Hello everyone, this is Dom Matthews, Studio Head at Ninja Theory. We’re releasing on May 21st Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II on Xbox Series X|S and on PC. It will be a proud moment for our team and those who contributed to our development journey. Today I want to celebrate the contribution of our mental health counselors by releasing ‘Senua’s PsycHosea feature video detailing how Senua’s experiences with psychosis in Hellblade II are rooted in both ndollarscience and real-world experience through collaboration.
When we first came up with the idea of telling the story of a character experiencing psychosis, we immediately knew we had a responsibility to understand the subject thoroughly. With this intention, we began a collaboration with Professor Paul Fletcher, Professor of Health Ndollarscience at the University of Cambridge, which in turn led to us partnering with Recovery College East and other groups of people, like Senua, who had real-life experience of doing things to see and hear that others do not see, and to have unique views about the world. What began as an exercise in the hope of learning quickly evolved into a creative collaboration where the openness, honesty and enthusiasm of our collaborators gave us the chance to truthfully represent not only Senua’s experiences, but also our character, her world and hers to improve history.
In Hellblade: Senua’s victimIt was a great honor to hear from fans that Senua’s journey helped them understand psychosis a little better. For some, it has helped them understand their own experiences. For others, it has helped to understand the experiences of loved ones. And for many, it has helped build compassion for the millions of people who struggle with mental health issues every day.
As we approach the launch of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II I hope we can give some people another taste of what it can be like to hear voices, see things only you can, and be guided by beliefs that may be unusual to others. A few weeks ago I was looking forward to sharing the stage with our employees Hellblade: A Journey of the Mind, A conference held in collaboration with Cambridge Ndollarscience exploring the topic of how Senua’s psychosis came to life Hellblade. For those interested: you can Watch the full conference here. The conference reminded me how fortunate we have been to work with our mental health staff, a special group of people who have been committed throughout our development to help us tell Senua’s story as someone who whose experiences could very well be the same as a real person.
In today’s video, I’m proud to introduce you to Paul, Eddy and Kathy, and I thank them and all of our employees for their immense contribution to this Hellblade.
For more information on the topics covered in this video, see hellbladehelp.info.
