#My Take on the current "Open world system" and some criticism on the general structure of story chapters.

Disclaimer- I actually really like the current story, without going into spoilers I think it's really interesting. This is about the structure the story is within, not the story itself.

When I say open worlds I mean the maps such as the current Part 2 maps.

[Mcguffin] astral ring, moon ring etc...

Big maps don't improve the storytelling.

When put to compare with the old way of telling the story [Story stages], the new system is quite disappointing so far. It's not terrible, or amazing, it's simply mediocre. Traditionally, HI3's storytelling went as such:

Walk —> talk to person A for a while —> head to destination B for reason C —> complete mission and head to person/Place D —> talk to Person E —> repeat.

The reader had the liberty of following the story at their own pace, proceeding with it chapter by chapter, mob stage by mob stage, ultimately building up to the finale.

However, when the 'OW' factor is introduced, I've noticed there haven't been any remarkable changes. Everything is still the same. It's still in the old visual novel format with characters talking in the same fashion they did since the earliest chapters with no remarkable changes whatsoever.

I'll use the Elysian Realm as an example [Not the "to the Flawless chapters" I mean the actual Elysian Realm].

I believe ER was narratively the greatest Honkai Ever was.

ER takes you through the story step by step, allowing you to go through the story at your own pace.

Going through the main story unlocks remembrance vessels which allow you to glean even more information Regarding the flame chasers.

Again, at your own pace.

Entering the Elysian Realm, you're greeted with the Flame chasers lying around, who you can talk to know more about them, giving it a certain sense of life that no other stages have managed to recreate.

In ER, each part of it is important to the Story [discounting the weekly trials of course] without the meaningless excess. It kind of creates the cozy vibe and sometimes I still walk through the Elysian Realm to just look at the Flame chasers [since I swore to never complete it because then they'll disappear].

Although ER has its own problems regarding having to grind through stages, I believe it's a perfect example of how Honkai's storytelling really should have improved towards.

Open worlds aren't fun to explore.

They're not fun or entertaining to go through and they never have been.

I don't think they ever will be within this game.

Your movement is limited by countless invisible walls so the people who love just going places for the sake of going there will be sorely disappointed [getting yourself stuck in an alley for funsies].

You're not rewarded in any real way for exploring the map, no there's no purpose to looking around as the buildings are cookie cutter and get quite repetitive and boring to look at.

Every open world yells at you to explore it except the only "exploration" is opening boring chest after boring chest, which is deliberately time-gated and spaced out such that you don't realize how meaningless it is. Please game devs, adding chests to your map, laughable puzzles and 'HEY DON'T GO HERE' signs don't make your map good.

The maps might look visually filled but are at their core empty. Talking to NPCs yields you nothing as you'll simply end up in a loop that goes like this:

-Dialogue option A —> enter dialogue —> return to dialogue choice screen.

-Dialogue option B —> enter dialogue —> return to dialogue choice screen.

-Leave dialogue.

The side quests that you get don't manage to get your interest. They're placed as boring filler to make you think that the world has actual substance when it really doesn't. It's, in essence, boring filler that's there because they know the hole they dug themselves into by time-gating the story and exploration.

Mobs are also no fun. Despite all the yip yap they did in their live streams regarding mobs, you'll still steamroll through the mobs simply because they will never pose a significant threat to you and there's not even an incentive to kill them.

And despite all the talk they talked, the valks are still innately uninteractive with their environment which can be seen by how most rotations don't even have any mention of enemy interference. Simply mash through the same skill combo Qte shtick you've had in your muscle memory for the hundredth time against the same enemy till they're dead.

The maps have no replayability factors, creating meaningless bloat.

Each of these maps takes up an ungodly amount of storage in the game, leading to the app (on mobile) taking up to 30~ gigabyte of storage just by itself. [Some of the more recent maps take up between 400-600 MB of storage, not counting audio resources].

It's become a meme atp that more and more phones are unable to run the game with mediocre graphics without cooking itself.

I've found myself with no motivation to explore the game beyond catching up with the latest slice of the story pie that they've given you. It's simply complete story quest and leave. That's how Honkai Impact always was, and always should have been.

Resources are grind-gated.

Resources [Crystals] are gated behind you logging on every single day to clear a stage that you don't gaf about for the hundredth time, or leveling up [insert Mcguffin] so that you can explore the barren wasteland they try to convince you is actually fun and entertaining.

To obtain the 1230 crystals promised, you'll need to explore, grind mob stage over and over and over and over and over again with the same 3 boring valkyries, leveling up [Mcguffin] .but leveling [Mcguffin] is only possible by clearing the same mob stage over and over and over and over again.

Summary

Honkai Impact would do better to trim off all the excess in its story. Between grinding 18 ER stages, Abyss, memorial Arena, and Stigmata Foundry stages, having to grind even more in the story, just to get rewards is really really tiring. [This is also the reason the Pri-arm mats Events aren't liked].

Large maps have no reason to exist other than the flex of saying "we have large maps oh and we have shaders too please praise me" for.

You will (almost) never go back to these maps because it gives you no satisfaction in doing them. Mobs are repetitive and interactive. You'll never really have to struggle against them as all you need to do is mash the same memorized rotations as before just to win.

Big maps don't improve the storytelling which has stayed almost the same as it was since Day 1.

Edit: changed interactive to uninteractive