Less Is More: Phantom Blade Zero Developers Inspired By Expedition 33’s Approach

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Phantom Blade Zero Is Being Heavily Streamlined And Polished!

Story Highlight
  • Phantom Blade Zero is taking inspiration from Expedition 33, as clarified by lead director Soulframe Liang.
  • The game is being streamlined and polished to ensure players have the best experience.
  • In other words, the action RPG will avoid redundant gameplay and stale moments. 

GOTY winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has swept through the gaming scene, winning almost all the awards it was nominated for and setting a new standard for RPGs. It’s no surprise that the industry giants are already aiming to achieve the same quality. 

Phantom Blade Zero lead director Soulframe Liang now says he reached out to Sandfall Interactive after their amazing performance at The Game Awards. He received invaluable advice that S-Game is already implementing for its kungfu-punk experience.

Why it matters: Taking inspiration from the studio behind one of the most praised titles to launch recently could help Phantom Blade Zero meet the same levels of success. 

Phantom Blade Zero
Phantom Blade Zero is one of the most anticipated games planned for next year.

In an interview with GamesRadar, Soulframe Liang clarifies that the team at Sandfall advised him to streamline Phantom Blade Zero as much as possible.

In other words, the game would be a pure action RPG experience without the redundant bits meant to serve as additional content. Phantom Blade Zero is also being polished to its limit to ensure gamers won’t have to worry about optimization issues.

One of the most important and interesting things they told us was that for the last nine months, the most important thing is to delete things. To cut things [from the game] and to polish the rest.

-Phantom Blade Zero Director.

The game’s performance has already been praised by experts, who found that it avoids using heavy Unreal Engine 5 elements to reduce any performance hiccups. Despite that, it still looks stunning with the dark, gritty world and fluid combat mechanics. 

So yeah, it’s a good idea. And I will take that advice.

Phantom Blade Zero
The game features fluid combat that aims to shake things up in the action RPG genre.

Therefore, Phantom Blade Zero is expected to be a hearty experience without any unnecessary grinding seen in most AAA RPGs these days. 

Do you think Phantom Blade Zero will reach the same lofty status that is enjoyed by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or join the discussion on the Tech4Gamers forum.

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