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The Stellar Blade dev team had a 'competition' to see who could beat a boss first: 'From that moment, all of us understood how to design the combat'

Stellar Blade's combat system was influenced by a boss-beating competition among developers, leading to an exciting boss battle experience in the game.

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Stellar Blade's devs say they had a "competition" during the game's development to see who could beat a boss first, and it helped them to design combat.

In the lead-up to Stellar Blade's release this week, the team at Shift Up is releasing a series of mini behind-the-scenes documentaries via PlayStation's YouTube channel. The second installment of the series was released this week and it reveals the team's approach to the action RPG's setting, level design, sound, boss fights, and more. 

During the boss fight section of the video, Stellar Blade's system design lead, Hyung Min Lee, talked about his favorite parts of the upcoming title. "I can't wait for players to encounter the boss battles," the developer reveals. "All the excitement, all the awe, it all combines into our boss battles." 

"There is a monster called Abaddon that players will meet early on in the game," he explains. From here, we see several of the other developers in the documentary having a stab at taking down Abaddon. "Everyone in the studio had a competition to see who could defeat this boss first. From that moment, all of us understood how to design the combat system of Stellar Blade," the developer recalls. 

Elsewhere in the same video, Stellar Blade's director, Kim Hyung Tae, revealed that he "grew up too poor to afford" a PS1, but when he finally got one in college, Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy inspired him to make games. 

Not only this, the developer also gave an insight into the creative process at Shift Up, joking that the action RPG "is the outcome of my creative dictatorship," but that "everyone pretends to listen to what I say whilst creating what they want."

*Find out what we thought with our Stellar Blade review or count down until it releases where you are with our Stellar Blade release time countdown. *