Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - An In-Depth Look

Let’s start this one off with an apology – I haven’t been writing over the past few weeks due to moving into a new place and a few personal matters to attend to. But that whole whirlwind of furniture, bills, and seagulls attempting to break into the dining room is behind me, and hopefully I’ll be returning to keeping this blog going once per week.

And we start back with a game that has been on the back burner for a while. I’ve been meaning to do a review of Hellblade ever since it came out back in August last year but it continually slipped past me. That ends this week, with an in depth look into this tale of loss, Gods, and grief.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice centres on the titular character of Senua, a Pictish warrior who has suffered from a severe personality disorder since childhood, referred to as the Darkness. The Darkness has grown worse, however, as her village has been destroyed and her lover, Dillion, killed by Viking raid. Senua sets off from the Orkney Isles to the land of the Northmen in search of vengeance and to retrieve Dillion’s soul from Helheim.

Ninja Theory, 2017

The level to which Ninja Theory has sought to create a legitimate portrayal of psychosis is illustrated right at the start of the game, where the opening credits list a Mental Health Advisor. Furthermore, this role is filled by Paul Fletcher, a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in the UK, a man with quite some qualifications for the role. Hellblade also received some funding from the Wellcome Trust, a non-profit organisation looking to improve the health and welfare of people all around the world.

Senua’s delusions manifest in several ways, but the most intriguing are the voices, or Furies as Senua calls them, in her head, which fulfil both narrative roles as well as being utilised as a hint system. In terms of story and atmosphere, the Furies provide commentary on Senua’s past and her current situations. This constant, overlapping chattering is quite unnerving, especially when it occurs in the quieter sections of the game.

Not just this, but the Furies will aid the player in exploration, pointing out things for the player focus on and use: “What if she focuses on it?/Focus, focus, focus”. The Furies will also signpost when the player is going the wrong way by asking “Why’s she doing that?”, or even mocking them and laughing. There is also a voice based on Senua’s father – hurtful, angry, and totally focused on breaking Senua and deterring her from her quests.

During combat the Furies will once again come to the player’s aid, offering hints as to where enemies are, when to block attacks and land a killing blow, but also chastising Senua when she gets knocked down, screaming “Get up!” or, more morbidly, “She’s letting go”. This is a great insight into the struggles of those of us unfortunate enough to suffer with a severe personality disorder like psychosis, with Professor Charles Fernyhough praising Ninja Theory’s work as being “compelling” and is “by far the best representation I've heard of what these experiences are like" in the on-disc documentary.

Ninja Theory, 2017

Senua herself remains relatively quiet throughout the game, with one of the voices acting as the narrator of the game, always referring to Senua in the third person. It’s also implied that the player is yet another voice in her fractured mind, with Senua looking past the camera, seemingly into the player’s eyes. The Narrator talks about feeling strangers inside your body, which may be another reference to the player being a new split personality, one that grown to control Senua.

But it’s not just the detail in the Furies that really sets Hellblade apart from other depictions of mental health issues, but the way in which hallucinations are portrayed. There is the use of both motion capture informed CGI in Senua’s face but also distorted live action blended together to create an incredibly uncanny experience, and it’s refreshing to see a developer not trying to usurp the uncanny valley, but to utilise it.

Looking to the gameplay now, the combat is slow, deliberate, sometimes erring on clunky. I feel that this is to evoke the same feeling that the Dark Souls trilogy of games has, with enemy’s signposting their attacks juuuuuust enough to give the player some warning and space to react.

There are puzzles throughout the world that must be solved for the player to progress. Doors and gates will be locked with runes that can be found in the surrounding environment. This demonstrates some great work by the environment team, with some runic shapes being easy to find and others more abstract, making the player think spatially.

Some of the puzzles tie in with some of the more tense and creepy moments of the story, drawing massively from the horror genre. Finding runes to unlock a door as a burning wooden maze as a demon pursues Senua was some of the most butt-clenching gameplay I’ve ever fought through. There is also a moment where the lighting is minimal, blurry, and the player must use their other senses to sneak past a group of strange, homunculi-like creatures; listening for the sound of a breeze, and following the rumble of the controller to escape is a really clever way of getting the player to think more about their surroundings.

Ninja Theory, 2017

Finally, we come to the boss fights, which are, for the most part, challenging and engaging. Fighting Surtr, the Norse God of fire, and Valravn, the God of deception, offers unique gameplay and require different strategies. However, the fight between Senua and Hela, the Goddess of the Underworld, is actually mostly a fight against her minions and Senua’s own demons. Whilst narratively this is a good way to end the game, in terms of actual gameplay it’s repetitive and uninspired.

Senua must fight off two waves of enemies, and then must succumb to the third in order to complete the game. Not beat them to a pulp once and for all, but fail. Again, this works narratively, being symbolic of Senua letting go of her anger and grief, but ultimately this doesn’t sit well with me as it requires the player to, more or less, do nothing and leave the game feeling as though they accomplished nothing. This ending could have been achieved by allowing the player to trade blows with Hela, and only appear to be successful before being struck down and the final cutscene playing.

Overall I’m thoroughly impress with Hellblade, all but the ending. It demonstrates that independent games can take over from what the big boys like Activision and EA no longer seem to care about – deep and intriguing story based games on a modest budget. Not only that, but the game managed to discuss some pretty heavy and sensitive topics in a very respectful manner, and I hope to see more of this from Ninja Theory in the future.