Promising and frustrating in equal measure, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice ultimately disappoints with rote puzzling, unexciting combat, and storytelling that fails to connect emotionally with its audience.
When developer Ninja Theory pitched Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice as an “independent AAA” title, there was reason to be excited. The England-based studio with a penchant for first-rate character action was going to bring their brilliance to a world and character of their own making. Not only that, but they were going to do it using “triple-A” sensibilities on a less-than budget.
It was inherently risky, but Ninja Theory seemed equipped to pull it off. Their pedigree was undeniable, after all; the studio was hot on the heels of DmC: Devil May Cry, an ingeniously retooled telling of the Capcom hack-and-slash classic, replete with thrilling combat and an excellent, pounding soundtrack. It is almost shocking, then, how little of that pedigree is apparent throughout Hellblade.
Influenced by Celtic and Norse mythology, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice tells the tale of Senua, a warrior with schizoaffective disorder who descends into a psychotic break following the death of her tribe at the hands of Viking invaders and plague. Senua, believed by her tribe to be cursed with darkness on account of her psychosis, is consumed with guilt; was she the cause of her tribe’s downfall? The loss of her love, Dillion, is the tipping point that launches Senua into a spiral of despair and insanity. Haunted by the spectre of her tribe’s horrific end, Senua embarks on a journey to Helheim, the underworld, in the hope of finding and freeing Dillion’s soul from a fate of enduring torment.
From the onset, Hellblade’s style of storytelling is grave and serious. There’s a clear intention here to avoid making light of, or doing injustice to, those who experience psychosis. Nina Theory went as far as to consult with people who experience psychosis when designing Hellblade’s portrayal of it, which is laudable in an industry that so often relies on cheap, misinformed storytelling shortcuts that do little to fairly represent mental health. Yet for all their care in portraying Senua’s condition, and for all the severity of Senua’s situation in theory, the game forgets to give players a tangible, motivating reason to care about her situation. Senua is already disconnected from her world and history when the game begins, giving players little opportunity to establish a connection that would furnish the ensuing drama with the profundity it tries so earnestly to conjure. Lorestones that reveal the beliefs which power the mythology of Senua’s world, and audible recollections of past conversations, go some way to achieving this but are ultimately no substitute for in-the-moment sequences of gameplay. It’s the classic dilemma of telling rather than showing, no doubt a result of this project’s budget limitations. Whatever the reason, it prevented me from ever truly investing in the tale. Protracted dialogue between Senua and the beings she encounters on her journey soon begin to ring hollow, their intensity only reminding me that I didn’t care as much as the game was hoping I would.
Hellblade’s visual offerings are easily its strongest. The environments Senua journeys through are evocative and highly polished. It’s easy to catch yourself stopping to admire the myriad vistas on display; a rain-drenched coast sporting a shattered pier, foreboding woodlands draped with primal totems, and more deranged settings found within Helheim and Senua’s mind are each as stunning as the last. The characters and monsters to be discovered along the way have all been given equal attention, ensuring Hellblade is not lacking in the graphical department. Ninja Theory have done a lot with a little here; while you’ll only visit a handful of different environments throughout the game, each has a distinct character and tone.
Aside from the visual hallucinations Senua experiences, she is constantly beset by a chorus of internal voices who mock, question, and narrate her actions. Normally a component of classical Greek tragedy, it’s interesting to see a chorus in a tale with such strong Norse and Celtic influences. These voices are designed to feel intrusive and frustrating, conveying Senua’s inner conflicts, her deteriorating mental state, and the restlessness, the hopelessness, of her journey. I am torn on these voices; on one hand, they are apt in emphasizing Senua’s mental state for players. On the other, they are incessant and annoying, rarely stopping throughout the game’s eight hours of play. I can’t decide whether Ninja Theory was so committed to the idea of expressing psychosis with accuracy that they aimed to have players grinding their teeth non-stop, or if I am offering them an overly generous explanation. I lean toward the latter when the poor quality of some of those voices is considered. Many of them do not sound at home in a game inspired by Celtic and Viking mythology; there are a few sporting modern-day British dialects and contemporary London accents, which creates a bizarrely anachronistic sound that drives a wedge between the player and the atmosphere Hellblade is trying to create.
The sentences uttered by the voices are also highly repetitive, often looping several times as you to solve one of the many counter-intuitive environmental puzzles that constitute most of Hellblade’s actual gameplay. In these puzzles you must find the right position to align a runic symbol with optical illusions hidden within the environment, focusing on them to manifest changes in the world such as repairing a broken bridge, or clearing a path that was previously blocked. It’s common to feel like you’ve solved a puzzle, having found an angle within the environment that produces the desired shape, but nothing will happen because you’re either not focusing on the “right” area, or aren’t standing in a very specific spot. Often it feels like there are multiple solutions, but there is only ever one “right answer” — leading you down the wearying path of second-guessing which solution is the one the developers wanted you to find.
When you’re not completing puzzles, you’re fighting a limited selection of enemies with a clumsy combat system that sorely lacks the style and flare of Ninja Theory’s previous work. While it’s clear that mid-air combos and announcers shrieking “SAVAGE!” would not suit the tone of Hellblade, I feel that more could have been done to make the game’s combat engaging. Senua is often outnumbered by foes, but there’s nothing in the by-the-numbers combat mechanics to make these confrontations feel desperate or even threatening. There’s a lot of repetitive dodging of telegraphed attacks involved, with the camera sticking closely to Senua, making maneuvers feel cramped and uncomfortable. As Hellblade continues, more and more waves of the same enemies are thrown at you in what quickly begins to feel like unnecessary padding. To try and add some spice to combat, Hellblade totes a death penalty system whereby dying too many times causes your progress to be deleted, forcing you to start the game again. However, the threat of this never really manifests itself as the combat is devoid of any challenge — it’s just slow and, eventually, boring. The game’s crescendo has you take part in a final fight for survival in the deepest depths of Helheim. It should be a crowning moment, but it winds up being a drawn-out rehash where you face all of the mini-bosses you’ve fought in previous hours. At this point, the story all but peters out, ending on a cliffhanger that suggests further adventures may be in store for Senua while forgetting to conclude the one she’s already on.
For me, that final fight encapsulated Hellblade as a whole. It should have been the crowning achievement of a studio taking everything it had learned while developing a big-budget title and applying it to a more soulful, independently-driven, artistic endeavor. While it is visually beautiful, the promise of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is lost somewhere between its stripped-back gameplay and overwrought story.
