We’re talking about Hellblade 2 – how big of a deal do we need the game to be and was that price a lure for Game Pass?

It’s been almost three months since the premiere. Hellblade 2 – The emotions have subsided, those who wanted to play the game have already played, and the attention of gamers has shifted to newer titles (or always topical topics, like “why is it so expensive”). It’s time to return to this title and take a closer look at whether it was a successful sequel, what was good about it and what was not. For this purpose, we met in a group Philip “FSM” Grabskywho just finished the game, and Anna Garaswhich happened shortly after the premiere. What came out of this conversation?

Read it.

(Beware of the little troublemakers.)

The game is good but…

Philip “FSM” Grabsky: Some basic things need to be established at the outset. Hellblade 2 It’s a good game. Anyone who says otherwise, in my opinion, is either being malicious or the final product was so different from his expectations that he probably wanted a title that was completely different from what the creators promised. At the same time, Ninja Theory’s production is so important that finding it takes no effort.

The first part of the Senua story was a real discovery for me. A beautiful and emotional game that wisely blends exploration, puzzles and combat, as well as offering a very original approach to issues of psychology, psychosis and trauma. It took me about 9 hours to complete, and since its release in 2017, I have remembered it as one of the best titles of the decade. When, in December 2019, shortly after the presentation of the new Xbox hardware, we received a trailer for the second part, I was very pleasantly surprised. A sequel? So fast? So beautiful? Of course, of course, please. And so we come to the first problem, for which the game’s creators are not directly responsible, but which it is impossible not to take into account when evaluating the final product.

First time in the market Hellblade 2 We had to wait 4.5 years. Slowly building up the atmosphere with great announcements did the game no favors. Not to mention the fact that the main trailer for the game is a sequence near the end of the final release. We simply received too little for such a long wait and for the “system vendor” from Microsoft. “Two” is the same as the one presented 7 years ago, only prettier, but also easier and shorter.

We also saw black bars on the edges of the screen in Death Stranding.Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Xbox Game Studios, 2024.

Anna Garas: I’m going to be a little different from the beginning, because I don’t think so. Hellblade 2 I was supposed to be a “system seller” for Xbox – although I understand where such expectations might come from. Finally, we have a TPP action-adventure game with amazing combat scenes; no wonder Xbox gamers watching the ads thought this was a challenge to Sony and their “Tsushimas” and “Godofwars”. The problem is, it was never meant to be this kind of game.

However, I agree that the tweaking and tweaking of the atmosphere you’re talking about didn’t do the game any favors – because the closer we get to the premiere, the less it does! We finally hit a weird spot where, a month before launch, the game was mentioned primarily in the context of people wondering why there wasn’t a trailer for it. I can already hear the naysayers saying that it would be a pain to edit the trailer so that it didn’t show the entire game, but that’s nonsense – this isn’t an element that would spoil the entire experience if it was spoiled. Is there anything you think was missing during the trailer? Hellblade 2?

Section: This quotation mark didn’t appear there by accident before. Of course. Hellblade 2 It’s too “small” a game to be a selling point for a console. But at the same time, Xbox doesn’t have many real hits missing elsewhere (although Microsoft’s gaming “ecosystem” is a topic for another post), so poor Senua has somehow been promoted to brand ambassador. This has somewhat hurt the game, which on the one hand looked very exciting before its premiere, and on the other hand – as I mentioned – seemed to disappear before its first appearance. It’s as if the creators or publisher decided they had gone a little too far and were afraid of the potential “hype”.

So I missed the heart of the proportions. The game was supposed to be announced at a later date (though it probably made sense from a business standpoint), and as the premiere approaches, we should be hearing more and more about it. Meanwhile, The epic of Sinai It ended up being a surefire candidate for Game Pass. Because if I spent the full amount on it – and fortunately it’s less than the prices of AAA titles – I’d be disappointed. It took me 7 hours to get to the end credits with little to no catching. The same amount of money gave me the second half a year ago. Alana WikiaBetter game in every way. But it’s not a sin – that’s what the industry looks like now, it’s expensive. However, the fact that Hellblade 2 One of the greatest advantages of the first edition has been undermined, and should certainly be condemned.

Fair price or Game Pass incentive?

A.J: Well, instead of a great-looking, though still niche, game, we got, somewhat surprisingly, an announcement for Game Pass. It’s a shame because I feel like Many discussions regarding Hellblade 2 It happens a little bit about this situation.and its quality itself is carefully evaluated through the prism of an embarrassing marketing campaign or The eternal debate “How much should a game cost per hour of play,” which basically explains that publishers justify the high prices of their AAA blockbusters by stuffing them with activities that only waste our time.It’s hard for me not to put on a tinfoil hat and assume that the price was set at this level so that people would think it would be cheaper for them to buy Game Pass even for a month, and it’s known that some percentage of them who have already subscribed to the service will stay. Just because they forgot to turn it off.

Let’s look, for example, at Indica, which was released a month ago. Hellblade M II It was even shorter – you could easily finish it in 4 hours. Here, the price of less than 100 PLN seemed more reasonable – and the length of the game was adjusted according to the gameplay model. In other words, I don’t think so. indicates It would be a better game if it was longer, like Hellblade 2 – Even though I loved it a lot, I didn’t want to play it for 20 or even 12 hours. And not just because I generally like games that I can finish in two or three evenings.

play in Hellblade 2 It is simply too emotionally draining to maintain such a game for so long. Let’s imagine landing on the beach in Normandy. Saving Private RyanWhich doesn’t last a few minutes but 5 hours. At some point, what is shocking and sad will eventually become boring and tiring. Although there are some stages in the game itself that take a little too long – I’m thinking, for example, of wandering around a cave in the dark – they’re finished at just the right moment.

The game allows you to take beautiful frames in photo mode.Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Xbox Game Studios, 2024.

Section: I totally agree about short but intense games. I also like situations for hours, and I don’t like them when they are too difficult. It is Hellblade It should be perfect for me. It almost is. You didn’t comment on my post about the feature being toned down from the previous game. So let me expand on this. It’s about the voices in your head. Technically brilliant (oh, that voice in your headphones!), emotionally compelling and at the same time gameplay-wise useful. No game has a UI like it. It’s unfortunate that such a simple title used this great mechanic to hand all the solutions to the player on a silver platter. Dark? The voice says to take the torch. Should we look for a way forward? The voice says to look towards the cave. It doesn’t look good when there are no other places of interest at a given point on the map anyway. It took me out of the game, and it became very obvious. When the voices work, it’s great. When the voices tell you what to do, it’s annoying. Why?

A.J: I don’t remember ever feeling like the voices were helping me much, but I definitely wished more than once that they would just shut up, at least for a moment. The question is, should they? I generally have a high tolerance for things that are a bit annoying, rough, and intentionally uncomfortable, and I liked the fact that these voices were sometimes annoying to me. Just like Senua.

As for the complaint that some of the gameplay solutions seem too intrusive, yes. Best geared towards level design.It’s great that a new type of collectible is introduced to introduce Icelandic folklore, but its location is always painfully obvious. Branches of the path? There’s always a collectible at the end of the narrower branch. This would be less of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that such detours hinder the pace of the narrative, and sometimes even conflict with it. I don’t like it when I want to fully engage with the story, say, moving forward, when I’m told to hurry up, but at the same time I feel like I should do some exploring, because there are definitely collectibles here. It certainly could have been better integrated into the whole.

Or maybe not? Maybe Hellblade 2 Ever tried to develop the gameplay unnecessarily? What do you think of environmental puzzles, for example?