Honkai: Star Rail Lead Game Designer Chengnan An on Creating an Immersive World

ANN caught up with Hoyoverse's Lead Game Designer, Chengnan An, at this year's Game Developer's Conference. After graduating from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Chengnan An ed HoYoverse in 2016 as the Lead Combat Designer of Honkai Impact 3rd, responsible for developing and fine-tuning the game's combat mechanics. He advanced to a more strategic role in 2019 and now serves as the Lead Game Designer for Honkai: Star Rail. He oversees the sophisticated gameplay design and orchestrates the strategic roap for this live-service, space-fantasy RPG. He spoke with us about the game's operations to his favorite characters and moments!

Are you surprised by the reception to the game and how positive it's been?

Chengnan AN: Of course! There is always this element of surprise. We always tried to create games that our players would love. When we launched the game, we felt so flattered. It wasn't until then that we realized we had so many fans in China and worldwide. That was a very pleasant surprise for us.

Looking back, it's been almost two years since the game launched. During those two years, there have always been new players to our game, and our game has always been very popular. That encourages us to always try to keep our players happy with the game and always have new content for them.

So, how do you keep the game fresh? What goes into the brainstorming process?

AN: If we were omnipotent, we would know everything about this game from the very beginning. But sadly, that is not the case for us, so we work with our players throughout the process to unleash new possibilities for our game. And we always make sure to leave room for the imagination to take its course. We take in our players' and see if the game has met expectations. At the same time, we keep working on the game.

How do you listen to your fan base?

AN: We communicate with our players differently across different regions, different platforms. We see their reactions to the content we create, whether or not they are good enough for every single character or specific event. There are certain points that we follow up on to see our players' reactions to learn if the players love the characters or if they have enough interest in following our events. We follow up on the discussions that our players have after the launch of new content. We want to see if the new content has stimulated a wide range of discussions.

What are your top three favorite scenes from the game?

AN: If you're referring to the story-related scenes, I would say there is this one scene from version 2.1 where you see the characters Acheron and Aventurine having a discussion and the space of Nihility.

The second scene is from the earlier versions of the game, and I believe it's also a scene loved by many players. It was when the main character challenged Cocolia with the theme song playing in the background. With all that built up and all the stories leading up to the final climax, that is very memorable to a lot of players.

The most recent one would be a scene from Version 3.0. That is when you see the main character start embarking on the Path of Remembrance, and the main character comes into with this piece of memory that the players do not previously know, which is the Stellaron Hunter experience. You can see this dialogue that the main character has with these friends, but at the same time, enemies and hints of the past. What they see isn't just a replay of the past. It's probably how the past interprets the memories we've never known. And the Stellaron Hunter showing up highlights the idea, the connection between the Trailblazer and Stellar Hunters probably runs deeper than it seems.

Who are your top three favorite characters?

AN: That is a tough choice because I love so many characters, and my answer would be different every time. For now, I would say it's Acheron, Jing Yuan, and Firefly. If I were to elaborate on why I like these three characters, we would be here all day! You just asked about my favorite scenes, and I think that ties into my favorite characters. I talked about the dialogue between Acheron and Aventurine in the space of annihilation. For the Honkai Impact 3rd players, the face and the stories of Acheron would resonate with them. That one dialogue between Acheron and Aventurine depicts Acheron's understanding of her past, and it's one of the few deeper conversations in the game that has stimulated in-depth thinking across the player community, myself included.

Our Executive Editor told me that Dan Heng and his dragon form–and Blade– are popular.

AN: We poured our heart into deg our characters, and it's not just about the story or how powerful they are. It's also about their own unique, distinctive characteristics. It's not a surprise that our characters are well-loved. It's something that's expected. I can share my insights from the perspective of gameplay and artistic expression, which is true for every single character we create, that we want the mechanics to work for the storyline and background stories of our characters. By doing so, we can bring this very immersive experience to our players. Throughout that experience, our players form a deeper bond with the characters.

Take the character Blade as an example. Setting-wise, he's very hard to kill, but he also longs for death. Throughout the combat mechanics, you can see this emphasis; his health bar changes from time to time during combat, making him hard to kill, no matter how much damage you inflict on him. Throughout combat, he has these quotes saying that, "Oh, you don't need to save me," just these abnormal comments that you wouldn't expect from a character during combat.

Both Dan Heng's and Blade's stories have not ended, and there is still a huge space for future progression.

How about Black Swan and Kafka?

AN: We cannot talk about Kafka and Black Swan without mentioning Penacony, which is a world we released in the 2.0 version. Penacony is somewhere in the galaxy where all characters from that galaxy come in. It is not surprising that Acheron, the Emanator of Nihility, and Black Swan, the Memokeeper from the Garden of Recollection, meet at this place. Through their interactions, players can see the interplay of the two different powers, the Nihility path and the Garden of Recollection. We also launched an animated short where the players can see Black Swan and Acheron dancing scenes, which is quite interesting.

I'd like to share more on the development of the character Acheron, the Emanator of Nihility. We went through multiple rounds of brainstorming, thinking about how exactly we would depict this very powerful character. Acheron plays a really important role in Penacony's story progression. One way to achieve that is Acheron releases her ultimate very differently from other characters by being the Emanator of Nihility.

She releases her ultimate by debuffing all of the enemies, reflecting her path. At the same time, we think about what exactly we mean by "nihility." When does someone feel a sense of emptiness in their life? It could be when someone feels like there's no desire left. There is nothing that this person wants. Or when this person is so powerful that there are virtually no enemies for them. What does that mean in the context of a turn-based game? It could be that this character is so powerful that she doesn't even bother to enter combat. So we give Acheron a special ability, where she can wipe out the smaller monsters without entering combat via her Technique called Quadrivalent Ascendance, to heighten this sense of emptiness or annihilation. For Acheron, the character, we even created a special filter—a faded one—for her. When she enters into combat, the players can see the world through Acheron's eyes. During certain occasions, the players can see the world just like how Acheron sees it, and there are only three colors left in this world: white, black, and red. This is how we create a comprehensive experience for our players that heightens the feeling of emptiness or nihility of Acheron.

How difficult is it to create new characters?

AN: You can create characters by stockpiling different elements, but you cannot create well-loved characters. Our characters not only engage in combat, but they are also the key roles that move the story forward, so we like to think in advance about the goals that our characters serve. What are their background stories, and how do we fit them as part of this bigger worldview? We also think about what we want the players to feel as the first impression when the new characters are launched. The combat mechanics are very much interconnected with character stories, and we want the players to feel like they are the characters themselves.

Obviously, our readers love the art style, so is there any plan for an anime or manga based on the lore?

AN: We always want to experiment with new, different ways to narrate the game. You can also see that we have animated shorts in our marketing efforts. For more, please stay tuned and follow the official announcements.

What is the hardest part about bringing a game like this to life?

AN: I would say the hardest part is how we create a game that is light and easy to start while providing rich content for our players, especially turn-based games that have gone through decades of development. How do we achieve our goals? I would say in the early development phase, we started with dozens of different design plans. We rolled out many of them. We went through two rounds of closed betas before we settled on the final mechanics you see in the game. Also, the players' wants and needs keep evolving, wanting to keep exploring the world in the game, so we try to bring new novel experiences to the game constantly. We create rich urban landscapes where the players can have interesting dialogues with NPCs or items. All of these are very surprising for our players.

What do you think is the most underrated role on your development team? Who are the unsung heroes?

AN: If you want me to name a single, unsung hero, that would be difficult because there are many of them. There are many development processes in game development. The players sometimes don't exactly know what went through our heads to bring this game to life. What we do with our team could be different from other gaming companies or what the players are used to seeing in other game development. For example, we don't have a strict rule about what needs to be done first before the next thing. One major difference, I would say, is the way that our teams collaborate. We don't have an upstream team to do things first, so other teams can't get started. Even at an early stage of development, multiple teams work together to envision the final product. In the early phase of creating specific content, it could be a character or a level – we have different collaborating teams working together on envisioning what that element would eventually look like. It's more like a co-creation process; it's not like we have one single team that has everything figured out, and then that request gets transferred to the next team.

On the production side, we have clear divisions based on production aspects because we respect everyone's expertise and are all professionals. There are also weird tasks that we work on as a team. For example, many of the enemies you see in the game have very special sound effects. For some of the bosses, the sounds and sound effects come from our employees' recordings! We then edit them to make them sound like monsters. We have a huge variety of characters, and we seek inspiration from many places, especially our real-life experiences! For example, we have mahjong lovers, so we have mahjong lovers in this game world. We want to create a mahjong-like, fun experience in the game so that players can feel the excitement as if they're playing real mahjong. We also have team who know swordsmanship. And so when we design characters with swords, we consult them on how to create the right postures.

For the gameplay that you see in the events. We seek inspiration from everyday lives. There is an event at Penacony called Vignettes In A Cup, where you get to work at the bar with Siobhan and mix drinks for the local monster population. The players get to listen to the stories and troubles of different monsters and present them with beverages accordingly. To create a good and immersive experience for that event, we go out into the city and talk to a lot of bartenders, learning how they listen to their customers and serve them the drinks they want.

What does your normal workday look like?

AN: I'm afraid I can't disclose too much on that. I have a lot of discussions with team . I review reports. When we reach certain milestones, I look at the work of our team and see if they can meet our expectations. I also have many discussions with the development team and the operations team.

Anything that you want to say to the fans?

AN: I'd like to say a big thank you to the fans for their over the past two years. And for Honkai Star Rail, we always want to tell good stories. For a lot of the popular characters and the storyline, the players know that they're still there. It is always on top of our heads, how do we create new experiences based on our mechanics? A lot of things are already planned, and we have the second anniversary coming soon. I'm excited to share more.