South Korean developer SHIFT UP just accidentally dropped the first real clue about where Stellar Blade 2 will take players, and it’s wild.
The studio wrapped up location scouting in China and posted what they’re calling “confidential” artwork showing a decayed urban landscape that fans immediately identified as Chongqing, the famous 8D City.
The slip-up happened on SHIFT UP’s X account when they shared an illustration of an abandoned cityscape with the hashtag #TheWorldChanges alongside a note saying they’d just finished location scouting for their next project.
The image was marked confidential, and the company quickly followed up clarifying they meant to post a real-life photo instead, but the damage was done. Whether this was genuine accident or clever marketing, nobody’s sure.
Chongqing: The perfect post-apocalyptic playground
Players didn’t waste time tracking down the location. The artwork features Chongqing’s iconic Kuixing Building and other structures from what locals call China’s 8D City, a nickname earned from its mind-bending vertical infrastructure.
The place is surreal even without an apocalypse: a monorail train literally runs through the 6th to 8th floors of a 19-story residential building at Liziba Station, there’s a truck somehow crashed into a building dozens of meters off the ground, and you can walk out of a 15th-floor entrance and find yourself at street level on another building.
This eccentric geography makes Chongqing prime material for a post-apocalyptic action game. The original Stellar Blade, which launched April 26, 2024 for PlayStation 5, took place on a ruined Earth in an unspecified location, though fans speculated it was Australia.
Now it looks like EVE’s sequel adventure might shift to an equally devastated version of one of China’s most architecturally bizarre cities.
Stellar Blade’s massive success fuels fast sequel
The timing makes sense. Stellar Blade became an instant hit, topping North American sales charts in April 2024 and selling over 3 million copies worldwide by mid-2025.
The PC version, which dropped June 11, 2025, sold over 1 million units in just three days and hit 192,000 concurrent players on Steam, making it PlayStation’s most successful single-player PC launch ever.
SHIFT UP officially confirmed the sequel during a May 2025 investor presentation, targeting a release before 2027. That’s an aggressive timeline considering the original game just turned one year old, but the studio seems confident they can deliver. Nothing’s locked yet though.
SHIFT UP made clear that location scouting ideas don’t always make it to the final product, so Chongqing could still get cut. But given how perfectly that vertical nightmare city fits Stellar Blade’s post-apocalyptic aesthetic, it’d be shocking if they passed on it.
Want more updates on the latest geek news and game reveals? Síguenos en Geek Realm Hub y Facebook for all the freshest drops!