Chen Tingting voices Sushang and the female Trailblazer AKA Stelle.
Jiang Li AKA Xiao N voices Tingyun and Pom-Pom.
Liu Beichen voices Tail and Owlbert.
Lu Minyue AKA Mace voices Topaz and Numby.
Mufei voices Cocolia, Jingyan, and Cirrus.
Peng Bo voices Welt and Boothill.
Qin Qiege voices the male Trailblazer AKA Caelus, Clockie, and Shiraga Oni.
Tao Dian voices Arlan and Baiheng.
Yang Chaoran voices Aventurine and Dan Feng.
Zhong Ke voices Yukong and Young Jing Yuan.
In Japanese:
Kana Asumi voices both Silver Wolf and Bronya Rand. Since both characters are inspired by different versions of Honkai Impact 3rd's Bronya, this is intentional. Notably, this did not carry over to the Chinese VO, where Bronya Rand and Silver Wolf have different actors (but Silver Wolf is voiced by Hanser, the actor for Bronya from Impact.)
Caitlyn Elizabeth voices the Guardian Shadow and Kakavasha.
Analesa Fisher voices Firefly and Cirrus (possessed boy).
Adam Michael Gold voices both Argenti and Huohuo's companion Tail.
Caleb Yen voices the male Trailblazer Caelus, a Department of Ecology researcher, and two Ruan Mei Creations (when the Synesthesia Beacon is activated) in the "When the Stars of Ingenuity Shine" quest.
Qingque is an avid player of Celestial Jade, which resembles mahjong in all but name. Her Japanese voice actress, Arisa Date, is a professional mahjong player.
Author's Saving Throw: Usually, developers announce quality-of-life improvements via Voice of the Galaxy series of blog posts.
After players complained at launch that the Sanctus Medicus portion of the Xianzhou Luofu storyline interrupted the pacing of the main storyline, the dev team stated in a Voice of the Galaxy blog post that they would take it out of the main questline. That change was made for Version 1.2 when it was converted to a World Quest.
Many smaller changes abound in response to player feedback, even something as simple as players complaining that in 1.0, one of the Calyx locations had two robots spawned next to it that would always aggro the players - a major annoyance when the point of Calyx's is just teleporting to one place to grind every day. Since 1.1, the robots now face away from the spawn point so they won't aggro players who just teleport into it. As small as this change was, players screenshotted and celebrated that the devs had listened to even something this small when doing quality-of-life updates.
Content Leak: Just like with Genshin Impact, data miners, beta test gameplay videos of upcoming playable characters as well as story leaks are easily spread around large online platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, or even on some gaming news websites. The presence of story leaks specifically was addressed on the 1st Anniversary livestream, where writer Shaoji lamented that story leaks make writing much more difficult as they ruin the element of surprise for players.
Creator-Driven Successor: Despite being set in the Honkai franchise, Star Rail is also a successor to miHoYo's Genshin Impact by virtue of sharing a significantly similar backbone; from their menu and user interfaces, their gacha "Pity" mechanics, and especially because of their character progression systems (as well as, by all indications, being built in the same graphics engine and world design tools). Light Cones in Star Rail are equivalent to Weapons in Genshin, Relics are to Artifacts, Eidolons are to Constellations, and so on. Story-wise, you also get to choose between a male or female Trailblazer just like the case of the Genshin Traveler.
Misha is voiced by Cat Protano (English) and Eriko Matsui (Japanese).
Darkhorse Casting: Much like its sister game, in addition to casting well-known voice talents in the English dub, the dub also includes newcomers and actors outside of the dubbing (and voice acting in general) sphere. Examples include Corey Landis (Welt), Cheryl Texiera (Kafka), Amber May (Yanqing), Nicholas Leung (Dan Heng), Caleb Yen (Caelus), Rachael Chau (Stelle), Su Ling Chan (Bailu), Laci Morgan (Tingyun), Jordan Paul Haro (Dr. Ratio), and so forth. Notably, the VAs for Bronya Rand and Clara, Madeline Reiter and Emily Sun respectively, had never done any voice work prior to the release of the game, with the former being a pseudonym.
Demand Overload: Jing Yuan's banner was so hotly anticipated that Chinese players overwhelmed Hoyoverse's top-up payment system, causing it to become unresponsive and forcing miHoYo to perform emergency maintenance.
Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Firefly, a character with a crippling physical disability, is voiced by disabled performers in at least two languages - Tomori Kusunoki in Japanese, who has hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and Analesa Fisher in English, who is autistic and has unspecified mobility disabilities.
Fan Community Nicknames: The game's official social media platforms address the playerbase as "Trailblazers", the general identifier for the main Player Character.
Inspiration for the Work: As confirmed in an interview with the game's producer David Jiang, the Trails Series served as an inspiration behind Star Rail; Jiang himself is a massive fan of that series, and he even has Tio Plato as his profile picture in social media for years. Mechanically, the combat system uses Trails version of ultimates where the player can activate a character’s ultimate even when it’s not their turn.
Milestone Celebration: This game was announced at the end of the "Starfire Sonorant" live concert which commemorated the fifth anniversary of Honkai Impact 3rd.
Newbie Boom: Needless to say, Star Rail'sGenshin-adjacent nature is bringing in tons and tons of new players into the sphere of Honkai games. For many, it is their first Honkai game, and even the first "gacha" title for which they were around for launch!
Non-Singing Voice: In all four voiced languages, Chevy acts as Robin's singing voice but not her speaking voice.
The Other Darrin: An interesting example; all of the returning characters aside from Welt are Alternate Selves to their HI3 counterparts, and are played by the same actors from the latter game, but there are a few exceptions:
In Japanese, Natasha is voiced by Yumi Uchiyama instead of Sanae Kobayashi, who played her counterpart Natasha Cioara.
In English, Allegra Clark is voicing the Raiden Shogun's counterpart Acheron instead of Anne Yatco.
In Chinese, while Hanser still voices Silver Wolf, Bronya Rand is instead voiced by Xie Ying, even though her design is inspired by Bronya's APHO 2 self, who is voiced by Hanser.
Reclusive Artist: Madeline Reiter, the English voice actor of Bronya Rand, is actually an unknown actor under a pseudonym, as confirmed byMolly Zhang, who voices Seele. According to her, even the other actors do not know Reiter's true name.
Refitted for Sequel: Forrest Wei Liu, miHoYo's co-founder, actually would've likedHonkai Impact 3rd to be more "international" from the start, but it simply wasn't possible early on (especially given the original state HI3 launched in China and miHoYo's capabilities in 2016). Although its Creator-Driven SuccessorGenshin Impact is the first miHoYo game that brought this vision to life (by virtue of having multiple dubbed languages from the start, and being Multi-Platform), Star Rail followed suit and is the first Honkai game to do so; its trailers and promotional sources confirmed an English dub from the outset, while the marketing really pushed to advertise the game at major international gaming events such as the Summer Game Fest and Gamescom prior to the April 2023 launch. Said launch also featured a dizzying array of language options available for the text (in addition to the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai and Viet options that are now common for Hoyo games, the game also supports Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Portuguese), meaning the vast majority of the world will be able to enjoy the game right alongside its domestic Chinese audience.
Role Reprise: As the most recent entry in the mainline Honkai series, Star Rail shares many of its voice cast with Honkai Impact 3rd, many of whom return to play an Alternate Self of their prior role, or, in Welt’s case, their original character who happens to be Trapped in Another World. There's one exception to this: Natasha's JP voice actor is Yumi Uchiyama, while her HI3rd counterpart Raven is voiced by Sanae Kobayashi.
Throw It In!: According to Rachael Chau who voices the female Trailblazer, the character was originally going to have the same "Nice!" voice line in one of her idle animations, but during the recording sessions, she was asked to record an alternate take saying the more energetic "Noice!", which ended up being the final voice line in the game.
Trolling Creator: In the 2.0 Livestream, writer Shaoji announced that the Penacony story would be "chill, carefree and upbeat". It turned out to be anything but. Similarly, in the 2.1 Livestream, Shaoji described Gallagher, the man behind the Penacony deaths, as normal and non-suspicious.
The English and Korean voice actresses for Fu Xuan were left uncredited for a while despite the character having a prominent role in the story. It wasn't until July 2023 where it was confirmed that Sarah Wiedenheft and Lee Ji-hyeon voiced her in the aforementioned languages.
Pom-Pom's English voice actress, Christine Sposato, was the only VA of the main cast to not be credited despite being a prominent NPC. The "Ichor of Two Dragons" video would finally credit Sposato as the character.
Griffin Puatu was uncredited as the English voice of Sunday until April 2024 and the version 2.2 trailer, despite the character appearing in the 1.6 Special Program, becoming a pivotal character in the main Penacony Quest, and the Japanese and Chinese voice actors being announced.
Voice-Only Cameo: In the beginning of the Belobog Underworld, there are three suspiciously sounding miners complaining about their job. One is sleeping and the other two you can fight. If their voices sound familiar, that's because they are voiced by the hosts of Trash Taste, that is: Connor, Garnt and Joey.
The Serval trailer features completely different artwork of Serval that goes unused in the game proper. Said trailer is also the second-oldest trailer (after March 7th's) available on the channel and was posted almost a year prior to Honkai Star Rail's release, so it's likely that the artwork was changed at some point in development.
In early promotional material and in the first Closed Beta, Pom-Pom had a slightly different outfit. Although the hat is largely identical to the current outfit, their entire body was covered by a large trenchcoat with a messenger bag and oversized zipper, leaving only their prehensile ears to do all the work. By the second Closed Beta this was altered into the current outfit with the fluffy neck ring, conductor's vest with sleeves for arms and a pocket watch. The beta design is still used on the Pom-Pom stickers seen in in-game chats.
In the betas, the birthday cake items you would receive on your birthday could be used to immediately gain 60 Trailblaze Power and a cosmetic copy of the cake. In the final release, the cakes are entirely cosmetic.
Kafka's Technique in the beta has her pull out two SMGs and fire at enemies. At some point before she's released in version 1.2 as a permanent playable character, it was changed to instead call down purple lasers striking in an AoE around her.
In the game's first Closed Beta, the Jarilo-VI arc was originally much darker in tone before being rewritten to its current status. Among other things:
The heroes were arrested by the Silvermane Guards immediately on arrival rather than meeting with Cocolia first.
The sealing of the Underworld had occurred a few centuries ago rather than 10 years ago and by the present day the Overworld believed that Underworlders were "devils" repenting for their sins, with Bronya's dialogue having a lot of added Fantastic Racism.
The Geomarrow was a product of the Stellaron's presence rather than a naturally-occurring resource. Geomarrow caused a fatal crystallization ailment that Fersman was a victim of, hence his relatively aged appearance. Natasha's adoptive brother Vache was attempting to develop a cure for Geomarrow sickness rather than Blizzard Immunity but was unsuccessful since his treatment only removed the crystallized tissue without healing the organs, causing Vache to experiment on himself until he turned into a monster. Serval was also a Geomarrow researcher rather than a Stellaron researcher.
Fersman did sell out the other Geomarrow miners to Svarog... to get his hands on a cache that he could sell to support Hook before he ultimately succumbed to his Geomarrow-induced illness.
Somewhat more infamously (because elements of this were used as promotional material back in the game's early press cycle in 2021), Clara was known as "Bloody Rabbit" and was treated as an outsider by most Underworlders (except by the "prospectors", who were an early take on the displaced vagrant Underworlders in the final product). She also reactivated Svarog in the original script rather than being rescued by Svarog. Her original character design had a red mark around her neck that was cut in the final release, and an extra main quest that occurred after the Svarog fight that explained how Clara repaired Svarog was also cut. Elements of all this did survive into the game as printed; there's a reference to the "Bloody Rabbit" name in one of the light cones, and her coat does still have its rabbit-eared hood, it's just that in her game model, it's usually hidden beneath her hair. The "Shared Feeling" light cone features art with the hood up.
Some characters were nerfed, such as Arlan who received less buffs to his damage output for balancing reasons.
Word of Saint Paul: On the Chinese version of the Version 1.1 "Galactic Roaming" livestream, Hanser claimed that Silver Wolf and Bronie are different characters.
General Trivia
Star Rail is a bit notable in the pantheon of Hoyoverse/HOYO-MiX releases (which havea storied history) in that it is the first of their releases in which they had multiple vocal tracks in which they collaborated with native anglophone singers to front the vocals. In previous releases, miHoYo/Hoyoverse would get Chinese or Japanese singers as their lead vocalists (which is understandable, given how they were far more readily available to Hoyo in the pre-Genshin-budget days), even for songs whose lyrics were in English. HSR, by contrast, features HOYO-MiX working with multiple North American and European artists in a single release for the first time - specifically, "Wildfire" is sung by Jonathan Steingard of Hawk Nelson fame, and independent Irish-Italian acoustic artist Anthony Lynch handles "Take the Journey".
And along a similar line, several of the English voice actors released their own cover of one of the game's main themes. Awesome music indeed.
As the most recent entry in the mainline Honkai series, Star Rail shares many of its voice cast with Honkai Impact 3rd, many of whom return to play an expy of their prior role, or, in Welt’s case, their original character who happens to be Trapped in Another World.
In Chinese:
Chen Tingting (Sushang and Ana) plays Sushang and the female Trailblazer AKA Stelle.
Du Mingya (Yae Sakura and SAKURA) plays Jingliu.
Duoduo Poi (Rozaliya) plays Bailu.
Guiniang (Selim and Timido Cute) plays Asta.
Hanser (Bronya Zaychik) plays Silver Wolf.
Hualing (Theresa Apocalypse) plays Fu Xuan.
Jiang Li AKA Xiao N (Rita, Ai-chan, Edison, and Sin Mal) plays Tingyun and Pom-Pom.
Juhuahua (Raiden Mei) plays Acheron.
kinsen (Kalpas and the male Dreamseeker) plays Hamster Ball Knight.
Li Chunyin AKA Dong Yu (Owl) plays Dan Heng.
Lin Su (Murata Himeko and Susannah) plays Himeko.
Liu Beichen (Litost) plays Tail and Owlbert.
Liu Shishi (Klein) plays Qingque.
Liu Yijia (Grey Serpant) plays Blade.
Lu Minyue AKA Mace (Fu Hua) plays Topaz and Numby.
Miaojiang (Durandal) plays Yanqing.
Mufei (Herrscher of Dominance) plays Cocolia, Jingyan, and Cirrus.
Nuo Ya (Sora, Higakumaru, and Wendy) plays March 7th.
Peng Bo (Siegfried) plays Welt and Boothill.
Qin Qiege (Kevin Kaslana) plays the male Trailblazer AKA Caelus, Clockie, and Shiraga Oni.
Qin Ziyi (Einstein) plays Natasha.
Ruan Congqing (Vill-V) plays Constance.
Song Yuanyuan (Shigure Kira) plays Firefly.
Sun Ye ("Main Character" / Adam) plays Jing Yuan.
Su Ziwu (Lin Zhaoyu) plays Dubra.
Tao Dian (Kiana Kaslana and Ajita) plays Arlan and Baiheng.
Tang Yajing (Seele Vollerei / "Seele") plays Seele.
Wang Xiaotong (Carole Pepper and Sirin) plays Hook.
Xie Ying (Natasha "Raven" Cioara) plays Bronya Rand.
Yang Chaoran (Su) plays Aventurine and Dan Feng.
Yang Menglu (Aponia) plays Black Swan.
Yanning (Elysia and Liliya) plays Pela.
Zhang Ruoyu (the female Dreamseeker) plays Jade.
Zhao Lu (Otto Apocalypse and Void Archives) plays Luocha.
Zhao Shuang (Songque) plays Sparkle.
Zisu Jiuyue (Griseo, Nuwa, and Yae Rin) plays Clara.
In Japanese:
Kana Asumi (Bronya Zaychik) plays Bronya Rand and Silver Wolf.
that they would take it out of the main questline. That change was made for Version 1.2 when it was converted to a World Quest.