Senua has returned from the hand of Ninja Theory, and the first victim for her new arrival is the uncanny valley of video games. No gameplay of the game. Without a scene and without a preview of its plot. Just the banshee of the Viking in front of the viewer for just over a minute and nothing more. Said like this, it might seem like a small thing, but those seconds are enough to understand that facial animations in video games they have just entered a whole new stage.
A wrong minute counting, to be fair, since a few seconds of the logo are scratched. But once the threshold is crossed, you can see the creation process for this demonstration of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and what has already been shown takes on a new value from there: the expressiveness achieved is not a cinematic made through a long process , but we are before animation generated in real time.
Taking advantage of the context of GDC 2023, during the Unreal Engine panel, called State of Unreal, Ninja Theory has shown the technology that is being used to shape Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the sequel to the studio’s most personal and emotional work. Shown the degree of realism that is aspired to in the face of this Xbox Game Studios game.
Now, Senua’s dialogue has a double purpose. On the one hand, and as we already mentioned, to show what can be achieved with Unreal Engine 5, the new flagship of Epic Games in regards to game engines. On the other, and this interests us to the same extent, putting on the table a small sample of what we can expect for the next big project from Cambridge.
And we are not going to deny it, the result has left us completely amazed.
The Hellblade sequel Senua’s Sacrifice makes a very rare reappearance, but its claims are huge. For now, he aspires to establish that leap in quality that we have been asking for for too long from ninth-generation systems, and in the process he postulates himself as one of the new banners for what we should expect from video games from now to the next few years. Of course, remembering that to definitively break down the limits between video games and reality, cutting-edge technology is not only needed.
In any case, although Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II It does not have a release date yet, it is expected to come to Xbox Series X / S, PC and Xbox cloud gaming. And it is not the only project in the studio’s hands: Ninja Theory is preparing its own horror experience called PROJECT MARA.
