Video game ads used to be pretty crazy. Nintendo had mascots doing real fights with The Turtles. Guys exploding in vomit on Yoshi’s Island. And don’t get me started on the brand activation gimmick era where Capcom served flavored food to people. Nowadays you’re lucky to get a promotional reel set in The Hives. A new commercial for the Switch 2 edition of Stellar Blade is a real throwback, with live-action artists integrating main character Eve into her daily life. In isolation, it’s a pretty charming video. In isolation. “It should have been me!” screams dozens of comments on the YouTube page, which has already accumulated two million views. The commercial wants to emphasize that on Nintendo Switch you can take Stellar Blade with you. In her 100 seconds, we see Eve catching Frisbees in the park, sharing refreshments, and showing off her future sword to travelers. Front and center is an indoor environment. A grown boy who Eve is tucking in, read a bedtime story, and even pulls a small creature out from under his bed. Released in 2024, the initially simple sci-fi hack and slash Stellar Blade became a fixture of the traveling culture wars. With a higher profile than most erotic games available, those determined to manifest a return to the machismo of 90s gaming and marketing turned the game into a totem. This sword was turned against developers Shift Up when any attempt to alter or add clothing to their characters erupted into a complaint campaign. It was pretty stupid. It’s always pretty silly out here. Marketing teams are rarely this dumb. It must be assumed that the Oedipal undertones of the new advertisement and the subsequent hypnotization of fans is intentional. And as someone who likes the crazy Grand Theft Auto Coca-Cola ad, forced to be coherent in my time on Earth, I give this ad my blessings. Of course, the other thing that the Stellar Blade games have been associated with is a more cautious adoption of AI. The trailer for the sequel, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, turned up every button, but with the kind of strange generative machine assistance seen in mobile blade ads. Admittedly, this new commercial doesn’t raise any of those red flags, and Eve’s performer Jade J posted behind-the-scenes footage to further suggest that those in the commercial are flesh and blood. So that’s one less thing you’ll have to tell your therapist.
