I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to enjoy Stellar Blade as much as I did. Last November, Shaun, a YouTuber who I've been following a very long time released a video called: Stellar Blade: The Fake Outrage. I'm re-watching is as I write this post, but it was mainly about how Mark Kern (it's really hard to describe who he is in one sentence so here's a video) created a fake bogey-man and owned "wokeness" by praising the developer of Stellar Blade, Shift Up, for giving their main protagonist a lot of sex appeal.

Shaun also provides a review for the game, which I watched before playing the game for myself, regrettably. It shaped a lot of my opinions going into the game which I had to force myself to let go the deeper I got into it. 

Shaun's Video (Anti-Wokeness, Gooners, Fake Outrage)

The first video I ever watched from Shaun's channel was Cuphead: The Fake Outrage. 

Back then, I was just starting to flesh out my political opinions a bit more and coincidentally the algorithm fed me a lot of breadtube videos. Shaun's videos was amongst those recommended to me. To summarize the video, there was a fake controversy surrounding the video game Cuphead. Many reactionary video game personalities believed there was a genuine attack on the game for it's visual artstyle that mimicked cartoons from around 1930 (some of which had racist depictions of black people among other groups). It resulted in people who were ready to have a critical conversation about the history behind the video game's artstyle and a discussion surrounding its difficulty, that was misinterpreted as an "attack" on the game by bad-faith gamers who honestly lack the cognitive functions to think critically. 

And a similar thing happened with Stellar Blade. Personally, I'm really tired of grifters who are creating controversies out of thin air. People like Ian Miles Cheong, Mark Kern, and others who are mentioned in Shaun's videos are people who irresponsibly spread misinformation. Their opinions, often created without much thought, are incredibly anti-intellectual and work against further efforts to seriously discuss games as an art form. 

Please think for yourself. Please think critically. Don't let reactions immediately influence your thoughts. Think of what is being said. Think of who is saying it. Think of why they are saying it. In relation to Stellar Blade, no Mark Kern, Shift Up doesn't give a flying fuck about WOKE/ANTI-WOKE. I doubt that it's even on their radar.

They've made the conscious choice to make their characters look attractive since the release of their first mobile game, Destiny Child in 2016. They did it once again with the release of Goddess of Victory: Nikke in 2022.

I really don't like getting roped into these stupid online discussions, but I cannot stand when these online crybabies make shit up and people actually believe them. I've said this many times before: No one is taking your pixel women away. No one is taking your attractive characters away. The guys in the Stellar Blade Steam reviews who think they scored a point against the "woke crowd" for buying a "gooner game" are lost and frankly sad individuals who need an enemy because they don't have anything else going on in their lives. 

I'm just kind of pissed off because I really hate when people try to hijack a game, or a piece of artwork to fit their agenda. Especially when the developers would never entertain the idea at all. STOP FIGHTING NOTHING. THERE ARE BETTER THINGS TO BE MAD ABOUT LIKE, GLOBAL WARMING. 

Okay, now I can talk the actual game.

Alright, this isn't really a review, but I want to talk about what I enjoyed about the game. Like the title suggests, Shift Up cooked really hard with something that's vaguely similar to something I was cooking with my own story.

SPOILER WARNING

I've mentioned this before on the blog, but I'm working on a visual novel. One of the story elements at the end of Stellar Blade is the union of Adam and EVE. The union of an advanced biological life form and an android to become a single powerful being.

The picture above is of the character Adam. It's revealed that he's the architect behind most of the plot in Stellar Blade. He's a character who definitely believes that the ends justify the means. There are three endings to Stellar Blade, with one of them being the true ending. In the true ending, EVE decides to merge with Adam. In a way, it accomplishes her mission of neutralizing the Elder Naytiba (revealed to be Adam as well). 

As I mentioned long ago, probably in one of my first posts on the blog, the unification of opposites is the ultimate goal in Alchemy. In fact, there is specific iconography in alchemy where a man and woman merge to become a Rebis

The Rebis symbolizes the unification of opposites and is synonymous with the coveted "Philosopher's Stone". It's also said that the Rebis is just ... perfect. It's infallible. The protagonist in my story, Amagi, is forced to merge with a homunculus to create a version of the Rebis that can be controlled by the antagonist. In Stellar Blade, EVE's personality and form is still in-tact after merging with Adam. She just turns ... gold. 

It's somewhat validating to hear that I have similar thoughts for stories as some of the video game writers nowadays. It's actually really uncanny because even though Stellar Blade has biblical references throughout the game, they never really explore religion beyond people having doubt in their faith. Those who still remain on Earth wonder why Mother Sphere's support has been lacking. Some see this as a way to test their fate, others are justifiably angry that their God has not heard their pleas for succor. Honestly, Mother Sphere is a very old testament kinda God. She's very cruel, hides shit from people, there's a whole ass conspiracy. Shit, she might be the demiurge.

Aside from the biblical references and the countless of instances of people doubting their faith, there's not a lot of criticism on religion itself. If there is, it's very surface level and is overshadowed by the action sequences and good music the game throws at you. A lot of NPCs also explicitly tell you that they've made their peace with whatever happens. Many of them are just living day to day and don't even really think about Mother Sphere. Like they aren't really for or against her, because regardless, they're still in constant danger every single day. 

All of that is nice and all, but imagine my reaction when a rebis was mentioned at the end of the game. It felt like Shift Up went into the future, read my story outline, then went back and wrote it for the end of Stellar Blade. I'm both impressed and disappointed. Like, I'm happy it's an ending in a video game at all, but now I'm disappointed because they beat me to the punch and people will think I took the idea from their game if they ever read my story, haha. 

In all seriousness, it's really cool to see this transformed version of EVE. 

It's really odd, I think Stellar Blade has motivated me to work on my story a bit more. In my Steam review, I said I was going to say that it was basically "Korean Nier" and just leave it at that. I'm so glad I was wrong, but I really hope that the writers double down on this in the sequel. I really like the reference to Alchemy even though it wasn't explicitly stated. 

It's also made me very hopeful that these themes will continue on in video games. I saw an article on Bluesky the other day that had a Yoko Taro quote in the headline. It said that Yoko Taro realizes that there aren't many weird people in video games nowadays. I didn't read the article, so I can only contribute my initial thoughts ... but I can only assume he means eccentric characters like himself. The truth is, many of the old guard of Japan's video game developers are starting to get old. Just last month, Hideo Kojima announced that he has a USB drive full of video game ideas so his team can continue working on stuff after he passes away. 

I have no heard a peep from Shigeru Miyamoto in forever, but last time I checked he's taken a step back from full-on directing. 

I don't think either of these guys are the weirdos that Yoko Taro is talking about (maybe Kojima ..), but I think it may also indicate something about auteur culture as well. Video games development is more accessible nowadays than it was for much of the old guard. Anyone with enough drive can make a simple game. And the video game market is incredibly more saturated than it was when they started. There are many great games that are never given the light of day and therefore I guess auteur culture struggles. There's just too many people now, I think? Like, everyone's a weirdo so they all look normal? 

I dunno, I kinda went off on a tangent. 

Anyway, Stellar Blade. It's great. If you liked Nier: Automata you should give it a whirl. It's not as deep or thought-provoking as Nier: Automata was, but it's great fun with a killer soundtrack. I also really like collecting outfits, it turns out. I want more games with collectable outfits and more customization options. Games need more customization! My EVE looked cool as heck ...

I guess that's all I really had to say about Stellar Blade. I already wrote a small review on Steam so I didn't feel like doing that again on here. I just wanted to share some screenshots and talk about the Rebis a little. 

There's more I want to write about. In my next posts I'll probably talk about the projects I've been working on in June! During a session of Stellar Blade, I began to experience joystick drift on my PS5 controller. Today I actually upgraded my sticks with the hall effect sticks and it works great! I also assembled a Bread N' Butter v3 leverless fightstick last week to play GranBlue Fantasy Versus Rising. Look forward to that as well!