Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is definitely a unique work in the gaming landscape. Having become notable for its oppressive narrative and its terribly effective sound design , Senua's painful journey will continue in a second opus, developed under Unreal Engine 5, which today lets some information escape about its ambitions.
Create the surprise
Juan Fernandez, Principal Game Designer at Ninja Theory, gave an interview to the Spanish site Vandal , in which he first spoke about the impact he thinks this long-awaited sequel to Hellblade will have . And where we could have legitimately imagined that the studio would prioritize the highlights of the first opus, the developer specifies that it is the novelties brought by this sequel that should mainly mark the players:
“ What I like about Hellblade 2 is that it's a very unique approach, I think it's going to have an impact like Hellblade 1, but for other reasons because obviously there's a lot of stuff that were new in the first game that will have less of an impact in the second, but there's a whole bunch of other new stuff that will have that impact ”.
Following these statements, we can easily deduce that Juan Fernandez is referring here to the narration or even to the transcription of the voices heard by Senua by mentioning the impacting elements of the first episode. And as a sequel, it is clear that these aspects will inevitably not cause the same surprise effect. This is why it is interesting to underline Ninja Theory's desire to go far beyond in terms of experience.
A redesigned combat system?
During the interview, the developer, who is working on the combat system, then spoke about that of Hellblade , an element that was not unanimously accepted in the first episode. Indeed, this one was particularly criticized for some lengths as well as a certain repetitiveness. An observation fully shared by Juan Hernandez, who returns to the shortcomings of the clashes:
" What I was least happy about in Hellblade 1 was the lack of enemy variety, long range combat was stifled, and the balancing elements, the way the difficulty systems were tuned, the enemies had too much life, they had too much durability and it got boring most of the time ”.
Finally, he ends by expressing that while the first game offered a variety of attacks, the different enemies did not push players enough to vary the combos. An interesting observation, but which is above all reassuring as to the ambition of the British teams for this new trip alongside Senua. Can we imagine a denser bestiary, more elaborate confrontations and more bombastic boss fights? It seems to be on its way. But if one thing is certain, it's that the gameplay trailer unveiled a few months ago does indeed suggest that the cursors have been greatly enhanced.
Anyway, we will still have to be patient before we can get our hands on it since no release date has yet been communicated for this Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 , which, as a reminder, is expected on PC and Xbox Series exclusively.
