The Stellar Blade dev team had a "competition" to see who could beat a boss first: "From that moment, all of us understood how to design the combat"
Apr. 25, 2024Shift Up took Stellar Blade’s combat very seriously
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Stellar Blade’s devs say they had a “competition” during the game’s development to see who could beat a boss first, and it helped them to design combat.
In the lead-up to Stellar Blade’s release this week, the team at Shift Up is releasing a series of mini behind-the-scenes documentaries via PlayStation’sYouTubechannel. The second installment of the series was released this week and it reveals the team’s approach to the action RPG’s setting, level design, sound, boss fights, and more.
During the boss fight section of the video, Stellar Blade’s system design lead, Hyung Min Lee, talked about his favorite parts of the upcoming title. “I can’t wait for players to encounter the boss battles,” the developer reveals. “All the excitement, all the awe, it all combines into our boss battles.”
“There is a monster called Abaddon that players will meet early on in the game,” he explains. From here, we see several of the other developers in the documentary having a stab at taking down Abaddon. “Everyone in the studio had a competition to see who could defeat this boss first. From that moment, all of us understood how to design the combat system of Stellar Blade,” the developer recalls.
Elsewhere in the same video, Stellar Blade’s director, Kim Hyung Tae, revealed thathe “grew up too poor to afford” a PS1, but when he finally got one in college, Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy inspired him to make games.
Not only this, the developer also gave an insight into the creative process at Shift Up, joking that the action RPG “is the outcome of my creative dictatorship,” but that “everyone pretends to listen to what I say whilst creating what they want.”
Find out what we thought with ourStellar Blade reviewor count down until it releases where you are with ourStellar Blade release time countdown.
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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I’m also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.
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