Senua's Saga: Hellblade II on PS5 impressions — Böring

Xbox, in their infinite wisdom, have continued their assimilation into PlayStation’s storefront, this time inflicting Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II upon unsuspecting victims. PS5 owners will be able to endure Hellblade II on August 12th, though I would advise against it. Microsoft threw more money, more marketing, and more developers at Ninja Theory to create a sequel to their highly acclaimed title Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (note the irritating swapping of the title/subtitle, à la Rambo), and for what? A game with visuals and audio as enchanting as Avatar 2 and a story with the depth of…Avatar 2. 

There’s no denying the graphical impression Hellblade II makes. The near-lifelike Icelandic vistas and the thick letterboxed black bars cramping the screen make Hellblade II feel like you’re watching the prettiest CGI movie ever made. The character models are detailed to an absurd degree; even the hair physics appear to be leagues ahead of the competition - though faces sometimes conjure thoughts of rubber stretched over bone in unsettling ways. There’s a decent amount of environmental variety, with some areas attempting realism and some leaning more bleakly whimsical, both realized with beauty and intentional sadness. 

The cinematographical work in Hellblade II elevates the graphical fidelity from great to special. The God of War (2016)-esque one-shot style is employed here, mostly glued to Senua’s over-the-shoulder perspective but occasionally soaring above the Icelandic shores to show off the awesome scale of Ninja Theory’s photorealistic artistry. This is often contrasted with extreme closeups that highlight the extreme effort put into both micro and macro details. 

Despite the undeniable visuals, I can’t help but feel a significant disconnect between the world and Senua herself. Hellblade II has clearly sacrificed interactivity in favour of visual perfection, a tradeoff that I don’t believe was worth it. I’m not asking to be able to scale the distant cliffs or climb on a Giant’s back, all I ask is for Senua to feel like she has a place in the world. Your primary method of interacting with these astonishing landscapes is by holding L1 to lightly jog through them. It begs the player to look at their surroundings but not engage with them in any meaningful way. It makes the whole game feel like a painting with a DO NOT TOUCH sign - tragically, Hellblade II is excellent for screenshots and cutscenes but not much else. 

Much like the first game, the gameplay is separated into discrete parts: puzzles, combat, and walking. While the original title felt decent for its time, even it struggled with somewhat shallow puzzle design and combat. Hellblade II doubles, triples, quadruples down on its own tedium, owning it and wearing boredom as a bizarre badge of honour. The game’s puzzles, if you insist on calling them that, severely tested my patience. They consist of the same rune I Spy areas as the first game, along with a new type of puzzle that involves switching the state of the environment to traverse. Both are insufferable and frequently paired with each other, only adding to the frustration. Senua’s glacial gait exacerbates the problem, creating a gulf between the point you’ve solved the puzzle and the point you’re actually able to complete it. It’s like if a third of The Last of Us’s runtime were dedicated to ladder-placing. 

The combat is immersive and glorious the first time and only the first time, since by then, you’ve seen everything the game has to offer. Oddly, some of Hellblade II’s best moments are in its brief cutscene transitions between enemies during combat, as you’re seamlessly carted from one to the next in an impressive, gruesome dance. It’s a shame this novelty couldn’t be brought to the repetitive square-and-triangle combos that make up the entirety of the lengthy battles. There is a valiant attempt at enemy variety; some have a sword and shield, others spew fire, and another flails like a rapid zombie. But fights drag on too long and by the end of one, you’ve seen the same enemy enough times to be sick of them already. I enjoyed combat sequences far more than the dastardly puzzles, but they weren't anything more than a quick, easy diversion from holding L1.

I keep coming back to this question: why does Hellblade II even need to be a game? Couldn’t we have skipped the meaningless puzzles, simulated the already cutscene-like combat, and released this as a multi-part limited series? The game feels like it’s a game out of sheer stubborn obligation, like the team had every intention of making something different but were forced to include gameplay to fulfill a contract with Hela herself. There was no point in which I felt satisfaction in completing a simplistic puzzle that took 30 seconds to solve or beating a wave of one-at-a-time humanoid enemies. Nothing ever made me feel like the medium was justified. 

I’ve been burying the lede, of course. All this talk of gameplay doesn’t matter nearly as much as the clear focus of the game: its narrative. Senua herself was the reason the original Hellblade worked; her literal and metaphorical battle against her own mind in an already cruel world was well-written, subversive, and more than compelling enough to excuse the workmanlike gameplay. Hellblade II spends little time trying to recreate the freshness of Senua’s maiden journey and never comes close to validating her return. 

The setup shows promise - Senua is purposely captured by a slave ship and brought to Iceland in an attempt to stop the slavers from snatching people from her village. Once she’s there, however, she’s informed that the slavers are more a symptom of a larger problem, that of the man-eating Giants that have been terrorizing the region ever since a nearby volcano erupted. Along the way, she enlists the begrudging aid of one of the slavers themselves, Thórgestr, along with Fargrímr, a member of a neighbouring village that serves as a frequent slaver target. Later, the party is filled out with Ástríðr, who is also a character in this game. 

With the exception of Thórgestr, I entirely fail to understand the purpose of these characters. Fargrímr lacks any discernible personality as he lazes from one location to another, reciting exposition at Senua. Ástríðr doesn’t fare much better; she shows up too late to be particularly fleshed out, though at the very least she’s given a scene where she unceremoniously dumps her life story on Senua. You get the sense that she’s a strong and fair leader, but not much else. Fargrímr - nothing. His Personality section on the Hellblade Wiki says it best: “[to be added]”. 

Save for Senua herself, Thórgestr is the only character with an ounce of nuance. His father is a cruel leader who has led the charge in gathering sacrificial slaves as offerings for the Giants. While initially closed off to the idea of helping Senua, they develop an understanding through their shared experience of having evil fathers. The theme that the game seems to want driven home ad nauseum is that “all monsters were once men”, suggesting that we must understand and empathize with our enemies in order to fight them. 

Senua’s method for defeating the thought-to-be invincible Giants is that she, with the help of a nebulous plot device called the Hiddenfolk, delves into the Giants’ pasts and learns their true names. The first two Giants she bests require, of course, a gauntlet of puzzles and combat followed by a reward: a lengthy sequence of floaty tableaus while the Hiddenfolk monotonously explain the Giant’s backstory to Senua. 

Fundamentally, I take more issue with the story’s presentation than the story itself. As I describe the events back to you, I find myself thinking that what I’m saying isn’t all that bad; that there was more there than I thought. And then I recall just how many words it took to get to the rather simple points the game is trying to make. Hellblade II is what would happen if Shakespeare made a Xenoblade-style JRPG (which would be incredible now that I think about it) - only in the sense that the script is flowery and fancy but nobody ever stops talking. 

So, so many words are in this game. Words about fate and nature, words about redemption and revenge, words about love and friendship. All of it is lost on dialogue and multiple levels of narration that view all these concepts in the most cursory sense, as if the team was more concerned with introducing themes than exploring them. In general, I’m not a fan of narrators in films as they’re often used as a quick trick to make it easier to adapt a book, or a lazy attempt at inserting exposition that couldn’t be fit naturally into dialogue (with plenty of exceptions, of course). Hellblade II’s narrator serves seemingly no purpose at all - she effectively recaps Senua’s current state, says something vaguely poetic, and then returns to the void. It’s inexplicable when there’s already an even more obnoxious trio of pseudo-narrators that never leave Senua alone for a second. 

To be as clear as possible, I think the idea of Senua’s hallucinatory voices being a constant presence is excellent and was fully realized in the first game. To continue to include them in the follow-up makes for a strong punctuation to the ending of Hellblade - Senua didn’t stop the voices, she simply learned how to handle them and finally understood her condition enough to keep them at bay. But if I were Senua, I would journey to the depths of Hel all over again to find some way to turn the incessant, condescending, tutorializing, Atreus-immediate-puzzle-solving, subtext-removing, nuanceless naggers off. 

Whenever Hellblade II has the opportunity to let its audience try to understand its themes on their own, the voices are there to make them clear as day. No ambiguity, no chance to consider. These are the themes, this is the solution to the puzzle, this is precisely how Senua is feeling…it feels inorganic and afraid, like the writers didn’t want a single person to misunderstand their messaging. The voices are no longer a valuable piece of Senua’s arc, they’re a device that cheapens the entire experience. The only time they’re interesting is when they disagree with each other, which only happens in a couple fleeting moments. 

What really cements Hellblade II’s story as a major disappointment is how inessential it is to Senua herself. One could make the claim that the game sees Senua overcome the shadow of her father, refuse the cycle of violence, and learn the value of the people you choose to surround yourself with, but this feels so slapdash in comparison to the first game’s tight, extremely personal adventure. This tale of overcoming the Giants and putting a tyrant in his place is serviceable but never rings true for Senua, who could have been a brand new protagonist and next to nothing would have to change. The short runtime (around 7-8 hours) and the addition of bland supporting characters leave less time for Senua to blossom or grow in a significant way. The ending rushes to give Senua’s saga a sense of purpose but it’s too little, too late. 

This new PS5 Enhanced version offers the post-game option to have Senua’s companions serve as narrators to guide the player along her jaunt through Iceland. I briefly tested out this feature and found them to be little more compelling than the original narrator, though there were brief instances in which I was able to catch glimpses of personality in Ástríðr and Fargrímr.

The new 60fps performance mode was a godsend as a staunch 30fps hater, and the game ran flawlessly with not a single stutter, frame drop, or even a visual bug of any sort. It cannot be overstated what a technical achievement this game is, and to have it running at a consistent 60fps is pure alchemy. I shudder to imagine the disdain I would have for this game had I been forced to play it at a lower framerate...let's perish the thought. The new developer commentary feature allows you to peek behind the curtain at Ninja Theory to see how at least part of the sausage was made, which proves far more interesting than the sausage itself.

Remember how in the original game, there was this looming threat of a permanent save wipe if you were to die too many times? How the game tells you this to increase your sense of paranoia as Senua's descent into Hel gets darker and darker but never actually deletes anything no matter what, beautifully marrying gameplay with theme? Hellblade II dares to ask - what if your save really could get wiped? Dark Rot Mode is a new post-game feature that artificially cranks up the difficulty by holding save-wipeage over your head if your combat ability isn't up to snuff. I value my sanity so I did not dive into this mode but if you wish to risk having to redo those puzzles, be my masochistic guest.

Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga is a test of frustration. It’s rarely fun to play and the sagging story never merits giving it a shot. It may look jaw-droppingly stunning but don’t be fooled - there’s not all that much going on beneath the surface. If you’re a PS5 owner who loved the original game and have been waiting forever to get your hands on the sequel, you’d best do yourself a favour and play the first game again instead. If you already played the game on Xbox and are wondering whether you should play it again with the new update - boot it up, watch the opening cutscene in 60fps, and turn it off again. You’ve seen all you need to see.