Highlights

  • Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 offers fans a short, emotionally-driven experience with exceptional graphics and sound design.
  • The game's innovative binaural audio design immerses players in Senua's world, enhancing the narrative and gameplay.
  • Cinematography in Hellblade 2 plays a crucial role in making the game feel cinematic, offering dynamic perspectives during gameplay.

While its gameplay may not offer the improvements that fans were hoping for, there's still a lot to love about Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2. Another short but sweet 5-6 hour experience, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 delivers another intriguing, emotionally-driven story that once again centers around the titular Pictish warrior whose new journey sees players explore a brand new land similarly inspired by Norse mythology.

On this new journey, Senua faces off against undead Draugr, meets some unfriendly Giants, and comes close to death more times than fans thought possible, and each step of the way Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 wows players with its exceptional presentation. But while Hellblade 2's excellent graphics have been a common point of praise since its launch last week, there's far more to Hellblade 2's presentation than its visuals.

Hellblade Burning Tree
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Hellblade 2's Presentation Is Great All-Round

One of Hellblade 2's Biggest Strengths is Sound Design

When Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice first launched in 2017, it quickly became one of the year's biggest surprises, and its presentation played a key role in that. More specifically, Hellblade's audio design became a hot topic among critics. When booting up Hellblade for the first time, players are encouraged to use headphones to make the best use of the game's innovative binaural audio design.

For those unaware, binaural audio is a technique that utilizes stereo technology to submerge players in a sort of sphere of sound. This means that if players are wearing headphones, it'll sound as though the game's audio is coming from all around them. Ninja Theory was able to use this technique in the first Hellblade to carefully choose where the game's audio would come from. In doing this, Hellblade was able to reinforce the symptoms of Senua's psychosis, having the voices that appear in her head dart around the player's own audio space.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 takes its predecessor's excellent audio design and builds on it, introducing a few new layers that go a long way in enhancing the player experience. One of these new layers is voice modulation and volume, which give Senua's voices even more prominence. Hellblade 2 also features more characters than its predecessor, and the audio design does some interesting things when those characters are interacting with Senua.

It's often the case that when a character talks to Senua in Hellblade 2, players will hear that voice all around them as if they were standing in front of them in real life. But as those characters are talking, Senua's voices will often chime in with their own commentary on what's being said, appearing in alternate ears to evoke the feeling that the player is constantly surrounded by an unseen presence that they can't control.

Hellblade 2's Cinematography Is an Unsung Hero

Cinematography doesn't get talked about much in the world of video games, but for narrative titles like Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, it's just as important as it would be in a movie. The vast majority of Hellblade 2's runtime is spent with the camera placed firmly behind Senua's back, and just above her shoulder, a common perspective of modern narrative games. However, Hellblade 2's camera isn't afraid to get a little more creative than some of its contemporaries, occasionally panning around Senua during cinematic moments to show her facial expressions, or naturally panning to characters and items of interest during gameplay. Hellblade 2's camerawork plays a vital role in making the game feel cinematic and seamless.