HELLBLADE II - SENUA'S SAGA
My thoughts on Hellblade's sequel, and why highlighting mental-illness in video games is important.
I would like to start this with a bit of background on myself, as well as a disclaimer. Growing up in a bit of a unique environment, I often times used video games as a form of escapism - I wanted to transport myself into these other worlds, take in huge stories, forget my strife, and maybe learn a thing or two about myself or the world along the way. This is something that I still do to this day, and is greatly important to me.
Playing a video game is a therapeutic affair, whether you are predominately a story-based gamer like myself, or a quick-draw type of gamer who likes routine in sports, sandbox or multiplayer games. Therapeutic tools, devices and experiences ≠ therapy. These things are not meant to be a replacement for therapy, but a tool to be used alongside therapy(A lot of therapists are starting to integrate video games into their practices as a tool, as well). They are meant to assist in coping, assist in escaping, assist in processing feelings, or possibly even provide a relatable story to engage with; they are not meant to be your therapist. But, as I alluded to above, video games are a great tool to use when a therapeutic device is needed to assist in your healing process, and I firmly believe video games exploring topics of mental illness only strengthen that sentiment. The Hellblade series, focusing primarily on psychosis, is a prime example of how this can be done.
Now, onto what I think about the second chapter in the story of the warrior named Senua.
Senua’s story is one filled with strife and hardships of an unimaginable magnitude. If you are reading this article, I imagine that you either have played the first Hellblade game and are looking for an impression on the second game, or you are just an avid supporter of what I do; however, I will tread lightly to avoid any major story spoilers for both games to the best of my ability. To give an intro version, Senua was raised by a tyrant for a father who led her people through fear. He also convinced Senua that the voices she hears in her head, the symbols she sees and finds deeper meaning to, and the things she sees that no one else can see can only mean one thing - that she is cursed by the “Darkness.” She was banished from her land. Her people were enslaved by another group. Her loved ones slain, and her eventual lover, Dillion, sacrificed in an absolutely grotesque way. Senua is haunted by constant, split voices in her head(that she calls the “Furies”) and visions that may or may not be real. Senua suffers through what is now called Psychosis. In the first game, Senua is on a quest to Hel to find a way to put Dillion to rest, while the game’s impeccable audio-visual design shows the player her internal suffering along the way.
Ninja Theory worked with a team of neuroscientists, mental health specialists, and people living psychosis to ensure they were accurately depicting the condition, as well as integrating it into their game’s lead character in a respectful manner. I played the game back in 2019, and aside from some gripes with combat animations, lack of enemy variety, and monotonous puzzles, I loved the game. The story was incredibly unique, and seeing the work the team put behind bringing awareness to Senua’s condition that people deal with in real life and implementing it in an incredible audio-visual feat for gaming made it a game that left an impact on me. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited for the 2024 release of the sequel from Ninja Theory, now backed by Microsoft.
After the closure on the story in the first game, Senua takes a different approach in this sequel - She wants to stop the enslaving of her people, and vows to follow it to its source and cut off it’s head. Senua thought it would be a simple matter, finding a way straight to the leader of the slavers, and ending him. As you would guess, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
This go around, Ninja Theory has opened up the setting quite a bit, with Senua leaving home on this quest, taking you to multiple locations on an island which are all geographically different. With a lot of the first game’s locations feeling the same, this is a change I fully welcomed as the game went on. You could be trudging through the sands of a war-torn beach, climbing rock faces in a mountainous area, trudging through waist high water, navigating in near darkness through caves, and more. It really drilled in the fact that Senua was on a much larger quest than it felt like in the first game for me.
Moving through multiple areas, you do encounter a few different groups of enemies. Combat in these games is simple on paper, but it feels so visceral in the weight of which you swing your sword, the speed (or realistic lack thereof) you dodge attacks, and the consequence of keeping your defense one-note in any situation you have to fight. My biggest complaint with a lot of action-based melee combat focused games is the lack of any freaking weight in your attacks, wherein you can just swing around your sharp stick like Nathan Drake on bath-salts; but in this game, there were plenty of moments where I felt like I had to be calculated in when to swing my sword because of the consequence of missing, or when to block/avoid a strike coming my way. My biggest complaint with the game in general relates to the combat, though - There is BARELY any enemy variety in this game. You basically have 3 types of enemies in each group you face in the game, and its pretty consistent across groups as to how they fight. As the game goes on, reading attack patterns becomes WAY too easy for a game where it feels wonderful to swing your sword around, so it's disappointing that Ninja Theory didn’t throw in a wider variety of enemies. It was a complaint I had with the first game, and unfortunately carries over to this one. The combat animations are much, much more fluid, with added animations this go around too, though!
As previously mentioned, something I felt like was very, very lackluster in the first game was the puzzles. They all felt mostly pointless and just broke up the story, with the only ones carrying any meaning were matching up symbols. This installment, the puzzles are better overall, however, there were some weird pacing issues. The best way to explain it would be that you will run into one of the easiest, mind-numbing puzzles you have ever encountered in a game before (ala “light this thing with your torch lol”) and yet immediately run into a puzzle the next section that requires a bit more reasoning and investigation to figure out. The ones that did require thought were mostly great - In my opinion, kind of the ideal video game puzzles. There were two I can remember wanting to bash my head against my desk over from how long they took to complete, and they just broke up the story bits all too much, but hey, that’s only two times I can remember! Small victories.
The highest point where this game shines is its story. Without giving away too much of this story for any of you that want to play the game, Senua is not wholly alone this time, unlike the first game. In the first game, you walked in Senua’s shoes, and you got to hear both how Senua saw herself, lensed by her trauma, as well as how the “Furies” in her head and the “Darkness” saw her(and therefore, how it affected her). This time, as the game goes on, you get to see both of those things now that the first chapter of her saga has concluded, as well as how the people she engages with through the story see her. It adds this entire layer, and the player gets to experience the development it has on the furies’ opinion as well as her own regarding herself, her curse, and the death that follows in her wake. You also get to watch these new characters, see their struggles, their plight, and their character development as the story goes on. In a game that is only about 7 hours to completion, the game makes you care about all of these things from the start to the end of the game, which I salute. The story, as one would guess, also becomes a much larger quest than simply finding one slaver. Although there were moments here and there where I could guess certain plot points, there were still plenty of surprises, beautiful set pieces, grotesque moments, plot twists, and HEAVY emotional moments, which left me crying at LEAST three times through the games short run time (and I am NOT complaining about a short run-time with the length of my backlog…..)
All-in-all, I think Ninja Theory achieved something great with this sequel. They took extreme care with the sensitive subject matter, and delivered a story that left me raw at multiple points in Senua’s journey, albeit with a bit to be desired out of enemy variety and puzzle pacing. I would highly recommend checking the game out if you enjoyed the first one. If you somehow never played the first one….. You definitely need to pick it up. I hope that more video game developers integrate themes of specific mental illnesses in their games with the amount of detail that Ninja Theory has in these two titles, as they truly have done something remarkable in that regard yet again.
arbitrary numbers or a short phrase like "fever-dream-good"
great article!