For the past few years, the biggest appeal for me has lay in the ‘quite big’ games over the ‘very big’ games. Last year, when everyone knewGod of War RagnarokandElden Ringwould duke it out for GOTY, I had my eye onLegends: ArceusandGhostwire: Tokyo. Back in 2020 when we hadThe Last of Us Part 2andGhost of Tsushima, my heart belonged toTHPS,Final Fantasy 7 Remake, andYakuza: Like A Dragon. This year, while everyone else cares aboutZeldaandStarfield, all I’m interested in isHellblade 2. Interested, but also a little worried.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was made by the fairly small studio Ninja Theory, who describe Hellblade as an “indie triple-A”, which makes a mockery of the already loose categorisation we have in gaming. After Hellblade, the studio was then acquired byMicrosoft, and began work on a sequel. It was revealed atThe Game Awardsin 2019, beforereturning in 2021 to show off extended gameplay footage. Since then, we’ve heard nothing.Xboxhas had various showcases, butHellblade hasn’t had a look in aside from vague teases. It’s scheduled for this year, but how likely is it to hit that date, and what happens if it doesn’t?
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Telling developers to take their time is not as simple as it seems. Whenever a game is delayed, the social media post announcing said delay will be inundated with supportive messages telling them to take their time. After all, as Shigeru Miyamoto almost definitely didn’t say, “a delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad”. No one likes delays, but we’ve all been burned by horrible launches, chunky patches aimed at fixing things beyond repair, and the disappointment of a game crumbling in your hands. However, quite often a delayed game leads to crunch, and in many cases devs have been crunching pre-delay in an attempt to hit the original date. The devs that we’re showing support for aren’t really taking their time, and at most studios, they have little say over when the release date is.
The point of all this is, while I would never demand Ninja Theory hurry up on Hellblade, this much radio silence for a studio tackling their biggest project yet in the wake of major investment is a cause for concern. Obviously, I would rather Hellblade be good in 2024 than forever bad in 2023, but do Ninja Theory have time for such perfection? The studio was one of the first acquisitions for Microsoft when it started trying to buy exclusives in response to Sony’s recent domination, and whileBethesdawill need time to bear fruit, Xbox might have expected more thanBleeding Edgein the five years since it bought Ninja Theory.
The gameplay footage we’ve seen features seamless transitions between cutscenes and gameplay, while the character models are even more detailed than the first game. This could be cheesed a little for the vertical slice (there’s no HUD or other UI, which will not be the case in the full game), but it shows Ninja Theory not only offering an alternative to Sony’s exclusives, but actively trying to compete with them. The first game self-describes as ‘independent’, and whether or not that’s fudging the truth a little, we should not expect a team like Ninja Theory to produce their own version of God of War Ragnarok -but it has been boasting that the sequel will put the original to shame.
The first game took less than ten hours to see absolutely everything - have the team been tempted into offering a far more bloated 40 hour affair, and is that why all we’ve seen is one specific section of edited gameplay footage, and then nothing in the 14 months since? I would have no issues with another ten hour Hellblade, or even a 15-20 hour adventure that expands on what the first game was capable of, but the tightly claustrophobic and curated journey was a huge part of the original appeal. If that has been lost, not only will the game balloon in runtime, development time, and budget, it will also lose its central charm.
It all comes back to this “independent triple-A” label. Hellblade, ultimately, does not know what it is. It wants to be a loud and mighty titan of gaming, but knows it lacks the means, so it simply dresses as one and sacrifices runtime. I fear the team see the brevity of the game as a limitation rather than highlight, and with Microsoft moolah behind them have shaken off the “independent” part and are now making a full-blown triple-A. It feels like a huge risk, and while it might pay off eventually, Microsoft need something to land sooner rather than later.
Sure, take your time. A rushed game is forever bad. I just hope Ninja Theory hasn’t bitten off more than it can chew, that we see more of Hellblade soon, and that it stays true to its roots. We need more games like Hellblade, far more than we need triple-A bloat.
