Chapter 40: What Defines a "Beautiful Girl Game"? Even the Enemies are Beautiful!
As the Honkai Impact 3rd live stream began, a massive wave of viewers interested in the game flooded the room. Upon seeing the hosts—two exceptionally high-visual "beautiful girls"—gaming forums across the internet were instantaneously ignited!
[Holy crap? Is miHoYo really spending this much? Hiring such beautiful girls just to stream?]
[Well, the selling point is "Beautiful Girl Game." It's only right to hire beautiful girls to represent it!]
[Curse it all... wine and women lead to ruin. From this day forth, I quit drinking!]
[Aren't you forgetting to quit something even more important?]
Human beings possess a natural instinct to appreciate beauty, regardless of gender or age. In reality, hiring beautiful girls for a stream wasn't rare—at least in Su Mu's previous world. Major League of Legends tournaments often featured stunning female hosts, and in the Honor of Kings KPL matches, the directors seemed obsessed with giving "hand-cam" style close-ups to beautiful girls in the audience. It was a segment that viewers always discussed with great enthusiasm.
As Pardo launched Honkai Impact 3rd and logged into her account, the screen first went black. Then the miHoYo logo appeared, followed by the promotional PV released earlier. Once the PV concluded, the scene shifted to the in-game Kiana, wearing the [Valkyrie: White Comet]armor, appearing on a fractured bridge.
[By the way, why is the name of this Valkyrie armor "White Comet" (White Practice)?]
[I keep getting this weird feeling that "practice is in vain"?] (T/N: In Chinese, "White Practice" (Bai Lian) is a homophone for "practicing for nothing.") [No, isn't your focus a bit too weird? Shouldn't we be looking at the smoothness of the graphics and the character models?]
Indeed. The audience leaned in and discovered to their surprise that the quality and rendering of this live build of Honkai Impact 3rd seemed even better than the previous gameplay PV!
[It actually looks better than the demo?]
[Did miHoYo optimize it again?]
[The character models are so exquisite! Kiana looks amazing!]
Pardo began controlling the in-game Kiana. Valkyrie: White Comet, a B-rank Mecha-type battlesuit, can strengthen her attacks by accumulating SP and releasing her Ultimate—specifically manifesting as giant cat paws emerging continuously from the void. Watching Pardo control Kiana to battle Honkai Beasts, the fluid animations caused the audience to gasp in succession.
[I'm definitely not seeing things; the animations have been further optimized. This is even better than the gameplay demo!]
[I didn't expect such a huge surprise on launch day!]
[Brothers, I'm launching Honkai 3rd right now. I'm playing along with Miss Pardo!]
[Damn it! Why haven't I finished work yet? I can't wait to jump into Honkai 3rd!]
[LMAO, I just went to deliver materials to my boss and found out he's watching the Honkai 3rd stream too!]
[Same here, we're a small game studio, and today the boss told us all to stop working and focus entirely on studying Honkai 3rd...]
During Pardo's playthrough, helpful information about "Zombies" and "Honkai Beasts" appeared in the game. Zombies are humans infected and eroded by Honkai energy. However, the audience was shocked to find... that these Zombies were, every single one of them, top-tier beautiful girls!
[Even the enemies have such high visuals?]
[Scythe Zombie girl, I love you! Heavy breathing!]
[Hey! You'll get infected too if you get bitten by one of those things, right?]
[Can I turn into a beautiful Zombie girl after being infected by Honkai? Brothers, I have a bold idea!]
In fact, the design of the hostile monsters in Honkai Impact 3rd involved a lot of effort. Zombies—humans who mysteriously lost their minds after the Honkai occurred. Lower-level ones bite like traditional zombies, while higher-level ones possess incredible supernatural abilities. The Zombie girls in Honkai 3rd were meticulously designed.
The Scythe Zombie, wearing black clothes with gold trim revealing long legs; the elite variants in-game wearing red. The Ranger Zombie, wielding a bow, wearing an eyepatch, looking heroic and cool. The Twin-Blade Zombie—a designation for the black "Shinin" and white "Chunin" variants, wearing bikinis with ninja and samurai features like forehead protectors and gauntlets, with oni-horns on their brows. And the Archangel Zombie, known by players in Su Mu's past world as the "Summoning Bitch," with twin white pigtails and a "bondage" aesthetic...
Even among the Honkai Beasts, there were high-visual existences, such as the Knight-class. It could be said that the game design of Honkai 3rd pushed the concept of "Moe" to its limit. This was also thanks to its predecessor, Guns Girl Z (Honkai Gakuen 2). The "Moe" art style combined with beautiful zombie girls truly captured the aesthetic preferences of the otakus of that era!
[No, seriously, these Zombie girls are way too good-looking! I can't take it!]
[Do we really have to hit such cute Zombie girls? I almost feel bad!]
Pardo explained the game while advancing the plot. Having accumulated experience from the internal tests, Pardo was now a "pro" at Honkai 3rd. Seeing her skillfully dodge Zombie attacks, trigger cool "Ultimate Evasions," and continuously dish out damage, the viewers in the stream couldn't stop shouting how cool it was!
You have to realize that in this world, masterpieces like Bayonetta did not exist. Therefore, the setting where time slows down upon an Ultimate Evasion, allowing for continuous attacks, truly made the audience's eyes light up!
In reality, the difficulty of Honkai 3rd isn't high; it's very easy to pick up. You don't need complex maneuvers to execute flashy combos. Of course, in Su Mu's previous world, the early "feel" of Honkai 3rd was a disaster—specifically Himeko's Greatsword, which was a nightmare to play. Su Mu had directly designed the game based on the later optimized White Comet modules.
Furthermore, the main story levels Pardo was playing were not the ones from the original launch of Honkai 3rd in his past world. They were the reset and optimized versions created after the game became successful.
As for why Su Mu chose Kiana's high-altitude skydive as the debut PV, it was likely his obsession as an original veteran player. After all, that was where the dream began!
As Pardo continued through the stages, the audience gradually learned the basic setting and the current plot. To put it simply: a battleship named "Selene" had gone out of control and threatened to destroy "Canghai City." Kiana and the other Valkyries were here to take control of this dangerous vessel!
END OF CHAPTER
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