Hellblade (Off-Topic)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, May 03, 2019, 18:01 (2029 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I'm likely going to do one more run on Xbox to get that 100% I accidentally missed. Eager to see how Cheap feels when he finishes.

I really liked it! Honestly, it's right up there with The Last of Us, in terms of games I really feel are "art."

The Garm section was incredible. It really is amazing to me that I can know the game is designed so that I'll always make it to the next section of light before Garm gets me, but it's still terrifying every time.

Yep! I've played its a few times and I still get to the next light and only the next light. I think it's the pictures of Senua cowering / in pain that flash on screen that does it. They nailed that effect, for sure.

I mostly liked the last section. Fighting on those platforms, surrounded, with the great music felt truly epic. The very last fight, however, feel really flat. Obviously you're supposed to die, but the game just spawns enemies immediately behind you. It felt cheap. But worse, it also wasn't hard. I guess it fits with the theme, in that I wasn't defeated--I had to willingly let go and die voluntarily. But it still just feels bad.

I love the music. Epic is exactly how I'd describe it. I also like that in those fights Senua has a new animation for standing back up after being knocked down. Instead of being wounded and one step away from giving up on the ground, she rolls back onto her feet and continues to fight with a much shorter delay. I think you can still be killed in the first platforms if you play badly enough, but for the most part you are kinda invincible. It works so well along side Senua's evolved sense of sell worth and courage. I love it!

I still don't like the Surtr area. In the grand scheme of things, it's fine, but it's still a bummer, and, honestly, it might be enough to prevent me from playing through the game again. Maybe not, though. We'll see in a year.

I like the story bits that Druth narrates, but yeah, there's the least amount of gameplay going on there than any of the other sections. Honestly, I don't mind it at all, but I can totally see why you might have stopped there the first time without knowing how long it was or what was coming after.

I really loved this game, but part of me would still really like to see what a real AAA $60 version of it would be like. Expand the combat mechanics a bit (although, I did really end up enjoying the combat in the game), expand on some of the areas for reforging Gramr. I'm not really sure the game would benefit from that, though. As it is, just about everything is compelling without overstaying its welcome. I'm not sure it would work as a 30 or even 20 hour game quite as well.

Right. And that's why I call it "perfect." Is it completely perfect? Nah. But for the most part it achieves what it set out to achieve in that way that it's really really hard to fault them for not doing more. Like you say, more might have been too much. The acting is incredible. The gameplay is good and has just enough variation that it doesn't overstay its welcome. The combat is good enough that I kinda wouldn't mind a second game where Senua just revenges it up some more without all the emotional turmoil.

And... speaking of story... here's what I think happened:

• Senua's mother had the same psychological disorder that Senua inherited. She heard voices and could have spells where she blacked out, but she also had some savant-like abilities to solve problems and anticipate problems long before others in their village knew something was wrong.
  
  
• Senua's mother taught her daughter that the voices they heard and the problems they saw before others did was a gift. They probably also shared a heightened sense of the wonders of nature, given that final monologue.
  
  
• Senua's father, however, was perhaps partially a liar, but probably mostly abusive and crazy. He tried to drive the voices out of Senua's mother through beatings and rituals, and when that did not work he eventually sacrificed her, burning her alive. I don't think Senua saw her mother die, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that's what happened. (Maybe she saw her father sacrifice others at a later time... and that's how Senua pieced together the vision of her mother being burnt alive?)
  
  
• Senua's father also tortured Senua. Physical abuse along with mental / emotional abuse. He convinced her that she was possessed by a darkness and he was the only one keeping it at bay.
  
  
• At some point, Senua starts leaving her house and watches Dillion practicing his sword combat. She learns from afar and gets very good at it, maybe better than him even, before one day she approaches him and they meet.
  
  
• Senua and Dillion fall in love and Senua leaves her father's house to live with Dillion. The two at some point journey together and take part in real life warrior trials.
  
  
• Senua still hears her voices and still has spells of blacking out or losing herself to visions of darkness, but with Dillion's help, she she begins to learn to overcome them.
  
  
• At some point a while later, Senua goes down to the local river and something feels very wrong with her. There's something in the water... a sickness... a death that only she can sense. Her sense of it is probably based on smell and maybe a little on touch, the water feels different to her. She warns people about it, but no one believes her. Perhaps they even mock her... until villagers begin catching ill.
  
  
• It turns out some sort of plague has come down the river and it kills many within the village. The plague even kills Dillion's father, who is the village leader. At some point the villagers even begin to blame Senua for the plague. Dillion himself, in a moment of grief, even lashes out at Senua.
  
  
• At some point, the village tries to rid itself of Senua by locking her in a building and burning her alive, but she manages to find her way out. Dillion rescues her and apologizes to her for blaming her for his father's death. But, Senua has been badly shaken by all of this.
  
  
• Senua leaves Dillion to go on a spiritual trek into the forest in order to try and rid herself of her darkness once and for all. In the forest, I think maybe she encounters a madman who possibly rapes her (the scene with Valravn over her is... disturbing...) but she eventually fights this person off, possibly killing them. Perhaps this was someone else from her village also on a spiritual trek into the forest, or maybe it was a Norseman cutoff from his army?
  
  
• Either way, Senua, believing that she has finally conquered her darkness, returns to her village to find it in ruins. While she was gone, Norseman raided her village, burned it, slaughtered or captured everyone, and strung up Dillion in an especially vicious and ritualistic manner since he would now have been the village leader.
  
  
• Senua finds her lover murdered and believes that he is more than dead. She believes that the Norseman have taken his soul. The voices that she had managed to drive away return in full force thanks to her emotional trauma. They mock her and taunt her and are generally against her. But, Senua loved Dillion, so she persevere and sets out on a quest to retrieve his soul.
  
  
• Along the way, Senua encounters Druth, a noble of some other tribe who was captured and forced into slavery by the Norsemen. Druth had his own story about his sister being sold into slavery (or something similar) which lead him to seek her out only to eventually be captured himself. He was tortured and endured years of working for the Norsemen as they raided more villages. Eventually, though, he ran through the fire of a village they were torching and escaped... not quite with his life as he was badly burned, but he was able to live long enough...
  
  
• Senua encounters Druth as she follows the Norsemen back to their... home?... village?... war camp? He regales her with many stories about himself and about the Norse gods. He promises that if he spares him and gets revenge on the Norsemen, that he will travel to hell with her and act as her guide. He dies and Senua continues her chase. Could it be that Druth escaped as the Norsemen burned Senua's village?
  
  
• Senua, now in a tragically grief-stricken psychotic state wanders the Norse camp. On one hand I think maybe she attacked and killed everyone there. That the battles we fight were against real people. Overlaid by her psychosis, but real, nonetheless. On the other hand, I think maybe she was simply walking around and through an abandoned Norse camp, and most everything was in her head.
  
  
• But, during this time, Senua, as lead by her memories of Druth and Dillion, manages to confront her demons and ultimately realizes the lies and deception and cruelty of her father. She eventually convinces herself that she must let go of Dillion. That he is dead and never coming back. In the end she literally lets go of his head which she really had been carrying around with her for the days or weeks after she found him murdered.
  
  
• With that, she has largely overcome her psychosis. I think she probably still has some of the voices in her head, but they are friendly and help her now instead of trying to mock her or hurt her. It's all in her head, but she is finally at peace with herself. She goes on to have new adventures that we will never see.

Anyway, I love the game. It set a new bar for emotionally charged acting and showed the depths of storytelling that can now be achieved with video game level facial capture and rendering. And it did it without being a massive AAA money waster. Ninja Theory turned a profit early and went on to continue to sell the game first on the PS4, the the XBone, and now on even the Switch. So, it was a big success story in more ways than one.