While the Astral Express crew looks toward its new destination, HSR’s development team isn’t done with Penacony just yet. In a new Honkai Star Rail interview with Famitsu’s September magazine issue, we learn some fun tidbits about the planet of festivities and some hints about what’s coming in the future.
The interview is between the Famitsu team and Hoyo’s developers and talks everything about the 2.0 to 2.3 updates, including characters like Honkai Star Rail Firefly and Honkai Star Rail Acheron’s stories.
When discussing Acheron and Honkai Star Rail Welt’s meeting, developers confirm that everyone’s favorite coffin-carrying healer, Luocha, will come back into the story and get an expansion on his lore. This is exciting as we know barely anything about him, and similar to Welt, he’s a character that appears in Honkai Impact 3rd (though under the name Otto). Acheron is also a cross-universe character as she goes by Raiden, too – just like Genshin Impact’s Raiden Shogun and Honkai 3rd’s Raiden Mei.
Another key moment of the interview is the talk of Honkai Star Rail Robin’s song. When using her ultimate move, she bursts into her signature song, which overrides the initial battle music through the duration of her buff. The development team suggests that her move may get an update in the future – this likely won’t change the effects, but may add the ability to change or mute her song. It does get a little old after using it multiple times in one battle, after all.
The interview also covers whether Blade needs to renew his driving license – after a lot of players (myself included) were surprised to see him take the wheel of a car. Turns out that no, as a Stellaron Hunter, he does not need to renew his driving license. Let’s be honest, he probably doesn’t even have one.
The final tidbit that caught my eye is that the team seems to suggest that we won’t see the Annihilation Gang again. You know, the group who got an entire introduction trailer with names and voice actors, only to be blown up off-screen during the Penacony events? The team may be playing their cards close to their chest, but surely we’ll see these characters pop back up.
We highly recommend checking out the full spread. You can purchase it digitally here at BookWalker or grab it on Amazon JP. The interview talks a lot about Honkai Star Rail’s Argenti, Penacony, and everything Honkai Star Rail Aventurine.