Summary
- Stellar Blade's unique setting draws inspiration from 90s anime and cyberpunk manga, creating a dark, post-apocalyptic world.
- While influenced by cyberpunk media, Stellar Blade also embodies the spirit of 80s and 90s science fiction, with graphic violence and techno-body horror.
- Director Hyung-Tae Kim drew inspiration from games like Sekiro and Bayonetta, as well as real-world events like self-driving cars' impact on jobs, making for a truly unique world to explore.
With so many cyberpunk games available right now, and many more on the horizon, the strange post-human world of Stellar Blade is a breath of fresh air. For those interested in the game, it's worth taking the time to look at what makes Stellar Blade's setting so unique.
Since the Stellar Blade demo dropped two weeks ago, fans have been eagerly playing and replaying the hour-long vertical slice of Shift Up’s upcoming action RPG, enjoying its well-designed and high-stakes action gameplay while exploring its unique and mysterious post-apocalyptic world.
Stellar Blade Might Just Be 2024's Bayonetta
The upcoming Stellar Blade is carrying on a lot of action game traditions, and could be the Bayonetta title fans weren't expecting to get this year.
Stellar Blade’s Stunning Environments Really Make It Stand Out
Presenting the player with a number of locations populated by mad androids and chitinous alien parasites, Stellar Blade looks to be taking influence from 90s anime OVAs and cyberpunk manga to create a dark science-fiction world set centuries after the fall of utopia.
As early as the demo’s opening cutscene—with strange piscine starships opening up red-lined gills to eject hundreds of squidlike escape pods—players are made aware of Stellar Blade’s unique aesthetic approach. Thrown directly onto a battlefield, gamers are forced to fight grotesque monsters and watch on in horror as the game’s catsuit-clad characters are dismembered by a strange alien angel. As abruptly as it began, the chaos of the battlefield then fades away and the player is dropped into the calm and cozy ruins of a once bustling cyberpunk city, now long-dead and reclaimed by nature.
Stellar Blade Isn’t Strictly Cyberpunk
Though Stellar Blade undoubtedly shares DNA with many iconic pieces of cyberpunk media—director Hyung-Tae Kim has cited Blade Runner, Battle Angel Alita and Nier: Automata as core influences—the game has been discussed by Shift Up as reinterpreting and embodying the spirit of 80s and 90s science-fiction in general.
Though neither Shift Up nor Hyung-Tae Kim have gone in depth on the game's other science-fiction influences, it’s not difficult to speculate. Stellar Blade’s post-apocalyptic supersoldiers are reminiscent of Tsutomo Nihei’s iconic manga Blame!, and its oblique religious iconography is a common feature of cyberpunk anime from Malice@Doll to Ergo Proxy. The game's graphic violence and techno-body-horror is reminiscent of Genocyber in particular, though it’s also likely that the wave of independent Japanese science-fiction films from the late-90s and early-2000s were an influence on the game’s grisly biomechanical monstrosities.
Stellar Blade Isn’t Only Influenced by Science Fiction
A number of non-science-fiction games were also influential on the design of Stellar Blade. In a recent interview with Famitsu, Hyung-Tae Kim cited Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Bayonetta as inspirations on Stellar Blade’s design. Hyung-Tae Kim also cited God of War as a major inspiration, stating that it had a major impact on Stellar Blade’s world design by demonstrating that a game’s setting could still feel vast without being open-world.
Outside of games, manga, and movies, director Hyung-Tae Kim claims he was inspired to make Stellar Blade when he witnessed South Korean taxi drivers striking in response to self-driving car technology putting their jobs at risk. Stellar Blade’s setting takes this to its logical conclusion, envisioning a world in which technology has made humanity obsolete.
There’s Much More to Stellar Blade That Players Are Yet To See
From what’s been shown off for Stellar Blade so far, it’s clear that developer Shift Up is putting its own spin on the game's wide range of influences to craft a world that feels both unique and part of a long science-fiction tradition.
With the game stated to take around 25 to 50 hours to complete, Stellar Blade’s demo is only a tiny taste of the science-fiction world players will get the chance to explore in the full release. Stellar Blade is set to release on April 26, so fans don’t have long left to wait to find out what surprises the game has in store for them.
Stellar Blade
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 81 /100 Critics Rec: 81%
- Released
- April 26, 2024
- ESRB
- M for Mature
- Developer(s)
- Shift Up
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
WHERE TO PLAY
RECLAIM EARTH FOR HUMANKIND The future of humanity hangs in the balance in Stellar Blade, an all-new story-driven action adventure. Ravaged by strange, powerful creatures, Earth has been abandoned, and what is left of the decimated human race has fled to a Colony in outer space. After travelling from the Colony, 7th Airborne Squad member EVE arrives on the desolate remains of our planet with a clear-cut mission: to save humankind by reclaiming Earth from the Naytiba – the malevolent force that has devastated it. But as EVE tackles the Naytiba one-by-one, piecing together the mysteries of the past in the ruins of human civilization, she realizes that her mission is far from straightforward. In fact, almost nothing is as it seems…
