With incredibly flashy combat and a promising story, developer Shift Up’s Stellar Blade is one of the most exciting PS5 exclusives on the horizon. However, with such an emphasis on the player character’s design and costumes, many were curious about the issues of microtransactions and paid cosmetics. Well, game director Hyung-Tae Kim has confirmed that “they’re all acquirable through gameplay”.
Stellar Blade’s creators have been revealing a lot about the upcoming PS5 exclusive recently, from its unexpected fishing minigame to Stellar Blade’s length for completionists. Now, Shift Up has explained how customization works.
“There are about 30 different outfits available in the game, and they’re all acquirable through gameplay”, Kim claims. “You can explore, go on a quest, or go to the in-game shop to purchase them” using earned currency. That’s not all though, as Kim explains that you will also be able to unlock hairstyles and other accessories, including earrings and glasses, “but the important part is that these are all acquirable in-game without any additional purchases.” So, it’s clear that we’ll be rewarded for taking our time and exploring in the PS5 RPG.
Given the developer’s history, however, this is surprising. Shift Up is best known for NIKKE: Goddess of Victory, a free-to-play gacha mobile game. Similar to HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, you can spend money to purchase rolls to, hopefully, get new characters. Gacha models heavily incentivize microtransactions.
Stellar Blade is evidently a departure for the studio then, with the developers hoping Stellar Blade will “encourage other Korean developers”. Nevertheless, it is considering how to “maximise the synergy” between Stellar Blade and NIKKE, likely meaning Eve will be heading to the mobile game in the future.
Though we’ve still got a while to wait, Stellar Blade is one of the most anticipated new PS5 games, and one that will hopefully rank among the best PS5 games when it does eventually come out. There’s even more on the horizon for PlayStation players, however, with major Xbox exclusives reportedly coming to PS5 soon.