‘Stellar Blade’ Director Admits “Narrative Was Lacking”, Says He’s “Cautious About Trying To Make Up For It Now”
In the wake of Stellar Blade crossing the three million sales mark, game director Hyung-tae Kim has come clean and admitted that, as many players rightfully pointed out, Eve’s story was more than a bit “lacking”.
While Stellar Blade launched in April last year on PlayStation 5, its June 11th PC release this year has served as a real shot in the arm. Even with 24 hours of its PC launch, it was declared Sony’s biggest launch on Steam. Less than a week later, it was beating out Steam all-time concurrent player counts for Ghost of Tsushima, God of War, and Marvel’s Spider-Man.
At this time of writing, the game has a Steam all-time concurrent player peak of over 192,000. While trending downwards, its too early to say if the game has already hit its peak.
On June 16th, the game’s official X account announced their latest sales milestone of over three million copies sold. “To all Players [emphasis theirs] around the world who have shown love for Stellar Blade, we extend our deepest gratitude and respect.”
A sequel had already been planned before this recent milestone. Having already sold over a million units by May, developer Shift Up revealed in a financial presentation that after “Platform Expansion,” a sequel would come thereafter.
Based on Shift Up’s accompanying graph, it appeared the sequel was scheduled to launch before 2027.
In an interview with This Is Game‘s Editor-in-Chief Woo-cheol Jung, game director and Shift Up CEO Hyung-tae Kim expressed surprised over the game’s success.
“Of course, I didn’t expect it,” Kim admitted (machine translated via DeepL). “I thought it would be nice to have more than 100,000 concurrent users, but I’m really grateful that users loved it so much. I was hoping for 200,000 concurrent users, but I’m very grateful for the current number. Rather than obsessing over the maximum number of concurrent users, we’re more concerned with managing the game so that it continues to be loved.”
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After discussing how Stellar Blade was optimized and prepared for PC (and continue to improve controls in updates), Jung asked, “On the one hand, some have said that Stellar Blade was a bit of a disappointment in terms of narrative. Do you have any plans to expand or enhance the main story in the future, and are you open to collaborating with Project Spirit?”
“First of all, we’d like to thank everyone for loving the PC version,” Kim opened. “The core gameplay system was completed relatively early, but the thing that held us back the most was the cutscenes. In an action game with a narrative, cutscenes play a very important role in storytelling.”
He added, “You can’t tell the whole story 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,” Kim admitted.
He proceeded to clarify, “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.”
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“It’s true that the narrative was lacking in that regard, and I’m cautious about trying to make up for it now 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,” Kim hoped.
Nonetheless, Kim explained, “We’re definitely open to the possibility of collaborating with Project Spirit or other projects. However, a year after the release of Stellar Blade, our plans are in flux depending on how we balance supporting our existing titles and preparing for the next one.”
To this end, Jung then asked, “According to the IR [Investor Relations] material, the project originally developed as story DLC for Stellar Blade has been turned into a sequel. Since it was said to be targeted for a 2027 release, can we really expect to see the sequel then, and is the platform still considered Sony consoles first?”
In turn, Kim admitted, “It was an IR team mistake.”
“When we were preparing the DLC,” he explained, “the volume was bigger than expected, so we switched our focus to the next game, but a lot has changed since then.”
Closing out the interview with a quick note about Shift Up’s current plans, the CEO explained, “I wouldn’t say that the next game has been developed a lot, because all of our resources have been put into the PC version, and we’re currently in a period of R&D where we’re thinking a lot about how we can showcase our vision for the next generation.”
“To be honest, since we’ve already released the PS version and then the PC version, we’re at a point where we can do proper R&D,” he concluded. “It would be great if it comes out in 2027, but since we only have three years left, all I can say is that we’re going to do our best, but I can assure you that it’s going to be amazing.”
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