Phantom Blade Zero PS5 PS1 PS2

Phantom Blade Zero has enjoyed a lot of positive press over the last year or so — and with good cause. The action title has always looked fantastic, and now developer S-GAME has revealed its approach to creating such a promising PS5 project.

"It's hard to label our game as a pure Souls game, nor hack and slash. It's just something in between. It's a way to tell a story," director Liang told Eurogamer in a new interview.

Liang goes on to explain Phantom Blade Zero's influences, referencing "Hong Kong kung fu moves from the 1970s", and wanting to recreate that same kind of impressive martial arts action in video game form.

"The trend [of martial arts cinema] has faded out since the early 2000s so we want to go back to that and try to bring the trend back," he comments.

But the part that stands out to us is S-GAME's overall philosophy on development. "We want to get back to the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 era, when the games were not so big, the budgets not sky high, the team manageable, and all the developers were passionate and creative and with experience," Liang reveals.

It's a really intriguing take on game development given the current struggles of the industry — especially at AAA level. "It's like a bigger indie game, but with budget and with experience and with a stable hand, and everything feels so integrated from the starting point when you press down the Start button to the finish point of the staff list," Liang continues.

In essence, Liang is saying that uniting a smaller, more focused team under one core vision is the way to go — and based on what we've seen of Phantom Blade Zero so far, we totally get it. That's an action game that knows exactly what it wants to be and how best to go about it; it seems to have done everything right up until this point.

And for what it's worth, PlayStation itself has clearly caught on to the title's potential. The company's been backing Phantom Blade Zero since its announcement, and we assume that the marketing push will only strengthen as we creep closer to the game's yet-to-be-announced release date. Fingers crossed we hear more soon.

Are you looking forward to Phantom Blade Zero? Please try to time your parries correctly in the comments section below.

[source eurogamer.net]