Video Game Review: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017)

The greatest battles are fought from within . . .

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Format: PS4/Windows PC (Reviewed on PS4)
Publisher: Ninja Theory
Developer: Ninja Theory

What is it: A dark fantasy action-adventure game set in the 8th Century. Players control Senua, a young Pict warrior woman on a journey to free the soul of her dead lover Dillion. Senua suffers from deep psychosis, a condition she has struggled with all her life, and now believes she is journeying into Helheim to confront the goddess Hela. Players guide Senua along a linear story that involves puzzle-solving and combat to proceed, constantly dealing with (and sometimes battling against) Senua's psychosis that impacts everything she perceives and does . . .

Review: Every now and then a video game comes along that has something truly original about it, which is becoming a rare thing these days. Hellblade is one such game, and it's been on my radar for some time: it was released in August last year, but I finally picked it up last month and I'm glad I did. It's the first game to feature mental illness - in this case specifically psychosis - and have it play a central role in everything the player experiences. Senua is utterly consumed by the condition, which has been fuelled by her grief at finding her village slaughtered by Vikings and her lover brutally sacrificed, and it impacts everything she sees and hears, and thus what the player sees and hears. It's an experience like nothing I've played before and it's truly remarkable.

Now this is still a video game. It's a fairly short one (around 8-10 hours of gameplay, which is reflected in its price) and it's played from a third-person perspective, with players guiding Senua along her journey through sections that involve exploration and puzzle-solving, interspersed with sections of combat. In the puzzle-solving areas Senua will find her way blocked by doors sealed with glowing runes, or paths seemingly broken or blocked by rubble, and players must use Senua's "focus" ability - which represents her fractured psyche - to seek out either runes hidden in the environment around her or to shift the blocked paths into passable ones, and the player receives visual and audio cues when they're in the right area. While not particularly difficult, some of the solutions aren't immediately obvious and it's an interesting take on puzzle-solving that fits with the overall theme of the game. The combat, unfortunately, is less effective: while the controls are fine (Senua draws her sword and has both light and heavy attacks, can dodge, parry and use a melee attack to stun) and the shadowy enemies she fights are varied and visually interesting, the game all too often surrounds her with opponents in these sections meaning you frequently get hit from behind by enemies that you can't see, leaving you open to being struck by another one from the front. It can get quite frustrating.

While some of the areas of the game are split into sections that can tackled in any order the player chooses, the game follows a linear path from beginning to end. A what a beautiful journey it is - the game features some truly incredible graphics and motion capture of an actress, amongst the best I've seen on a console, and PC players enjoy an even better experience. Some of the pictures you see here are screenshots I've captured with my own PS4 (which is a standard one, not the more powerful Pro) and I was blown away by the quality. Senua's journey takes her through forests and caves, through razed villages, across an ocean and finally into the depths of Helheim and to Hela's sanctum itself. There's a strong mythological element to the story and the presentation of the environments, and when you combine this with how Senua's psychosis effects both the visuals and the audio, which I'll talk about next, it makes for a truly remarkable experience.

While creating the game, the developers Ninja Theory worked with several psychologists and prominent experts in the field of psychosis, along with a group of people who have/continue to suffer from the condition, to ensure that the depiction of it in the game is realistic. Some people will find the game unsettling because of this, and this has been done deliberately, as the developers didn't want to water down this element of the game and I commend them for it. As well as the aforementioned "focus" ability Senua has, the player is bombarded with what I can only describe as a visual and audio assault as you play through it, which represents the continued deterioration of Senua's mental state: the environment around you is frequently disturbed by flashes of images and sounds representing both dark hallucinations and Senua's memories of being isolated and attacked for her condition; brief cut-scenes will sometimes interject themselves without any warning, and there are several clever visual effects used that distort the environment around her to create feelings of isolation and claustrophobia.

The most effective element of this, though, are the Furies. Senua hears several female voices inside her head (a condition of psychosis known as voice hearing) that, while not constantly talking, appear frequently enough to remind you that they're always there and give you an impression of just how maddening it must be to suffer from the condition and hear voices in your head all the time. The voices alternate between being cruel and mocking (verbally abusing Senua and criticising her/the player for her choices), to supportive and reassuring (offering encouragement and hints, or warning when you're about to be attacked). The voices bicker amongst each other, are sometimes joined by Senua's own internal voice, and Senua sometimes verbally addresses them - including moments when she turns and speaks directly to the camera, implying that you the player are one of the many voices in her head. If you play the game with a surround sound system or 3D headphones the voices appear from all sides and distances, and they add another incredibly effective layer to the presentation.

Senua is performed by Melina Juergens. Juergens, who has never acted before, works as a video editor for developers Ninja Theory and they initially used her as a stand-in while testing their equipment, but they quickly realised they'd found their actress. Juergens was fully motion-captured so both the physical and vocal performance is provided by her, as well as Senua being physically modelled on her, and it's a phenomenal performance - the emotional and physical ranges she goes to in the depiction of Senua's journey and her mental state are nothing short of astonishing. She won an award for Best Performance at The Game Awards 2017 for the role, and was only beaten to the same award at the Golden Joysticks by Ashly Burch for her performance as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn. She's truly impressive.

 

Some players will find Hellblade too unsettling to play due to the frank and incredibly effective depiction of psychosis. I urge you to give this a go though - it's a remarkably beautiful and original experience that has one of the best acting performances I've seen in a game.

 

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

A truly original, beautiful but harrowing game that takes a fantastical storyline and presents it through a realistic lens of what its like to suffer from psychosis. While the combat sections can sometimes be frustrating, it doesn't spoil a unique experience that features some of the best graphics and motion capture I've seen in a game, along with a truly astonishing performance from actress Melina Juergens. A game that everyone should play.