Your role is to clean the place up so that change can take place. Jarilo-VI and the second planet-a bright, futuristic China with immortality problems-are distinct locations with casts of characters who are capable of handling their planet's problems on their own. While the planet's storyline doesn't end on a radical solution to the problem, it suggests that Star Rail won't have the kind of story where a magical hero fixes everything with her magical powers. It's actually more soft on that aspect than I like, but the missions there spend a lot of time unearthing how the extreme precarity became an excuse for extreme control by the people in power. Star Rail doesn't go full Final Fantasy 7 with its depiction of class disparity and anarchism in Jarilo-VI. But toiling below the city is an entire society of miners keeping the lights on. Heaters line the stone streets and citizens gather around a monument dedicated to the ancient people that made the place habitable. On the surface, the city looks surprisingly prosperous despite being surrounded by a frozen wasteland. You don't spend a long time trekking through the snow before being escorted to the planet's last living city, Belobog. The Trailblazer has one inside her, which makes her uniquely equipped to find out how to stop them. (Jarilo-VI is one of two planets available at launch, but, sort of like Genshin's regions, more will be added over time.) Jarilo-VI was tricked by one of the universe's gods and given a Stellaron, a seed of disaster that helps civilizations prosper before it mutates and curses them for eternity. Once you leave the space station in Star Rail's intro, which acts as the hub for important characters and side quests later on, you're dropped into Jarilo-VI, a frozen planet that shares the same problem as the Trailblazer. She's tired, confused, and doing her best-a truly resonant character for anyone trying to survive what it's like to be alive and online in 2023. My Trailblazer sends emojis and spams question marks to her friends. NPCs periodically send text messages asking for help or just to check in, each an opportunity to personify the Trailblazer in a much more playful and compelling way than the Traveler in Genshin. Star Rail doesn't waste your time, and it plays like a modern RPG-with some free-to-play gacha game caveats.ĭitching the open-world structure established in Genshin lets Star Rail focus on building a meaningful cast of side characters through quests and stray conversations. Here, that stuff is tucked away in text logs and item descriptions. The steady pace of the plot and its surprisingly articulate writing help avoid the misery of having to sit through long stretches of worldbuilding like you're forced to in Genshin. Your main character, the Trailblazer, and her two crewmates travel to different planets and wade into the politics and problems of the locals. Star Rail's cast of anime protagonists fits its elastic tone, which fluctuates from the heroic optimism of a space opera, to the dark comedy of a Nier game, with a lot of Final Fantasy 14's soap opera storytelling mixed in.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |