Long-ass post about my thoughts on Pantalone's playability (Art is OC)
Hello, everyone! I don’t normally make posts like this on Reddit, but given all the uncertainty surrounding this topic, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the possible playability of our beloved Regrator.
Before we get into it, I need to preface this with:
→ Please keep in mind that I am a big Fatui fan, and I would absolutely love everyone to be playable, but I'm saying all of the following not just because Pantalone is my favorite, but because I don't trust Hoyoverse to make certain decisions about the development of the game.
→ I will not consider the 10th Harbinger at all because we have no clue who that is or if the seat is even occupied.
→ This post will contain content from the 7.0 Archon Quest, so if you haven’t done that, TURN BACK NOW.
→ Any mention of leaks will be spoiler tagged, but the amount of leaked content I mention will be minimal and not crucial to understanding the post as a whole. I strictly do not engage with story leaks however, so please for the love of the Tsaritsa, refrain from mentioning story spoilers or spoiler tag them properly as specifically story-related if adding to the discussion.
Now, put on your tinfoil hats and let’s begin!
Although I still won't definitively trust in his playability until official or reliable sources straight up say it, I do think it's reasonable to believe he has good chances of being playable. Here's my take on it...
First, I'll talk about slots. Based on what we know, the amount of characters released for each region/patch cycle is around 15-17, counting both 4 and 5 stars. Assuming this is still the case in Snezhnaya, based on the amount of characters we've seen in the Snezhnaya trailer, that's 9 playable slots taken including the Tsaritsa, plus the yearly Lantern Rite character, which makes it 10.
[1] Odette, [2] Alyosha, [3] Vodyanitsa, [4] Vesna, [5] Mitya, [6] Valeriy, [7] Anastasya, [8] Danica, [9] Noy, [10] Lantern Rite
That leaves us with approx. 5-7 slots left. We could also get a character never mentioned before (e.g. Escoffier, Emilie, etc.) and/or one mentioned in early half region voicelines (e.g. Lohen, etc.), which might take up an unknown amount of slots. >!DK2 who arguably has the best track record of any current Genshin leaker, also corroborated the claim that Dainsleif is coming in late Snezhnaya. If true, that would hypothetically knock down the remaining slots to 4-6, but as always, take it with a grain of salt.!<
This is the Fatui's territory. It'd be foolish (no pun intended) of them to not release at least one big name that isn't the Tsaritsa, right? Anyway...
Second, the aforementioned "big names". Out of the remaining Fatui Harbingers (plus Director Pierro) who currently aren't playable yet, Pantalone is the safest design taking into account the main target audience: the Chinese playerbase. He appears young, is clean-shaven, fair-skinned/pale, has a good amount of muscle but isn’t “too beefy”, and is just all-around conventionally attractive, meaning he is the one who fits traditional East Asian beauty standards the most out of the remaining big names. The downside is, I can only ever see them releasing him in Snezhnaya because, at the moment, he currently doesn't seem to be concretely connected to anything super lore-heavy enough to release him outside of the current patch cycle. This will most likely be the highest amount of hype his character will ever have, and unless they capitalize on that in Snezhnaya, it won't be looking good for him or us.
Now let's talk about the other Fatui contenders:
>Pulcinella. He's a tiny old man, and while he is the representative of Snezhnaya in the Travail teaser, has gotten some advertising, and is implied to have huge story relevance in the future, unless Hoyoverse has the balls to release him as-is (which I doubt they do) or they pull something out of left field by giving him a "younger, more attractive" model, I don’t see them releasing him. His model by itself isn’t a problem because we’ve seen them willing to make unique models for newer playable characters (e.g. Varka, Mitya), but the problem would be how to sell him the way that he is currently. If anything, I would be pleasantly surprised if Hoyo made him playable as-is, since it'd be far more interesting than just getting a younger-looking “more attractive” version of him. As it stands right now though, I have many doubts about his playability, as much as I want him to be so.
>Pierro. He looks to have a better chance than Pulcinella, but again because of East Asian beauty standards, I’m a little 50/50 on this one. He's got facial hair and looks quite aged, although with the focus he’s been given in the story so far, and the connection he has with Paimon, it already places him as an ally of the player (at least for now). Knowing Hoyoverse, though, the nature of his design might be a dealbreaker for them when it comes to selling him so I hope they defy my expectations. If he does end up playable, he might contend with Pantalone for a playable slot in Snezhnaya... HOWEVER! If we consider Khaenri'ah possibly coming directly after Snezhnaya based on the Travail teaser and the huge lore bomb they dropped in the 7.0 livestream, Pierro could totally be given a slot from there as well.
This is also similar to my thoughts on Capitano, who I believe still has the potential to return, and also has ties to Khaenri’ah.
>Signora. After all the most recent marketing involving her and especially her relationship with Odette as shown in the 7.0 AQ... I used to think it was possible for Signora to come back, but now I can't see it happening. That’s mainly because it seems the shadow of her death constantly looms over those who cared about her such as Sandrone and (to an extent) Odette. I feel like it would cheapen it a whole lot if they brought her back, which is why I no longer see them doing it.
As for Dottore though, I think there’s still a chance for him, given all the hints of his possible return. It’s not exactly the first time he’s “come back” from the dead, and all the "good” guys of the story reiterating that this (Luna VII AQ) is the last we'll ever see of him, plus the specificity of the amount of time that Irminsul burned in Nahida’s dialogue just makes it even more suspicious to me. He also doesn't have as much weight given to his death even in recent marketing; it's barely, if at all, been mentioned so far unlike Signora's. The catch is, I have no idea at what point in the story would be a good time to bring him back, if he ever will.
And before you say anything, I know they're allergic to killing off characters in Honkai: Star Rail, but consider that Genshin Impact has a different team behind it who make vastly different decisions. It’s for this reason that I can't take their decisions for their other games into consideration.
Now that that's out of the way... Here's the third part, the most common questions and arguments I’ve seen regarding the potential for his playability.
>"He can't be playable, he doesn't even have a Vision!"
While, yes, him not getting a Vision is the whole point of his character, there's nothing saying he can't be given some sort of an alternative. Delusions and now Stellar Linchpins exist. I could definitely see him receive the latter, or some artificial form of it somehow due to the Fatui’s ongoing research on them. It's also entirely possible for him to get an actual Vision at some point like a cruel, sick joke from the heavens. We've seen other characters gain Visions during the story multiple times (e.g. Wanderer, Furina, Ineffa, etc.), so it's absolutely not out of the question for it to happen even in some sort of an ironic twist. Or maybe the Electro Dragon Sovereign theory is true or something, we literally don't know. The point is, he’s not just a Fatui Harbinger, he also has an insane amount of wealth and connections; it’s not impossible for him to gain a way to manipulate elemental energy in some capacity, even if it’s not by conventional means. Our man is known for his great ambition, after all.
>"But Dottore said he only has a few years left to live!"
Case in point: Baizhu. You know, the guy everyone loves to compare to Pantalone because they look similar? He's chronically ill (bless his heart) and trying to find an answer to his mortality because his life expectancy isn't very good, and most importantly, he's still playable! He's so often compared to Pantalone but somehow people conveniently forget about him when pointing this out. Hoyoverse doesn’t care one bit about who does or doesn’t die when it comes to who they make playable. If they think a character can sell, they’ll either find some way to explain the character’s present circumstances or just ignore the plot point completely. (Case in point again: Sandrone, who they long planned to return from the dead when Pulonia wasn’t able to. Lisa is also living on borrowed time, but they never made any mentions of that fact since.)
>"But he's antagonistic towards the Traveler and was an accomplice of Dottore!"
I love the Fatui, but any Fatui fan would know that if Hoyoverse wanted to, they could make him our ally any way they know how. It's happened time and time again with previous Harbingers, and I don't see why he's any different. He said it himself too: "One's enemy in the present may not necessarily be an enemy for life." (Luna VII AQ Act 9) which means he's open to the idea of allying with us. While the Harbingers don’t see eye to eye all the time, at the moment they all seem to be united in helping the Tsaritsa work towards her goal, and she lets them do whatever they want as long as it benefits her. I’d argue that it’s in Pantalone’s best interest to support the Tsaritsa, given his disdain for the rules of the world, and obviously we’re inevitably going to have some sort of amicable relationship with the Tsaritsa. The seeds are already being sown with our non-hostile encounter with Pierro, and allying with the Fatui against Ronova. If Hoyoverse wanted Pantalone to have a good relationship with us just to sell him as a playable character, there’s nothing stopping them from making that happen.
>"He has an NPC model! His design doesn't look intricate enough for a playable character!"
I don't see why this is even brought up as a point, to be honest. Hoyoverse is a billion dollar company who's made new models for previously unplayable NPC characters before; the most recent obvious one being Sandrone. Because of Sandrone too, it seems people also have the idea that he has to die first in order to return with a new design, but remember that Skirk also received a new design just because they felt like it. Although it seems the idea is that she aged a little since we last saw her, regardless, that already proves that dying is not really a requirement for a character to receive a redesign. It is absolutely not impossible for them to give him an updated model when he becomes playable, even if he's a male character.
Also a possibility I should bring up: If we consider his current model not to be his playable design, the question is, why did they not just give him his playable model in the first place like with Arlecchino? My thought is that they possibly gave him the model and design he has now because they’re trying to hide a story-related element to his potential playable design that would be considered a spoiler at this point in time. This is just my theory though.
>“But there’s no way he’ll be released in September now! He won’t follow the release trend!”
Hoyoverse, especially in this day and age, is known for breaking patterns they’ve already established. While the most recent Harbinger, Sandrone, follows the same pattern of the “active Harbinger releases in the month of their rank”, I wouldn’t be surprised if they break this specific pattern here. This is Snezhnaya, if there’s any time and place for them to break this pattern, it would be here in the homeland and territory of the Fatui especially if they’re going to release multiple of them. However, going into theory territory here, personally I believe he’d be released sometime after the Tsaritsa.
Regarding patterns, one thing I noticed that I haven’t seen brought up before at all, is that, minus the 1.0 patch cycle with Mondstadt and Liyue being released together and having Childe sandwiched between two Archons, every playable Harbinger thereafter regardless of active status has always been released after the release of the cycle’s “Archon” or Archon representative. Scaramouche/Wanderer (3.3) was the patch after Nahida (3.2), and Arlecchino (4.6) was a few patches after Furina (4.2). Nod Krai is a special case, releasing two of them. In this case, since Columbina (Luna IV) is more or less considered the “Archon” representative of the region, the corresponding “Harbinger” for Nod Krai’s patch cycle would be Sandrone (Luna VIII). If we take in consideration what I said earlier about Pantalone’s chances of playability compared to the other big name contenders, there’s a good chance he will be Snezhnaya’s representative Harbinger, releasing sometime after the Tsaritsa in the later half of the region.
>!Considering many leaks say that the first half of Snezhnaya consists mostly of the clearly playable characters we see in the trailer aside from Noy, it’s basically confirmed already that a good chunk of our potential hard hitters are in the second half. If the leaks about the Cryo/Dendro “Rimegrass” reaction in late Snezhnaya are true, he might be one of the featured units meant to trigger this reaction in his kit.!<
Lastly, some extra stuff that I believe might help his case:
- Hoyoverse seems to be easing him into getting increased focus in the story, which is what they often do to sell a long-awaited character, just based on the amount of advertising he's gotten. Being featured on the version arts of Luna VII and 7.0, having a name card for the Snezhnaya trailer, having merchandise, having several shorts focusing on or including him prominently, and being featured in Web Events, are some of the few examples we have so far. The fact that he's gotten a good amount of engagement such as likes and comments on his advertising across the different regions, apparently including China, may indicate to Hoyoverse that he can sell well.
Now, a slight tangent to clarify things: Don’t be fooled. The thing about the cycle of game development and the decisions made during its time most likely means that, if they're planning to release him, he's definitely already in the works. The common misconception a lot of people seem to have is that they cobble together a character from scratch in a short period of time, or make massive changes to a character right before release based on fanbase reactions and feedback to the character, but this isn't normally the case. People like to make conspiracy theories about how Hoyoverse sees “outrage” on social media (which, more often than not, is confined to a relatively small space in the collective playerbase) or similar claims, and decide to make changes based on this. There’s no doubt they keep tabs on public perception of their games, especially since we had the whole Zhongli kit issue from back in the day, and the “Neuvillette nerf” fiasco, but to think they’d care about what a few loud complaints on Reddit or Twitter say is just plain wrong. I just had to bring this up because, after the thing with Mitya’s Stellar Linchpin mistake, it seems a few people don’t really understand how game development works.
Let me reiterate: The reaction Pantalone’s marketing gets on social media does not influence whether or not he will become playable. They have the roadmap of who is playable when the region is planned, which is just basic game development and supported by previous regions’ character ID datamines. If Pantalone is to be playable, he’s already in the works.
Moving back to my point: Every beta cycle is just to further polish (or, well, fumble for certain characters) the products they already have prepared. I surmise that the data Hoyo receives from their advertising for characters, such as how many views and likes they receive, is mainly used as a metric for how to market certain ones further if they have them lined up. This applies to both scheduling the marketing and how exactly they market it. Hopefully, the fact that our beloved banker is getting lots of attention on their advertising means that they'll treat him well and try to hype him up when his time comes.
Regarding the story... Throughout the years, they’ve been dropping a lot of crumbs of his lore here and there. With the most recent hints to his backstory, it seems Hoyoverse may be setting him up to be someone the players could sympathize with to sell him as a character, which is not a new concept. We’ve seen them do this with previous Harbingers: with Scaramouche/Wanderer’s story intertwined with the Sumeru AQ. With Arlecchino, giving her an animation and Story Quest that gives insight to the events leading up to her becoming the 4th Harbinger and taking over the House of the Hearth. With Sandrone, hinting at her connection to the Narzissenkreuz WQ long before Nod Krai finally fully connected it with mentions in the AQ, the promo material, and eventually the summer event. Our beloved banker has the potential to receive the same kind of treatment from Hoyoverse, which would be a good sign for his playability. >!Also, Vodyanitsa being well-established in 7.0 and their need to sell Vesna instead might mean more time to focus on Fatui-related affairs in 7.1, which may mean a lot more screentime for Pantalone.!<
Aaaand that’s about it from me so far. It took me a good few weeks trying to cook this up, what with work and everything keeping me busy. I tried my best to make it presentable, and bring up examples and receipts to back up my case even if some of it goes into theory territory... But hey, am I really a Fatui fan if I’m not the least bit delusional?
I’d also like to remind everyone to please be respectful towards each other; this is all merely speculation based on my own observations, and something I laid out and decided to share with the community because I thought it was fun and interesting to think about.
Anyways, let me know what you think! Any reasons why you think he would be playable or otherwise? Any hopes you have for his story, element, kit, weapon, animations, etc. in the future? Are you saving for him regardless? I’d love to hear from you all!