Honkai: Star Rail’s Screwllum Leaks Paint a Pretty Picture for Future Characters

Highlights

• Screwllum leaks confirm he will be a playable character in Honkai: Star Rail, and his addition hints at improved character design diversity.
• Despite having 53 characters and a sci-fi setting, the game lacks body diversity, making Screwllum’s design a step forward.
• Screwllum’s robotic nature and unique story prominence push Honkai: Star Rail to be bolder in its character design choices.

Honkai: Star Rail is certainly not immune to leaked content. Among recent leaks is the reveal that Screwllum, one of the game’s prominent NPCs, will become a playable character very soon. This has been heavily rumored for quite some time, but the latest leaks are more reputable than ever. Likewise, they confirm one aspect of Screwllum’s design that is sure to be good news for future additions.

After the recent additions of Firefly and Jade, Honkai: Star Rail currently features fifty-three characters. Despite this sizable roster and the general sci-fi inspiration of the game, Honkai: Star Rail‘s roster is lacking diversity in key areas of its character design. Thankfully, Screwllum’s leaked design hints that this problem may finally be solved going forward.

Honkai: Star Rail May Finally Improve its Character Diversity

Honkai: Star Rail Features Uniform Design Despite its Sci-Fi Setting

Honkai: Star Rail is a game that features multiple planets as the major areas of the game. Of course, this should mean that the majority of the cast consists of aliens or other fantastical designs. In fact, many of Honkai: Star Rail‘s boss enemies meet this expectation perfectly. However, a glaring issue has persisted throughout the game’s updates regarding its playable characters.

For starters, every playable character in Honkai: Star Rail is humanoid in nature. Even the most alien characters in the cast essentially resemble humans with animal ears. Although the foxlike traits of characters such as Tingyun and Yukong distinguish them from humans in general, they don’t stand out all that much in the larger cast.

This aspect of Honkai: Star Rail‘s character design is understandable in most respects, and likely an issue of modeling. Simply put, most characters in the game share a handful of bases, and adding a character who does not conform to this rule would likely consume an immense amount of developer time. Unfortunately, this gives the game a lack of body diversity in addition to its bias towards human characters.

Screwllum is a Big Step Forward for Honkai: Star Rail

Screwllum doesn’t completely fix this issue, but his design certainly addresses it. Screwllum is an automaton, which already breaks rank from the largely human cast. Although his humanoid body is largely uniform to Honkai: Star Rail‘s other trends regarding character design, his face is a huge departure. This heavy distinction is made by a key factor that will hopefully continue through other characters going forward.

Screwllum’s design feels so distinct for a very simple reason: the core of his character is already distinct. Screwllum is an intelligent automaton who is one of the greatest minds in the galaxy. This leaves absolutely no room to avoid the robotic nature of his design. Likewise, his prominence in Honkai: Star Rail‘s story has always made him a great candidate for becoming playable.

These principles were bound to butt heads for quite a while before eventually forcing Honkai: Star Rail to step out of its comfort zone. Screwllum’s importance necessitated his playability, which in turn necessitated the game to go bolder with its character design than it ever had before. Screwllum wasn’t the first character developers experimented with, and he most definitely shouldn’t be the last.

Screwllum Shouldn’t Be Honkai: Star Rail’s Final Experiment

While Screwllum may be the furthest Honkai: Star Rail has strayed from strictly humanoid designs, he isn’t technically the first. Although she may be a human girl beneath the disguise of her mech, Firefly still spends most of her time in-game piloting it. This means that despite being humanoid herself, Firefly is most commonly seen through a semi-robotic lens. It’s entirely possible that HoYoverse may not have committed to Screwllum if it hadn’t already proved its mettle with Firefly.

It’s unfortunate that the issue of design diversity has persisted this long, but Screwllum’s leaked design is a welcome surprise by contrast. Screwllum still conforms to many of the game’s previous trends, but still distinguishes himself where it matters the most. With that in mind, one can only hope that the most unique aspects of Screwllum’s design persist into Honkai: Star Rail‘s future characters.