A few hours before launch, S-GAME creative director and CEO Soulframe Liang posted an open letter to players on the official Phantom Blade Zero account. Titled “Reason and Madness,” it explains where the game’s world came from and ends with three practical notes for PC players.
Liang recalls that it all started about 20 years ago, when he was a student abroad and made his first indie game, Rainblood: Town of Death, in RPG Maker. That project created the Phantom World, a traditional Chinese wuxia setting mixed with body modification and parallel worlds. Making games began as a comfort during his studies and became one of the most important parts of his life.
He also looks back at the first trailer’s debut at a PlayStation Showcase more than three years ago, when S-GAME looked like a new studio “being a little too bold” with an original IP few people knew. From then on, the letter says, the studio cancelled other projects and put everything into the game: thousands of hours of motion capture, 3D scans of towns and mountain villages across China, lion dance guided by masters from Guangdong, sword formations with masters from Mount Emei and hand-to-hand techniques with Shaolin monks. The stunt team, led by action director Yang Liu, worked with guidance from Donnie Yen.
Liang mentions talking to players at events in Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles and São Paulo, where the game was shown at Gamescom LATAM, and lists details that came from those talks: an option to tune the sound of clashing blades, three button layouts on PS5, more flexible remapping on PC, and support for 16:9, 16:10 and ultrawide screens beyond 3:1. He credits art director Michael Chang, who drew the concept art for every character and most environments, and music director Caisheng Bo, who made more than ten hours of music almost on his own.
The letter closes with three last-minute updates. There is a day-one patch of about 5 GB that improves ray tracing and path tracing performance and fixes bugs; players who pre-loaded should install it before launching. The studio says it refined the non-ray-traced visuals and tested the game on mid-range and lower-end PCs and handhelds. And for NVIDIA users, S-GAME saw instability with driver 621.01 and recommends rolling back to 617.42 with a clean install until NVIDIA ships its next driver.
Phantom Blade Zero launches on PS5 and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store) on October 28 at 7 p.m. PDT. The full letter is on the game’s official X account.
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Source: S-GAME.
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Max Xavier