MiHoYo has a habit of putting individual characters in its games with vastly different settings and situations. This is apparent in Bronya and Silver Wolf, with the former being a playable character in both Honkai Impact 3rd and Honkai Star Rail. The latter’s looks and powers are based on a skin of Bronya’s in Honkai Impact, but she seems to have taken on a life of her own in Star Rail. Keen players also know that while characters seem to hop from one game to another, their appearances, personalities, and even skill sets are quite different from one another. As such, some fans may wonder what the connection is between the three games, let alone if they’re linked at all.
Honkai Star Rail is the latest mainline title from miHoYo, which was released on April 26, 2023. It follows Genshin Impact, which has been hugely successful since it launched in 2020. It can be argued that these two games owe their success to 2016’s Honkai Impact 3rd, which set the tone for miHoYo’s signature look and storytelling style. Both of the latest games pay homage to Honkai Impact in different ways, with the most important one being the sharing of characters.
The Connection Between miHoYo Games Explained
Keen fans of miHoYo’s mainline games may have spotted hints of the connection between the titles in Honkai Impact 3rd’s Fallen Rosemary trailer back in 2020. It featured an interview with the game’s story writer, who discussed the final part of the game’s 17th chapter. In it, the Overseer Otto is seen observing other worlds using the Imaginary Tree. One of the things he sees is Genshin Impact's Dvalin, one of the elemental dragons in Teyvat.
The Imaginary Tree is known as the origin of life, the universe, and bubble worlds in Honkai Impact 3rd. This may be a reference to the Tree of Yggdrasil from Norse mythology, which isn’t a surprise since miHoYo games like to reference myths from different countries. However, the Imaginary Tree seems to be bigger and grander in scale compared to its Norse counterpart. It has millions of branches, each with a form of civilization, and its leaves are all bubble universes of their own. In contrast, Yggdrasil only has nine realms.
There is no official and specific information in the lore of any miHoYo games about what a bubble universe is just yet. Rather, fans are speculating that these are parallel universes. This may explain why there are multiple versions of a character in different titles, each with different personalities and life paths.
This is apparent in Honkai Star Rail's Himeko, who is also a character in Honkai Impact 3rd. In Honkai Impact, she’s a scientist and a Valkyrie in the Assault Squad, who later became a teacher. In Star Rail, she’s also a scientist, but she has no recollection of her past, save for the fact that she started her trailblazing journey by repairing the Astral Express.
MiHoYo’s CEO has That Genshin Impact Exists in the “Honkai Universe”
In a recent Game Development Conference (GDC), Haoyu Cai, miHoYo’s Chief Executive Officer, discussed why they wanted to create Genshin Impact. He debunked claims that they capitalized on the open-world game hype at the time of its release. Instead, he said that it's been miHoYo’s goal since 2014 to create a “Honkai universe”. In the same month as the talk, the company also launched its publishing subsidiary named “HoYoverse” for markets outside of China, and has since rebranded to it in name. The name may be a reference to how its major titles are linked.
There’s no doubt that miHoYo’s Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, and Honkai Star Rail are intertwined, as evidenced by information from in-game lore and developer interviews. Still, it seems that they do not exist in the same canon or continuity. Instead, they can likely be seen as parallel universes of one another, with common characters existing as variants, a la the Spider-Verse movies or the MCU’s multiverse.
Honkai Star Rail is available now for mobile devices and PC.
