Hellblade: Fighting the Ghost of Norsemen

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice:

Time to Beat: 9 Hour

Designed by Ninja Theory, a sixteen year old company with a lack of critical or commercial success, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice seems to come from an entirely new direction. Best known for hack and slash action games like Heavenly Sword and DmC: Devil May Cry, Senua's Sacrifice incorporates the combat of Ninja Theory's previous games, but only as a supporting element to its character development, story, visual effects, and atmosphere.

Yet, the player will spend about ten to twenty percent of the game fighting phantasm like enemies in a fantastical, despairing journey into the land of the dead. The protagonist is Senua, a young Pict woman raised on the archipelago of Orkney. Hellblade follows her quest to rescue her lover from the underworld of Helheim. The undertaking feature's Senua's physical and internal struggles from the border of Hel to its center, with its events structured around the stories from Norse myth.
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To inform the player and infuse the story with meaning, Senua discovers Runestones, which relate the stories of Norse myth when activated. From inside the Stones, (or from inside her mind's eye), her former companion Druth tells the tales, as one would find them in the Poetic Edda, Snorri's Edda, and Völsunga saga. Druth speaks of Hel, Muspel, Baldur, Loki, Ragnarok, Fenrir, Gram, Sigurd, Fafnir, and gods, monsters, and heroes. He tells of his experience with the Northmen (as he calls them), after they enslaved him and taught him that life contains no truth but that of power and death. Though the Runestones are optional, the developer encourages the player to find them by connecting the current myth Senua's predicament.

Combat in Hellblade is an oddly necessary component. While slaying hordes of wraith-like Northmen sometimes feels like filler, the constant threat maintains taut tension the game requires. Combat features a simple hack and slash mechanic that occurs only at predetermined locations. These locations are easy to recognize, and the player will become proficient in predicting its arrival. Combat arenas are clear and circular in shape to offer a clean engagement without obstacles or corners. Senua, wielding her two-handed sword, knows two attacks (fast and slow), a stun, a parry, a block, and a dodge. She can combine fast and slow attacks for combos. Senua can also alter the effect of these attacks by running toward the enemy.

Hellblade includes a few different types of enemies, but not more than four or five, along with a handful of bosses. Once combat begins, the designated arena becomes inescapable, and the enemies prowl toward Senua. They never run. They never try to encircle her. They plod straight toward Senua, blocking each other, allowing only one to attack at a time. Defeated enemies vanish, and sometimes new foes appear without warning, right behind Senua, already on the attack. Fortunately Senua's voices (more on them next article) warn her of impending danger, so if the player is listening they can dodge aside. With the player's limited options, combat is simple, but looks brutal, which fits the broader aesthetic.
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While Hellblade includes combat, it only serves to support the tone of the story, so a number of fights incorporate special conditions. The first fight can not be won, nor can the finale. At least one fight can't be lost. Of particular interest is a threat leveled by the game at the player early on. Hel, the queen of the dead, curses Senua with rot. Illustrated as a small diseased red, blackish disfigurement near Senua's hand, the sickness expands towards her head with each death. If the rot reaches the brain the game file will be wiped and the player will have to restart from the beginning. Whether this is true or not, (because I never died enough to find out) the developers used it successfully to make every engagement tense.

On the topic of game files and saving, one issue with Senua is that the player can't choose to save whenever they want. The game autosaves, an appreciated feature in 2019, but Hellblade often includes long stretches where the player must play on until they reach a predetermined save location.
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In the interest of creating a game which feels like a realistic experience, the game doesn't include a tutorial for the puzzles or combat. Fortunately the mechanics of both are simple, if not necessarily easy. I defeated hordes of enemies, along with the first boss, Surtr's, giant of flame, while only dying once. In contrast, the other early boss, Valravn, killed me six times before I managed to slay him. No other enemy offered much trouble. I died more against Valravn then all other deaths combined. The difference in difficulty surprised me, but it was caused by the unit types. To create Surtr the developers took the common Warrior enemy type, but made him bigger and stronger. Valravn, at the time seemed like a unique unit, but later appeared often as another Norse enemy type, Revenant, replicating most of Valravn's attacks and abilities. 

In designing an atmospheric game with horror elements, Ninja Theory displayed exceptional judgment by refusing to incorporate jump scares or quick time events. Hellblade tells a story about a young woman's troubling quest contained in a claustrophobic atmosphere and cloaked in Norse mythology. The mechanics of combat and puzzles support the story, and Ninja Theory didn't cheapen the experience with the two most common crutches of inferior game designers.

Part II on Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice next week for more about Senua, puzzles, visual effects, and atmosphere.

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