What Can We Expect from Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2?

The sequel to the original Hellblade has been in the works for a while now but the details shared by the developer are scarce. Here’s a summary of everything we know about the next Hellblade game.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 was first revealed back in 2019 alongside the Xbox Series X, making it the first ever next-generation game shown. But after that announcement trailer, we haven’t seen anything besides some small updates for the game.

Graphics & Gameplay

Through an official post by Xbox, Microsoft has confirmed that developer Ninja Theory will be using Unreal Engine 5 to power Hellblade 2.

According to the Xbox Wire post, ‘The team will be building the game on Unreal 5 and leveraging the power of Xbox Series X to bring the Hellblade franchise to levels never before seen.’ They also restated that the initial trailer we saw in 2019 was ‘captured in-engine’ and added that it ‘reflects the power of Xbox Series X available to developers to deliver new universes, experiences and games in ways you have never imagined.’

The first Hellblade was a third-person game with combat and puzzles. The same will be the case for the sequel; however, now that the studio is under Microsoft’s umbrella, it likely has a much larger budget so it is fair to expect a much bigger game with a more complex combat system. Melina Juergens, the actress who plays Senua, has also been training hard with Smiff, the swordmaster for Star Wars and Game of Thrones. The team is capturing every move, Senua and enemy AIs alike, via motion capture which gives the impression that they plan on making combat more complicated and realistic than it was in the last game.

Soundtrack and other updates

Ninja Theory is collaborating with the band Heilung; their song ‘In Maidjan’ is the song that plays in the announcement trailer. We also heard some new music for the game in the teaser shown at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase: Extended, and it really helps set the tone and theme of the game.

Some behind-the-scenes content posted by the Ninja Theory team and Melina herself include a short video where they are setting some clothes on fire with a tweet that ‘high quality scans like these will help us reach an amazing level of detail for our games.’

Melina has been taking her fans through her journey of becoming Senua by posting several vid-docs on her YouTube channel, including one where she showed her pretty intense fitness and combat training for the game. As mentioned earlier, the actress alongside the game animators have taken several sword-fighting classes and worked with C.C. Smiff so they can capture more realistic and authentic movements.

The developers have also stopped adding content to their multiplayer game Bleeding Edge to put all their focus towards developing Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 and the team is more than double the size compared to the first Hellblade team.

 

Story and setting

Not much has been shared regarding the story or the plot for Hellblade 2, but after rewatching the trailer an unhealthy amount of times there are some details present that you can easily miss.

First look at the trailer and you can already tell the game is going to be much more sinister than its predecessor. There were some crazy rituals going on, limbs hanging and that terrifying giant-mountain hybrid thing which scared the crap out of me.

Tameem Antoniades, studio founder at Ninja Theory, shared that 'the first Hellblade gave us a personal insight into psychosis', the sequel adds to that and ‘shows how madness and suffering shapes myths, gods and religion.’

There is also a small village, on top of a hill shown during the trailer. The game was later confirmed to be set in Iceland, however, Ninja Theory showed us that village several times throughout the trailer and also ended the trailer with it. It was also recently shown in the teaser at the Games Showcase: Extended which suggests that it has a major plot element in the game.  It might be Senua’s base for all we know.

The aforementioned song in the trailer, In Maidjan- as redditor u/Charyou-Tree in the Hellblade subreddit translated it, the first chant goes ‘tawol athodu ek erilaz owlthuthewaz niwaremariz saawilagar hateka harja’ which translates to ‘Come, guest Tyr, I, the Runemaster, servant of Odin, call upon The One of the Sun to aid our army.’ Then, the names of the runes are shouted several times and the song ends with ‘Odin, prepare for battle!’

Now, this could literally just mean that Senua and her army seen in the trailer is calling upon the Norse Gods to defend themselves from some sort of attack. It also aligns well with the last game where Senua progressed by collecting and mastering the runes. Makes sense why she refers to herself as the ‘runemaster’. This all only hints that the game will further explore the Norse mythology, also there will be a bunch of fighting with and against armies of Vikings and potentially gods?

 

Release Date

Hellblade 2 does not have a release date or a release window yet. When the game was initially announced back in 2019, Phil Spencer stated that it was early in development. After being a no-show at E3 2021, it was a part of the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase: Extended where they told the fans that the game is still ‘early in development.’ Tameem Antoniades informed the fans that, ‘What we're doing right now is building a good chunky slice of the game before we move into full production to build out the rest.’ He added, ‘Hellblade was very special to us and we didn't want to do a straight sequel. We wanted to do something extra special and so we're making our lives as difficult as possible in that pursuit.’

COVID-19 has badly affected the development of Hellblade 2, however, it might be reasonable to expect the game to launch in 2023 as suggested by the industry insider Jeff Grubb.

Hellblade has had a big impact on me and it is one of the best games I’ve played. We’re all eagerly waiting to hear or see more of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 since it has been over four years since we first followed Senua through her journey of rescuing the soul of Dillion from the Goddess Hela in Hel. Are you ready to reunite with Senua?