Stellar Blade made quite a name for itself with a rather intriguing trailer in the latest State of Play showcase. The latest preview reintroduces the game once known as "Project Eve" to viewers, featuring its post-apocalyptic story and even some supporting members that help add to the world that has only grown more interesting in the time since it was last shown off.
While the upcoming PS5 exclusive has already captivated many players with its combat and visuals, not much is known about Stellar Blade's development both under its new title or even as "Project Eve." Currently, all fans have to judge the game on are the two trailers freely available on YouTube, and two PlayStation blog posts made by the developer, Shift Up Corporation. However, the history of the studio creating Stellar Blade is important in understanding why the action game is such a big deal.
Stellar Blade: What is Shift Up Corporation?
Shift Up Corporation is a Korean video game company that, while obscure to many English-speaking gamers, is well known for its mobile games. Destiny Child was released in October 2016 and is still active to this day, whereas other similar gacha mobile titles such as Kingdom Hearts Union X have been shut down for numerous reasons. Alongside the development of Stellar Blade, Shift Up is also working on a second mobile game known as Nikke: Goddess of Victory, which has recently finished a focus test while reaching one million pre-registrations for the game.
Interestingly, unlike Stellar Blade, despite Nikke's large player count, the game has no known release date yet. However, what's even more curious is that Stellar Blade marks the first console game Shift Up has ever developed, adding even more intrigue to the game with how beautiful it looks already despite the fact that Shift Up has been focused on 2D art for its mobile gacha games for years.
From Project Eve to Stellar Blade
Following Shift Up's successful mobile titles, the company announced its first AAA game in April 2019. Beyond that, hardly anything was revealed about the game until "Project Eve" was first shown off during the Playstation Showcase in 2021. This trailer featured gory aliens known as Na:tives that would remain as the title's main enemies even after the game earned its proper title. These creatures were shown occupying abandoned spaces and subway stations, and were even shown possessing corpses despite the lingering implication that those bodies had been left alone for decades, if not centuries.
To viewers, it seemed like Protect Eve was aiming to play like Bayonetta with Resident Evil's zombie and horror elements attached to it, allowing players to dodge and beat up enemies with the agility of a flexible girl in a skin-tight suit. While this combination looked and sounded interesting, players wouldn't get any new information on the title until almost an exact year later when it returned to the September 2022 State of Play as Stellar Blade, complete with a brand new trailer.
Even though the rather intriguing trailer combined with being left in the dark about Project Eve arguably got players attached to the name, it was made rather clear with the name change that "Project Eve" was never the title of the game, but a codename instead. Codenames being used as placeholders is a common practice in the video game industry that applies to consoles as well as games, like the Nintendo 3DS being known as "Project Citra" internally at Nintendo. Luckily for fans who preferred the name "Project Eve," the code word lives on through the game's protagonist keeping the name Eve despite the change.
However, what isn't seen as often is the fact that Stellar Blade only has two mobile games behind its studio prior to its development. With how gorgeous the game looks, it's rather surprising when one looks at Shift Up's mobile gacha-based history that relied on 2D motion artwork for the majority of its assets. It's clear to see when looking at the games that predate its first console game, Shift Up is a company that values its time to make a good product above everything else. Even if Stellar Blade comes out later than expected, or gets hit with any sort of delay, fans will certainly get a good game for their time and money if Shift Up's previous track record is anything to go by.
Stellar Blade is set to release in 2023 exclusively for PlayStation 5.
