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Overview
Pang Town is a labyrinthine urban environment in Phantom Blade Zero that serves as both a gameplay location and a technical showcase for the game's Unreal Engine 5 rendering capabilities. Featured in dedicated trailers and gameplay demonstrations, Pang Town demonstrates the game's approach to ray-traced lighting, atmospheric effects, and environmental storytelling through its maze of narrow alleys, rain-slicked streets, and flickering lantern light.
Visual technology
Pang Town is the game's primary showcase for its ray tracing implementation. Importantly, Phantom Blade Zero does not use UE5's Lumen system for global illumination. Instead, the game uses baked lighting with selective ray-traced effects:
Item | Description |
|---|---|
Ray-traced reflections | primarily visible in puddles and water surfaces throughout the town's rain-soaked streets |
Ray-traced shadows | used selectively rather than globally, applied in areas where dynamic shadow quality has the highest visual impact |
Ray-traced caustics | accurately replicate the way light distorts when passing through and reflecting off water, visible in the town's puddles and canals |
Baked lighting | the base illumination uses pre-computed (baked) lighting rather than real-time global illumination, with ray-traced effects layered on top for specific visual features |
NVIDIA DLSS 4 | supports DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation at launch, enabling higher frame rates with maintained visual quality |
This selective approach to ray tracing (using it where it creates the most visible impact (water reflections, caustics) rather than applying it universally) allows the game to achieve striking visual results while maintaining performance.
Music, septuple meter
The music for Pang Town was composed by Caisheng Bo, who employed a distinctive septuple meter a 7-beat rhythmic pattern that alternates between 4+3 and 3+4 groupings. This unusual time signature blurs the expected accents, creating a sound that conveys a feeling that something is fundamentally off. An unsettling, disorienting quality that perfectly matches the town's atmosphere of hidden danger and moral ambiguity.
Caisheng Bo also sought to capture the essence of Chinese musical instruments while experimenting with blending retro electronic sounds. The result is a soundtrack that feels both traditionally rooted and eerily modern, like hearing ancient melodies through a distorted, dreamlike filter.
Environment design
Pang Town is designed as a living, breathing space within the kung fu punk aesthetic. Its labyrinthine layout rewards exploration and creates natural opportunities for Stealth and Assassination gameplay. The narrow alleys and elevated walkways provide multiple approach angles to enemy encounters, while hidden alcoves and rooftop paths offer alternative routes through the town.
Key details
Action | Key/Button |
|---|---|
Lighting | baked lighting with selective ray-traced reflections, shadows, and caustics (not Lumen) |
DLSS | NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation |
Composer | Caisheng Bo |
Music | septuple meter alternating 4+3 and 3+4 groupings |
Atmosphere | rain-soaked, labyrinthine, unsettling |