The voices in my head told me to make a Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice thread - by Thirith
Thirith on 11/10/2017 at 18:53
Because I am not interested in recommending a game that isn't for everyone in a way that makes everyone think the game is for them, because that sort of disappointment makes for the most boring conversations.
What I was originally trying to say is this: If you value gameplay above all else, this may not appeal. Perhaps I didn't put it very well, but I think it's a valid statement.
Anyway, shouldn't we rather talk about the game?
henke on 5/7/2018 at 18:20
I'm playing this now! Just did the part where you're stumbling around in the darkness. Y'know I was gonna make a horror game just like that, where you mainly had to rely on sound for navigation. I even have a prototype of it. "Shadow of the Blemmye" I was gonna call it!
Anyway, when Hellblade is not somehow stealing my great videogame ideas, it's a very good game! :thumb:
Pyrian on 5/7/2018 at 18:54
And when it is stealing your ideas, not so much? :cheeky: ;)
Mr.Duck on 6/7/2018 at 05:42
The only thing Hellblade stole is my heart...
...and that's fine by me.
henke on 6/7/2018 at 18:36
Quote Posted by Pyrian
And when it
is stealing your ideas, not so much? :cheeky: ;)
No actually that bit, and the other bits
just before and after you get your new sword, were the highpoint of the game.
Just finished it.
Quote Posted by Thirith
I finished
Hellblade and would definitely recommend it to anyone who can forgive a game for being mediocre
as a game if it does interesting things with mood, atmosphere and storytelling. Having said that, I'd say that I admire
Hellblade more than I like it. As the credits rolled, I felt exhausted more than anything, and while that is an interesting and unusual feeling for a game to evoke, I'm not quite sure what I'll take away from the experience.
Yeah, same. Regarding the ending: the reveal of what happened to
her mother and what her childhood was like put a lot of things into focus, but the whole end scene with Senua and Hela was a bit muddled and confusing. Not entirely sure what happened there, except I guess a sequel set-up?Good game overall though.
Sulphur on 6/7/2018 at 19:42
Definitely not a sequel hook, henke. Which part was confusing? My take is it's saying that Hela was really a manifestation of Senua's grief and inability to accept Dillion's death. The only way to defeat death is to accept it; Senua's long, arduous journey is about coming to terms with that in the end, and I think it's fair to say with her psychosis it's even harder to do than with someone neurotypical. The final scene simply meant that Senua's battle with herself doesn't end - the voices will always be there, because this is not a condition you can cure by simply willing it away. She'll always have to find the strength and a measure of peace within herself to quiet them. It's the one thing that made me nod my head and go, 'Yes, maybe they really do get it after all.'
henke on 7/7/2018 at 06:45
Ah yeah, I watched a bit of the featurette last night and started coming to the same conclusion.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Definitely not a sequel hook, henke.
What about the part where she looks straight into the camera and says
(https://youtu.be/V2cR3ZLJNWY?t=1994) "Follow us, we have another story to tell"?
Sulphur on 7/7/2018 at 07:22
Ah, didn't remember that bit, thought you meant the voices resurfacing. I suppose so, but it'd be in poor taste to have Senua in a sequel if they plan on it, at the very least.
Nameless Voice on 14/7/2018 at 13:27
Just finished this too. I agree with what others have said - great atmosphere and visuals, mediocre gameplay that started to get tedious.
I also found the ending very disappointing, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of story.
(Major spoilers below)
First of all, from a gameplay perspective:
Before the final battle, you have to repeat a shadow copy of every fight in the game, which is fine enough as a precursor to the main finale sequence, but the next part just has you fighting a near-infinite set of standard enemies, while you are unable to actually die. That fight was very long and just got incredibly tedious before it finally ended. As the final moment in the game, it was a complete anticlimax.
Then, the final cutscene afterwards:
Senua has fought through a massive epic hero's journey, carefully constructed so that it could be either real, or a battle all inside her head, or a mixture of the two (that Helheim is real, but shapes itself around her own fears and psychosis). She overcomes every challenge and preservers through sheer strength of will, managing with difficulty to overcome her fears and to slowly remember the things in her life which made her the way she is. Just before the finale, she remembers what happens to her mother, and it's set up as though she's going to have a chance to confront the darkness inside her which was placed there by her father, that overcoming the hatred and fear that he put inside her would be the final battle and, while it wouldn't cure her of her problems, would at least help her not to see herself as cursed.
Instead, she gets to the final confrontation with Hela and ... just gives up and lets herself die.
It's even more anticlimatic than the gameplay side of things. And epic hero's journey where the hero just gives up at the final hurdle.
Somehow, letting herself die represents letting the part of her that can't let go of Dillion die, but the whole thing is just vague, confusing, and feels like a waste of a perfectly good story.
Sulphur on 14/7/2018 at 13:54
I think you might have been expecting something from the outset that the game wasn't ever pivoting towards. It's not an epic hero's journey, or at least it doesn't try to hew to that particular template (which they already followed and subverted a bit in Enslaved). The story starts with loss, which in itself means there's a somewhat different goal than growth or overcoming external adversity.