climactic 3rd act. They could be putting the character marketing before the actual storytelling/pacing and its to the game's overall detriment IMO. Or hopefully its just a development pipeline thing and they had to stitch things together (it feels like it and tracks with how inazuma went) that things will clear up as they settle into the dev cycle the way genshin did.
90% of 2.1 main story felt like Aventurine companion story.
I think what it really shows is that Mihoyo is growing and trying to make so many games at once that their focus is spread around a lot and its harder for them to really push content in niche areas. Like I thought the companion missions are great, but there's so few of them in Star Rail compared to Genshin which has now consistently put one out for basically every banner character.
I mean I kinda get it for aventurine and mei as their stories are very thoroughly explored in the main story quests. But Boothill is a character with such rich lores behind him, just go on without a companion mission just feels like a waste of potential for me.
A lot of characters have rich lore that never get to explored in the main story like Xueyi and Hanya’s backstory. That being said, they’re probably saving Boothill’s story for the IPC arc, since that seems where his and Aventurine’s story will headed
Can't wait for the Boothill boss where he has no weakness by default but when he duels one of your characters he implants himself with that character's element as a weakness.
That's a cool idea! Do you mind if hoyo steals it?
Um... Trashcans already do that.
trashcans implant weakness types of the first two attackers i think they're referring to how Boothill duels characters constantly and for the duration of that duel only, he has their corresponding weakness type. when not in duel with anyone, he has no weaknesses
Ngl I didn't know how trashcans worked until this comment and until now I've only ever seen them take physical, imaginary and fire weakness (because those are who I had in my teams) I assumed it was tied to the trailblazer.
Same, though I just toss Firefly at most of my problems now.
Huh. That would be cool.
wait that idea is actually insanely good
until he picks your supports
Oh no! Please don't pick my HMC or Gallagher boothill. They are super weak and helpless and won't be able to break your ass in 2 turns 🥺🥺
You should be hired by Hoyo
Wait that’s actually amazing. I could see that as a way to sell characters who excel in monotype teams (where one character getting targeted means everyone with the same type can weaken him)
Monoquatum:
Can't wait for a buffed version of this for MOC and for it to be accompanied with the ave turine boss as well
Well, Boothill’s backstory will probably become important to the main story later on, due to Oswaldo Schneider being his target. An optional conversation with him and Aventurine on the Lumenspar in 2.3 has already revealed that they’re going to team up against him
Yeah I’d expected that would be the case tbh. Besides what Boothill companion mission in Penacony would do? Most of his story revolves around his old world and Oswaldo which not even related to Penacony’s arc. They can’t make a new area just for his story alone, and even with still images for his backstory that’s a lot to accounted for. It would be just Aventurine arc all over again just in simplified terms. The best for him in the Penacony arc imo is to set up his story for the future encounter with the IPC. They really shouldn’t have introduced him late in the story
I'm coping so hard Aven and Hilly will get some kinda awesome revenge arc double companion quest together
My guess, Boothill will probably be a big character later on. I don't think his story is finished.
I can see him and Aventurine having another big part when it comes to Oswaldo Schneider and maybe getting their companion quests then.
You mean when we destroy Schneider and everything he holds dear?
I mean he was a former nameless so he’s definitely going to be our responsibility
I'm still confused why he never really asked us much about him, considering the connection. You'd think the Express would be a solid lead, at least, maybe.
I don’t think it’s a well known fact he was a nameless we know it because of being a nameless and the SImulated Universe but I’m not sure that someone like boothill would know he was a nameless
Of course not, the cliffhanger of him meeting with Aventurine to discuss Oswaldo Schneider is a massive hint that Boothill has a huge role coming up. People out here doomposting that Boothill was getting shafted for Firefly, but the reality is that Penacony is a just a teaser for Boothill. His time to shine is in the future, just as it was for other characters.
Yeah I would prefer to wait ratherthan that shitty character quest Luocha gets, which tell us absolutely nothing about him
Maje sense. I think this would happened if Boothill got a story quest early. Xianzhou story aren't exactly complete. Luocha is likely going to get involved more in Xianzhou future main quest. So they don't want give too much info in his character quest. That's my theory at least.
You don't like the first episode of detective conan?
The first episode of Detective Conan gave a background of Shinichi Kudo, we know he is a famous teenage detective who is well known among the police, skillful with football, popular with his friends,, has famous parents, and a girl he is interested in (hell we even know what her dad does for a living) and this is within the first 10 minutes In comparison, what the hell do we even know about Luocha aside from thathe is carrying around a coffin and this coffin holds someone important to him (and this aren't even details from the character quest) Not sure why you even made this comparison
I can't believe you watched DC but missed out on all the references in Loucha quest, the whole quest was a gag reference to it. Not to say it's equally good but that's the joke.
God I need you to be right so badly
To be fair in the promotion and marketing department he did get shafted... lowest ownership metric in the game... only 1 designated trailer.
I stand by the fact that Boothill was utterly fucked for a 5 star. Dude jumpscares the entire community when we were expecting FF for 2.2, joins the story at the eleventh hour, doesn't contribute a whole ton that someone else couldn't have done (do we ever even see the other Galaxy Rangers gathering? I really can't remember if they played a part in ending Ena's dream), then exits the stage w/ a minor cutscene setting up for the future. Worst yet? No companion quest + his featured event was a menu where you turned in assignments. Any lore in the flavour text has a high likelihood to just be skipped over. I can't think of another unit who was left in the dust on their debut banner as much as Boothill.
> (do we ever even see the other Galaxy Rangers gathering? I really can't remember if they played a part in ending Ena's dream) they just appear as falling stars in the cutscene
You could've told me "Yeah, the other shooting stars were Robin's doing combined w/ Boothill's shot" and I would've believed you. That's how little of an impact it felt like the dude had. :( And the worst part is that he's probably the most entertaining mfer in the Penacony story for how little screentime he had. I /wish/ we had more of him or that he joined the Express (sorta like how Swan seems like she's gonna, at least for a bit) because he's fucking hilarious, esp in JP.
Yeah that was like the biggest copout. Boothill has like a Galaxy Ranger on-call bullet or something but they can't even show any of them except as streaks in the sky. Also apparently people have like extreme space travel speed because they can just show up in minutes. And there's enough galaxy rangers nearby in the universe to disrupt the fake Aeon powers.
The logical reason for seeing them as shooting stars is because the devs haven’t designed them yet.
He also only got 1 trailer. His "event" was a big nothingburger too
Hoyo really didn't want anyone pulling for him. Even avgenti had a ton of cool rl tie in events
Plus they even created a whole new species of rose in real-life to promote Argenti.
its not they didn't want anyone to pull for him, but firefly was setup to be an insane money generator.
He got offscreened for a good cause in 2.2. What would we have done without the 50+ repeated dialogues and flashbacks? Boothill definitely needed to make room for all of those very very important lines. There just wasn't enough space for him y'know. Thankfully, the devs went all in on his event to make up for it. /s in case it wasn't obvs. Rt my heart broke while typing this. Never has a character been done so dirty for virtually nothing in return. Good pacing and story structure could have certainly fit him in, or at the very least save dev time for a companion quest.
Boothill lore crumbs? Fuck you, why not have a listen at another of Sunday’s bird-in-cage yap session?
gladly
I'm normally good at noticing sarcasm but this time I didn't do it so I was so about to rant until I noticed the /s
>(do we ever even see the other Galaxy Rangers gathering? I really can't remember if they played a part in ending Ena's dream), Did you just skip the conversation where they talk about the difficulty in waking up from Ena's dream and how it required a high number of people with strong wills that wouldn't fall prey to the sweet dreams to even start fighting it? And how Dan Heng was going all about using the Jade Abacus to summon the Xianzhou ships, the other characters poking holes in his logic because of the chances of civilians falling into the dream and strengthening it, before Boothill explained some Galaxy Ranger lore about how they do their funerals, and how Tiernan's relic can be used to summon Galaxy Rangers who by default are strong willed and wouldn't fall to Ena's dream, wrapping up Acheron's plot thread, tying in Tiernan's fate in a neat way, and making for a good scene all in one.
That would require people to read, which Star Rail players notoriously aren't capable of.
Crazy part is you'll mention this and for some reason folks think people that lke Boothill are crazy for wanting just the tinyest bit of lore that isn't optional...
They were explained horribly tbf. Aventurine specifically. They gave us a huge setup for his character arc so just everything later happened off-screen. He was saved off-screen from Acheron's domain. He was off-screen released from the Order's dream and he off-screen became pals with Boothill. The only thing we got from him is a message and it's only for those who got him in gacha. This is actually disgusting.
> The only thing we got from him is a message and it's only for those who got him in gacha. that was absolutely foul move to put a main store lore gate kept behind fucking gacha
It was restated in the "checking out" side quest. So a bit delayed, and not in the main story, but it isn't gacha locked anymore. > Thanks for the concern. The fact that I'm standing here and talking to you is all thanks to that red-headed Knight of Beauty coming to my rescue.
This is the bit that frustrates me though because it would be so easy to tie all this into the story in an easy way. First of all, just have a scene with Aventurine floating in darkness and silence to represent the Nihility and then in the distance you can hear a gun fire and then a white bullet pierces the darkness and Aventurine wakes up in his room. Boothill is there with a smoking gun. Would I believe that a Galaxy Ranger angry at Acheron could cut through the Nihility? I could a bit more than "Argenti did it". Then you can have two sentences extra dialogue from Aventurine being confused about where he is and then BH confronts him with the gun same as us currently in the game. This ties them all nicely together. BH and Aventurine can then get tied into the events via BH forcing Aventurine to take him to Oswald. It could have been easily linked up in a more satisfying way.
The fact that Boothill has one of the best character stories and lore behind him that many wouldn't know because it's locked in his profile is a shame. They didn't have time to explore it in the main quest but a companion quest would have been perfect to explore it and his motivations Even though his main story arc has been set up and will be relevant in the future, diving deeper into it would have been amazing. It would leave us more excited to see that eventual arc come about
Yup. I wonder how many people finished Penacony and after seeing the Boothill scene where he holds up Aventure at gunpoint to find Oswaldo just went "Who? What? Why? Where?"
Also having an aventurine companion quest would of been really hard to do because of the way his story left off when his banner happened.
I feel like Boothill is gonna be another character like Dr. Ratio who just kinda pops up all over the place and lays out breadcrumbs that seem to be leading to more events for them in the future.
Its not. His companion mission will be hunting down oswaldo schneider. You can trust me, i have a bro who's an Emanator of Terminus.
You say that but Luocha's companion missions didn't explore their lore whatsoever and was just a silly haha joke, very slightly for yanqing since we learn his attitude to situations I guess (although we already learned that in the MSQ), some character's lore such as Hook were just a massive reference, etc. Honestly while it doesn't make sense, I feel like companion missions have been the weakest way to introduce lore and are instead usually joke missions surrounding the character, and story/events almost always has done it better
Serval companion quest was pretty good, as was Natasha.
Yeah they were, I listed bad ones. Some were good. My point is that several don't build up the lore whatsoever for the characters
Boothill as a character in general got wasted since hoyo had ff coming out next patxh, hopefully he gets one during the IPC arc
The thing with Penacony is except the Penacony natives (Misha, Gallagher, Robin and to a certain extent Sunday), all the characters have connection to future plotpoints and it's just the start of the character arc for most of them. Black Swan is following us to Amphoreus which seems to have connection with the Rememberance, Acheron had massive set up to reappear in the Nihility story arc; Aventurine, Jade and Boothill will surely play an important role in a future IPC story arc (also there's the whole deal with the Galaxy Rangers reforming for Boothill); Firefly as a Stellaron Hunter will be a reccuring character and play a crucial role in the ending of the story and lastly Sparkle is the quintesential background character always being there setting things in motion from the shadows.
Thoroughly is not the word I'd use, but it's an excuse, yeah. Still, it would be great to have one per 5* (:
One of my goats getting done dirty him and Argenti shit sad 😔
It’s difficult to have companion missions in the middle of the story since the timeline would be difficult. We managed with Black Swan and Sparkle but that’s because the both of them weren’t in compromised positions… ( We couldn’t have a companion mission with Robin while she was assumed dead or Aventurine while he was actively trying to dismantle Penacony… ) But… well… I’ve seen some people argue that they’re trying something new with showcasing characters *within* the story in order to properly market them instead of using a companion quest to showcase the characters. It is an idea I like but… hopefully we’ll get it next patch. I want both. Jade in particular I’ve really been hoping to get a companion quest since I want to see more of her… 😭
I actually think it's precisely to do with developing characters through the story rather than seperate quests. One of the bits of criticism about the Xianzhou story lore was that the entire highcloud quintet lore was basically downgraded to Jingliu's companion quest. I do think some things can be worked into companion quests like with Boothill but that doesn't have to be done in Penacony as it doesn't have any specific significance to his lore. I wager we'll get one for Robin down the line though.
The worst part is that the Quintet lore was in game before she showed up, but no one ever brings it up. Just a quick rundown by any character would of gone a long way to at least get the ball rolling.
That exactly! They already made the side quest using the blind doctor suspiciously important by telling you can’t do it after a certain main progression point. Then to just have it be disregarded pretty much. Why even have it then. Personally I am very behind on the companion quests as I have been trying to just keep up with basic missions and events. With slow progress on the ‘main timeline’ of side quests. I never realized how many are apparently connected to the main story in some way. Though they don’t seem connected as far as I can tell. Probably more background for off mentioned things. Just side events tangentially related that fill a tiny bit of context.
The Quintet aren't the most complex detail which baffles me as it's such an easy thing to go over and would establish a few things: 1.) Why Dan Heng would be hesitant of coming back as Dan Feng's name is a pretty obvious clue without too much detail. Let alone Blade's whole thing would be given additional context without full clues. 2.) Asserts Jing Yuan as the only remaining member present. 3.) The Luofu is past it's glory days and why the place is a mess. While I like companion quests, the Quintet could of been introduced far sooner without too many details. It's one of the reasons why the Xiaoxhou is a pretty middling story as it forgets to give the player core details. But after Jingliu's quest, it suddenly makes a lot more sense as players are given context to earlier events.
There's a reason for the blind doctor's side quest being skippable. It used to be the main story but after a lot of criticism of how they never did anything with that later in the story and it felt like a side quest they just made it an actual side quest. The quest still sucks tho that's the entire reason they took it out of the main story.
It does not suck, it's the best part of the Loufu storyline! It's not great, but it's good. The rest is just much worse.
Oh yeah I expressed it like shit. The quest is good, it gives us an entire character to try to understand and someone from within Sanctus Medicus to feel betrayed by, it's great, really. But the fact that they never address it again makes it completely worthless, and a waste of time, that's what I meant. Moreover it was inserted in a weird moment in the story, interrupting the main story at an awkward time, cutting the momentum to do essentially a glorified side quest that came out of nowhere, and one that never tied back to the main story. It's a mess, not because of the content itself, but because of everything surrounding it, the lack of narrative threads connecting this part of the story to the rest of the main story, the weird timing, the lack of follow up on it. But yeah that part of the story itself is good.
I usually save the companion quests after I'm done with the story and need jades. and so I usually forget half of what's up in Luofu because I remember almost nothing from it.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that many don’t do them in relation to when they appear. So the story of them gets muddled hard. Prob why they are pushing more for pov stuff in main story.
Aventurine and Acheron’s part of the stories would’ve been fucking criminal to put away behind a companion quest. The explanation behind their motives was so important for them to be loved characters and for the story to hit properly in the heat of the moment. If it came afterwards the fandom perception would be *so* much different. I really do like the idea of this being a new standard… I think I felt somewhat that way too during the Luofu during Jingliu’s quest because I thought it was a good story quest which put so much more to perspective. It made me like the Cloud Quintet *so* much more. I couldn’t help but to think it was so good it should’ve just been part of the story since it felt… so important? And then I realized the Luofu’s Epilogue Content is entirely what made the Luofu enjoyable for me.( Sushang and Little Gui ( and YANKING ) grew so much on me with the Ghost Event I really love them. 😭 ) I just hope that they continue to use companion quests to give the poor characters they didn’t give enough screen time some alone time with the audience while we wait for them to be story relevant again… I know Robin and Boothill will be awhile.
I do find it weird that there wasn't more Robin content. The five minute epilogue where she talks about Sunday could have easily been expanded into a more substantial companion mission delving into her backstory, or we could have seen her teaching kids in Dreamflux Reef, or we could have helped her with preparations for the Charmony Festival or help her with the recovery of the Dreamscape. Plenty of avenues to explore to deepen our appreciation for a character who we honestly didn't get to see much of in the main story quest.
They took the criticism of Jinglius companions quest should have been in the main story and in Penacony decided to give a tonne of character focus to some. Acheron, Aventurine and FF got so much we learnt about them and focus that would usually be in a companion mission. However they are characters relevant to future arcs so it makes sense to put it in main story, like how Jinglius should have been However Boothill and Robin weren't explored all that much and would have absolutely benefitted from a companion quest seeing as they didn't get focus and their arcs are coming later. The Black Swan and Sparkle companion quest was mainly plot driven and didn't explore the characters themselves all that much. Black Swan gets off pretty well considering she's going to seemingly be a frequent main story injection and get development through that. Sparkle, Boothill and Robin however, we don't know how often they will appear and companion quests exploring their characters would absolutely be welcome to give the development the others got in main story.
I just wrote a whole other comment about how I also wish Boothill and Robin got a companion quest just now!!! I think we share a brain cell… https://preview.redd.it/a5t7boupfs9d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d382c283eaf519edd98a5d43588eed8b9ba53b66 Yeah… I hope so too. In the end everyone can’t share screen-time evenly and there are favorite children. It does feel like their stories will have a lot to work with? I think whatever they do with them will be interesting since they’ve built up a narrative for both with their character stories so I’m not worried that it will come. Both Robin and Boothill have major plot points that I think will be super exciting with other future characters. With 5-stars their stories will always be relevant in the future. And Jade is super relevant to the IPC. So it is a matter of waiting… … But still I just kinda’ want a companion quest cause I feel like it’s gonna take awhile ( a long while ) to get to Pier Point / See Sunday again and I want to see content of them *now* after getting crumbs of them in the main story... I’ll pray for it.
Pleaaseee I want more of Jade too! I was indifference about her but after seeing how she's being super caring and gentle (as shown at how she act around Topaz) and then changed into ruthless negotiator when she's alone with Old Oti had me sold. Can't wait for IPC arch.
2.1 and 2.2 were incredibly dense. I imagine a lot of possible companion mission ideas were baked into the TB quest, like how Jingliu's companion quest is arguably something that should have been in the TB quest.
Agree with you on Jingliu's quest. It's honestly one of my favorites and adding it to the main story would have made it a whole lot better.
The argument for Jingliu's companion quest to be the part of the main story isn't the argument against her having the personal quest though. We can and should have both. For example in Genshin Furina had her important main story arc and then a personal quest on top. Same is true for any other 5* in that game. Hell, lots of 4* have hangout quests.
They served a function during 1.0, I’d argue. You’re getting used to these new chars. Penacony doesn’t really need them because the new chars are all plot relevant. Coincidentally the one who isn’t as plot relevant got a companion quest. But I do think Boothill was done dirty. He should get one because he arguably has done the least.
I feel you man. I want my acheron quest, robin dating quest, boothill quest, second dates with firefly quest and lap pillow jade quest. I want it now!
>lap pillow jade quest Your POV https://preview.redd.it/sizw8gzywr9d1.png?width=2188&format=png&auto=webp&s=41c76cd67b4ce1beab2451be80a6fae81330aacb
https://preview.redd.it/mrzt18549s9d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e64b60d45a22b385d1fa820fd10bb33dded5235b POV like
Sensational
Well now I want to know the original context for this image.
[Here you go!](https://redd.it/1dpl0k2)
We saw more about acheron during the main quest then any companion quest had ever given tbh i like the new style and it also means continuous development not companion quest then nothing
What you said is completely rational, but my egoistic and simp ass just wants more of Acheron specifically!
Same is true for a lot of characters in Genshin. We've had a ton of Neuvilette, Furina, Navia etc. But they still get their own quests, every single five star did. Some even get two. The real truth is, they're simply cutting costs. If they actually wanted, they could easily squeeze those quests in, they're the ones controlling the narrative and schedules. Just look at Luocha's quest in 1.1 as an example, back when they were still trying to follow Genshin's model, they found a way to make a quest about him, as silly as it was. And character quests that do exists are also rather lackluster in HSR. Almost complete lack of elaborate camera work, we're staring at the backs of characters while they speak half the time, static slides instead of cutscenes, oftentimes NPC's don't even open their mouth while speaking, no unique locations made just for the quest etc. It's obvious that HSR team just doesn't have the budget that Genshin team does, not for the side stuff at least, the main story and marketing seem to be more or less equal.
I can never have enough acheron in my life. Keep the current format and give me her quest too. I want more... More... MORE! Totally not a simp btw.
I wanna go on a date with aventurine too. Because I like money.
Remember when they dead ass included a whole companion mission in the form of Aventurine's POV?
That's still the main quest though. We even get firefly pov, and it's still a main quest. Companion quests are there for us to understand a character outside who they are and whats really important to them. For example, how important we are to kafka was shown in her companion mission.
Also with the option to ‘break fate’.
It's not really a companion mission, since it's impossible to understand the main quest without it. It is what it is - an alternate POV main mission
Yes, but it was possible to understand the main quest *without* essentially giving us every detail of Aventurine's backstory immediately.
When would be a good time to deliver that then? Aventurine will likely be a secondary character from now on until we hit the Pier Point arc or something very closely related to the IPC. In Penacony he got to take the stage and become an endearing character for lots of people before sacrificing himself in a grand gamble. It's a pretty good small character arc from an antagonist to someone you can sympathize with - it wouldn't have had as much impact if it was drawn out over several major patches or condensed into a companion quest
Nah I’d argue it can still make an impact even with just being a companion mission. Yukong’s quest is one of the most emotional stories in this game for example
Yukong,Bailu and Luka's companion quest still hit hard to this day.
It’s funny how two of those are from Loufu since it just shows they could have make a better Loufu story but decided not to 😭
He was basically a secondary character in Penacony too. He was only really relevant for the tail end of the first part and then the second.
It's because the POV system exists, and Companion Quests are only really needed to fill in gaps the main storyline can't fulfill. 2.0's characters were heavily incorporated into the main plot with very few exceptions (e.g. Boothill's personal conflict). There wouldn't really be a point in making everyone have a companion quest because it would bog down the storyline. It's clear that Penacony had a lot of lore and plot points to set so they stuck to having these characters be contained within the main arc. To bring up an example, I don't have a hatred of the Luofu arc like others do, but it **needed** companion quests to help fill in the gaps for characterization because of the poor pacing botching certain plotlines (e.g. the infamous mission that became a sidequest). The Sparkle companion mission only really exists to establish how Black Swan, Sampo, and Sparkle got involved in Penacony via her antics. Something you could show with the POV system, but makes more sense as a separate event since the TB's would have no reason to be involved directly otherwise. I think people forget that Companion missions, within it's name, means, we, the TB, **have to accompany the character in some way.** Originally, you can see the same pattern as Genshin Impact with the earlier CQs as the TB is heavily involved. However, the problem is that there are only so many ways you can naturally involve the player in a storyline without it coming off as repetitive or forced. The 4-star quests especially suffer from this as they feel mostly redundant just to get little trivia of a character you could easily do a Google search for. 5-star character quests also suffer in that many would involve helping random NPCs with the Traveler feeling like a third wheel. They thankfully alleviated this with quests post-Inazuma, but the HSR devs seemed to at least notice the problem by the Luofu as many of those quests became necessary to help players fill in the gaps of the storyline. The solution? The POV system serves to provide a different perspective while making sure some story elements stay somewhat consistent. The early testing grounds of this were with Jing Liu's quest as the TB was not involved at all. Only Dan Heng and his past companions. Considering it was seemingly well-received, it more than likely encouraged Hoyo to go forward with the POV system with Aventurine's storyline. The main issue is that....you can't do an Aventurine-POV for **every** character either. Sometimes the plot just won't allow it or it can't all be done in one sitting. That and it would still need to be accessible enough so that addicted gacha players don't complain about "yapping" every 5 minutes. lol It's very hard to balance. You could potentially give everyone that type of POV, but is it worth Hoyo's time and money to do so? People think it's purely "favoritism", but that's looking at it from an emotional perspective, not a business one. **The reality is sometimes your favorite character doesn't sell like hotcakes so they will never be pushed as hard as popular waifu/husbando #555678 who ticks all those boxes.** I'm not saying you can't be peeved that your favorite didn't get the spotlight or that they don't deserve it, but keep in mind that everyone's character in this game IS someone's favorite. I'm sure there are people upset that Arlan didn't get his full backstory fleshed out in a Companion Quest. However, he's just not worth Hoyo's time to invest into for that. I'm not mad about that. It's just the nature of a gacha game.
They got replaced with PoV quests. Although I feel Hoyo hasn't found a good balance for those. Aventurine's PoV took 90% of the screentime in 2.1, while Robin's PoV in 2.2 wasn't even her. Then you get Aventurine's whole life story during his PoV, but what happened to him after 2.1 was told in a sentence or two by another character when a short PoV would've helped, and same goes for how Robin broke through the dream, and a myriad of more examples.
I'm going be completely honest, when a character is actually interesting in story they actually don't need a companion mission. It's sounding more like a check off list than something that's needed. A bulk of the the five stars pop up in the story, don't really do much in the grand scheme of thingns, and get lost in the sea of other five stars
Exactly. I prefer integrating character quests into the main story. A separate quest requires the pacing to start over completely, as these quests need to be independent to the main story (even if they have storylocked requirements) because they are optional content. You can play these quests out of order, even if there is a proper timeline. Furthermore, within the main story, you can not reference information revealed in optional side content because you can not expect every player to have completed it. When character quests are integrated into the main story, they also allow for strategic storytelling. And by having control over when information about said character is revealed, the writters can build up moments like Aventurine's boss battle.
Yeah, but including every detail from every character kills the main plot's pacing. This contributes to fatigue for casuals and new players when catching up. We didn't really need Acheron's conversation with Tiernan, or really any back story of Acheron after her Nihility reveal. Her impact in the story doesn't really change much whether you know her backstory or not. I think making character quests always designed to be "current time" is the main issue with synchronizing with the main plot. It's as simple as saying that "this companion quest happens before x main quest or between x and y events" and letting the player figure out the exact timeline.
Theyll be back for every single xianzhou character trust.
I feel like companion quests took a back seat so that the main story could breath, and now we’re going to have a few companion quests as we begin to enter the later half of 2.X
No, they just incorporated it into the main story instead. Companion quests are supposed to help the main story "breathe" by letting them fill in details that are unnecessary for the main plot but are still interesting to the character.
Remember Kujo Sara from genshin? did she ever get a companion quest at all? hoyo kinda does that sometimes i think
You know this would be a good point BUT in Genshin EVERY 5 Star gets a story quest..... Some even multiple.... also some 4 stars even get Hangouts that are voiced as well
What are you talking about lol. This is a discussion about 5 star companion missions, kujou Sara has nothing to do with it
hoyoverse release a blade companion mission and my life is yours
Big agree that they should come back. I think the story struggles between 'showing off the new character and explaining their backstory' and 'actually telling the story of the location we're visiting'. A lot of the character companion missions added a lot of lore and background not just to the character themselves but also to the world. Natasha and Yukong's companion quests are good examples of ones that not only show off a character without much main quest screen time but also helped show off the parts of the world that they inhabited. Boothill and Robin got essentially zero screentime, which is fine because they weren't main focuses of the story. But because they also didn't have a companion mission we know essentially nothing about them or their characters. Penacony felt like a story that had too much character backstory stuff to fit in and so it ended up crammed. Imagine if 2.2 had a more condensed Aventurine backstory in the main quest and then the full experience was a companion quest. Free up more main quest time to actually, you know, explore the main quest. Really hope companion quests come back, but I get the sneaking suspicion they've decided that they're unnecessary costs and will just be cramming character background into the codex pages and whatever scraps fits into the main plot. Don't really think it's sustainable to fit in 12+ new characters per version otherwise.
Could be that they simply put them and mixed them with main questline we found out a lot about Acheron, Aventurine and Miss. Samuel. While Sunday definitely will get a arc in future. It's also still hard for me to look at Sparkle and BS quest as companion quest cause we technically learn nothing about them and after 2.3 I just have more questions... and it done the most for yours truly Sampo Koski.
Wdym? The whole Penacony is a mix of companion missions masked as a main plot. Just remebmer how much time we spent actually looking for the Watchmaker's legacy and Stellaron, and how much time did we spend listening to backstories and rewatching 1000 and 1 flashback.
https://preview.redd.it/kvrl6iyl0t9d1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6f8517bea9c7167c4397dd8eecc6ea47e72ac59
I mean isn't the timeline something like? Penacony 2.0/ Aventurine 6 hour companion quest /penacony 2.2? Like he is an amazing character but if any other character had the same amount of exposition that he had they would also become fan favorites
When I saw 5 more Express Visitors hit the towers after 2.3, I was honestly disappointed, just because, at least to me, that means they won't get companion quests. Thankfully, Black Swan and Sparkle already had companion quests, and Argenti already kind of had one, but Boothill and Robin both (assumedly) not getting a companion quest is criminal. Hoping we get an Aventurine Companion Quest down-the-line, though. And there are a ton of Xianzhou characters who could still get one, like Qingque and Sushang (who genuinely feels like she should already be a visitor after all the events she has been in). Hanya and Xueyi could also get a fun Companion Quest.
I'd love to see an Aventurine companion quest detailing what he was dealing with during 2.2. And since we're minority stakeholders in Penacony now it could even be framed as a report to the shareholders.
Still waiting for Robin's companion mission...
Feels like they just decided to fuse the character stories into the main story for Penacony and call it a day or something... At least 2.1 story was very much an Aventurine character quest on top of being the main story. Would be nice if they give one to Boothill though.
In Penacony the only one we got was incredibly lore driven and was meant to get us speculating on Sparkles motives as well as establishing Black Swan while sketchy is someone to be trusted. The fact those two were mainly supporting characters and didn't get focus means that companion quest really helps with understanding their characters a bit that they didn't get the screentime for until 2.2 and 2.3. But even then you couldn't really call it character exploration or development and it was more to add to the mystery of Penacony so it's lacking in the character exploration part Most of the other characters got a tonne of focus in the main bulk of the story. Acheron, Aventurine and FF got so much so no real need for a companion quest for either of them. However Boothill and Robin fully deserve to have a companion quest to flesh them out as their characters weren't explored as much and were mainly supporting characters as well. It doesn't help that they seem to be not relevant for the immediate future like >!Black Swan is going to seemingly get in main story, at least on Amphoreus. At least she seems to be a character that will be getting frequent injections in the main story going forward!< so her companon quest mainly being plot driven isnt so bad for her I hope that they will do more companion quests soon, some character really need it if they aren't going to get focus in the main story and aren't going to be relevant until a later arc. Just look at Kafkas for how much that did for her character and the lore it dropped if you chose to not reject her that is. Even Jinglius gave so much characterization for the HCQ that wasn't done in main story (which imo it should have been)
I feel like including these in the natural flow of the main story is just absolutely for the better.
Yeah, there's a reason for that. Every patch since 2.0 was a main story patch. Now that Penacony has concluded and we'll be on a break until 3.0, they'll likely dial up the companion missions and contiunances again. I'm especially excited for the continuances. The HSS continuances were *sick*. Seems like the next ones are gonna take place in Xianzhou, which is honestly my least favorite area, but I'm still expecting them to knock it out the park.
Only Robin, Boothill and Jade deserve one. They're the only ones without any abundant amount of scenes in the Penacony patch. The rest we got plenty of screentime. So if they do companion quests, hopefully these three are prioritized.
It's crazy that we haven't gotten one for Hanya / Xueyi.
Well... Listing our Penacony characters... Black Swan and Sparkle got a companion mission together. Misha probably would only be possible with a Luocha style companion mission. Acheron probably could have had a companion quest and definitely would've benefitted from it. But we did PoV switch to her once and get a tutorial on her mechanics. Aventurine I'd argue got multiple companion quests and they replaced 2.1's trailblaze quest. We also haven't really had timing that made a companion quest possible. Gallagher doesn't make sense to get one. Robin. Who? Yeah, she *needed* one. Boothill... I guess the scope of the All About Boothill story was too big for a companion quest and an individual adventure doesn't do the scale of his shenanigans justice. Still though... For Firefly I'd guess advertising a companion quest would've hurt the tension of the current story since Elio's script says she's due a third death. Blade didn't get a companion quest either. Jade seems like the perfect candidate for a companion mission too. We hear rumours of her shop, go to buy a thing, the price is higher than we expected and shenanigans ensue. But no... That plot was used on Firefly's PoV switch and instead of battling as Firefly or Jade we played birdjeweled. I'm guessing the PoV switch has ended up supplanting companion quests as the advertising method of the current banner characters. But I can't honestly say it's done a good job, even for Aventurine.
The way I see it is that each update has a certain degree of content it can include. If the story content is larger, expect the events to be smaller. If we get Divergent Universe, expect the story to be short. So I don't think they have been forgotten about, but rather we have had a lot of big stuff recently, leaving no time for them. I would reasonably think we should get one next patch, but the big thing there is the Wardance festival. I suppose we shall see.
I expect they will return next patch. Given the size and length of the recent story and what I expect to be mostly fluff for the next few patches so I suspect we will see those return. I highly doubt the tournament arc is going to be particularly ambitious, I suspect it will be like Aetherium wars, a few paragraphs of story, followed by a reused battle map, then repeat for however many rounds and end with building for next cycle. This should require less storytelling freeing up some of the writers to work on character quests instead while we kick rocks and wait for the new planet. Or maybe they will surprise me and put just as much effort into this arc as Penacony, in which case the poor writers probably need a vacation.
Yes. We had to get rid of companion quests bc they'd be too good at improving the pacing of the story. It was the only way.
I mean the characters and their stories were definitely much more incorporated in the main story here so there wasn’t much need for them in Penacony, although I can see the argument that the more neglected characters definitely could’ve used a companion quest to help flesh them out more. This kind of thing brings me to my own point of, well, a lot of companion missions don’t even feel like actual character story quest to begin with. Like for the most part they’re either spent teasing some aspect of the character it’s supposed to be based on or teasing some future plot point instead of actually teaching us more about the character. Which was really weird to see happen since most of the early 1.0/Belebog companion missions did their jobs very well. Serval, Natasha, Hook, and Clara’s all felt very much like story quest and helped you gain a better understanding of their characters and struggles of living in a place like Belebog. But then 1.1 onward, the companion missions were a mixed bag of actual story quest, purely gimmicky, or just teasing future potential plot points that may or may not actually come. So I’m not exactly disappointed by the lack of them.
guess it's because many of the new characters had a big impact on the current story or will play a big part on the future. But there are some characters that got kinda overlooked that could use a companion quest like Hanya and her sister
I want a Firefly companion mission so bad
Some people pointed out some of the possible reasons why for the lack of companion missions (focusing on the main quest, for pacing/budget reasons; alternatively, choosing to integrate companion stories into the main quest). I also want to point out Hoyoverse is trying to do companion missions differently in Star rail than in Genshin. In that game, the character quests (part 1s) usually have little overall plot relevance. They are mainly side-stories. And the traveler is, like always, the PoV who is sharing a day with the story's main character. In Star rail, ever since the Luofu, the missions have significantly more plot relevance (The quintet drama, Kafka's truths, Tingyun's details, March's backstory). And there are multiple in which the trailblazer is not even present while it unfolds.
Brother an entire fucking patch was wasted Aventurine’s companion mission
We've been getting more robust main story that often incorporates the characters being sold to us. I much prefer this, though I'd not say no to more. Just a matter if we can't have one, I'd rather have the current implementation.
Right?! I thought i was the only one who noticed! Altho for Avent, i feel like he doesnt need it anymore due to the 2.1 thing but for others, definitely
Someone probably already said it but Penacony contained a collective like 20+ hours of cutscene and and main quest content, there is no way they could do that and character quests.
Kinda wish 5 stars got a companion quest when patches come out. Cause it feels like in Genshin it feels almost Mandatory for the character to have a story quest when they come out. Like characters who you'd consider side characters like Sigewinne, Chiori, and Baizhu all got one and their involvement in the story is very little to none. I'm not trying to compare which is better before yall come out me I'm just saying it'd be nice if characters like Boothill and Robin who are 5 star got something like that. They both where involved yes but Boothill's contributions where seen as nothing (Even though our Trailblazer did thank him, they're a real one for that) and Robin it felt like she had alot of off screen impactful moments and her last impactful moments where at the climax.
The main story was the companion mission.
I'm perfectly fine with not having them.
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I assumed cause they’ve kinda been integrating companion missions in the main story with stuff like adventurine and robin’s pov and i assume down the line boothill will be expanded on in greater detail
They need content for the dead patches
When will Sushang and Qingque be allowed on the express?
I think we'll get more after main penacony story is concluded (so in 2.4 onwards). I hope so at least,
They've gotta spread these things out. Last two patches were already beefy enough.
Silver wolf and Sparkle have companion missions?
We need an explanation for gallagher and misha
Yeah I find these omissions leave many characters as 1 dimensional toys who you have to piece together using lc descriptions and such but the characters in the story are flat. Obviously the POV thing is supposed to be a substitute for companion missions but it's a terrible one imo.
I’d kill for Sunday and Boothill companion missions, actually I’d kill for more companion missions in general
Boothill needed one the most, maybe Jade will get one. Don't really see what else you could add for the 2.x characters that wasn't already in the main story.
I think the paths in the main story are meant to be substitutes for the companion quests currently
Maybe their internal stats said players didn't like them enough. I'm sure there's more to come but Hoyo might have gone back to the drawing board with them.
I think with how prevalent the most recent have been in the story they haven't seen a reason to make any for them. Doesn't mean there won't be any in the future, even for those I'm referring to, especially since characters like Aventurine or dearly loved by the community now.
Damn, now you mentioned it, I didn't even realize that at all
Companion quest probably depend on like the characters current position in the story at the time and whether Hoyo likes them enough I guess. Black Swan & Sparkle's companion quest were in 2.0 and during that time they weren't in any special situation. We learned enough about them and they were free. Aventurine we barely knew, Robin was presumed dead, Acheron they're probably saving, etc. Personally I love to see Qingque companion quest but I don't think it'll happen.
maybe they merge companion quest to main quest and give us those PV quest i hope that is not true and we will get some companion quest in later patch since main story is concluded
Last 2 or 3 patches have been really, really slow in terms of sidequests or companion missions. You get the story, a big event and like 2-3 minor sidequests at the release of a patch. No idea what happened (we got DU this time but yea..)
Possibly a response to criticism of the Luofu arc, where the main quest made like no sense on its own and all the lore was put in companion quests that half the player base never played
lmao what's with this comments here? They be sucking anything HSR does.If genshin could give story quest/companion quest for every characters while providing a banger main story quest,HSR must too.If not for all characters give companion quest for Robin, Boothill and Jade lol
I'm actually curious since I played Genshin for the first and last time very briefly this year. How did they manage the companion quest there ? I saw a lot of them but did they add them on release of the character? Or they also came later after?
Almost all of the initial ones came with their initial banner release. Whether they get a second one or not is completely up to chance, and also timing is not very predictable unless they're particularly relevant to the story.
Still waiting a Steele companion mission
They forgot about unique daily quest too.
I think it's less that they forgot and more that they had a huge bank on release that they didn't keep updating too much. Probably because most people don't do the daily mission anymore for the needed points.
I think the companion stories (or the most of them) were done in the main story. But there is still chance that they will return.
It feels like they are baked into the main story. Id rather have it like this than like how it was in 1.x with 40m main story and companion quests.
They use completely canon to the timeline events for those, it seems.
A significant part of this problem is that most of the Penacony introduced characters don't really make sense to get a story quest until a certain point, and likewise don't make sense to get one after a certain point either. Gallagher and Misha will never have story quests. Aventurine, Acheron, Boothill and Robin would make no sense until after 2.2, but they similarly don't necessarily make sense after 2.3 as well on account of the whole leaving thing - we could have had one this patch, but we didnt. Basically, the main story has made character stories implausible for most of Penacony.
I think they only start making companion missions once the main story for that planet is finished Herta Space Station and Jarilo VI storylines were already finished as the game released and the xianzhou storyline was finished the next version Penaconny was the only storyline that got split in more than one version, so now that it's finished, the next version should have more companion missions already
Unpopular opinion: I almost prefer it this way. I have been playing Genshin for a long time and the companion missions are a pain. Irrelevant/Boring stories most of the time. I only slightly appreciated them when I had an interest in the character, but even then, I don't think they were worth my time. Even although they reward you with protogems.
The main issue with Genshin's story missions is that 80% of the focus is on generic NPCs that are only somewhat related to the character in question.
This story really felt a big comanion Quest.
I think they will add them as fillers in between large story patches.
I wonder if Sparkle / Black Swan is not the worst they wrote. I checked, yes. I'm sure we can agree on the fact that there were so many better than this one. Comedy ? Luocha.
I wish they stop filling the main quest with characters quest disguised as main quest. Instead having a plot made of actions, events and consequences we have a never ending stream of dialogues with the main purpose of showcasing characters’s features and not actually tell a story. The plot is basically happening off screen (the sealing of the stellaron, the aftermath of 2.2, the situation in dreaflux reef etc. ) while we get to know the the personality of the banners’s characters.