The 14th British Academy Games Awards were handed out this week and, while the awards themselves may be a bit disconnected from where the rest of us in Games Proper see the industry, they are a good measurement of how The Establishment sees interactive entertainment at this point. To that end, it is both shocking and a bit exciting to see the awards highlight a game that was overwhelmingly overlooked this year, and which deserved more celebration than it has received to this point. I'm speaking about Ninja Theory's dark adventure fantasy game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and its five BAFTA wins: Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, British Game, Games Beyond Entertainment and Melina Juergens took the Performance category for her role as Senua.
]]>Three of Capcom's Devil May Cries are getting a treatment from Nurse Definition, in fact - 2001's first game, 2003's somewhat disliked Devil May Cry 2, and 2006's special edition of Devil May Cry 3. I.e., the first of four hacky-slashy games to star the original, silver-haired, which way to to the Final Fantasy VII cosplay contest Dante, as opposed to the shorter- and darker-haired finger-flipping version from Hellblade studio Team Ninja's 2013 DmC. They're getting high-def and sixty frames treatment in a $30 triple-pack next May.
]]>The voices won’t stop. They’re whispering in my ear, gnawing at my skull from all angles. “Turn back”, one says. “They’re watching you”. “She falls for their tricks every time,” says another, cackling while Senua screams. More than once during Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice [official site] I had to fight the urge to rip the headphones from my ears. As a portrayal of how harrowing it is to live with psychosis it undoubtedly succeeds, and it uses Senua’s illness as a route into an excellent eight-hour story about love and loss. But, sometimes, especially in its combat segments, it’s also difficult to play for the wrong reasons.
]]>Developer Ninja Theory has a lofty goal for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice [official site]: to make a hack-and-slash game that's all about mental health. They're the folk that made DmC: Devil May Cry and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (they like a colon, eh?), so you can expect an inordinate amount of stabbing. But the real focus is main character Senua's struggle with psychosis, depression, and hallucinations.
That focus is clear from the latest trailer. Senua's facial expressions are genuinely harrowing and the deep voiceover narrating Senua's torment is chilling (although I had to jack my speakers right up to figure out what it was saying). The trailer also draws clear parallels between the overarching story of Senua searching for the soul of a dead lover and her inner plight – as in, she's fighting both inner and external demons.
]]>Ninja Theory must have thought the old title really wasn't cutting it, and I can't really blame them for it. Hellblade does sound like a Ninja Theory game, but it didn't reflect the new direction they were going for with this one.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice [official site] should more accurately reflect the two souls of their work-in-progress, pairing their typical hack-and-slash action with an uncommon attention spent on accurate portrayal and characterization of mental health issues. The new trailers lets us listen in on Senua's inner monologue.
]]>A Celtic warrior fighting monsters with her sword is what I'd expect in the E3 trailer for Ninja Theory's Hellblade [official site] and yup, it sure has those. A little more surprising is an accompanying video about the character's struggles with psychosis, depression, anxiety, and hallucinations, with a professor University of Cambridge talking about his work consulting on the game. Huh! So sure, it is about slaying monsters, but it seems they're trying to sensitively handle a terrible illness. While still getting to slay monsters, obvs.
]]>While the possibility of a second dose of delicious devil tears seems unlikely, we can at least console ourselves with the knowledge that Ninja Theory's next release, Hellblade, will be coming to PC. The studio once teased a follow-up to their first game, Heavenly Sword, but the sequel never appeared. Could a Hellblade be from the same fiction as a Heavenly Sword? Leading theologians say YES. There's a video below but nobody runs up the side of a building that is also a demon while attacking the physical manifestation of jazz with a gun-whip so I'm not sure you should bother watching it.
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