Not everyone saw the Stellar Blade cyclone coming, but no one could remain indifferent to the charm of the protagonist Eve once her exploits took shape in an excellent action game on PlayStation 5. The South Korean developers of Shift Up, after more than ten years of experience in the smartphone gaming sector, have debuted on consoles with an epic set in the future which perfectly mixes sexy atmospheres à la Bayonetta and the absolute tension of Souls-style titles. Stellar Blade director Hyung-tae Kim has created a convincing world teeming with challenges, but above all a combat system that mixes the best elements of different genres.
“We wanted to create a game that was more different from the usual hack and slash,” Kim explained to AdnKronos. “We looked for a balance between strategy and attack: rather than prevailing over the enemy by overwhelming him with attacks, we wanted the player to learn the opponent’s moves and develop the best strategy to prevail, without sacrificing the spectacular nature of the fights. At the same time, if the player prefers more fast-paced action and wants to focus on brute force, he just has to develop the skill tree in this sense.”
Kim’s experiences as a game artist are reflected in the incredible variety of enemies, very dangerous and demonic creatures with a disturbing appearance that contrasts with the attractiveness of the protagonist. “The monsters are the main aspect of Stellar Blade, they are the real protagonists”, explains the director. “Sometimes they were designed to fit the game, but in many cases they were created from scratch and then inserted into the levels. In addition to their appearance, it was essential that they have recognizable but not monotonous patterns. The player learns as he progresses through the game, until you clash with the bosses, which are the sum of everything you have learned while fighting”.
If it is true that the monsters are the protagonists of the game, Eve undoubtedly attracted attention. Strongly criticized well before launch for the extremely sexy representation of the main character, Stellar Blade finds in its protagonist the best possible business card. Yet, before arriving at the final form, Eve’s characterization has been a long journey: “At the beginning, we decided to base Eve’s polygonal model solely on the illustrations we had created. Only later did we decide to rely on motion capture and scan a real person. But even this wasn’t enough to achieve the goal realism we wanted, so we decided to scan all the body movements first and then those of the face. Our goal was to achieve the best balance between photorealism and my illustrationsto give the game a unique atmosphere.”
In some ways, Eve resembles a K-Pop singer. There is a lot of Korean pop culture in Stellar Blade, as Hyung-tae Kim himself admits: “Pop is one of my passions, and it had a strong influence on the creation of the game. But at the same time what influenced me the most are the games and films of when I was a child, cartoons, science fiction. I tried to reinterpret all these things in a modern way so that I could put them in a contemporary video game.”
The biggest challenge for Shift Up was running the risk of investing a lot of resources in a project intended for home consoles and not smartphones. “In Asia, mobile games are the most successful and guarantee the most revenue for a longer period, so this move was definitely a gamble before and a challenge after. Five years have passed from the beginning of the game’s design to today, and to get this far we needed the help of many people, in addition, of course, to Sony.”
Now that Stellar Blade has been released, obtaining among other things excellent critical success, there is great expectation on the next moves of Shift Up, and on the possibility that it will become a saga or that it will at least have extra content in the future. Kim explains: “The future of Stellar Blade depends on players, their feedback, and the aspects of the game they will love most. Video gaming is something that doesn’t exist without players, and I think it’s really important to create a direct connection with them. Obviously, there are stories and aspects of the game that I would personally like to explore more, but my priority is to create something that is satisfying for users, first and foremost.”
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Hyung-tae Kim, director of Stellar Blade (left), and Dong Gi Lee, technical director of Shift Up
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