I don't know why it is that in-game text messages are so often tragically bad. A game can have immaculate writing, a gut-wrenching narrative and then smack you in the face with the stalest, most cringe-worthy texts known to man. They're usually just a pretty lame way of driving the narrative or giving a mini lore dump while you're busy doing other things. But what if text messages in games were lowkey unhinged, often pointless to the plot but a whole lot of fun to read instead?
Honkai: Star Rail dishes out texts that are the perfect level of ridiculous, yet feel strangely grounded in its silly little space RPG world. I've become surprisingly enamoured with its cast—I never got particularly attached to Genshin Impact's heroes, but HoYo's English writing team seems to have seriously improved for Honkai. I've especially loved the interaction between the core three characters—the player-created protagonist, their buddy Dan Heng, and March 7th (yes, that's a character's name)—which has definitely been helped by some of the daft texts I've exchanged with them over my weeks of playing.
