There have been quite a few “next-gen moments” this generation of consoles – those dazzling, technical revelations when you see a game do things that were unthinkable on previous hardware. You can make a case for it Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart‘s lightning-fast loading or Starfield‘S Potato physicsbut there have been relatively few cases in which one could observe the future in real time.
There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, console supply issues and pandemic-related development delays led to an unusually long cross-generation phase. Until last year, most games were released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and their successors. Another reason is that Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of Epic Games’ ubiquitous graphics engine, has lagged somewhat behind the new generation of consoles, and large-scale UE5 productions have been slow to come to market, with a few exceptions.
For all of these reasons, I wasn’t expecting to experience a next-gen moment when I traveled to Cambridge, UK to visit and play at the Ninja Theory studio Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. But I got one. It’s an astonishingly lifelike narrative action game that leverages UE5’s technology, Microsoft’s resources (the company owns Ninja Theory), and the unique processes of a small team of technical artists to create something that’s simultaneously grounded and vividly hyperreal. There is nothing like it.
This won’t be a complete surprise if you played in 2017 Hellblade: Senua’s victim. Both Hellblade games combine horrific, quasi-mythological action with a realistic approach to the psychology of their heroine Senua, an 8th-century Celtic warrior with psychosis. Both games have a photorealistic visual style with a heavy emphasis on performance capture – an area Ninja Theory has specialized in since working with Andy Serkis on his 2007 action game Heavenly Sword.
However, a lot has changed for Ninja Theory since 2017. In 2018 the studio was acquired by Microsoft. It hasn’t grown much since then – with 100 people, about 80 of whom are working Hellblade 2
One would expect a dedication to the work from any game led by three technical artists, but that still wouldn’t prepare you for the extraordinary lengths Ninja Theory goes to in its pursuit of realism. In Hellblade 2Senua travels to Iceland in search of Norse slave traders who are decimating her community in the northern British Isles. When the press toured the studio, Attwell explained that the route of their real-world adventure had been planned and the locations had been captured using a mix of satellite imagery, drone footage, procedural generation and photogrammetry. The team spent weeks on location in Iceland, studying the landscape, photographing rocks and piloting drones. They also studied construction techniques of the time and constructed doors virtually from 3D scanned wooden boards rather than modeling them. They even made their own rough wood carvings and scanned them.
Dan Crossland, character art director, showed us real costumes that were made to fit the actors using contemporary techniques by a London-based costume designer and then scanned by the studio. Behind Crossland’s desk stood a mannequin covered in mesh, putty, feathers, and deconstructed scraps of fabric—a creepy, hand-sculpted prototype of an enemy.
Over in the combat team section, lead action designer Benoit Macon, a very tall and exuberant Frenchman, explained that the game’s combat sequences are not traditionally animated, but rather 100% mo-capped. I watched stunt professionals demonstrate their finishing moves on the performance capture stage while animation director Guy Midgley filmed them up close and handheld using a phone in a lightweight rig.
The playable results of this entirely mo-cap based combat system are quite unique. Fight in Hellblade 2 is one on one, slow and very brutal. In the combat scenes of the demo I played – which also featured pattern recognition puzzles and some atmospheric, grueling traversals – there’s a heightened sense of menace as Senua faces huge and aggressive enemies and the characters stand out from the unusually tight camera angles. This may not be the over-the-top fight DmC: Devil May Cry
In a small, soundproof studio on the top floor, Garcia worked with the two voice actors who played the Furies. This is how Senua thinks about the voices in her head that constantly comment on what is happening and her state of mind. (As with the first game, screenwriter Lara Derham worked with psychology professor Paul Fletcher and with people who have experienced psychosis to depict the effects of the condition.) The actors prowled around a binaural microphone – essentially a mannequin head with microphones as Ears – hissing and murmuring their lines as if they were addressing Senua herself. Garcia, a Spaniard with an infectious sense of wonder, is called a “genius” by his colleagues. Its growling, chattering soundscapes are players’ primary entry point into Senua’s state of mind, and they’re just as overwhelming today as they were in 2017.
The extent to which Ninja Theory will anchor this digital video game in physical reality may seem otherworldly or even contradictory, but the proof is in the game. The game I played on Xbox Series But beyond that, Hellblade 2 has a tactile immediacy that seems to work on an almost subconscious level. Ninja Theory’s artists strive for an emotional connection with the player, which they believe can only occur if the player thinks what they are seeing is real.
“I think the human spirit does [a thing where] You think you know what something looks like, but then when you look at what the thing is, it’s actually a lot more messy. It’s not quite the same as what you imagine in your head,” Slater-Tunstill said. “If you just model the head, the environment, the characters or whatever, some of that nature, some of that chaos is lost.”
Attwell said that Unreal Engine 5 made this realistic approach easier to implement, both because of the accuracy offered by the engine’s Nanite geometry system and because “the time between scanning the thing and putting it into the level has been drastically reduced.” “You can spend this time doing fine work.”
“You can think more about the composition,” agreed Slater-Tunstill. “And with the kind of lighting volumes we can do now, everything fits in a lot better. It’s more believable.”
Overall, the Ninja Theory team feels that UE5 has removed many hurdles for video game creators and that gamers are just starting to see the results. “It feels like the graphical leap we’ve made with this…we’re on the path we wanted,” Attwell said.
You just have to take a look Hellblade 2 in short, to understand that you are experiencing the next evolution of gaming technology. However, it’s not just the engine – there are a number of factors that need to be aligned Hellblade 2 a technical showcase. For one thing, the game design is extremely focused. This isn’t a wild open-world simulation; It is a linear, narrative action game. As an Xbox first-party studio, Ninja Theory has the luxury of building for fewer formats. He was also given time to experiment. When you take a tour of the studio, you can see that Microsoft’s investment in Ninja Theory makes perfect sense. The tech giant has acquired not only a boutique developer, but also a research and development unit that explores the technical and artistic limits of a particular game development process.
The result is a game with an unusual level of focus. Hellblade 2 won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste, with its slow pace, deliberate input, and well-thought-out, cinematic presentation. It struck me as a modern successor to something like the 1983 interactive animation Dragon’s Den. As intense and dramatic as the section I played was, it remains to be seen whether the game’s story – a more outward-looking journey for a more mentally balanced Senua – can connect as deeply as it does Hellbladeis a journey into their darkest fears. But there is no doubt about the craftsmanship on display or the immersive feel of it Present This game has. It may be a sequel, but it feels like the start of something – as a true next-gen experience should.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will be released on Windows PC and Xbox Series X on May 21st.