Hi guys I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!
Some time ago I brought up how the new devs made use of fan theories to repurpose the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles into "Asmoday just one of the four Shining Shades." This messed up Nicole's original role as the Sophia to its Acamoth in terms of Genshin's Gnosticism basis. As a result, Nicole was also repurposed as just an angel who just happened to retain her powers at the cost of her speech but also gained the ability to see through Irminsul's imperfect record of history. Fan theories had also brought up some kind of dominion for Phanes and its shades, relating them to the Artifact categories but of course since Phanes created its shades, this would necessarily put the Circlet of Logos above all of the other Artifacts. This is obviously not the case as they are equivalent and even if they weren't, in terms of gameplay the most difficult piece to get is usually the elemental goblets which then relates to "Asmoday" instead, setting a single shade above even her creator. Originally, these five factors may have represented these members of Celestia but only in so far as identifiers. As Enkanomiya had pointed out long long ago, the shades share the element of Phanes and the Descenders and that element would be Light. The Traveler twins had bright white accents at the start of the game. Enkanomiya was the home of Istaroth's Light Sigils and there are no such things as "Time Sigils" which would have had to be the case if her sole dominion was that of time. It even felt like when the new devs attained creative control over Genshin starting back in Fontaine, they'd gone out of their way to undermine the original lore of the game. I've been finding more and more inconsistencies as time goes one. Natlan and Nod-Krai up until this latest update was full of lore that conflicts with previous information and worse, sometimes this new lore even conflicts with itself. (How are you still alive Xilonen?)
And then something odd happened. By the end of Act VI of the Nod-Krai Archon Quest, I started noticing parallels with - of all things - Amphoreus which I theorized to be the creation of those old Genshin devs. There were just too many things about Amphoreus that relate better to the old Genshin lore than any of Star Rail's previously established lore. (they didn't conflict with that lore mind you which again shows how good these old devs are) So why would the new devs be copying off of the old dev's homework after deliberately undermining it for so long? I've had another theory. Midway through Natlan, we received the Paralogism Archon Quest. This quest abruptly ended the then ongoing Natlan aftermath story arc that related to the consequences of Capitano's sacrifice at the end of the Archon Quest. That year's Lantern Rite had spelled it out for us but then we got nothing until the v5.6 livestream when the devs had Escoffier's VA bring it up again. However playing through Paralogism, there was actually nothing about that story arc. So again, what was going on? I had a feeling that with all of the inconsistencies since Fontaine, these new devs no longer knew how to reconcile their own story. As a result, they didn't know how to continue. The solution was to use Paralogism (which was likely meant to take place a year later) as a soft reset for the game. Starting from this quest the lore has mainly separated itself from the original game. The Travelers no longer arrived in separate meteorites for example and now arrived in a single spaceship though the twin was found outside of it. We also received Durin as an upcoming playable character, more connections to the Hexenzirkel were made that paved the way for the Witch's Homework "Hexerei" buffs, the Bakunawa was first teased as well, Miliastra was first teased with a random item we got at the end of the quest and so on. But just like how deviating so much from the original lore lost them the plot midway through Natlan, starting fresh when you don't have a solid foundation also wasn't going to last long. As a result, they've been forced to go back to when this game did have a firm grasp on things. I think pride kicked in though and prevented them from doing it the right way. Instead of trying to reverse course and fixing all of these plotholes they've created for themselves just to distinguish themselves from their predecessors, they instead took to mending their broken story with just the raw ideas from those predecessors or in other words, copying off of Amphoreus. Now let's see how that works.
Side Note: I say Paralogism was when the new devs decided on the soft reset because they were out of ideas but Paralogism also followed the events of Simulanka which is also a basis for Miliastra. I had suggested that Simulanka was better served as a spin-off title for miHoYo rather than include its story into the Genshin universe since it doesn't quite fit. Perhaps this was intentional. It could be that after the disaster of the Fontaine Archon Quest, the new devs wanted a safeguard in case they didn't have their act together. Then while producing Natlan, they realized they would in fact need it. This would at least show some presence of mind from the new devs and that they understood the actions they were taking would not go well for them.
Anyway we then were introduced to the concept of "variables." These are spacetime anomalies that can subtly affect the course of history. In Amphoreus, these "variables" were the products of Lygus and Cyrene. Lygus deliberately entered the Emperor's Scepter to manipulate the experiment into calculating towards the Destruction in an attempt to destroy Star Rail's "Logos" the Aeon Nous. Cyrene then was an emanation of the Aeon Fuli who went on to spark a consciousness in the Stellaron core of the scepter in order to combat those changes. Dottore is our Lygus for Genshin.
He manipulated Irminsul's record in order to create an opportunity to assume the power of the moons. Columbina thus became the Cyrene of the story to undermine him. It's funny because there is another version of this that I had even referenced in my previous theory about Dottore. The Final Fantasy VII remake also has a Lygus and Cyrene duo inserting variables into an existing history. Sephiroth is Lygus. He means to reshape the FFVII story so that he can win and achieve the godhood that was robbed of him in the original game. Aeris is therefore their Cyrene who is working against his manipulations, even sacrificing herself to the world in order to do so just like Cyrene.
Now, that might have worked for the new Genshin devs except for one small problem. Can you spot it? It's there in both Amphoreus and Final Fantasy. The problem with Dottore adding any kind of variables to Teyvat's history is that he's still part of Teyvat. Lygus was not part of Amphoreus. He was a robot based off of a scientist who actually built Nous before Nous became an Aeon. Cyrene as previously mentioned was an aspect of Fuli. Sephiroth and Aeris might have been part of the FFVII story but the versions in the remake are not from the universe that they're manipulating. They are manipulating the events from outside that universe, only assuming their former roles inside of the history as we get into the final part of the game. Lygus and Cyrene too created avatars of themselves to interact within Amphoreus.
The new devs did at least notice this and didn't just play it straight. However their solution to this was to make use of the Abyss. Now, the building blocks for this idea had already been laid. Back in v5.7 they had Skirk undermine four years of long established lore, claiming that the Abyss wasn't a bad thing. It's just another form of power and maybe even the Traveler's "purification" wasn't actually removing it but converting it. So in the Nod-Krai Archon Quest, that's exactly the power they used. Durin used the Abyssal side of his nature to add his own variables which changed history. (it actually fractured it into a myriad of quantum causalities but let's not get into that here) Dottore therefore did the same thing. How and when did Dottore get his hands on Abyssal power strong enough to do what he did then? Well, I had had a theory that Dottore was after Rerir's power. That ended up playing out as two separate storylines, one where Dottore just manipulated Rerir to use his power and the other being using his segments as a precursor towards splitting his soul to create two complete individual selves, just like Lygus by the end of the Amphoreus story.
It is much more difficult to predict the story when there is no longer any basis for anything but now the new devs also seem to be using the old dev lore that they adapted for Amphoreus. Let's review:
Topic originally created on December 21st, 2025.
