Summary
- Stellar Blade offers open-world exploration with plenty of collectibles and side quests, enhancing player agency and rewarding discovery.
- The absence of maps in certain zones encourages curiosity-driven exploration but can lead to excessive signposting and frustrating backtracking.
- While mapless areas in Stellar Blade have their benefits, they also present challenges that can impact the overall player experience.
Stellar Blade is an action-packed game filled with plenty of opportunities to explore. Much like one of its spiritual predecessors, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Stellar Blade consists of several open-world areas where players can find a multitude of collectibles, crafting materials, and side quests. From the game's earliest stages, it becomes abundantly clear that Stellar Blade intends for its players to venture off the beaten path in search of valuable rewards, including Data Bank entries that help flesh out the game's world. Unfortunately, these explorable areas aren't always the easiest to navigate thanks to one regrettable feature.
As players begin exploring Stellar Blade's starting zone on Eidos 7, they may quickly begin to notice something: there is no map for the region. At first, this might come across as one of Stellar Blade's more refreshing features, considering what a mapless zone is capable of accomplishing for exploration and discovery. However, as the game progresses, players will gain access to more of these mapless areas, most of which they will be encouraged to return to at a later time to complete side quests or retrieve valuable collectibles they might not have been able to acquire during their first visit. Furthermore, the lack of a map for these regions results in the game employing an overwhelming number of other, more controversial tactics to help guide players.
Stellar Blade's First Post-Launch Addition Feels Clear as Day
With such a stunning visual display, Stellar Blade's first post-launch addition of an increasingly popular feature feels like the logical way to go.
The Pros and Cons of Stellar Blade's Mapless Zones
Stellar Blade's Mapless Zones Encourage Exploration and Increase the Reward of Discovery
Some of Stellar Blade's zones may be mapless, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anytime an explorable region in a game doesn't include a map, it essentially hands a massive amount of agency over to the player by allowing them to be the solely responsible party for where they go and where they end up. That's precisely how each of Stellar Blade's mapless zones comes across, as players are in charge of their own journey, rather than being subjected to a bunch of "chores" in the form of map icons.
Certain areas in Stellar Blade encourage exploration by foregoing a map. Instead of being directed to an area by a map or compass icon, players are directed to an area by their own curiosity, just as they are in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's open world, though TotK does include a map. Furthermore, this type of self-governed exploration simultaneously increases the value of any rewards players find along the way, so there are indeed some benefits to a zone or open world excluding a map.
Stellar Blade's Mapless Zones Require Excessive Signposting and Make Backtracking a Pain
On the other hand, Stellar Blade's mapless regions have led to some unfortunate shortcomings. Firstly, Stellar Blade doesn't shy away from signposting. Interestingly enough, although Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's yellow paint garnered plenty of controversy, the internet has been fairly silent about Stellar Blade's. Even so, Stellar Blade's yellow signposting can feel a bit excessive at times, and it is even more prominent in areas that don't have a map.
This is primarily because players need some form of guidance since a map isn't there to help.
Additionally, these mapless zones in Stellar Blade don't help backtracking at all. Many times throughout Stellar Blade's story, players will be encouraged to travel back to areas they've already visited, whether it be to complete a side quest or to collect items they might have missed due to not having the traversal feature necessary to reach them. Without a map, players are all but required to travel through each area from start to finish again, hoping they eventually land in the area they're meant to go to.
Not all of Stellar Blade's zones are mapless, but the ones that are without a map make for quite the double-edged sword. While not having a map certainly encourages and rewards exploration, it results in excessive signposting and painful backtracking.
Stellar Blade
- Released
- April 26, 2024
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…
- Developer(s)
- Shift Up
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG
- Metascore
- 82
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
