Shift Up’s Stellar Blade sequel, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, is being designed with a multiplatform launch in mind. No longer tied to PlayStation exclusivity, Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim hopes the game will be a title for everyone.
As video game consoles and PC hardware gets increasingly more expensive, KIm explained that the team isn’t looking to increase the system requirements of the sequel over the base game. Instead, the team is looking towards improved optimisation workflows that will allow for increased density of detail at the same performance level of the original game.
“I believe there is a limit to progress based on price, whether it’s for PCs or consoles,” the CEO said in a conversation with Inven Global. “Therefore, we are prioritizing making the game playable for users with current-generation consoles or current PCs. Since we still need to show differentiation, I believe it’s important to focus on the density of certain linear areas and the charm of the various cities.”
Stellar Blade: Blood Rain is a much bigger, denser game than the original. Kim notes that the game will include ideas the team “couldn’t fully achieve in the previous game”. However, with a much more experienced team, the goal is to make sure that all of these additions don’t lock out players on older machines from playing the sequel.
Kim explained that every addition to the game is not built “on the premise of rising hardware specs”. This should mean that the same entry-level specs of the original, such as the mere Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU, will be able to run the game which would be one hell of a feat considering the scale of the game’s trailer.
All of this is only possible due to the advanced knowledge of the original game’s development team. “Development has been underway for about a year,” Kim said. “We’ve kept almost the entire team intact, and the staff’s skills have improved by leaps and bounds without any wasted effort, which is how we reached this point. That said, rather than rushing to release, we intend to take our time to scale up and add depth to the game’s fun and narrative.”
Kim explained that it’s hard to explain how far through development the game is. While “some systems are advanced”, others are not, and there’s still a lot of work to be done. However, with the team pushed to eliminate waste, a lot of the original’s elements are returning, so it shouldn’t take too long to come to fruition compared to other titles.
