- 3 months ago
Haunting, confrontational, and deeply cathartic all at once, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is a breathtaking achievement in video game art. Ninja Theory dives headfirst into its heavy themes, embracing them with a finely tuned empathy and an even sharper creative edge this time around. The result is an unforgettable narrative adventure that's hard to watch but even harder to turn away from.
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GamingTranscript
00:00So Jasmine is playing Senua Saga Hellblade 2 for us and is reviewing it for us.
00:03Give me like in one sentence how you found playing it.
00:07Uhhhhhhhhh...
00:09I mean...
00:11That... That's a little...
00:13It's probably the most deeply affecting game I've played in forever.
00:17Okay.
00:18You know...
00:22It's not a fun game, but it's an important game.
00:25But this one just takes what made the first one so deeply emotional and so deeply powerful
00:33and amps it up by like 10,000.
00:35It has actual story this time that makes it all feel more like a narrative experience
00:40than just a purely metaphorical...
00:42Yeah.
00:42Like if the first Hellblade...
00:44If the first Hellblade is like a character study of Senua,
00:48then Hellblade 2 is like taking that character and giving her a story.
00:51And it's a story of humanity and of like letting go
00:55and becoming a full person.
00:57Yeah.
00:57But Hellblade 2 is her coming out the other end.
01:01She's still got these problems, but she's using them as assets.
01:04And they're actually helping her become a better fighter.
01:07It helps her understand the world and see it from this way that no one else can see it.
01:12And all of that feeds into this broader narrative that's bigger than her, much bigger than she is.
01:17Whereas before, she was like the main character in her own sort of like psychological drama.
01:25It was this horrible, again, very painful to watch, painful to play experience.
01:30But this one is still extremely confrontational, emotional, not what I would call fun, but also incredibly cathartic.
01:41Like I cried about seven times while playing it, which tells you everything.
01:46But yeah, it's wow.
01:48There's been a really big step up in this game.
01:51They've taken a lot longer to make it.
01:52They've put a lot more into it.
01:54There's a lot more mechanics.
01:55How has it changed from the previous game, people coming from the previous game?
01:58I think, of course, from the first thing that you'll notice is that the binaural audio
02:05design is just so much more, it's so much more refined.
02:19It really feels like when you close your eyes, you just feel like there are people just talking
02:23behind you all the time, the furies.
02:25It has that ASMR kind of quality.
02:28And for me, I don't really respond well to ASMR.
02:30It kind of makes my back hurt in a way and it makes my lower back really hurt.
02:35So I had to turn it down a little bit, but you really should only play this game with headphones
02:40because it puts you...
02:42One core tenant of it is that it really wants to immerse you in this world and in this story.
02:46And it does that in a big way through the audio design, but also through its incredible graphics.
02:53I believe that all of the animations that we see in the game,
02:57they've been scanned from real people, real costumes, real actors.
03:01And if you look at the footage, it just looks like a movie.
03:04Yeah.
03:04And that kind of feeds into this really...
03:08You can almost feel the grit of the rocks beneath your feet.
03:12You can almost smell the blood in the air.
03:18It's such a deeply visceral experience.
03:21And that's all to do with like igniting you from like a sensory level.
03:24Yeah.
03:25Not only through like being an action game.
03:27Like it's again, it is at times it will feel like more of like a horror walking sim.
03:32Yeah.
03:33But the horror is so much more pronounced this time around and it feeds into like you can again,
03:39it's something that you experience not with your eyes, but with like your mind, with your ears.
03:43It puts chills up your spine.
03:46Yeah.
03:46So it's more of an...
03:47We're getting into that realm of experiential video games.
03:51Mm-hmm.
03:51And it is that thing of like, this is something that you have to go into eyes open,
03:55and it's not necessarily going to be a fun time, but it'll be a time that you remember.
03:59By fun, by like fun, I mean like our like...
04:01When I say fun, when you and I say fun, we're like, oh yeah, you know, like we have this power fantasy.
04:07Yeah.
04:07It's like we're feeling big and strong.
04:09We're going into this amazing world.
04:11Yeah, you're leaving your life behind to become a big, strong person.
04:15Yeah.
04:15You're not a big, strong person in Senua's Saga.
04:18You are a strong person because you've been through stuff.
04:21You are a traumatized, deeply traumatized person.
04:24But still powerful and still strong.
04:25Yes.
04:26But it's not the same kind of power fantasy.
04:28I guess it's the power fantasy of being like, you know what?
04:31I have a lot of baggage, but that's not going to stop me going to Iceland to avenge my dead family.
04:36Yeah.
04:36That's the power fantasy of this game.
04:38Yeah.
04:38Which is a very specific one, mind.
04:40But again, it's it's when I say that it's not fun.
04:43It's not like you like you won't be there laughing away.
04:46There's not one moment in this that will make you smile, but it will make you go, oh, my God, I feel that.
04:54And I feel like I'm being sort of again, like almost interrogated.
05:00But there are these moments where like this really intense darkness gives way to the most beautiful moments of calm and peace and, you know, like you'll have one really scary moment where you're like trapped in like a little tight, confined space in a cave and you're in the dark and the furies all around you.
05:18They're like shouting at you just to leave and get out.
05:21And it's really chaotic and frenetic.
05:23And then you can just breathe.
05:25And you're in this like golden field bathed with light.
05:29And you've come out the tunnel, the literal tunnel, and you and you just walk around and the game is like, oh, like you can be safe here.
05:36You can relax here.
05:37It takes care of your mental health at the same time as like showing you this very deep journey through someone else's ninja theory.
05:46They really wanted to lean into the focus of mental health and to make this game.
05:51They were interviewing and they worked with people who actually experienced psychosis in real life.
05:55Again, I think that's why they've taken steps to also take care of the player.
05:59And there is this feeling of protection and aftercare and it doesn't want to, it doesn't want to traumatize the player.
06:07It wants you to sort of understand how you might move through this, like this, again, this process.
06:15The first game was like the grief process.
06:17And this is kind of an extension of that, but also looking at how you can look after yourself even in the darkest of times.
06:24With that in mind, then how much of this game, like how scary is this game?
06:29If people will recommend, if you were going to recommend it to somebody, because I understand that some people would look at this and go, that's too scary for me.
06:34That's too much.
06:34It is much scarier than the first game.
06:37Okay.
06:37I would say much scarier.
06:39That's at first blush.
06:41That's when you first see it.
06:42It's scarier.
06:43The atmosphere is a lot more gritty.
06:45It's a lot.
06:45The audio design is very harrowing.
06:47You hear people crying, people choking on their own blood.
06:50It's very, yeah, it's, it's, there's a lot to it that is very like texturally rich and deliberately off-putting.
06:57If someone experiences extreme anxiety around that kind of thing, I wouldn't play this game.
07:02Okay.
07:02Or at least I would play it through speakers, not with the, I think really the headset is what makes it feel so close to the bone, you know?
07:11Yeah, fair.
07:11When it's literally in your ears and you can hear things just behind you, but they're not really there.
07:16Even if you're scared of horror games, I would play it.
07:19Okay.
07:19Because you can play it on an easy setting.
07:21There is still action, but you can adjust the difficulty level of the combat, like with the first game.
07:26Okay.
07:26I think there's.
07:27So if you are in it just for the story.
07:29Yeah.
07:29And the action side of it doesn't bother you that much, you can tweak it.
07:32Yeah.
07:32And the action, like in the first game, the action is more like short and nasty is what I describe it as.
07:39Like it comes out of nowhere, it's brutal, but it's about three minutes.
07:42And then you're walking around, you're, you're looking at puzzles.
07:45The puzzles are a lot more refined this time around.
07:49There's a lot more variety with the puzzles and how you, it's, it's not like only looking at illusions or sigils in the environment.
07:57But as you play it, like I said before, there are moments that are, there's peaks and troughs.
08:02It's, it's, it's not like a relentless emotional onslaught.
08:05Everything you've said so far has been great, positive.
08:08Is there anything that does trip it up?
08:09You know, nothing is perfect.
08:11There was one chapter that felt incredibly long compared to the other ones.
08:15Um, it just, in terms of pacing, that kind of threw me.
08:18How long did it take you to finish?
08:19About nine hours.
08:21Right.
08:21Okay.
08:21So it's pretty, it's pretty short and sweet.
08:23Doesn't overstay its welcome too much.
08:25So with all that in mind, what score have you given it?
08:28Five out of five.
08:29Um, wow.
08:30Yeah.
08:31Yeah.
08:31Five out of five.
08:32And I'll tell you why.
08:33I think, again, there is nothing that is doing what, what this game is doing.
08:37Ninja Theory has broken new ground, not only in terms of its technology, but also in terms of the stories that it's able to tell with this technology.
08:45It is something that I will never forget.
08:49It's potentially, you know, going to alter how we talk about mental health in video games from now on.
08:55It's doing something that is both really, it's a massive risk to tackle something so thematically intense, but it does it with such a level of empathy and understanding.
09:07But also with creativity, it takes something that we see as a big weakness and it becomes her biggest strength.
09:14And I think both in terms of like a metaphor, but also from like a practical sense of like making a game, you can't really get much more impressive than that.
09:22And this is what perfect score games, five out of five, tens out of tens, they should be pushing the envelope.
09:27Like, don't get me wrong.
09:28I love the next bullet sponge and just like shooting big glowy things or whatever.
09:32But at the end of the day, video games are an art form.
09:34And this is the kind of thing that we need more of.
09:36Precisely.
09:37So, yeah, like I think this is the kind of thing where it should be absolutely recognized.
09:40And the fact that it's on Xbox Games Pass and whoever's got a subscription to that, it's not free.
09:44You have to pay for the Games Pass.
09:45But like you get so many great few games.
09:46The fact that people can play this amazing, genre-defining, pushing the edges of what video games are, it's just fantastic.
09:53The fact that on day one, so many people can play this.
09:55And actually, if you're listening to this right now, then it'll be on Game Pass right now.
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