aThe stench of rotting corpses fills the air, the screams of my butchered kinsmen ring out, and my lips begin to tremble. “You let them die,” a blaming voice in my head says, as I crawl hopelessly towards the lifeless corpses. “Save them!” another thought pleads. But their killer saw me. I tremblingly raised my sword as he drew his blood-stained blade. “You?!” I scold myself in my mind. “Fight!” they? you weak! You will die here.
To say Hellblade II is stressful would be an understatement. A blend of bloody Norse epic and terrifyingly realistic depictions of people living with mental illness, this film confuses historical horror with the snarling demons that live inside our heads. In this unlikely sequel to Senua’s nightmarish journey through Helheim, our hapless heroine is tied up on a slave ship in Iceland. She is torn from her native Orkney by Norse raiders and washed ashore by a violent storm. As her captive kin die, she is left alone in her hostile 10th century Iceland.
If developer Ninja Theory was worried it might lose its edge under new owners, Microsoft is… well. With fly-infested entrails staining the floors of village huts and snarling ghouls stalking blackened caverns, Hellblade II’s uncompromising violence suggests that expanded budgets have only enabled its creators to reach new levels of brutality.
Like its predecessor, headphones are essential to the experience. After her lover is murdered in 2017’s Hellblade, a grieving Senua interprets her resulting psychosis as an ancient curse, calling the cacophony of her inner narrator the “Furies”. ” is called. Hellblade II uses the same binaural audio technology to bring Senua’s psychosis to life, creating an enveloping effect of fear as her increasingly frantic voice rings menacingly in her ears.
Melina Jurgens gives a great performance as Senua, and the voices fighting inside her head are brought to eerily life by actors Helen Goren and Abi Greenland. However, the fear in Hellblade II is not just about the shadows in her heart. As you wander across the stunningly painted landscape of Iceland, across its vast Nordic plains and snow-capped peaks, you quickly discover that reality can be just as frightening as Senua’s illusions. Ninja Theory’s work evokes the same disturbing blend of folklore and history as Robert Eggers’s 2022 Viking film The Northman.
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Senua is no longer alone on her perilous journey. The suitably damaged characters help add to the sense of scale of this ambitious story. As she battles everything from Vikings to giants to the undead, the line between the real world and Senua’s psychosis becomes blurred. An unsettling cave section heightens the psychological horror to almost unbearable levels.
Like Death Stranding, Hellblade II uses Iceland’s otherworldly rock formations to bring surrealist fiction to life, combining lifelike photogrammetry with widescreen presentation and cinematic grain. It’s the most visually stunning game of this console generation yet. I don’t usually mess around with Photo mode, the pointless in-game equivalent of Instagram, but it’s worth pausing the pathetic act of lining up nice, pretty shots of the horizon like some twisted A-level photo. I couldn’t help it. allocation.
The first game’s wacky, surreal puzzle sections also make a welcome return, regularly ruining scripted cinematic moments by dragging poor Senua kicking and screaming into a nightmare. These environments warp and bend before your eyes like a ’00s Tool music video, a chorus of conflicting hints at the Furies combining into a stress-inducing symphony. Hellblade II’s emphasis on cinematic immersion makes that anxiety even greater. There are no button prompts, health bars or ability meters to guide you as you dodge sword strikes and tumble out of reach of demonic claws; just Senua, with her growing scars and sullen expression.
Video games have long been praised for their ability to put players in the shoes of their characters, and Hellblade II uses that interactivity to create a truly challenging sense of empathy. Anyone living with anxiety is used to having an unreliable narrator whispering in their ear, but it’s rare to experience such constant and deliberate misdirection in a game. I’m not mentally ill, but I find it incredibly cathartic to hear this character’s innermost insecurities and insecurities play out in real time.
Hellblade II, a big-budget sequel to a PTSD-themed arthouse game, is 2024’s most unexpected blockbuster. But from its nerve-wracking beginning to its bold, bloody climax, it’s an emotional and terrifying triumph. Short and tightly written, it doesn’t really resemble any other video game, but where countless titles offer hours of loot-earning and leveling up, Hellblade II delivers a frighteningly deep experience.
There’s kindness woven into the brutality, suggesting that even the world’s biggest monsters were once human. In increasingly divided times, this simple message about choosing empathy over hate is especially poignant. With corporate giants shuttering BAFTA-winning studios, games like Hellblade II are to be cherished; who knows how many more intelligent blockbusters like this one our risk-averse industry will be able to churn out?
Source: www.theguardian.com
