Always eagerly awaited since its official announcement at the Game Awards 2019 with an eye-catching trailer, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II continues to provide information about its development. The title will contain graphics that are far superior to previous standards as it is designed with Unreal Engine 5. It’s not just in the range of Game design that the game of ninja theory promises to be revolutionary. On the animation page The German actress Melina Jürgens revealed this Friday on her YouTube channel behind the scenes of her training to play the character of the tortured warrior Senua again.
The success of Hellblade: Senua’s victim won multiple awards for the game and earned its lead actress the 2017 Game Award for best performance. As she states in her video, the actress wondered about her future career after this first episode. The opportunity offered by Ninja Theory to repeat his role was therefore a catalyst not only professionally but also personally because of the challenge this new project presents.
In fact, the developers have the ambition to make this sequel even more realistic, and after discussing it with the game master and co-creator of the studio Tameem Antoniades, the decision was made that Jürgens would direct the fighting sequences himself this time. She made this available for the first work activity recording, simple movements such as walking or secret movements and dubbing. It may therefore be a first in video game history for the central role of a work, The actors are generally used for one or two of these services, but not for all of them who do stunts in Movement absorption usually entrusted to specialists.
This novelty should be directly related to the technical limitations related to motion detection. Because if it is common in the cinema to see actors performing their own stunts for a long time, things have been quite complex in the world of video games, as the requirement to wear a suit and sensors is too restrictive for acting. Today this device has become completely wireless and much lighter and more discreet, while the precision has been vastly improved. So actors can let their talent run wild without compromise.
Melina Jürgens’ training turns out to be long and complex: the actress is not used to sword fighting and suffers from fibromyalgia, a disease that causes severe pain in muscles and joints and permanent fatigue. You have to follow an adapted program to make your movements as realistic as possible. She started off with an internship at the British Action Academy, a stunt school, for an internship that proved particularly difficult.
She then made sure that her physical preparation and hand-to-hand combat training were perfected with her own companion, a professional mixed martial arts trainer. And with the help of CC Smiff, coordinator of the stunts in the Game of Thrones series and the Star Wars post logic, she was able to improve her handling of the sword and define which sequences she could most easily achieve and naturalness.
Eventually, the entire team of 3D animators of the ninja theory also trained in armed combat to have a better idea of what to reproduce for the game’s characters. Melina Juergens had opponents available to train constantly to stay within the walls of the studio, for a fairly satisfactory result that is visible at the very end of the video.
Between the worry both brought the Game design Therefore, thanks to the latest technological possibilities and the realism of its central character, the ninja theory seems to be on the right track Hellblade II a new nugget in the tradition of its predecessor. The game is currently available for Xbox Series X | S and PC planned with an as yet unknown release date.
