Today we are proud and excited to launch Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II on Xbox Series X|S, PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Game Pass.
In Hellblade II, the sequel to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, we see the return of Senua in a brutal battle for survival through the myth and tyranny of Viking Iceland. It is a game from the heart, where our small team of around 80 developers have crafted an experience that aims to immerse you in Senua’s world and story. Our bold mission as a studio is to ‘Craft Life Changing Art with Game Changing Tech’, by which we mean we aim to push the boundaries of technology and techniques in order to create a game, and an experience, that leaves you thinking and feeling.
Immersion drives our work at Ninja Theory, with our belief being that if we can immerse you in Senua’s Saga, we can take you on an unforgettable journey. Our belief is also that believability is the route to this immersion, and so our team has painstakingly worked to bring our reality into Senua’s.
The game is set in real locations in Iceland, recreated through satellite data and photogrammetry. Our characters are digital doubles of real people and their costumes first made as real clothing through historically authentic techniques and materials. And all our character animations starts life as real movement from our incredible cast on our performance capture stage.
It is not only our presentation that is based in ground-truth reference, but so to are the narrative themes in Senua’s journey – in particular Senua’s experiences of psychosis. Senua is a person who lives in an unshared reality. She sees things that others don’t, hears things that others don’t and has unique beliefs about the world.
In order to realize Senua’s experiences of psychosis in a truthful way we have, as we did on Senua’s Sacrifice, worked closely with our friends and partners in the world of neuroscience and lived-experience. Their generosity, openness and support has given us the opportunity to understand what living with psychosis can be like, in the hope that Senua feels like a real person going through a very personal mental health journey.
I’d like to take this as an opportunity to thank our team and collaborators for devoting themselves to Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II as a true passion project. I’d also like to thank you, our fans, for your support throughout the development of Hellblade II. It has meant so much to us.
Now, it is time to turn down the lights, put your headphones on and join Senua for, what we hope is, an unforgettable journey into Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.
