Stellar Blade CEO admits that the story is a let down, promises better in future

The Stellar Blade PC port is already proving to be quite the hit. Shift Up's sci-fi action game launch has eclipsed every other single-player Playstation port on Steam, as hundreds of thousands of players flock to it. In fact, Stellar Blade even has a staggering 94% rating on Valve's platform from over 16,000 user reviews, edging it ever closer to 'overwhelmingly positive.' Even with this success, however, Shift Up's CEO admits the game's narrative needed some more work.

In our very own Stellar Blade PC review, Reid says the narrative is oftentimes its weakest element. He calls the game's story "a serviceable enough sci-fi tale without any outstanding elements," but its flashy fights do enough to make it one of the best action games on PC.

Shift Up CEO and Stellar Blade director Kim Hyung-Tae is aware of this criticism, and in a new interview with Korean language outlet This Is Game, they've explained why the narrative turned out as it did. Keep in mind that the following is machine translated via DeepL, alongside checks on Google Translate.

"First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many people who loved the PC version. The core gameplay system was completed relatively early, but the thing that held us back the most was the cutscenes," Hyung-Tae says in the interview (via MP1st). "In an action game with a narrative, cutscenes play a very important role in storytelling. It's hard to tell all the narrative through action alone, so you have to take the narrative through cutscenes, and initially, we had a lot of setup and a lot of things we wanted to do in cutscenes."

"In the early stages of development, we planned to include detailed settings in the story, such as the reason why the protagonist changes clothes, but as we progressed, the cost of making cutscenes became too high, and in the end, we were forced to cut down on cutscenes that supplemented the worldview and character narrative outside of the main plot for efficiency. That's how we were able to finish the game. Part of the reason for this is that the development talent pool or system for narrative-oriented games has not yet been fully established in Korea.

"It's true that the narrative was lacking in that regard, and I'm cautious about trying to make up for it now with Stellar Blade because it might conflict with the story that users have already accepted. However, if we are given the opportunity to make the next one, I think we will be able to present it with a rich enough narrative."

It appears as though Shift Up may just get that chance, as during a recent company presentation, the team outlined an unnamed Stellar Blade sequel.

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