Honkai: Star Rail post about Dan Heng’s height has fans really confused
Be it Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail, character heights are always a hotly debated issue in the community for some reason. Usually, people appreciate it when a developer comes in and gives some official clarification, as that helps everyone to get more precise measurements.
However, HoYoverse recently muddied the debate around Honkai: Star Rail character heights by posting a rather confusing image on Chinese social media platform Weibo depicting a mugshot of Dan Heng, an Astral Express crew member. One issue is the imperial measurement system the company used, which may be familiar to audiences in the US and the UK, but might as well be hieroglyphics to the rest of the globe.
A height of about 6’8” would be around 2.03m – that is pretty tall and would put characters like Sampo, Welt, Gepard, and Jing Yuan, who are all known to be taller than Dan Heng from their in-game models, firmly into top basketball athlete territory. Jing Yuan would be a colossus at about 2.20m. That can’t be right, can it?
It's likely that the person making this asset simply didn't put too much thought into the depicted height or mixed things up due to using an unfamiliar measurement system.
HoYoverse
There is also the fact that a police report from the game, which estimates the height of upcoming character Kafka, puts her at about 1.70m. Her in-game model is just a smidge less tall than that of Dan Heng, though, contradicting the image as well – unless the height on the report did not figure in her shoes and her heels bridge the remaining distance, in which case she must suffer from an incredible risk of broken ankles at all times.
People brought up the possibility of characters growing taller due to the lower gravity in space, which in turn would compress their spines less and let them appear taller. However, that doesn’t cover all the characters that have grown up on planets like Jarilo VI or environments like the Xianzhou Luofo, which have artificial gravity. They’d grow the same way as regular humans do.
It's likely just confusion on the artist's part, since China officially uses the metric system for measurements just like most of the world.
For now, it’s probably best to stick to the following height classifications the community figured out for Honkai: Star Rail characters, though you’re free to think that everyone in the game is just absurdly tall as well:
- Male (tall): 1.92m / 6’4”
- Male (medium): 1.80m / 6’0”
- Male (short): 1.63m / 5’4”
- Female (tall): 1.70m / 5’7”
- Female (medium): 1.63m / 5’4”
- Female (short): 1.47m / 4’9”
- Male/Female (children): 1.27m / 4’0”
In practice, characters’ heights will vary a little bit with hats, hairstyles, shoes, and other features adding more visual diversity. To sum things up: This debate will be going on for a while longer.
