HoYoVerse teases 2024 Zenless Zone Zero release, Penacony update for Honkai Star Rail

HoYoVerse had a field day at the 2023 Game Awards, debuting two new trailers for Honkai Star Rail and promoting the future release of Zenless Zone Zero. The company's games also made a showing in the nominations and winners' gallery, with Honkai Star Rail winning the Best Mobile Game award and Genshin Impact being nominated for Best Ongoing Game (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty won that award).

The Zenless Zone Zero trailer was another video focused on character attack animations, promoting several members of the launch roster, and shark-tailed maid Ellen, who is the banner character in the game's closed beta test build.

The trailer ended by trumpeting a potential early 2024 release window. For more details on how the game works, check out our in-depth preview based on the 2nd closed beta test.

The Honkai Star Rail trailer was a general overview of the game in its current state, featuring characters Dan Heng in his Imbibitor Lunae form, Huohuo, and the current banner 5-Star character, Argesti. The trailer is narrated by the mysterious fortune teller, who remains unnamed officially, though data leaks from earlier versions suggest she's called "Black Swan".

Finally, the Honkai Star Rail Game Awards trailer ends with a brief tease of the Astral Express' next destination: The Planet of Festivities, Penacony. The trailer also gives players a glimpse of a new character called Acheron, the Galaxy Ranger.

For players of Honkai Impact 3rd, Acheron should be somewhat familiar: She's a dead ringer for Raiden Mei, one of Honkai Impact 3rd's main characters. In keeping with HoYoVerse's love of echoing differing versions of its Honkai Impact characters across games, another character closely matching Raiden Mei's description also appeared in Genshin Impact, in the form of the Raiden Shogun, Electro Archon and ruler of Inazuma. In Japanese, all three characters are voiced by the same also voiced by the same actor, Miyuki Sawashiro.

Honkai Star Rail is available on PC, PS5, and mobile devices. Zenless Zone Zero is in development and will launch on PC and mobile devices.