Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – How Performance Capture and Stunts Created Next-Level Combat

Combat, Evolved

Combat in Hellblade II is a vast improvement on the first title, but, fascinatingly, this is not a traditional action game in practice. You won’t be bashing and slashing through endless hordes in Hellblade II – every fight you’ll enter as Senua is calculated and intentional, every swing, punch and grapple is crafted to align you with her struggle, and her growth as she overcomes these hurdles. Every foe feels like the one that might finally finish you and Senua off, and walking away intact feels like a triumph every time.

“Instead of taking what we’ve got and adding to it, we looked how we could go deeper on the thing we really care about, which is making combat meaningful to the narrative,” Matthews says. 

During my visit to Ninja Theory, I was shown this evolution in combat from multiple perspectives – a look at how the combat scenes were performed and captured by actors, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at some of these movements in their development stages inside Unreal Engine 5, and then of course, the finished gameplay itself, which showcases the end product of this fantastic and thoughtful work. 

In one section, the chapter culminates in Senua facing off an onslaught of masked enemies, some with heavy builds primed to knock her down, and some with swift fire attacks that require well-timed dodging. Each fight – all handled one-on-one, but with new enemies barrelling in from off-screen to keep the frantic feeling alive – feels like survival by the skin of your teeth, and the sum of Senua’s power is funnelled through her retaliations; the movements to take down these foes are almost rhythmic, a desperate beating heart powering the game along.

It’s hard to explain unless you’ve played yourself, but this doesn’t feel like traditional video game combat. There’s a weight to it, both from Senua and her enemies, that turns this into more of a desperate dance than a piece of superpowered pugilism. It makes for exhausting, exhilarating sequences, producing the feeling of an intense boss rush, even against what would otherwise be regular enemies. 

“We wanted to bring a sense of brutality and struggle to one-on-one combat,” says Benoit Macon, combat director on Hellblade II. “There is a sense of connection between the combat and the narrative.” 

[This article originally appeared on Xbox Wire]