Over A Year Before Release, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain’s New Hero Evie Draws Fire

InnovationGamingOver A Year Before Release, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain’s New Hero Evie Draws FireByPaul Tassi,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.Follow AuthorJun 09, 2026, 11:08am EDTStellar Blade: Blood RainShift UpOne of the biggest reveals at this year’s Summer Games Fest was the announcement of Stellar Blade 2, or rather, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, the sequel to the surprise 2024 hit from South Korean developer Shift Up, which sold well and received great critical and audience acclaim. It has also been at the center of video game culture wars for two years now, and that does not seem like it’s about to change with Blood Rain.Eve, the original Stellar Blade protagonist, was purposefully sexualized as a lead at a level we probably haven’t seen since Bayonetta. Comic book-like curves, revealing outfits, and held up as the standard by right-leaning fans as the kind of women they wanted to see in video games.I’d argue there is nothing inherently bad about a purposefully alluring lead in a video game, of either gender, and fortunately, Stellar Blade also happened to be a very good action game, my favorite of the year. In my view, it was a shame it was roped into the woke v. anti-woke war, which made most overlook it as an actually fun video game. But sales were high enough to almost instantly greenlight not just a large number of patches (and dozens more outfits) but a sequel.Stellar Blade: Blood RainShift UpNow, however, the sequel is creating new splinter groups with the return of the culture war, now facing new fronts. There is a broader view that it seems odd that such a well-liked protagonist like Eve is not returning as the lead in a sequel, replaced instead by “Evie,” a different heroine, albeit it stands to reason that Eve is very likely to have some role in the game, if not perhaps even be a playable character in the future.Play Puzzles...