Game director of Stellar Blade, Kim Hyung-tae, has revealed that the input lag experienced by players is deliberate. He explained that it was a creative choice to fit the game’s animation style. He did leave room for changes to it, should players feel that the lag is causing the game to be more difficult.
Kim Hyung-tae was asked in an interview with 4Gamer about the input lag, as there was a noticeable delay between the press of a button to perform a parry or dodge, and the action being performed in the game. He explained that the design choice was made to keep the animation smooth and there’s no input delay as the game is registering it as soon as the button is pressed. However, the parry or dodge is taking a 0.5-second lag to take place as they did not want the character’s movement to seem erratic by having them perform the action as soon as the button is pressed.
“In Stellar Blade, there is about a 0.5 second lag between the moment you press the button and the moment the skill is visible on-screen. It’s a time lag that can’t be reduced any further. We made it so that the character’s movement does not get triggered immediately upon button press, as we felt this would not fit the game’s style of animation. Thus, we made it so that the skill itself is activated the moment you press the button, but the animation of the movement follows afterwards,” said Kim Hyung-tae.
Kim also said that they will wait for feedback from players, and if they feel that the delayed animation is making the game harder to play, the team might look into solutions later on. VGC highlighted that a partial fix for this situation may have already been addressed in the game’s day-one patch on April 26. The official Stellar Blade X account announced that the patch has fixed “the input time for basic attacks, as well as the timing of blocking and parrying to be more responsive”.
The Day One patch fixed the input time for basic attacks, as well as the timing of blocking and parrying to be more responsive.
Also, the chromatic aberration and grain noise effects can now be toggled on/off.😍#StellarBlade #PS5 #Dayone pic.twitter.com/sISg5Q1WmZ
— StellarBlade (@StellarBlade) April 25, 2024
Ahead of the game’s launch today, the PlayStation exclusive title received a launch trailer which is viewable below.
