SENUA’S SAGA: HELLBLADE II
Developer Ninja Theory Publisher Microsoft Game Studios Release TBA
Edge, it is fair to say, did not enjoy Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Granted, Ninja Theory’s depiction of a Pictish warrior’s fight against her inner demons was never intended to be fun. The studio succeeded in having the player experience something akin to Senua’s psychosis for themselves – auditory hallucinations, visual tricks that cause you to question reality, even paranoia in the form of an in-game promise (which would later turn out to be provably false) that if you died, your save would be wiped. But it was weighed down by clichéd writing, poor level design and awkward combat – and, ultimately, soured by the unfortunate presentation of mental illness as a kind of special superpower that helped you solve tedious puzzles.
We approach the prospect of a follow-up with caution, then. The story is set in Iceland, with creative director Tameem Antoniades having travelled there for a break after wrapping up development on Senua’s Sacrifice, according to a recent dev diary released by the studio. His being moved by the beauty of the landscape, he says, was when “the first thoughts of doing a sequel came into my mind” (which, given the amount of sequel-baiting going on at the end of the first game, seems rather hard to believe). Senua will journey hundreds of miles across the country on her quest – much of the setting comes courtesy of the Quixel team, who were visiting Iceland at the same time to scan different biomes for the Megascans Library (which is, as you’ll remember, a key part of Unreal Engine 5’s ability to help small dev teams produce high-quality graphical results with less resources). Unsurprisingly, this already looks visually breathtaking – whether it can reconcile the many deep-rooted issues of the first game is quite another matter. We don’t expect to enjoy it, but this time, we’d like to respect it – and it, us.
This looks visually breathtaking – whether it can reconcile the issues of the first game is another matter