Ninja Theory announced their new game, Hellblade, in August of last year, and have since been prototyping and iterating. In January, they earnestly began to work on the game proper, so this seems like a good time to cover what we know of the title so far.
For Hellblade, Ninja Theory don’t have a big budget. As a result, they’ve been forced to be creative and focus their efforts. The fundamental decision was made early on that the game will be a singleplayer-only experience: the developers are making this project all about how much they “can push storytelling and action with one character”, they say.
Action
Mechanically, Hellblade will be a straight-up action game, focusing on player skill, instead of skill trees, equipment, and other such RPG elements that have crept into the genre. Players have but one weapon, a sword, which they’ll have to master. Other things confirmed to be absent from the game are companion AI, QTEs, and platforming.
Senua the protagonist will be able to perform special attacks, but they won’t be like Heavenly Sword‘s Superstyle moves, which Antoniades, the Chief Creative Officer on the project, believes took players “out of the flow of combat”. Nor will there be combo lists—players just have to figure out how to fight; comparing the game to fighting games, they’ve said it handles “closer to Street Fighter than Tekken on that front.”
While there isn’t any way to make the protagonist more powerful, Ninja Theory are tinkering with gameplay involving her senses and abilities. They’ve mentioned that they have been playing with Senua’s perception of the world, and her perception of depth and time in particular. They’ve also spoken about being able to activate modes that focus on speed or strength. However, it’s not known yet which of these experiments will make it into the game.
The developers would prefer that the game have one difficulty mode but, depending on data collected during playtesting, this may change. However, they say the game will be aimed at seasoned players, not newcomers.
Story
The story has two angles, an introspective side, in the form of the protagonist, and an aggressive, primal side, in the form of Viking hordes. The narrative will focus on how these differences interact. There won’t be a big ensemble cast, like there was in Heavenly Sword, but there are characters that are very important to Senua. Antoniades has stressed that they would like to avoid relying on cutscenes too much, so they’re trying to figure out how to integrate story and characters straight into gameplay.
Development
The game is being developed for PCs and the Playstation 4, but it’s unknown at the moment whether it will run at 30 or 60 frames per second.
Ninja Theory want to involve their fans during development, so there are plans to run alpha and beta tests through the PS4. The company also want to support the modding community, but are unsure to what extent they will be able to do so, since that’s new territory for them. And Russian players will welcome this news: a Russian localization has been confirmed.
We should expect a gameplay trailer shortly, as Ninja Theory were aiming to have the combat mechanics set by Spring.
For more on Hellblade‘s development up to this point, check our archives.
We’ll keep you updated.
Sources: 20 Hellblade Questions Answered and Hellblade Twitch Q&A
