i’m not qualified on the subject matter either. besides the " changing to (), i think important changes are the changed hooks and their order;
old conf read;
HOOKS=“base udev autodetect modconf block keyboard keymap filesystems”
new conf reads;
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck)
changes being “keyboard” coming before “filesystems”, “keymap” removed and “fsck” added at the end.
now there is some info on these hooks in archwiki;
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mkinitcpio#Common_hooks
from the little i understood, i think the new conf could be used as is. missing “keymap” hook is required if you use full-disk encryption apparently (so beware). having additional “fsck” hook is recommended practice. that is all i can fathom.