Three years later, Hellblade 2 on Xbox Series X finally gives us a next-gen moment

This console generation has been relatively short on “next-gen moments” – those dazzling, technical revelations when you see a game do things that were unthinkable on previous hardware. You can make a case for it Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart‘s super fast loading or Starfield‘S potato physicsbut there have been relatively few cases where you can see the future coming in real time.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that console supply issues and pandemic-related development delays have led to an unusually long intergenerational phase. Until last year, most games were still released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and their successors. Another is that Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of Epic Games’ ubiquitous graphics engine, lagged a bit behind the new console generation, and large-scale UE5 productions were slow to appear with a few exceptions.

All of this is why I didn’t expect to experience a next-gen moment when I traveled to Cambridge, UK, to visit and play at the Ninja Theory studio Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. But I have one. It’s an astonishingly lifelike narrative action game that applies the technology of UE5, the resources of Microsoft (the company owns Ninja Theory), and the unique processes of a small team of technical artists to create something that is at once grounded and vibrantly hyper-real. There’s nothing else like it.

This won’t be a total surprise if you played 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s sacrifice. Both Hellblade games combine gruesome, quasi-mythological action with a realistic approach to the psychology of their heroine, Senua, an eighth-century Celtic warrior with psychosis. Both games feature a photorealistic visual style with a heavy emphasis on performance capture – an area in which Ninja Theory has specialized since collaborating with Andy Serkis on the 2007 action game. Heavenly Sword.

However, quite a bit has changed for Ninja Theory since 2017. In 2018, the studio was acquired by Microsoft. It hasn’t grown much since then, with a hundred people, of whom about eighty are employed Hellblade 2this remains a modestly sized team, but Microsoft’s investment is clearly visible in beautiful new offices with a large, dedicated motion capture studio (and, at the insistence of some extremely British local planning regulations, its own pub). During my visit, there was no sign or mention of Ninja Theory’s flamboyant founder Hellblade writer-director Tameem Antoniades. An Xbox spokesperson later confirmed to Polygon that he is no longer with the studio. Antoniades was involved in this Hellblade 2 in its early stages, but the game now has a trio of creative leads: environmental art director Dan Attwell, visual effects director Mark Slater-Tunstill, and audio director David Garcia.

You’d expect a dedication to crafting each game under the direction of three technical artists, but that still wouldn’t prepare you for the extraordinary lengths Ninja Theory will go to in its pursuit of realism. In Hellblade 2Senua travels to Iceland in pursuit of Norwegian slave traders who are decimating her community in the northern British Isles. As press toured the studio, Attwell explained that the route of her adventure had been plotted in the real world and locations had been captured using a combination of satellite imagery, drone imagery, procedural generation and photogrammetry. The team spent weeks on location in Iceland, studying the landscape, photographing rocks and flying drones. They also studied the construction techniques of the time and virtually constructed doors from 3D scanned wooden planks, rather than modeling them. They even made their own rough carvings and scanned them.

Character art director Dan Crossland showed us real costumes that were custom made for the actors by a London-based costume designer using period-appropriate techniques and then scanned by the studio. Behind Crossland’s desk stood a mannequin plastered with gauze, putty, feathers, and deconstructed scraps of fabric—an eerie, hand-sculpted prototype of an enemy design.

In the battle team section, lead action designer Benoit Macon, a very tall and exuberant Frenchman, explained that the game’s battle sequences were not traditionally animated, but 100% mo-capped. I watched stunt professionals perform the finishing moves on the performance capture stage, while animation director Guy Midgley captured them in close, roving handheld style, using a phone in a lightweight device.

The playable results of this fully mo-cap combat system are quite unique. Fight in it Hellblade 2 is one on one, slow and very brutal. In the battle scenes of the demo I played – which also featured pattern matching puzzles and some atmospheric, grueling traversals – there’s a heightened sense of menace as Senua faces huge and aggressive opponents, and the characters loom large in the unusually tight camera angles . This may not be the over-the-top fight of Dmc devil can crybut it is still very effective.

In a small, soundproof studio on the top floor, Garcia worked with the two voice actors who played the Furies, and so Senua thinks of the voices in her head that constantly comment on the action and her state of mind. (As with the first game, screenwriter Lara Derham worked with psychology professor Paul Fletcher and people who have experienced psychosis to portray the effects of the condition.) The actors walked around a binaural microphone – essentially a mannequin head with microphones as ears – hissing and muttering their lines as if to Senua himself. Garcia, a Spaniard with an infectious sense of wonder, is called a “genius” by his colleagues. Its growling, chattering soundscapes are players’ main entry point into Senua’s state of mind, and they’re just as overwhelming now as they were in 2017.

The length to which Ninja Theory will ground this digital video game in physical reality it may seem quixotic – even contradictory – but the proof is in the game. The game, which I played on Xbox Series But furthermore, Hellblade 2 has a tactile immediacy that seems to operate on an almost subconscious level. The artists at Ninja Theory look for an emotional connection with the player that, they believe, can only happen if the player believes what they are seeing is real.

“I think the human mind does (something) where you think you know what something looks like, but when you look at what that thing is, there’s actually a lot more chaos in it. It’s not quite the same as what you imagine in your head,” Slater-Tunstill said. “If you just sculpt the environment or the characters or whatever from your mind, it will lose some of that nature, some of that chaos.”

Attwell said Unreal Engine 5 has made this realistic approach more feasible, both because of the level of fidelity available in the engine’s Nanite geometry system, and because “the turnaround between scanning the thing and putting it into the level is drastically reduced.” , and you can spend that time on finesse.”

“You can think more about the composition,” Slater-Tunstill agreed. “And with the kind of volumetric lighting we can do now, everything fits in much better. It’s more believable.”

Overall, the feeling from the Ninja Theory team is that UE5 has broken down many barriers for video game artists, and players are only just starting to see the results. “It feels like the graphical leap we’ve made with this is like… we’re on the trajectory that we wanted,” Attwell said.

You just have to look at it Hellblade 2 short to understand that you are seeing the next evolution of gaming technology. However, it’s not just about the engine: there are a number of factors that fit together Hellblade 2 a tech showcase. First, the game design is extremely focused. This isn’t a wild open-world simulation; it’s a linear, narrative action game. As an Xbox first-party studio, Ninja Theory has the luxury of building for fewer formats. Moreover, it has been given time to experiment. As we tour the studio, Microsoft’s investment in Ninja Theory starts to make a lot of sense. The tech giant has acquired not only a boutique developer, but also an R&D unit that explores the technical and artistic boundaries of a specific game-making process.

The result is a game made with an unusual degree of focus. Hellblade 2 won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste due to the slow pace, deliberate input and cinematic, script-heavy presentation. It seemed to me like a modern successor to something like the interactive animation from 1983 Dragon’s Lair. As intense and dramatic as the section I played was, it remains to be seen whether the game’s story – a more outward journey for a more mentally balanced Senua – can connect as deeply as Hellblade‘s journey into her darkest fears. But there’s no mistaking the craft on display or the immersive feel of it presence this game has. It may be a sequel, but it feels like the beginning of something – as a true next-gen experience should.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will be released on May 21 on Windows PC and Xbox Series