S-Game has reemerged to talk up their upcoming Chinese action game, Phantom Blade Zero. But it seems they want to clarify that Phantom Blade Zero is not the game that we think it is.
S-Game’s CEO and director, Soulframe Liang, shared this letter on the game’s official Twitter account:
Chinese kung fu and the spirit of Xia have a history spanning thousands of years. Across different historical periods, they’ve always managed to find new forms of expression – and within those forms, created distinct genres of their own.
Starting in the 1960s, kung fu masters like Bruce Lee began to “stitch together” traditional Chinese martial arts films, Western combat techniques, and Hollywood filmaking. Over the following decades, this hybrid continued to evolve, eventually forming a specific genre of cinema. Today, few people would simply call them “action movies.”
More often, we refer to them as Kung Fu films, Wuxia films, or martial arts films.
Likewise, Phantom Blade Zero is not exactly a “Soulslike” game or a traditional “action game.” Broadly speaking, it falls under the category of ARPGs. But more specifically – maybe it could create a new identity that is Wuxia Action Games? Because here you’ll get to experience:
- Leaping across rooftops under a rain of arrows;
- Fighting off pursuers atop a speeding carriage;
- Uncovering the truth behind an incident that shocked the world years ago;
And even more iconic cinema moments.
The letter goes on to refer to a new demo they will be sharing in their upcoming S-Party, to be held in Shougang Park, Beijing in July 26 to 27. We don’t know if S-Game will make the demo available globally online afterwards, but it seems they want gamers from around the world who can make the trip to go to Beijing for their event.
Soulframe also made it crystal clear that Phantom Blade Zero is not a Soulslike by revealing its three difficulty settings:
- Wayfarer, the easiest
- Gamechanger, the balanced and default difficulty, and
- Hellwalker, which has to be unlocked in New Game+
S-Game certainly wants to make it clear that their game may take visual cues and inspiration from FromSoftware’s gameography, but they definitely want to take Phantom Blade Zero in its own direction. In fact, Team Ninja said the same thing when they would talk about their games, like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, as its own genre called maso-core games.
The gamers complaining that these developers are not following the spirit and conventions of FromSoftware games are missing the point. They aren’t trying to make Soulslike a genre, and in fact it may be the case that FromSoftware’s games are really just a jumping point to a broader explosion of action games. S-Game seems confident that their game won’t just be labeled a hack-and-slash title in the end, but could they accidentally fall into making a stylish action game like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, no less stylish than the Shaw Brothers wuxia films of old? Presumably, we won’t have to wait that long to find out if S-Game has created something truly novel after all.
