Stellar Blade director Hyung-Tae Kim says “special attention” was put into the design of the female protagonist’s back. Kim explained that players will spend a majority of the game looking at the character’s back and developer Shift Up wanted to make sure that what we were constantly looking at was full of detail.
“When it comes to the design, we put special attention on the back of the character because the player is always facing the back of the character when they’re playing,” said Hyung-Tae Kim in a recent interview with GamesRadar. “That’s what they see the most of, so we thought this was pretty important.”
Kim also spoke about the broader cultural discourse about characters like Eve, the protagonist of Stellar Blade, and how his own desires reflect in the games he makes:
“I personally think that compared to movies, animations, manga and so on, people are especially strict towards games. In games, there’s all the views that people have [which are] not always positive about unrealistically beautiful characters. Honestly, when I play a game I would like to see someone who is better-looking than myself. That’s what I want. I don’t want to see something normal; I want to see something more ideal. I think that is very important in a form of entertainment. This is, after all, entertainment targeted for adults.”
It’s not surprising that Stellar Blade took quite a bit of inspiration from Nier: Automata, which also wasn’t shy about its depiction of protagonist 2B in all the marketing. Keep in mind, this was also a game where you got a trophy/achievement for trying to look up 2B’s dress, though we don’t think Stellar Blade will go that far.
Stellar Blade launches on 26 April 2024 exclusively for PS5. Make sure you check out the South African pre-order guide as well as the various editions that you can pre-purchase right now.
Source: GamesRadar
