If you've ever worried that HoYoverse might run out of ideas, you'll be pleased to know that the developers of Honkai: Star Rail have plenty of unreleased characters to fall back on.
Since launching in 2023 with 23 playable characters, the mobile RPG has ballooned in size to a total of 93 at the time of writing.
At a media event in Seoul ahead of the release of Version 4.7, we asked lead game designer Chengnan An how far in advance the team plans such updates and what their approach to development is.
"It's almost impossible to make a game if we just look into one update only," he began.
"We always want to provide content with high quality, and our stories and characters are closely connected, so we have to play ahead of time.
"If we want to design a whole new world, it takes more than 15 months to dig into the concepts and based on the core concept we can then design our characters."
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Considering how character-driven the game is, it's perhaps no surprise that this is a core focus of development, with plenty of characters currently in development with an eye toward future updates.
"We have over 10 unreleased characters at one time and characters in different production pipelines," he explained. "We also have very specific plans for them."
After asking if there were any characters that they haven't found the right occasion to introduce yet, he coyly teased that "in the next year, you might be able to see some of the characters that players have been wanting for a long time, but no spoilers right now".
In the meantime, the Version 4.7 update dubbed 'Now, Lay Laughter to All Stars' will introduce Aha as the 94th playable character.
Her addition will mark the first time that an Aeon – a race of gods who preside over the game's universe – will be available as a playable character in Honkai: Star Rail.
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