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How hard it is to understand that it is not your typical bloated and full of needless fat video game with markers, fetch quest, pointless choices which don't affect anything, pointless levels and numbers, goddamn crafting with inventory management, adjustable difficulty which won't even let you outlevel everything in the game etc. to let you live your power fantasy. I won't name any games, but it is super obvious which games I mean and as it so happens these games are selling millions, while some very niche and much more impressive games get buried under them and criticised for not being yet another brainless pop-corn time waster. Good lord, ugh...
ANYWAY....
Just finished the fight at the Draugar ritual. Jesus Christ almighty. I remember some devs tried to show something similar to make you feel disgusted and scared. First game that comes to mind is of course Tomb Raider 2013. So, Ninja Theory just fuckin' annihilated the whole thing to a point of it being no more than a childs play. I can't even describe just how brutal and realistic the whole leadup to the fight was, with torned and decapitated bodies literally in front of you and at a distance with amazing camera work, lighting and shadows, allowing you to see just enough and not make you throw up and then... then you have to fight your way out of this hellhole.
Holy shit! I haven't played a better game with realistic sword fights than this EVER. It's so fuckin' visceral with blood and sweat and you even could be caught on fire cuz some enemies have torches and they sure love to toast you to crisp, eat you piece by piece, suck your blood and eat your brain. What's also amazing to see is that this shole fight can be played very differently each time you die, with completely new animations, moves, killing blows and stuff like that that it's almost required to die a few times just to see it in action (play the game on Hard people!).
It is so fuckin' incredible how swords clashing and deflecting sounds and feels, how astounding animations and transitions between different fights are. And all of this while you're surrounded with an amazing and thick atmosphere, billions of particles, amazing music under moon's light with dancing lights and shadows from torches and stuff... Eat shiiiiiit, modern God of War!
Fuckin' WOW, Ninja Theory! I thought the first boss fight was incredible but the Draugar ritual is just in the whole other universe. I got so immersed into the whole thing that I wasn't even thinking about making shots and stuff. Hellblade II is fuckin' easily my game of the year, EASILY! Can't even imagine which game can beat it for me this year. DD''2'' was the first candidate until I actually played it some more (~200 hrs) and finished it (almost 2 times).
Also, in game models are exactly the same as during cutscenes, the thing is though, you simply can't see all the details (small hair on skin, pores, detailed scars etc, etc. during gameplay) cuz of the very strong DOF effect which blurs all details during cutscenes even, not to mention that to even see it them you need to zoom in a lot and the farther the came is from the character, the worse it gets when it comes to details, cuz they're getting lost. It is the best, the most realistic video game and interactive entertainment ever, period. You can even seen dozens of blood vains in the eyes ffs. The only thing the game lacks really is Pure Hair or even better next gen physics based hair rendering, that's fuckin' it. I honestly cannot believe how well the game runs with all this pure next gen visuals, with zero stutters and all that during extremely heavy and demanging scenes. There's some really fuckin' serious and god tier programming wizards working at Ninja Theory
