The emergence of Chinese studios and developers has gone from strength to strength in the last few years. The days of mobile clones and subpar offerings have now been overtaken by AAA offerings that are amongst the world’s most-played games. Titles like Genshin Impact and Black Myth: Wukong are paving the way for future games, and S-Game‘s Phantom Blade Zero is set to be the next big thing.
There is undoubtedly pressure for the studio to deliver on what has already been several promising showings. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, the team alluded to as much, citing that the prior success of Wukong has changed global perceptions, and brought more resources via investment from Tencent.
What this means is they can go full steam ahead with bringing their vision to life, with Phantom Blade Zero built on two key philosophies. The first being to give players that feeling of cinematic action like from the films of old.
“We want to call back the golden age of Hong Kong kung fu movies from the 1970s, starting from Bruce Lee and then Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen,” said director Liang Qiwei. “The trend has faded out since the early 2000s, so we want to go back to that and try to bring the trend back.”
As a Chinese studio, pride is at stake, and the team is acutely aware of that. Looking at the previous success of Sifu, another title that showcases martial arts deftly, that is the kind of level of authenticity that S-Game wants to achieve.
The other philosophy is to keep things tight, where development scope is keep focused and manageable: “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. 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.”
At the very least, the game has gotten the gaming community excited. Most of their trailers on YouTube have garnered higher view counts than Wukong’s trailers did at a similar stage. With this momentum, there is every chance that Phantom Blade Zero will surpass Wukong in both critical acclaim and sales.
Phantom Blade Zero is still slated for a 2025 release on PlayStation 5 and PC, though no specific launch date has been confirmed yet.
