Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is an excellent depiction of schizophrenia, but underwhelming as a video game.
Hellblade tells the story of Senua, a Celtic warrior who casts off on a journey to Helheim in order to rescue the soul of her lover, whose severed head she carries with her in a burlap sack.
Looking through the director’s notes and the “Hellblade feature” they included with the game, it’s very clear to me what they were going for with Senua’s Sacrifice. They made an admirable effort to address mental illness, and involved people with personal history with psychotic hallucinations, as well as mental health experts and professionals. The voices in Senua’s head are portrayed particularly well: some of them seem far away, some right in your ears, and with varying levels of volume. These “Furies” were voiced by eight different VAs, and this created an eerie immersive effect. My one issue with this is how Senua ignored them for most of the game, so they seemed only for the player’s benefit.
So yes, they succeeded in that endeavor. It’s a chilling look into the mind of a person who hears voices, sees the world through eyes clouded, and interacts with things that aren’t really there. It’s just a shame they failed to make an engaging video game in the process.
Puzzles
Hellbade’s gameplay is split into two, very distinct categories: puzzles, and combat.
Almost all, if not all, the puzzles are based on forced perspective. They require you to look at objects from a certain angle, use shadows, reflections, or create appropriate lighting in order to reveal a particular shape in the environment.
This is supposed to harken back to mental illness and how schizophrenics find meaning in patterns among mundane objects, like window panes and passing cars. The problem is that as gameplay, it really isn’t very challenging.
While most of the puzzles fit the above mould, there was one kind that I enjoyed thoroughly.
Confined to the earlier sections of the game, magic portals would allow you two see two different realities, completely seamlessly. Going through the portal one way would change parts of the environment, and examining and utilizing these changes in order to progress further was engaging and challenging. Then I realized that these puzzles were similar to those “spot the differences” puzzles in old newspapers, which impressed on me how simple and shallow the puzzles in the game really are, even if enjoyable.
Combat
That’s it. That’s all it is.
The combat system in Hellblade is very rudimentary. You’re auto-locked on a single enemy, while others look on sluggishly. Sometimes, they’ll decide to get off their arse and swing at you, but it’s much slower compared to the enemy you’re currently locked on to. Senua’s schizophrenia works in your favor here, the voices in your head acting like a sort of spidey-sense for enemies behind you.
Once you’ve sufficiently beat up on an enemy, a meter will fill up with “focus”. Using “focus” lets you slow down time for the enemy, and beat the crap out of them. And that’s the extent of combat in Hellblade.
There are a few different enemy types, and aside from their moveset, nothing really changes. Even the bosses, though they do have different designs, aren’t dealt with in much different ways.
Story
As with most walking simulators, narrative is the bread and butter of Senua’s Sacrifice. It is confirmed that most, if not all, of the game takes place within Senua’s own psyche. She suffered a psychotic break after seeing her lover, Dillion, made into a gruesome blood eagle by Norsemen invading her Pictish tribal homeland.
The “world” she creates within her psychotic break is informed by the tales of the Norsemen, narrated by her now-slain friend, Druth. Druth was a slave to the Norsemen, who was later sacrificed after being recaptured. For all her psychotic delusions, one thing is clear: she did set out into the forest, carrying the severed head of her dead lover.
As you navigate the world, you’ll come across Lorestones that carry more of Druth’s stories, each fleshing out the world a little more, and feeding you watered-down Norse mythology.
Senua’s imperfect retelling of Norse mythology within her mind is most evident in the way you progress through the game. To gain entrance to Helheim and rescue the soul of your beloved, you must first spill the blood of two Norse “gods”: Valravn and Surt.
Valravn isn’t a Norse god. In fact, he doesn’t even appear in Norse mythology at all. Valravn are from Danish folklore, and are described as carrion feeders with preternatural powers. If they consumed the heart of a child, they could take the form of a knight, and were born when a raven flock consumed the corpse of a king who fell in battle.
In Senua’s Sacrifice, Valravn is depicted as a god of the Norsemen, a wielder of illusion, and a half-raven, half-man hybrid.
Surt is a little closer to Norse mythology, although more commonly called Surtr.
Eventually, you face off against Hela, goddess of the underworld, Senua’s final hurdle, and also the point where the story falls somewhat flat.
Senua realizes that she cannot save Dillion, and consigns his head to the abyss, as she and Hela switch places (unsubtly showing that she was at war with herself all along), eventually leaving her “darkness” in the form of Hela dead, while leaving in peace.
The story of Senua’s Sacrifice is at times vague and inexplicable, while at others too on the nose and cheesy. Senua realizes that none of this is real, and that she could have opted out at any time. This left me with a somewhat uneven aftertaste: is it the “it was all a dream” effect, or did we indeed have to go through her trials to come to the discovery that it was all in her head? I would err towards the former, because of how Senua interacts with the world.
The character of Senua does not undergo any major changes throughout the narrative. She is in constant denial when spoken to by malicious entities, never really changing her stance on her journey. So her snapping to her senses does not compute with what we have come to know about Senua.
Conclusion
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a lesson in balance. While they put a lot of effort into portraying schizophrenic delusions excellently (wonderfully crafted environments, unique sound engineering with the Furies), the gameplay felt very lacking. Horror elements worked well, if only visually. The environment, the dank, dripping sounds of dimly lit caverns, and the dead grasping at you created a virtual haunted house: scary, but you know nothing’s really going to happen.
Despite all these successes, it fails in key areas. Over choreographed gameplay and the lack of character development left much to be desired. Senua’s Sacrifice is an experience in emotion, but lacks depth in critical places which make the game feel hollow in the end.
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