Stellar Blade is an excellent sci-fi action game that a small, ill-defined number of unhinged gamers have latched onto as the latest front in a made up culture war on boobies. After petitioning the studio behind the PlayStation 5 exclusive to “free” the game from unsubstantiated claims of censorship, some of them are declaring victory now that a new patch has added additional sexy costumes. But not everyone’s satisfied.
A May 24 update to Stellar Blade brings a 19-boss-rush “challenge mode,” new quality-of-life features, and additional nano-suits for its protagonist Eve. Since combat and boss fights are the heart of Stellar Blade, the new mode is a great way for players to put to the test the skills they’ve spent the game honing. And things like staying locked on to enemies when switching from long-range weapons to melee attacks are welcome improvements.
And then there’s the new suits. In addition to the White Kunoichi and Black Kunoichi, there’s now Midsummer Redhood and Midsummer Alice outfits available to buy and craft. These are effectively variants of the original Bunny and Cybernetic Bondage suits, two of the suits that some players loudly derided as “censored” because a pre-release patch made them slightly less revealing, even though Stellar Blade’s director said the changes were made for aesthetic reasons.
Proponents of the “Free Stellar Blade” petition are calling this a massive victory and preparing to pack up their bags before moving to a new frontline in the gaming culture wars. “Please sign the petition, which will now be sent as a GIFT to Shift UP!” tweeted 56-year old Mark Kern. “So many have helped to make this possible. Everyone worked so very hard.”
But not everyone’s ready to give up the fight. “We’ve won nothing!” one player tweeted back. “The original censorship is still there! But they’ve won from your reaction. Know they know that they can bribe us and distract us. Your reaction means we’ve lost!” Others are going over existing costumes with a magnifying glass looking for new signs of “censorship.”
This includes “transparency checks” on the fabrics that are partially see-through to see if they’ve been made more opaque. In one particular instance, there seems to be disagreement over whether it’s censorship to make sheer fabric more opaque even while making Eve’s underwear significantly smaller. “A lot of people can’t take a win when they get one,” Kern tweeted. “They want to quit when they take the foothill but not the mountain.”
It’s unclear how many more sexy outfits Stellar Blade will need to get before everyone the petition originally riled up into an unhinged frenzy is finally satisfied. Like most conspiracists, they’re probably unlikely to ever be satisfied, instead destined to spend the rest of their days searching for truth in the pixels of a sci-fi lace teddy.
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