Developer Shift Up’s Stellar Blade (formerly known as Project Eve) isn’t scheduled to be released until April 26, but the PlayStation 5 exclusive is quickly shaping up to be one of 2024’s most divisive games.  This rather odd story gained momentum a couple of weeks ago when Stellar Blade’s developers released a gameplay overview of […]

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Developer Shift Up’s Stellar Blade (formerly known as Project Eve) isn’t scheduled to be released until April 26, but the PlayStation 5 exclusive is quickly shaping up to be one of 2024’s most divisive games. 

This rather odd story gained momentum a couple of weeks ago when Stellar Blade’s developers released a gameplay overview of the upcoming action title during a State of Play event. Though seemingly a pretty standard trailer released during a fairly uneventful presentation, the reactions to that video made it clear that quite a few people quickly became infatuated with the lead character’s highly sexualized design. 

Unless this is your first day on the internet, you’re probably not going to be surprised to hear that gamers are leaving…enthusiastic comments about a highly sexualized female character. For that matter, this is hardly the first time that such a game has featured a stylized and sexualized female character as a playable protagonist. Bayonetta, Lollipop Chainsaw, NieR:Automata and the Dead or Alive franchise are all fairly notable examples of that oft-used design trend, and Stellar Blade was clearly inspired by some of those titles. 

So what makes this particular game so divisive? Well, it comes down to a few things. 

First off, it should be noted that Stellar Blade is South Korean publisher Shift Up’s first Triple-A game and is being developed by their new Triple-A subsidiary branch: Shift Up Second EVE Studio. Previously, Shift Up primarily developed mobile titles like Goddess of Victory and Destiny Child. While popular, those games developed a reputation in some circles for their sexy anime character designs and aggressive Gatcha microtransactions. Destiny Child was actually censored in certain international markets as the original game featured some notably explicit artwork. 

Mind you, Shift Up has never shied away from that aspect of their games. In an interview with GamesRadar, Stellar Blade director Hyung-Tae Kim stated via translation that the team put “special attention” into the design of the back of that game’s playable character, Eve. While he sa