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Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades: “‘Hellblade 2’ will make ‘Hellblade’ look like an indie game”

Vasto

Member
The Ninja Theory co-founder says the game is focusing on "capturing reality"




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In an interview with NME, Antoniades said that the team’s ambition has taken the form of an all-encompassing approach to the idea of “capturing reality.”

“The goal with Hellblade 2 isn’t to perfect it, but to create an experience that feels more believable and more refined. Its ambition in terms of scale is bigger. I think Hellblade 2 will make Hellblade look like an indie game,” said Antoniades.

Over 40 locations in Iceland were scouted and narrowed down before being scanned into Hellblade 2‘s engine. Real costumes were also created and scanned in, and Melina Juergens – who plays the titular Senua – was trained by a combat expert to perform the in-engine combat herself.

“The idea is believability – making things look real or believable – and the best way to do that is to base everything on real things,” added Antoniades.


 

yurinka

Member
Nice. In his last interwiew I remember was in summer and he said the game was in preproduction and that they were working on the vertical slice. Let's hope they entered full production, this and Indiana Jones are the two MS games are the two I'm more hyped for.
 

CeeJay

Member
Hellblade did look amazing but the gameplay was really limited. They did get some amazing results for a small low budget title though, certainly punched well above their weight with it. I am really looking forward to see what a Hellblade sequel with the full support of Microsoft behind it looks like. It could go either way, when you are severely limited it focuses the direction whereas when there are no limits it could easily end up in scope creep hell with too many ideas trying to fit into an overall incoherent experience. Ninja Theory seem like a good grounded team though so I am pretty confident Hellblade 2 is going to be a vast improvement over the first game.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
I mean, good. That's what we're all hoping. The first one was clearly low budget.

I'm really just hoping for a complete re-imagining of the gameplay. Graphics and story seem great.
 
The visuals look insane from what we saw from the last showing. Hopefully we see major improvements to the gameplay as I did find the first game to be quite shallow and boring.
 
Senua 1 was an indie game. Does this statement kind of feel like a weird self-insult?

At the same time I understand that he may feel powerful because he now works for Microsoft and has more money/tech available, but at the same time, feels like insulting indie developers with that comment, or at least is that how I see it.
 
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synce

Member
Is that supposed to be an insult? I can't name one AAA game I've enjoyed more than indie games in recent years. If he's saying it'll be even more of a walking sim, then I guess I can see that.
 

winjer

Gold Member
Hellblade 1 felt and played like an indie game. And that was part of the reason it was great.
It wasn't constrained by AAA politics and expectations. So it could risk speak about a theme as difficult as mental illness.
It wasn't filled with pointless and bloated cutscenes. It wasn't marred with micro-transactions. It wasn't a GAAS.
I hope having a AAA budget doesn't mean going the way of many AAA franchises, and ruining a good thing.
 

K2D

Banned
Fix your obnoxious puzzles and you might have something good on your hands. Who thought it'd be funny/cool to do obtuse puzzle solving as schizophrenic person in a depressing environment? There's a serious disconnect there.
 
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