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Behind The Expy : What Makes Honkai Star Rail's Story Have That Extra Edge
What makes a game stand out from its clones? HoYoverse has had an iron grip over the mobile games market, with everything from art style to settings for major releases shifting to match any pace set by the Genshin Impact developers’ decisions. It’s reaching the point some studios can even do it better: games like [...]
What makes a game stand out from its clones? HoYoverse has had an iron grip over the mobile games market, with everything from art style to settings for major releases shifting to match any pace set by the Genshin Impact developers' decisions. It's reaching the point some studios can even do it better: games like Wuthering Waves and Duet Night have deeper combat than Genshin, even if they feel like they're lacking that same je na sais quox that puts Paimon on major billboards.
Yet, there's one thing that HoYoverse holds above its contemporaries- that is the thrilling links between its different narratives. While not direct sequels to each other, games like Honkai Star Rail lean heavily into the concept of the expy- a fandom term referring to "exported" characters.
Briefly, the rules for an expy are fairly straightforward: they will usually share at least a Japanese or Chinese VA, look visually similar while bearing some thematic similarities. A great example would be Natasha from Honkai Star Rail, who's largely agreed is the counterpart to Raven from Honkai Impact 3rd. Despite not being a murderous assassin in the newer game, she's still got the core beats of Raven down- she loves kids and takes care of them, even keeping her original name.
Given the rich mythos HoYoverse has built up from Fly Me To The Moon all the way through to Honkai Impact 3rd, they've created these strong symbols out of their characters. Faces like Raiden Mei and Bronya appear in multiple games, never as the same character- yet if they show up long-time fans know to get excited for it.
The Power of the Expy Is To Tell You How To Feel
The most recent reveal of Amphoreus- the next planet for Honkai Star Rail is a peak example of how this works for both players too. For the new players, you're probably enthralled by the idea of an arc revolving around legendary heroes from the past, especially when so many of them were teased at once.
If you've played any Honkai Impact 3rd however, you'd probably immediately caught on to that whole saga as the story of the 13 Flame-Chasers- AKA characters so popular they continued to get merch even after their arc was done.
If you know the major beats of the Flame Chasers, you probably have some attachment to it, and the idea of seeing it built on and explored in Honkai Star Rail is a cool one. Sure, it's not going to be the exact same group as the last time- but the fact you know HoYoverse knows how to write a story about the downfall of 13 of the strongest warriors for humanity means you're going to love to see them do it again.
Better yet, if you're just a fan of the characters it's also a chance to see them again. I'm not the biggest Raiden Mei fan, but seeing two drastically different interpretations of her in Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail was really cool, because they lean so hard into the tragedy behind her as a character. Imagine the absolute fiesta that happened once the Amorpheus trailer closed with a reveal of the first Elysia expy.
She may have a million things different from her Honkai Impact counterpart but who cares, it's Elysia. The fact she only had one line of dialogue and she's talking about a romantic story is already all the signal we need: this is a reimagining of one of that game's most popular characters.
It's something that's really hard for other games to do because they simply haven't had the head start that HoYoverse has. Honkai Gakuen was by no means a cultural phenomenon but it's something that people who did play it hold dear to their hearts. In today's world of lightning-fast End of Service announcements games don't have that time to set in like that.
Meanwhile, a lot of props has to go to the HoYoverse team for not directly veering into the expy stuff and making Honkai Star Rail a direct sequel. The game sports an amazing cast of original characters, every bit as compelling even without some fan going "umm actually". Just look at characters like Herta, Sparkle or Firefly- even if they hadn't been built on a pre-existing archetype like Bronya or Himeko they leave a strong enough impression that I wouldn't be surprised if you suddenly saw them in Genshin Impact or Zenless Zone Zero.
I mean, HoYoverse is so rock solid with their setting they can even address the expy situation in-game: Welt Yang isn't even an expy, he's literally the same character from Honkai Impact thrown into a new game, and has a conversation about how weird it is to see alternate universe versions of people he's met.
The MCU Problem
I do think that chasing the Expy feeling is something that's going to be very hard for other studios going forward. Just like how the MCU saw DC suddenly pretending that a few stinkers was a 10-year coordinated studio legacy, a studio coming out of nowhere claiming that their next banner is the "return of a fan favorite character" from a previous title is likely to feel tacky, forced and derivative.
The best studio to have a shot at that is probably going to be Kuro Games: I've met some real enjoyers of Punishing Gray Raven, and I would be legitimately surprised if one of those characters didn't somehow show up in Wuthering Waves.
And that's exactly the point of it: if your studio has, against all odds succeeded long enough to pull off the expy gambit I think it works out really well as a layered piece of fanservice. But it requires something that's really hard in a world of instant returns: an obsessive commitment to your story and understanding of your fans and their takeaways from it.
Now if you excuse me, I have to decide if I'm going to spend as much on the Elysia expy in Honkai Star Rail as I did on Elysia Prime in Honkai Impact 3rd.