Stellar Blade is finally out today and players are getting ready to jump into the next anticipated PS5 exclusive from developer Shift Up. If you already played the demo, you might’ve noticed a rather strange half-second input lag when trying to parry or dodge. As it turns out, this wasn’t a fault of the game as the decision to implement that delay was deliberate, according to the director.
Stellar Blade director Hyung-Tae Kim recently told Japanese publication 4Gamer that the input lag players experienced in the game’s demo when trying to parry or dodge was intentional in order to maintain smooth animations for Eve during combat. “In Stellar Blade, there is about a 0.5 second lag between the moment you press the button and the moment the skill is visible on-screen,” he said. “It’s a time lag that can’t be reduced any further.”
Hyung-Tae Kim continued:
“We made it so that the character’s movement does not get triggered immediately upon button press, as we felt this would not fit the game’s style of animation. Thus, we made it so that the skill itself is activated the moment you press the button, but the animation of the movement follows afterwards.”
During our review period, we noticed that the input lag persisted when parrying or dodging. It’s admittedly a bit jarring but you get used to the timing pretty quickly. However, the game’s day one patch might’ve rectified this issue as one patch note mentions that it fixes “the input time for basic attacks, as well as the timing of blocking and parrying to be more responsive.”
Considering that a bulk of the game’s combat heavily relies on parrying and deflecting precisely, it makes sense that Shift Up would want to tweak this feature to make it tighter for players for execute successfully, even if it comes at the cost of losing a bit of smoothness to the animation.
The day one patch for Stellar Blade also quietly added a New Game Plus mode which allows you to start a second journey with all of your upgrades and gear carried over.
Stellar Blade is now available for PS5. Make sure you read our full review before diving in.
Source: 4Gamer
