#I mean he himself said he’s a supporting character in terms of Penacony’s plot

[ironunderstands]

Honestly I think the reason why I’m not a fan of this theory is not because it couldn’t be true but because it would be incredibly unsatisfying, as narratively, we already accomplished everything we would want to within Penacony.

Sure, maybe I wouldn’t hate a “but was it all even real anyways?” as that could be interesting, but a re-do of the plot in a manner similar to 2.2 would SUUUCKKKK and here’s why

The Astral Express has no reason to stay in Penacony

We got our answer to, “Why does life slumber?” and we learned of and said goodbye to the three trailblazers/Nameless, as well as fulfilled there wishes by taking a share of the stock in Penacony, and having a stake in its reconstruction, meaning we can help prevent it from returning to a similar state as its former self. Moreover, we kinda always leave places with problems, I mean it was either Dan Heng or Himeko who said that trailblazers get worlds back on their feet, then leave the rest to them, something which we did on both Jarilo-VI and the Luofu.

Therefore, if this ends up being a dream, the ending we will reach by resolving it won’t check off any more boxes for us, as well, we already accomplished everything, so it would be more like erasing the checks and drawing them over again- a completely pointless endeavor.

The reason the 2.2 twist WORKED and was actually good is because we hadn’t completed those objectives yet, but in the second bossfight with Sunday we answered why life sleeps, and got to fulfill the wishes of the Nameless in 2.3.

Effectively, another dream would only serve as a waste of time, and unless it’s there to completely solve the hedonism in Penacony (something the Nameless aren’t that worried about because well it’s ultimately up to the people there), there’s nothing another dream would allow the story to gain.

2. Who’s gonna be the bus driver for this?

Every other character on Penacony has either moved on, or is dead and has pretty blatantly said goodbye. Like Aventurine and Boothill are gonna hunt Oswaldo, Robins presumably gonna do more charity work, Sunday’s free and that’s gonna hand consequences, Acherons gonna keep chasing the Nihility, Black Swan might be joining us on Ampherous, Ratio’s going back the guild, Topaz and Jade are gonna continue their IPC work, Firefly did her third “death” and is gonna go back to being a Stellaron Hunter.

Practically everyone has higher priorities, none of which are related to Penacony, so dragging them all back because oops it’s another dream would only delay all of their characters arcs. There’s almost nothing anyone could gain by having another arc in Penacony, both narratively and literally, so there’s no point in remaining.

Moreover, who exactly would be the perpetrator of this second dream? Even The Family seems uninterested in that, so like, would it just be endemic to Penacony like what Firefly’s story implies? How the hell would we even handle that? Why would we even care at that point? If we went to the Xianshou and they were like “hmm back already it’s only been a few days?” and everyone’s like “damn that really was a all a dream,” then what would that change? If we truly leave Penacony for good, only to find out it was all a dream or something, that wouldn’t change anything in the plot because it already affected every character which interacted with it, so it might have been reality. At best I feel this situation exists in the state it currently resides in: uncertainty. Putting little hints of “but was it really real?” is far better than pulling a 2.2 part two, which leads into my next point.

3. WHYYYY WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS

Pulling the same fucking twist twice for the sake of a “haha gotcha!1!” moment is not only stupid, it’s criminally, offensively boring and a spit in the face to everyone who actually enjoyed Penacony’s plot and is willing to move on.

It wouldn’t be fun or compelling, it would be a fucking chore. I don’t know about yall, but for whatever update they would but this in, I wouldn’t be enjoying it, I’d be like, “god I guess we gotta fix the dream again,” because we already did that and there’s nothing new to learn.

Also, hoyo knows their audience. They know we are fucking stupid, they are gonna be WAYYY more obvious about it like they were in 2.2 if they are pulling a stunt this big, and not rely on hints that are a) straight up from previous updates b) completely up to interpretation c) misinterpreted entirely (2.3 takes place in the dreamscape yall) d) probably just a writing error

4. Guys this game isn’t that well written 😭

Does it have great moments? Of course, and I think HSR has far better writing than people give it credit for but like- oh my god is it not perfect

Like the mystery that is how old Pela actually is (she’s 16 yet also went to college and played in Servals band)

Whatever the fuck the 1.5 lore retcons were

Us never sending Serval a picture of the stellaron

March getting an outfit in like 1.5 we still haven’t received

Duke inferno going from using non-gendered pronouns to he/him

Jing Yuan confronting Luocha and Jingliu WAY BACK yet we still don’t have a conclusion for that

all the racist shit they have written (WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO NAME AVENTURINES PLANET AFTER AN IRL SLUR 😭)

The fact that we can do quests at any order whenever we want at any time (hell we didn’t even have a timeline at one point)

There’s probably a million more that I haven’t pointed out, but HSR already has SO MANY CONTINUITY ERRORS that haven’t gotten and will probably never get resolved, so stuff like Aventurine standing in front of the repaired screen really shouldn’t matter (I mean we don’t even know when that actually occurred, it’s a cutscene and not only was Aven not in the same room place as everyone, he could have also not been shown in same time. Moreover it was probably just meant to be symbolic anyways, him standing by the place in which he learned so much).

Penacony’s story not being 100% perfect and making sense is normal for HSR because THE ENTIRE STORY IS LIKE THAT, and making 2.3 somehow be another dream would only cause more problems for the writing.

Personally, I think 2.3 did an excellent job at wrapping the story up, as we accomplished everything that needed to be done and all the characters moved on from what was going on there (or died).

I feel like most peoples dislike of it is more of a matter of personal taste than anything, as objectively, we accomplished what needed to be accomplished, and compared to the 3 previous high-stakes updates, a chiller one was definitely in store.

Like guys, HSR is a Space COMEDY, it’s extremely silly and has been extremely silly, so having a more lighthearted update is nothing out of the ordinary, especially since we were due one for a while, considering 1.6-2.2 were all fairly serious (I mean 2.3 still has its dark moments too regardless 😭).

Considering we still have 2 warp jumps left, I assume the next one is to the Xianzhou for a while, for reasons we aren’t privy too yet (although, I actually don’t know if warping to places we have been before costs fuel). Maybe we will revisit Belabog if that’s true, and Penacony of course to aid in reconstruction. After that, it’s off to Ampherous, which I’m incredibly excited for!

Honestly I think it’s time to move on, and I sincerely hope the game doesn’t decide to beat a dead horse

the people of penacony are still (yes, still) stuck in a dream.

disclaimer: i am not a theorist. i just want to present some very suspicious things i've found and speculate on some things because i am frankly going insane over this

firstly, did anyone else get deja vu when first starting the new trailblaze mission? march says the exact same things as she did in ena's dream when trying to get the trailblazer to get up. "wake up, wake up," and then "wake up! the sun's frying your butt!"

the trailblazer has the option to say that this sounds familiar in both quests. the similarities stop after this, but another thing i found weird was how the stellaron was only mentioned once by march and then, to my knowledge, never again. no more attention focused on the thing that helped cause all the disaster in penacony?

onto other things - in the new quest checking out, qingque says this:

that's exaclty how the 2.3 quest went as well. everything went smoothly, including the deciding of the future of penacony, which i personally thought was going to be much more difficult. after that, everyone just leaves in a silly unvoiced side quest. and we didn't get to say goodbye to firefly in the end. she didn't actually experience her third death either, did she? i thought her third and final death in the script would've been a bit more dramatic, at least.

after going to firefly's secret base and interacting with the railing, you get this dialogue. this is only available after completing the 2.3 trailblaze mission.

why would the writers want to point out that it's supposedly not an illusion?

on the radiant feldspar, you can listen to these two npcs talking about the astral express acquiring the airship. this npc should be very aware that they're in the dreamscape, being in penacony, right?

the whole thing with ena's dream was also covered up by the family, with the guests having no memories of it, so they aren't talking about still being in ena's dream. what was the reason for this dialogue, then?

this is from the ending cutscene for the 2.3 mission. we fixed that screen behind aventurine. so... why is it still broken?

yes, you could say that it's for the people who haven't completed the quest where it was fixed. but that quest, once upon a dreamville, is supposed to happen before this one, so it should be fixed anyways, right?

i personally don't think hoyo would overlook something like this and leave the cutscene inaccurate for a good portion of players and mess with the timeline unless there was a good reason. trying to hint that something's not right, maybe?

in an optional interaction on the radiant feldspar, welt says this:

...but that didn't happen. welt knows that jing yuan wasn't actually there, so why wouldn't he mention that at all? iirc, march, himeko, and the trailblazer don't mention anything amiss with this either, even though this is supposed to be a snapshot of the trailblazer's memory and it didn't actually happen. don't you think that's worth mentioning?

you also get these two pieces of dialogue:

both of which i find very suspicious. i tried to chalk it up to the trailblazer being paranoid after ena's dream, but they haven't expressed that anywhere else, and they're happy in these scenes. so... why would the writers put both of these here?

after interacting with these building blocks near the monitoring room in the dreamscape reverie, you get this strange dialogue:

i could be wrong, but as far as i know, from my experience and another person's, this dialogue only appears after the 2.3 update.

in this video, sparkle says this:

firstly, the answer is important. this question is repeated countless times throughout penacony's quests, and answered by multiple different important characters. second, it's also repeated countless times that in penacony, it's not just about being happy. there are so many people in the beautiful dream who are miserable, who threw their lives away to get there, who are forced to work tirelessly to try and fulfill their dreams only to get no where. both of the things she claims are untrue. it feels like they're trying to hint at something or distract us.

yes, you could chalk this up to sparkle being sparkle. but i don't know why they would put this in the official video saying goodbye to penacony if it was just that.

onto some smaller things - robin says this in the new checking out mission:

...they all woke up from their dreams already, no?

also from the aforementioned video:

why would they acknowledge that the audience isn't satisfied with the ending? they did that with qingque too, and with something March said at the end of the quest: "so even if there are parts of it that aren't really realistic nor logical, we still hope that their story gets a good ending when it comes." why would they acknowledge this three different times if the story is truly over?

it's also said that the astral express will run out of fuel in two warp jumps if we don't go on more trailblaze missions. why are we going to the xianzhou then, if we need to trailblaze to get more fuel?

one last thing. personally, the conclusion feels all too perfect. despite this, virtually nothing has changed for the people of penacony. the beautiful dream isn't any more beautiful than it was before. people are still spending all their money to get to penacony, still wasting the rest of their remaining lives away in the dreamscape, still failing to achieve their dreams after giving up everything. despite one crisis being averted, it isn't going to get any better for the people of penacony. is this really such a perfect ending?

-

there are definitely hints i'm missing, but this is what i have for now. if i find anything else, i'll put it in a reblog. also, most of these are things I've noticed myself, but I did get a few from MeganeSimp on twitter.

i know a lot of people were very happy with the ending of 2.3 - and i am too! i don't necessarily want this theory to be true, but i also can't ignore the hints that hoyo is giving us. well, i could, but they've been eating away at my brain for days now. sure, these could all be meaningless, but i don't think the writers would put all of this in for it all to mean absolutely nothing. they're hinting at something.

i am also not trying to say that everything that happened in 2.3 was fake. i believe it did all happen, just while everyone (or just the trailblazer?) was unaware that they were in a deeper layer of the dreamscape and couldn't get out.

alright, that's all. thank you for taking the time to read through this, i hope it wasn't as disjointed as it feels. also, there are admittedly many holes in this theory. if you have anything you want to point out that I've missed or that debunks this, please feel free!