Has Xbox finally found the cult franchise associated with its ecosystem with Hellblade? It's quite possible. 7 years after the release of the first opus Senua's Sacrifice, Ninja Theory is back in the spotlight with the sequel to its adventures. Senua's Saga: Hellblade II picks up where players put their controllers several years before, but this time there are a few changes at work.
Purchased in 2018, Ninja Theory is now a proud member of Xbox Game Studios. Hellblade 2 is therefore released this May 21 as an Xbox console exclusive, to the delight of Series X/S owners. On the other hand, our heroine returns stronger, in an even darker universe and with increased playability. In 7 years, the franchise has made a masterful transition to rise to the rank of immersion. But can this game really become the standard-bearer of an entire ecosystem? The answer in this test of Senua’s Saga Hellblade II.
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Welcome to Iceland
Those who have played the first adventure of the license know how special it is. Senua, a woman who has not been spared by the war as collateral damage, suffers from psychiatric disorders at a time when they were often confused with a demonic evil. Voices race through the head of the Pict warrior, who has been thirsting for revenge since the death of her life partner, named Dillion. After trying to bring him back to life in the first installment, Hellblade II focuses more on finding justice in the midst of destructive conflicts.
Senua ends up on a slaver's ship before being shipwrecked on a cursed land all the way to the core. The game still takes place in Norse mythology and sets the scene for a particularly violent Viking Iceland. The land that the heroine explores is desolate, and she will have to fight demons much more dangerous than her psychoses.
Except that this time, Senua accepts her difference, the voices she calls Furies, and even lets herself be guided by their constant call. In the game, this inevitably results in hours of internal discussions for the character, who in reality speaks very little outside of what is happening in her mind. From the start, the sensations can seem strange and disturbing.
Trust...
The player has access to the entire inner self of the warrior, who is sometimes consumed by guilt, sometimes proud of a mission to save the oppressed, but always alone in her contradictory paths of thought. The voices give us instructions, in a more or less authoritarian manner, and an uninitiated person can very quickly find themselves overwhelmed by the amount of audio information.
In addition, the nature of these indications makes the whole experience even more immersive than it already is. Whispers, shouts, calls for help, orders, reflections, etc. Everything happens at breakneck speed in the narrative, exploration, and action scenes. The studio itself describes the game as a “cinematic immersion.” It’s clear that this claim is far from being a lie.
While open worlds have been rife in recent years, Hellblade 2 has chosen to tell us a story, from beginning to end, without any deviations. The game doesn’t adopt a conventional style, with an introduction, quests, and a conclusion, but rather is experienced as an organic, guided narrative that seems impossible to escape from along the way. Even when we talk about exploration, we can’t say that Hellblade 2 doesn’t leave us with many possibilities. A few wanderings are possible, but almost never beyond what is necessary for the narrative.
In the heart of the fight
However, it is not all contemplation. How can we talk about the ravages of war without experiencing the fighting and violence of the time. During her journey, Senua meets human and monstrous enemies that she must defeat in the name of the justice she seeks. But we quickly see that from these confrontations, we always come out a winner. Hellblade 2 is the opposite of a punishing game, not only in the intuitiveness of the controls, but also in the general difficulty of the fights that let us start over where we left off until the objective is reached. It is exhilarating to succeed in your timing games with dodges and parries, but in truth the game gives you all the time you need to get the hang of it.
Even in this context, it is immersion that counts more than your abilities. Hellblade 2 has a lot of cutscenes, interspersed with guided gameplay sequences. The transitions between the different scenes are so fluid that we sometimes forget that we have to direct the character. The studio excels in its animations and manages to make the whole adventure as natural as possible. The screen has no visual distractions (HUD) and the narration adapts to your pace of progression in all circumstances. Needless to say, the dialogues are mastered from start to finish and the audio environment – especially with a headset with 3D sound – is well beyond industry standards.
There is no doubt that Hellblade 2 rivals the greatest of the genre, notably those from PlayStation (The Last of Us, God of War). Visually, it is almost flawless for Ninja Theory, which places photorealism at the heart of its game. The universe of Hellblade 2 is dark and primitive, so there is no diversity in terms of settings or facial expressions. But since the whole thing is coherent, we can't hold it against him.
After several hours on the game, it is obvious that Senua’s Saga Hellblade II is absolutely not for everyone. And yet, Xbox has one of its most successful franchises here. It will be impossible for us not to recommend this experience to you as it is so different in the best sense of the word. Still, it’s just as impossible not to recommend Hellblade 2 without warning you. The immersion of the “game” is such that it would be easy to get lost, so you have to be careful to separate reality from fiction in this context, and appreciate the title for what it is: a dive into Senua’s tortured mind, with no real control over what she feels or does.
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