Stellar Blade 2 will address the lack of narrative in the original Stellar Blade, according to the game’s director.
In an interview with This Is Game, director Hyung-tae Kim admitted the game’s total number of cutscenes had to be cut due to cost-saving measures, but thanks to Stellar Blade’s success this problem will be directly addressed in the sequel.
“In the early stages of development, we planned to include detailed settings such as the reason the main character changes clothes in the story. However, as production progressed, the cost of producing cutscenes became too much,” stated Kim (via machine translation). “And eventually, for the sake of efficiency, we had no choice but to reduce cutscenes that supplemented the world view or character narratives outside of the main plot. That’s how we were barely able to complete the game.”
Kim elaborated the development resources for “narrative-centered games…has not yet been fully established in Korea”.
“However, if we are given the opportunity to create the next work, I think we will be able to present it with a sufficiently rich narrative,” he said.
Hyung-tae Kim confirmed Stellar Blade 2 was initially planned to be a DLC expansion to the original Stellar Blade, but due to the scope of this DLC it was rolled into a full blown sequel.
“As we were preparing the DLC, the volume grew more than expected, so we changed direction and proceeded with the next work,” Kim explained. “However, there have been many changes since then.
“Currently, all manpower has been invested in the PC version, so it’s hard to say that the next work has been developed much. Right now, we’re in the R&D period, thinking a lot about ‘how we can show the vision of the next generation.'”
In a recent investor presentation, Stellar Blade 2 was set as a 2027 release. This comes as the PC release for Stellar Blade is performing exceptionally well on Steam, hitting concurrent player counts of nearly 200,000 and pushing total sales past the 3m sales mark.