You can skip that.I really enjoyed the story for this patch, especially the last half. Also, March's training is fun, though re-running it multiple times is less fun with all of the repeated dialogue.
I just finished this today (well, the story part of it, there's still stuff to do) and the story was surprisingly well done. The journey of self discovery for Luka, the history of Igor and the couple of side stories were very nice. The side stories in particular seemed to touch on some topics that are relevant in contemporary times. The story of the Borisin temple people was especially touching.The Wardance story about Luka has also been excellent.
Well Sunday has come and gone and I see no trailers posted...I would post the 2.7 drip marketing as well, but it feels wrong to not post in on Sunday
I'm so glad to be going back to Penacony! I'm sure Rappa will be fun in the story, but I will be skipping her no matter what.Rappa feels like a filler character but they still went all out on the marketing
Am actually surprisingly hyped for 2.6 though. I'm really curious about the Penacony story, all the monkey stuff has me thinking that maybe we'll get some Dr. Primitive/Genius Society stuff
New Simulated Universe DLCs are also always neat and chunky.
An island full of bananas~Ba na na na!
Same...So many characters I want! Sunday is priority, but after that I don't know what I'll do! I really want Fugue now, so that I can continue to use my Firefly team while Memblazer is on another team. But I also want The Herta. Aglaea isn't really my jam, so that's one character I don't want at least!
I kinda hope these patches are more frequent and they introduce a way to rewatch old story bits like ZZZ, would be really welcome. Even an aging gacha like FGO which lacks many QoL modern games have allow players to re-read previous story chapters.What do you mean, main story over 8 patches - a full year!?
This has the potential to be a genuine epic. And they said we're still going to get content for the old worlds as well.
I've not played the game since October and I've mostly been out of the loop but this bit of information caught my eye. This seems to address an issue I have with both Genshin and HSR where the main story for a year would start from patch x.0 and conclude around x.3 or x.4 and then you'd have 3-4 patches with what is essentially filler content. This year in Star Rail, the Penacony story ended around 2.4 and then we had 2 patches with the werewolf prison break and then whatever came after that (I didn't play it). The werewolf content wasn't bad but it really had nothing to do with the actual story of the game. In fact, now that I think about it, there really hasn't been much movement on the core plot about what the deal is with the Trailblazer implanted with the stellaron. But IMO, this is an even bigger issue with Genshin where they introduce a whole new mini region half way through the year. I guess it serves to fulfill the demand of their loyal players to have something to do all year but to me it feels extraneous with no link to the archon story and the main plot. I've only done 2 of those regions in the game - Dragonspine and The Chasm - and both were just okay. Because I'm years behind in content, these extra regions become more stuff to trudge through to catch up to the real meat and bones of the story. I skipped Enkanomiya but the desert to the North-West of Sumeru (Hadramaveth?) just broke my resolve to continue. Even if I had finished or skipped that, I have all of Fontaine and then the entirety of Chenyu Vale before I can reach Natlan. I feel like it would be much easier to remain interested if the main story was told throughout the year and all the content expansions happened in the main region/planet, which is what I'm hoping for in 3.0.What do you mean, main story over 8 patches - a full year!?
It's not the same but Fate's Atlas does exist to give a story recap if you've forgotten what's going on.I kinda hope these patches are more frequent and they introduce a way to rewatch old story bits like ZZZ, would be really welcome. Even an aging gacha like FGO which lacks many QoL modern games have allow players to re-read previous story chapters.
Kinda nuts only ZZZ has this feature.
I would say it does in some way. The Xianzhou has a bunch of B-Plots going on that are off-shoots of 1.x - They are now enemies of Nanook because of Phantylia and Nanook is very central to a lot of the story. The Stellarons are apparently connected to him, so by extension the Trailblazer is (and our first Path was Destruction). Jingliu and Luocha are still having plans that are seemingly about killing an Aeon. And there is The Hunt vs. Abundance war. Lots of plot-threads thare are maybe only tangentially related to the "main-main" plot, but are imo still building up to something big, so I don't mind them.The werewolf content wasn't bad but it really had nothing to do with the actual story of the game.
So, to me, the stellaron is the core plot/mystery of the game. The other stuff happening with the factions and aeons are sort of world building and while they do contribute to the overall cosmology of the Star Rail universe, they are not directly telling the main story. I kind of understand that it's difficult to write a story for a live service game... you have to expanding the plot in new directions while simultaneously drip feeding the core story. I think the balance is off for Star Rail... I'm not even sure they actually moved the stellaron story forward at all in Penacony. I think live service stories should be written as finite arcs so that they can actually reach a conclusion instead of getting stretched indefinitely. In the case of Genshin, the main story is finding Lumine/Aether and resolving the history of Khaenri'ah. And even though it will be a 6-7 year long arc, it's fair to expect a resolution in or after Snezhnaya. And then, hopefully, if Genshin remains popular, they should start another proper story with the Traveler and maybe Paimon too. That's how I'd prefer things to happen anyway.I would say it does in some way. The Xianzhou has a bunch of B-Plots going on that are off-shoots of 1.x - They are now enemies of Nanook because of Phantylia and Nanook is very central to a lot of the story. The Stellarons are apparently connected to him, so by extension the Trailblazer is (and our first Path was Destruction). Jingliu and Luocha are still having plans that are seemingly about killing an Aeon. And there is The Hunt vs. Abundance war. Lots of plot-threads thare are maybe only tangentially related to the "main-main" plot, but are imo still building up to something big, so I don't mind them.
While you're right about this, I didn't want to rush through Genshin just to catch up to the main story. As a general rule, I like to do the main and side quests of an RPG. In the case of Genshin, it is also worthwhile to do other things like exploration, oculus collection, reputation and so on. Mondstadt, I reached 100% region completion with something like 90%+ for Dragonspine. In Liyue I did all the quests and oculus collection but left exploration at around 60% because it was just too much. In Inazuma, I did quests and oculus collection but left exploration and decided to skip Enkanomiya and come back to it at some point in the future. Now in Sumeru I've done the archon quests but not all the world quests, and I'm thinking of skipping the oculus collection and exploration. Even after this I'll have all of Fontaine to go through and I'll probably skip Chenyu Vale to reach Natlan. I'm not a completionist by any stretch but you can see I'm playing each region less and less just to be able to catch up and I'm not really liking that either. I'm not playing the way I'd like to play and also continuously falling behind the relentless pace at which new content appears. So yea, it's a "problem" as you mentioned but I also don't want to just skip over a ton of stuff only to catch up to the story.Although for your "problem" in particular, there's really nothing stopping you from bee-lining the main story and doing exploration at your leisure afterwards. Iirc only Chasm is a main story progression-blocker.
This really is one of the best parts of ZZZ. Low intensity, low stakes storytelling without some grand overarching threat in the story. That said, even here, I believe the origin story of our protagonists is in fact the main mystery so far and I hope they're going to address it. Literally everyone has said that 1.4 was a fantastic patch so I'm actually very tempted to come back and see what happened but again, I'm at least 2 patches behind in the story. It's always daunting to think how much time you'll have to play just to catch up with everything.I think Zenless also does a good job with it's story. It has a more character-driven, lower-stakes, slice-of-live vibe that might feel like stuff is just "filler", but 1.4 was a phenominal "season finale" that basically brought everything together. Will have to be seen how things continue now though, but for now they have my trust after 1.4.