00:00Unlike DMC Devil May Cry Hellblade isn't all about the combat. Combat is
00:05important to Hellblade, but at its heart Hellblade is about the journey and the
00:09struggle of Senua on a mythical adventure.
00:17In the famous book Don Quixote the hero sees the world interpreted through
00:21madness, seeing giants instead of windmills and in a similar way when you
00:26played a game you experienced the world through Senua's mind's eye. Senua knows
00:32that there is no going back to how things were. We like to think that we
00:36experienced the world almost like a high-definition photograph as it really
00:41is, but actually a lot of the time what we're doing is using what we already
00:45know to shape and govern what we perceive. You know if we recognize that principle
00:49of how the brain functions it may be that we can begin to understand what happens
00:53in the context of psychosis, because psychosis can't really easily be
00:58understood as just some malfunction of the mind. It's actually a very creative
01:02process where somebody constructs a world.
01:05She's finally arrived in the light of mist and fog.
01:09Place the Northmen call Hell.
01:13In Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice I play a character called Senua who's a Celtic warrior
01:19that goes on a vision quest into the Viking heartland. It's a journey of suffering which
01:23can be quite dark and sometimes brutal.
01:28Everything that Senua sees is shaped by visions from her own past, but also Viking mythology.
01:40At the start of the project we researched as much as we could Viking mythology, arts and culture, but the
01:47more we looked into it, the deeper we went, the more I started to feel like we were out of
01:52our depth.
01:53So we reached out to Dr. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, a leading scholar in the department of Anglo-Saxon,
01:58Norse and Celtic from the University of Cambridge.
02:02We showed the game to Dr. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe and she gave us a lot of very detailed feedback
02:07on Norse art, culture and myth, and we realised we could go a lot deeper on the Norse legend.
02:12She agreed to come on board as consultant and presented a trove of reference material to the team.
02:17I was talking about idols. We don't have a lot of them left. We hear many descriptions of wooden men
02:24or sacrifices on poles.
02:26The more we learned from Elizabeth, the more we wanted to share these myths with you.
02:30So we've created lore stones and scriptures that relate to the Norse legend for you to find throughout Senua's journey.
02:36The secret path along the cliffs will take you to Gellerbru, the bridge that separates the living from the dead.
02:43The roots of the tree of death will take you to new lands where you will face the trials.
02:49Look around in the sea, the drowned, the sick. Here they lie, nodding in the fields and rivers of hell.
02:57I've often been struck by the sense that I get talking to people with psychosis that they do feel themselves
03:04on a quest.
03:05I mean, it may be a figurative one, and in some cases people actually experience a genuine physical quest.
03:11They're looking for someone or something or some answer, and with the feeling that if they can only achieve that,
03:18then there will be a release or a resolution to all of the things that are plaguing them.
03:29We've covered in previous diaries how we've worked with experts, organisations and people with lived experience to simulate voice hearing
03:37and visions.
03:40But another lesser known aspect of psychosis is the ability to see patterns and associations and find meaning in them.
03:51One individual we spoke to told us in vivid terms how this felt for him, where every day felt like
03:56a puzzle,
03:57the clues of which were found in symbols, sounds, colours and visions in the world all around him.
04:06I and my colleagues at Cambridge University have been doing a lot of work exploring how people can use their
04:14prior expectations
04:15to increase their sensitivity to stimuli in their environment.
04:20And one of the very striking things that we've found recently is that people with psychosis or prone to experiencing
04:26psychotic symptoms
04:27may actually be remarkably good at that.
04:31Maybe that under some circumstances they're actually capable of using their prior knowledge
04:36to really enhance the way in which they see patterns and put things together.
04:46The idea of illusion shifts in perception is common in both psychosis and Norse mythology.
04:52So these ideas form the backbone of the puzzle experiences in the game.
04:57But it's not just a gameplay mechanic. Some of it is more experiential.
05:01Perhaps the wind is connected to your movement or just paying attention to something changes the way it sounds.
05:10He's dead.
05:12A good example of where perception changes gameplay is a section of the game where Senua loses her sight
05:18and must rely on sound and the barest of vision to navigate the world.
05:25One of the service users we worked with, she told us about her experience with catatonia
05:30where she felt completely cut off from the world.
05:33So we put a section in the game where Senua can barely see or hear anything
05:37and as a player you have to try and find a way out of it.
05:45When I did the body mocap for that section I tried to perform everything with my eyes shut
05:50so that I can get a sense of fear and anxiety and hopefully you will feel this when you play
05:54the section.
05:58We've now captured hundreds of animations to make Senua believable in both gameplay and cutscenes.
06:03The decision to create a low-cost mocap space in the studio has really paid off
06:08as otherwise the costs would have been prohibitive.
06:11Given the complexities of interwining mythology, backstory, art and gameplay
06:16it took us longer than we expected to get to this point.
06:19But now all of the story scenes have been captured, all of the VO recorded
06:23and the gameplay is fully playable from start to finish.
06:26We now run dailies where representatives from art, story, sound, design and gameplay are all present
06:33and we spend an hour every day reviewing a section of the game
06:36and that very day we implement everything that we can think of to make it a polished experience.
06:42And this is a process we're going to rinse and repeat every single day
06:45until we've finished the whole experience.
06:47She sounds too scared.
06:52The breathing is good, it really gives you a sense.
06:55The breathing is going to be all time even when she's not scared.
06:59We've just completed our alpha milestone for Hellblade Senor of Sacrifice
07:03and that means that for the first time you can now play the Hellblade experience from the beginning
07:07right through to the end.
07:09This however doesn't mean that the game is finished, there's still a huge amount of work to be done
07:13but all of the levels, gameplay and story are now in place.
07:17But it does mean that we can now focus on what really matters
07:20and that's the player experience.
07:28We look forward to bringing you another update soon.
07:52Here we go, 힘 to jobs!
07:57Here we go!
07:59I run our plan to save all of our days
08:00In the beginning, there día we go!
08:15Grazie a tutti.
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