What's up guys! It's your friendly gaming overthinker Inotia King. It's v3.3 now and the Laha-Roi Chapter is complete. Previously I did a review of the first half of Rinascita to see where we stood on the lore and setup. Let's see where we are now as of this third major region. (I also do theories on Hoyoverse games so for the Genshin ones you can click here. And for others like Star Rail and Zenless you can click here.)
I think the lore about what the TDs are is already solid. They come from the negative emotions of humans produced through conflict and death. Physically they are the game's rendition of zombies where instead of their flesh rotting, it's their frequencies and to prevent this they must devour new frequencies which mostly come from living victims. An Echo is simply a tamed TD so they share the same origins but are stabilized so they don't need to devour frequencies. In fact, you can even manufacture Echoes by mass purging TDs and then cobbling together their fragmented frequencies. This is how Divine Echoes in Rinascita are made. And of course, if Echoes are just tame TDs then you can untame them like we saw in the same region.
As we got more information, I figured that the Sentinels provided some kind of counter to a regional Waveworn Phenomenon. The Threnodians have powers based on an aspect of humanity's fall. For Glacio, I suggested that the Sentinel there would counteract a Threnodian with the power of decay, something that rots away frequencies. I described this Sentinel's power as inertness, a way to preserve the frequencies from decay. Enter Lahai-Roi and Aleph-1 which has the power to disintegrate frequencies and so Startorch Academy came up with a way to "preserve" them through the Cassettes. Lahai-Roi was once a desolate frostland too so there's still a shoutout to Glacio but just no tie-in to the Sentinel/Threnodian pair plotline I theorized. (That's because Lahai-Roi is in part meant to be WuWa's Khaenri'ah, a technologically advanced subterranean nation that followed no gods so Kuro's hands were tied. This might also be why we still don't have Glacio Rover.)
Side Note 1: Lahai-Roi essentially means "life is my guide" which plays into this duality against Aleph-1. Life vs Decay. Roi in Hebrew can be translated in many ways like "sight/vision" or "an appearance" or "shepherd." Looking into the culture behind it though, it's used in the phrase El-roi which can be translated as God sees me or God is my guide. Lahai just means life so going off of El-roi, lahai-roi would be life is my guide. So far, each act also deals with the life choices made by the starring Resonator. And in the end the Exostrider felt the pulsing but finite life of the new heart that humanity created for it thus it assumed the name Lahai-Roi so it too will be guided by life.
Side Note 2: The thing about Lahai-Roi being the frostland is something I wrote back in v3.1. As of the Segue in v3.2 there's also Hiyuki who is the academy's trump card. She was shown to eat one of the crazy candies that do weird stuff to people and it didn't affect her at all. Glacio. Inertness. Her Forte probably prevents changes from happening to her frequencies. Great way to counter an enemy that destroys frequencies.
Side Note 3: As of Hiyuki's release in v3.3, it doesn't actually state this plainly but it does do this in practice. Hiyuki's frequencies prevent the decay wrought by Aleph-1. However she can also seal away Voidmatter by tying it to her potential futures which in effect also freezes it in place. Perhaps since defeating Aleph-1 didn't do it, Hiyuki might give us our Glacio Rover, maybe in Denia's Segue since Kuro couldn't fit that into the Main Story. Either that or it'll be revealed that "Lahai-Roi" the Exostrider secretly gave the Arbiter their Glacio frequencies from Aleph-1 back when it revived Aemeath.
Then in the Act III Segue, Luuk explains what Honami really is. It was part of WuWa's Japan region. Lahai-Roi is also separate from the New Federation and seeing as how Ragunna and Septimont while being two halves of Rinascita are entirely separate regions in practice, it could be that the second half of Version 3 will be the New Federation arc. Ever since v1.4 became the last part of Version 1 and Huanglong, I noticed Kuro doesn't have as much story to tell that could extend each version series to say the vX.8 of Hoyoverse games. Instead Rinascita was broken up into a v2.0-v2.3 Ragunna story and then the v2.4-v2.7 Septimont story. Lahai-Roi has now ended with v3.3 so the story will pick up again in the New Federation for v3.4-v3.7 which could tie back to Lahai-Roi again just like Ragunna was back in the story by v2.7's finale. Finally we'll get Version 4 which will be Ashinohara. (or they could always pull a v1.4 so v3.4 will be a Black Shores section and then the game will just skip to v4.0 with the New Federation)
How any of this fits into my previous theory is that Lahai-Roi with Aleph-1 now fills in for the Glacio and a decay Threnodian part. I had then suggested that Fusion might be seen in the New Federation and the Sentinel's quality would be catalysis. Finally there's Electro and might just be perfect for the Japan-based region of Ashinohara. Given Electromagnetism's fundamental role in reality and how we define particles through charge, this should be a turning point in the story that'll lead into Part 2.
Side Note 1: Alternatively if it continues to take after Genshin, the rest of Version 3 might be a bridge year because Luuk also claimed that we'd have to wait for things to settle before going to the New Federation and one of the places he suggested as a detour was Mengzhou.
Side Note 2: Kuro actually pulled a good Star Rail in Act V though. Not only do we already have Chisa, Hiyuki and Honami which was central to Hiyuki's Segue Act that bookended Act V, Luuk had brought up the New Federation which was then brought up again by Lucilla and the Grand Architect in Act V. Just like how Star Rail teases different possible worlds the Trailblaze might visit next, we have story tie-ins now for both New Federation and Ashinohara which means either could be next and still progress naturally. Kuro actually did better than miHoYo in this sense. I personally think New Federation makes more sense but based on the description of Ashinohara in the wiki, it could continue off as the "Fontaine" region like Rinascita started with a base of Inazuma. (isolated island nation that's hard to get to and then we sail to it only to encounter trouble on the water and need to be rescued and taken the rest of the way safely by pirates, Brant's instead of Beidou's) Ashinohara is a "walled in" nation that's isolated just like Fontaine is located on a raised plateau. Lorewise, both Inazuma and Ashinohara nearly fell to their respective Sea of Quanta - the Abyss and the Lament. There'd also be a tradeoff of Rinascita being Renaissance Italy which can be compared to Fontaine's Industrial France and Ashinohara's anti-Resonator Registration Act compared to Inazuma's Vision Hunt Decree against allogenes. Then New Federation would be WuWa's Snezhnaya and make use of the comparison of opposing themes Fusion aka Pyro vs Cryo. We saw them already do this with the Roya who are sun-worshipping tribespeople of the frostlands which parallel the Frostmoon Scions who are moon-worshipping tribespeople of the frostlands.
Phrolova's installment back in v2.5 strengthens the idea that the Fractsidus are similar to the TDs. They are humans who are in pain because something traumatic occurred that damaged their frequencies. Thus merging with TD frequencies alleviates some of their pain and they believe this is "evolution." It's just like Persona 3's Strega who championed the call for Nyx in order to end their suffering.
The story also played at a future where the Arbiter really will side with the Fractsidus to understand this underlying issue. We were shown that after Phrolova's traumatic event, the Arbiter did meet with her and promised to help her only to then disappear. This paved the way for the Grand Architect to manipulate her. And as for this Grand Architect, he claimed the Fractsidus had been the Arbiter's Waystones. As of v3.1 it actually sounds like the Grand Architect might be of the same species as the Arbiter and plays the role of "Abyssal Twin" to compare with Genshin. (they kept bringing up how the Arbiter has a uniquely long lifespan while saying the Architect is immortal and what that means to them) Whereas the Arbiter nurtures humanity to counter the Lament, the Grand Architect might have been driven insane by his mimicry ability and thus screams out for the True Lament. This led to his creating the Fractsidus or wounded star. (残星)
In fact, I have a feeling the Arbiter's homeland cut off communications with Solaris-3 to prevent the Grand Architect from returning with his corruption. I also have a feeling the Arbiter was only made aware of this when they prevented the True Lament the last time, which might have started as a direct confrontation against the Grand Architect. It could be that in the past when the Arbiter arrived with their Sentinels, they didn't come alone. Instead, there was a full landing party (though I don't think we can confirm or deny that it was the He Civilization just yet) and in the early days they all worked together to prevent the Lament from spreading to Solaris-3. They cultivated society and worked with them to get the planet's people ready for it. This should be the starting point for the Black Shores. Unfortunately they miscalculated and a Waveworn Phenomenon struck and left many of these people with missing frequencies that caused them pain. The Grand Architect may have lost the frequencies needed to maintain his sanity while using his ability to become anybody (identity crisis) or it could have mutated his Forte into the ability to mimic anybody's frequencies while erasing or warping his own native ones. Maybe this was an artificial Second Resonance Awakening. After that, he could only relieve his pain by being someone else (other people's intact frequencies) and so he was convinced that the Lament was the be all end all of existence since it had "evolved" him to become whole again. The Fractsidus might therefore have started from the ranks of this early Black Shores group. The Arbiter never learned any of this as they'd come out of the phenomenon more or less unscathed. If that's the case, it could be that the end of Part 1 will be when they'll finally take down the Grand Architect. And it'll only be then that they learn the Architect is from their same homeland and that it is life's suffering itself that keeps calling the Lament and allowing it to spread. Thus Part 2 has them join the Fractsidus to work through this problem from their perspective which won't sit right with all our Part 1 characters like Cartethyia, Aemeath and Yang Yang. (it could be a good opportunity to bring her back into focus since she was heavily used in early promotional material and is still the game app's icon character)
Of course the alien thing itself follows the heels of Genshin's A Space and Time for You when the Traveler was turned into an alien too. Prior to this, the Traveler was a divine being and so was the Arbiter who had created the Sentinels to protect Solaris-3. As such, I theorized that the way they'd saved the planet from the last Lament was they had sacrificed their elemental frequencies to construct a barrier and these frequencies were then slowly assimilated by the regional Threnodians. That's why we get new elements after defeating each one, Havoc from Ovathrax, Aero from Leviathan and Glacio should be coming soon. I'm not sure how this would work with the alien thing though but perhaps it still holds. We know that after the first Lament, there was a second Lament that saw the Etheric Sea cover the entire sky of Solaris-3. The Arbiter was shown falling down from it in data recorded through research that the Grand Architect had funded. Maybe that was when they sacrificed their frequencies which made them even more akin to the Architect and Fractsidus hence the line in v2.7.
Mya's Tacet Mark is interesting. I had said before that I think the vertical forehead mark is reserved for those related to the divine. Mya was a failed artificial Resonator. She does have her mark on her head and it is vertical but it's over her eye. Failure. It's reminiscent of Cantarella who was also a failed artificial Resonator. Her mark is on her tongue. (for fanservice but it works this way too) I think this idea of mine is now reinforced so we'll see what Calcharo's horizontal forehead mark implies. (I'm surprised we didn't get anything yet in Lahai-Roi since they already brought Calcharo around for the Rinascita finale and they brought up New Federation so much but I suppose we'll get the answers next as we head there)
And I suppose this goes back to A038 being an attempt at creating a god. Leviathan stated that it betrayed the other Threnodians which falls in line with how A038 was being developed. The researchers were trying to create an artificial Retroact Rain. However even without that, Abby is at least an Echo and those are just tamed TDs which are related to the Threnodians. I don't think that outburst should have had quite the punch that it did in the community.
Aemeath brought up something that falls in line with how WuWa is based on string theory, specifically the fictional version miHoYo had come up with in Honkai Impact. We already have the idea that everyone is made up of frequencies but the other part of string theory is the membrane those strings are attached to which is defined by the overarching M-theory. In M-theory, reality should consist of 11 dimensions, our 3 normal spatial dimensions, the temporal dimension and then six extra spatial dimensions that are truncated between those dimensions while the final eleventh dimension contains all of them in a unified reality. That's the real science. In fiction like the Hoyoverse, you get this higher dimensional stuff Aemeath is talking about like the Voidspace that's beyond time and space so anything can happen at any time which allowed for her time loop. In the Hoyoverse this is where Venti sent the Mare Jivari.
A few little nitpicks. A keystone is meant to be the critical component to something. For example a better Keystone in fiction was StarCraft's where it served as an anchor for Void Energy that allowed for both the existence of the Voidborne Xel'Naga Amon in the StarCraft universe and also the means of ensnaring it within the Keystone and drawing its influence away from the Protoss. Meanwhile the "Keystone" in Wuwa is just something like a remote control because it was just a part of the Exostrider, not at all what a keystone is defined as. Originally a keystone was the key stone of a building's structural integrity, hence the name. It's the last stone you add to your structure that keeps all the other pieces in place. So if Kuro wanted to call something related to the Exostrider a Keystone, it should be the critical component that allows the Arbiter to use it at all. I think that would be Aemeath who serves as the Exostrider's "Resonator." We should have heard from Shorekeeper, "Bring Aemeath with you when you activate the Exostrider. She is the Keystone that will allow you to safely harness its power in spite of the dangers posed by your shared origins as you come into contact with the Voidmatter."
Another nitpick curiously related to StarCraft is "Voidcreep." Creep in StarCraft is a substance created by the Zerg that facilitates their movement speed and ability to expand their bases. Dark Mud in Genshin Impact also improves enemy speed and attack power but also has the additional effect of draining your team's HP and restricting movement. Voidcreep seems to have been named after Creep but forewent Creep's effect that relates to Dark Mud while keeping the effect of Dark Mud's HP drain and slowed movement. Why? In practice, it is a form of Voidmatter so it really is just WuWa's version of Dark Mud. Perhaps Glacio Rover might even be able to dispel it the way Genshin's Lumenspar Adjuvant dispels Dark Mud?
The Suzu or Suzu Bell isn't a bracelet with bells on it. If you hop over to Genshin, Yae Miko's Signature Weapon is what a Suzu Bell really looks like. It's used in Shinto rituals and originated from Ame no Uzume. Actually for a cliffnotes explanation on it, you can just look again at Yae Miko. She's got that cultural reference in spades. There is nothing in Shintoism where you'd use Suzu Bells in rituals tied to sacrificing your potential futures though. Again for cliffnotes on real world uses, look into Yae Miko. Couldn't they have just called it something else? Legacy Chimes. The Knell. Devotion Bells. Emergent Occasion. Or if they really wanted that Suzu reference, they could call it the Mototsubo which is the specific kind of bell used during that New Year's shrine visit or hairei where you ring the bell to call to a kami and make your New Year's Resolution aka some potential future you're working towards. That would better tie-in with how Hiyuki's ability works and distance itself from how the Suzu Bell is actually used.
Side Note: Hiyuki's Suzu power was likely inspired by Ye Shunguang from Zenless Zone Zero. Similar to how Hiyuki uses the Suzu to sacrifice her future to seal away Voidmatter at the cost of her life, Shunguang uses the Qingming Sword to seal away Miasma by sacrificing her memories aka her past at the cost of her life. Shirotori is also basically Yixuan's Qingming Bird who also normally perches on her shoulder and she can send it off with people as a safeguard when she's unable to accompany them or to scout as another pair of eyes and ears. (also white bird vs black lol) Gyokuro would also be to Hiyuki who Yijiang was to Yixuan, deceased older sisters who were the previous holders of their title that died due to overusing their power. Finally, Hiyuki and her sword the Frostburn is most inspired from Hoshimi Miyabi who inflicts the Frostburn Anomaly. Both are ice element Japanese swordswomen defined by having a destructive supernatural power, cool and aloof personalities with a malevolent force hoping to corrupt them for its purposes, a villainous faction facilitating this outcome, which then fails when these two very casually choose to go against it and instead become the very thing that causes the downfall of said malevolent force.
Finally the timeline seems to be holding. I suggested last time that it seemed the Arbiter's first run saw them set up all of the nations and the Black Shores and then more recently they absorbed A038. Based on their title of Arbiter, they might have been one of the major players of the military of their homeland. Given they seemed to be a leader while officially recognized as a star student at Startorch Academy, I think it wouldn't be a surprise if they end up revealed to also somehow be affiliated with the New Federation and Ashinohara in some kind of influential capacity. (maybe they're the Endmin lol) This would have been before the Lament that sealed Solaris-3 under the Etheric Sea. After that Lament, the Arbiter was cut off from being able to return home. This could also be when they fought the regional Threnodians with the Sentinels after being betrayed by the Grand Architect and his new Fractsidus group. The Arbiter then ended up living in Lahai-Roi and eventually saved Aemeath. During this period they routinely traveled to the other nations to keep them protected. Somewhere during this time they absorbed Abby and that might have led to their erasing their memories 20 years ago. (of course we also know that the situation in Rinascita was already underway 20 years ago so it now means the Arbiter was present for those early stages and still chose to remove themselves which is curious)
I'm still not a fan of the False Sky and alien thing Kuro has added to the game from Genshin. But Aemeath imo is the most interesting character they've developed. She was done better than Columbina though I thought this-
-was unnecessary. I'm also glad to see most of what I theorized is still holding but it seems we don't get very much additional information per region. The stories are mostly localized with events that only apply to the region itself and not the wider lore. In terms of new developments, we now know the name of the last region - Ashinohara - and since Rinascita we know that the regional Threnodians were already working on undermining the Arbiter's sacrifice back when they decided to depart. This should factor into the quests going into the New Federation and Ashinohara which will regain the Arbiter their Fusion and Electro forms. Anyway let's see how my new predictions will do.
