Review: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

I finished Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice recently, a game that had been on my radar a long time. And though it eventually wasn't even close to what I expected it would be, it did still manage to leave quite an impression.

It was, in short, quite a harrowing experience. Hellblade wasn't exactly horror but it sure made me feel things horror usually makes me feel.

The story's as follows:

Senua is a girl growing up on the Orkney islands off the north coast of Scotland. She's a Celtic warrior and since she was a child she has been struggling with a form of psychosis. This has influenced her whole life and has made normal social interaction rather strained, to say the least. She leaves her village and isolates herself in the wild where she comes across a traveller, an ex-slave named Druth, who recognizes in her a fellow tortured spirit and who fills her head with stories of the culture and religion of the people who once enslaved him; the northmen.
Then, something happens...
And it is as a direct consequence of this event that she experiences a rather crippling blow to her psyche. As a result she sets out north in a kind of spirit quest, to the land of the nords.
We join the story as she has just arrived on northern shores. But the trick is that the way that Senua views the world is alot more fantastical and horrific than it genuinely is. It's hard to sift what's true and how much is imagination. But the trauma and the pain is real. At every step the emotional wringer that Senua's being put though can be felt. Her mental suffering is so genuinely depicted and incredibly well-acted  that it becomes at times quite painful to watch. The game is not for everyone.
You'll feel her suffering at a very personal and intimate level and it's something that I've not seen done like this in any game I remember playing.
But despite all the pain, the journey has meaning and the ending is worthwhile.

Special mention: Senua is motion-capture-acted by Melina Juergens who was developer Ninja Theory's video editor and stand-in for Senua's character while the company where perfecting their motion capture techniques. 

Developer's diary picture

Unbeknownst to the head honchos she had already auditioned for the role whilst drawing on her own past to depict Senua's mental anguish. Needless to say; she was impressive.

Now, the developer has throughout the project worked closely with people suffering from psychosis and mental anguish and together with various mental health advisors, in an effort to be as true as possible to the experience of psychosis without exploiting it. They've tried to put it in as honest a light as possible, while at the same time gritting it up quite a bit, in order for them to try and break taboos and stigmatas associated with the condition.
They've mashed various forms of psychosis together though. Senua hallucinates and suffers from intense delusions, visions and flashbacks. She hears voices who constantly undermine her determination and sap her courage. She sees patterns and imbues them with inescapable meaning and ritual where they are in reality without point. At times she views the world though a luminescent lens while at other times colours can be oversaturated.

I don't have psychosis, obviously I don't. I don't know anyone who has, I think. But what I saw here seemed genuine and more than that, through its honest depiction, respectful.

Gameplay is mostly a mix of Senua running (or limping) around, solving puzzles by matching runes on a locked door with runes cleverly incorporated into the surrounding environment,

which, truth to tell, can get a little annoying when you have to do it again and again. But then that's also something that's in service of depicting compulsions and ritualistic ascribing of meaning in psychosis,

and a form of Souls-inspired combat.

There's a few bosses that are very memorable and my favourite was the one in the dark, though that one did take a frustrating while to get used to. But then when you finally get it, when you figure out how it works and fight accordingly and when you finally triumph over this creature, it feels so very hard earned.

And as an action hack and slash fan, specifically anything that From Software has lately put out I quite liked that aspect.
There's a part about three thirds into the game that's basically a 20 minute fight sequence, that takes place, because of the psychosis, in some sort of hellish vision that is twisting the landscape into mountains of grasping, clawing corpses under a reddish-yellow sky. A storm rages with yellow lightning while Senua is hip-deep in a valley filled with blood, rain lashing down around her, while she's fighting off various forms of demonic looking vikings.

Here is that grit I spoke of earlier.
I can't truly say it's not overdone because it really is at certain points, but despite that, despite its sensationalist trappings, it's the story that resounds the most. To tell more would be to spoil but if you can tough it out until the end you might not be disappointed.
I say might, because I personally was very pleased with it as I was expecting a different type of resolution but I can see how easily that specific ending might rub some people the wrong way.

Sound design is exceptional. In its voice acting in particular. Senua's anguished cries form a rather constant presence in your journey, while numerous voices fade in and out around her, voicing doubts and disparaging remarks and rarely offering anything positive or helpful.
Druth's lessons of nordic lore dot the landscape in runic menhirs and his animated tones alleviate some of the ever-present darkness.

There are other memorable voices, but to tell would be to spoil.
Music is present and though not paricularly memorable for me, does add a bit to the atmosphere, amping up during combat and gently warbling during the quieter puzzle sections.

Here at the end, I should say again, that the game simply isn't for everyone. It's meant to be mainstream and the developers have done their best but the story moves at its own pace and there's rather a large level of difficulty in combat at times that is quite at odds with its more sedate puzzle sections.

It's odd that I've written so much as I wasn't really planning to do a review for this game.
Senua's combat sections made me want to play the last game in the Dark Souls series that I hadn't yet played and I wanted to write a short introduction about how Hellblade made me pick that game up and then post a few pictures about how it's good to be back.
But then when I started to write it just all came out.

I'm very happy that I did this though because Senua's Sacrifice is a uniquely special game that really deserves the attention. If you can and if I didn't scare you away, go pick it up.