Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an action adventure video game developed and published by Ninja Theory for the PlayStation 4 and PC. The game was initially announced at Sony's Gamescom 2014 media briefing and is described as "independent AAA" game, a title designed to be developed and published independently but with all the quality and production values of any AAA game on the market.
The story of Hellblade is based on Celtic and Norse mythology and follows the story of a Pict warrior named Senua as she embarks on a very personal journey through a hellish underworld.
Gameplay[]
The gameplay of Hellblade is primarily focused on exploration and combat. Players explore detailed environments based on the mythology of Norse gods and realms in order to guide Senua to her eventual goal of the underworld of Helheim. The environments can contain visual based puzzles of locating Norse runes in the world in order to unlock gates and seals, which Senua can find by Focusing on them. In addition, there are numerous Lorestones that can be collected in order to learn more information about the legends of the Northmen.
Certain areas of Hellblade force Senua into combat with hellish manifestations of the Northmen. When in combat, Senua has access to both light and heavy attacks with her sword that she can use in a combo system to strike her foes down. She has the ability to dodge incoming attacks and can also guard against enemy strikes. She can even parry those strikes when timing her guard correctly and temporarily stun them, though some attacks that are blocked with incorrect timing with temporarily stun her instead.
Senua can also build up her Focus in combat by successfully blocking and striking enemies, When she has gained enough, she can temporarily slow down time to allow her foes to be dispatched with ease.
Hellblade uses an automatic saving system and only holds one save file at a time for the duration of the game. Near the beginning of the story, Senua is infected with the 'Dark Rot', a corruption of her flesh on her right arm that acts as a symbol of her psychosis. The more times that she is killed, the further up her arm the rot will travel. The game warns that once the rot reaches her head, the 'seat of her soul', then Senua's quest will end and all of the player's progress will be lost.
Plot[]
Set in the late 8th century, the game starts with Senua, a Pict warrior from Orkney arriving at the secret entrance to Helheim in a quest to save the soul of her dead lover, Dillion, from the goddess Hela. Senua believes she suffers from a curse that causes her to hear the voices of spirits, referred to as "Furies", in her head, the most notable of which is the Narrator, who is aware of the player's presence and often breaks the fourth wall by talking to them directly. She is followed by the Shadow, a dark entity at the core of the curse. She carries Dillion's severed head to use it as a vessel for his soul and is guided by her memories of the stories of Druth, a former slave of the Northmen well-versed in their legends, now deceased, who became her friend and mentor during a year-long self-imposed exile. To enter Helheim, Senua overcomes several tests and defeats both the fire giant Surtr and the god of illusions Valravn, but as she crosses the bridge to Helheim, she is attacked by Hela, who defeats her with a single blow and shatters her sword. Barely surviving the encounter, Senua cauterizes a large gash on her head caused by Hela. She then follows visions of Druth and a man-shaped light she believes to be Dillion to a great tree, where she undergoes four trials that test her body, spirit, and mind and is rewarded with the legendary sword Gramr, a weapon powerful enough to kill Hela.
As the game progresses, Senua's backstory is unveiled in nonlinear order through her hallucinations, revealing that her mother, the healer Galena, suffered the same curse she did but thought of it as a gift. However, Senua's devoutly religious father, Zynbel, thought otherwise and burned Galena alive. Senua witnessed the event when she was just five years old, which caused her psychosis to worsen significantly and caused her to block out the memory. Her father, convincing her that she was tainted with evil, abused Senua emotionally and physically and isolated her from the rest of the world until she met Dillion. The two fell in love, and Senua left her father to be with him, as he saw her as different and misunderstood instead of cursed. However, after a plague killed many in Dillion's village, Senua, believing the fault to be hers, left in exile. When she returned a year later after seemingly conquering the Darkness, she found the surviving villagers killed by Norsemen raiders, who had sacrificed Dillion in a blood eagle to their gods. Remembering the stories of Druth, Senua then swore to save Dillion's soul from the gods of the Northmen.
Ultimately, Senua fights against the influence of the Darkness, surviving the "Sea of Corpses" and defeating the beast Garm at the gates of Helheim. She realizes that the Darkness is a representation of her father's abuse and temporarily imprisons the Furies in a magic mirror. She then confronts Hela, who summons a legion of undead warriors; Senua fights them until she is finally overwhelmed and tries to bargain with Hela. In her final moments, she recalls Dillion telling her the importance of accepting loss. As the imagery of Helheim fades away, Hela stabs Senua with Gramr and drops Dillion's head into the abyss, but as the camera returns to her, Senua is standing in her place, with a dead Hela at her feet. Having accepted that it was never possible to bring her lover back and that she is not responsible for his death or anyone else's, Senua finally banishes the Darkness from her soul and accepts the Furies not as a curse, but as a part of who she is. She invites the player to follow her, saying that there is another story to tell.
Development[]
According to Ninja Theory, over the course of the last 14 years, they have developed three key strengths that define their games: ninja-class combat, strong character stories, and a unique art vision. In Hellblade, they wanted to take these three key strengths to the next level. To do this, the developers decided to focus their game's story on a unique hero's journey by using psychotic mental illness as one of the central themes of the game. Overall, Hellblade's production used 20 of Ninja Theory's staff to create.
In order to properly portray Senua's psychosis in a way that was both realistic and non-reliant on typical tropes used to portray mental illness in other forms of media, Ninja Theory consulted with world-leading neuroscientists as well as organisations such as the Welcome Trust during the development of the game. They also conducted interviews and meetings with actual sufferers of psychosis and used their experiences and feedback in the game itself.
One of the Hellblade's most realistic ways to portray the symptoms of psychosis is the use of binaural audio, a recording technique that mimics the way that humans hear things, allowing for a high level of accuracy when visualizing where a sound is coming from. The Furies, the voices that Senua hears, were recorded in binaural audio, giving the illusion that they are speaking right in the player's ear.
Though the game was initially a PlayStation only title, a PC version was revealed in 2015. The game's additional subtitle of Senua's Sacrifice was revealed just over a year later. Both versions were released in August of 2017 simultaneously.
In April of 2018 the game was also released for Xbox One.
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