If Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice had ended up in the hands of a big publisher, the heroine of the game would certainly not be what she is today. Because if this Celtic warrior knows how to handle the sword perfectly, it is actually her weaknesses more than her strength that make her interesting. Senua is indeed suffering from psychotic disorders, which make her hear voices and make her confuse the real and the imaginary. This statement directly serves the gameplay and the whole gaming experience of Hellblade. The most obvious point concerns the presence of different voices in Senua's head. We also strongly advise you to play with headphones, in order to make the most of their precise placement. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes hostile, they comment on the action just as much as they influence it and greatly contribute to creating a heavy and paranoid atmosphere.
JOURNEY TO THE END OF HELL!
The developers' supreme skill consists in distilling gameplay clues through these voices at times, without ever breaking the immersion or the coherence of the whole. Similarly, the game abstains from any interface elements at all, so that Senua and the player are truly one. And the recipe works perfectly! You bond with the heroine far more than you would a standard video game character, instantly embrace all of her mental issues, and make her desperate quest our own. Far from taking part in any down-to-earth battle, the Celtic warrior goes to Helheim, the equivalent of hell in Norse mythology, in order to free the soul of Dillion, the lost loved one. This inner journey to the end of hell gives the player the opportunity to cross landscapes as splendid as they are desolate. Dark, dirty and violent, the artistic direction is no less sublime, and it is further heightened by the use of many graphic filters, some of which are significant in relation to the heroine's illness (a short video documentary delivered with the game will detail this once you have completed the adventure).
If Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice had ended up in the hands of a big publisher, the heroine of the game would certainly not be what she is today.
As for those who swear only by the technical aspect of things, they will have something to be amazed by the perfection of the motion capture, which is here at the service of the expression of the faces and therefore of the emotion. Senua is larger than life, so much so that it is difficult to differentiate the characters generated by the machine from those who are simply filmed and appear during certain cutscenes. Moreover, the acting of the various actors is absolutely irreproachable, while the soundtrack also offers us some high quality passages. In short, the treat is as much visual as sound, even if it is above all the strength of the atmosphere and the story that you will retain the most in the end. Do not believe that the game is purely narrative! Far from starving, the gameplay combines exploration, combat and puzzles. The latter essentially consist of finding in the decorations the form of a few runes, from the old Nordic alphabet, in order to unlock certain passages. Concretely, it will be necessary to find a sort of M ("Madr" for connoisseurs) formed by the shadow of branches, to recognize in crucified bodies the features of a Y ("Elgr") or even to place oneself correctly in front of a pylon in order to that it forms a P ("Wynn") when aligned with beams. Less basic than one might think, this hide-and-seek game often uses perspective and the superposition of different elements, thus forcing the player to rack their brains a little before being able to unlock certain passages.
THE PSYCHOTIC REVERSE
It will also be necessary to play several times with devices (arches, masks, focus function) which subtly modify the level design, thus bringing the solution to a situation which would otherwise be a dead end. These brainstorming sessions alternate with fairly heavy combat sequences (in the "darksoulian" sense of the term), where you face from one to ten massive enemies. Fast attack, slow attack, melee attack, parry and dodge constitute all the moves available, and it does not take more to make the clashes interesting, knowing that these do not constitute the heart of the game. a little tension, the developers make you the promise at the beginning of the game of permanent death. Each failure is sanctioned by the spread of a black mark on the arm of the heroine which, if it reaches her head, will sound the end of the quest and the loss of all the progress made until then. This darkness also echoes that which has gnawed at Senua since her early childhood, the scenario not hesitating at times to move away from the love quest to return to dark family stories. However, do not expect a big plot twist. The game is far more subtle than that, and its bittersweet ending is well worth any bombastic reveal. Perfection not being of this world, there are still some points to reproach the experience. Some passages are a bit long or frustrating, the camera is so close to the heroine that it is sometimes difficult to understand the environments, and there are here and there some problems with the subtitles (missing sentences or not corresponding not what is said). But all this is of the order of the detail compared to the general force of the subject.
