With a name like Hellblade, players already know this game's going to be a hell of a wild ride. And now with the game's release, we get a very up-close-and-personal look at our character and her trials. And considering it's a game that has a mental health adviser listed first in the opening credits, you know it's gonna be pretty crazy to put it lightly.
Unmarked spoilers below!
General Gameplay
- A warning for players: if you ever pick up this game and want more ambiance, be sure to play it with headphones on. Why? So that the voices in Senua's mind can be up close and personal with you. Even worse is that, at times, the voices are directed at you. The game uses 3D audio designed for headphones, and it sounds like the voices are right behind you whispering in your ear.
- The message that appears early on in the game, after the Dark Rot starts to take form (pictured). It states that the rot will continue to grow every time Senua dies or otherwise fails, and all progress will be lost if the rot reaches her head. Thankfully, you can die as many times as you like and the rot won't reach her head until the end of the story. The Dark Rot and the implied warning that comes with it is meant to spark paranoia and put you, the player, in Senua's position.
Characters
- The character designs for Senua's enemies are nothing short of terrifying. Although they appear humanoid, their movements and sounds they make are nothing even close to human.
- The Shadow is, perhaps, the most horrifying thing about the entire game. Whatever it is, it keeps following you, and it will not stop until Senua is dead. Regardless of where you are in the game, the voices in Senua's head make it clear that it is hunting her. And by the end of the game, we learn that The Shadow is, in fact, Senua's memory of her own father.
- That severed head of Dillion that Senua is carrying in a burlap sack with her? It is breathing.
- The gods themselves. These aren't sanitized—these are the ones straight from Nordic lore and viewed through Senua's mind, and they are horrifying.
- Surtr, God of Fire. A towering hulk of a man with a head made from burning wickerwork, and wielding a sword his own size, he looks quite reminiscent of the Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2.
- Valravn, God of Illusion. His typical depiction is that of a raven. In the game, however, he's a horrifying hybrid of man and raven, complete with a malformed raven skull for a head. And when you first see him, he's standing in a dead field, just staring at Senua. Then your vision is briefly obscured, and he outright vanishes, replaced instead by an effigy. Nothing Is Scarier than an enemy you can't locate.
- Garmr, guardian of Hel. Despite the normal depiction of a wolf or dog, the game takes it up to eleven and instead portrays Garmr as a half-rotted boar corpse, a result of Senua having no idea what a wolf is and filling in the blank with her people's knowledge. Even worse is that it is able to summon darkness and, in turn, Senua's worst memories.
- Hela, ruler of the underworld. The game does an excellent job building up this particular character, seeing as she's the whole reason Senua's going through this whole ordeal. And she appears not even halfway through the game, appearing from the shadows ahead as a massive figure. And her appearance is nothing short of terrifying — while one side of her is completely pale and peppered with runes, the other half is dark and gives the appearance of a charred corpse that is still smoldering with embers.
- Senua herself can look rather distressing, with her face almost constantly pulled into a grimace and a wide manic look to her eyes combining to make Senua appear on the edge of losing herself totally to her illness.
Story
- Everywhere Senua goes, sooner or later there will be corpses. Some are hanging from trees, others float in the water, yet more are lying and leaning against walls and rocks. The final Surtr area has wooden cages literally filled with burned corpses. Hela's castle is littered in skeletons and hanging cages with corpses inside.
- How Dillion died: he was strung up with his back mutilated, exposed to the sun. That's not fiction (possibly, as there is still debate among scholars as to whether it was a real practice or invented for stories). It's the "Blood Eagle". A human sacrifice to Odin, which was purportedly done to the chieftains of conquered villages.
- To pass through Surtr's gates, Senua must find a sacrificial altar. When she focuses on it, she is blasted by visions before being thrown into a burning version of the area she was just in. Senua must find her way through this inferno to the gate, while all around her she is dogged by the sounds of people screaming as they are burned alive. If she doesn't make it to the gate in time, she suffers the same fate.
- The Trials of Odin are all quite nightmarish considering Senua is defenseless without her sword, but standouts include:
- The chase at the end of the plague level. Senua must find runes to unlock the door before time runs out, all while pursued by a great flaming ball of...SOMETHING.
- Those...pulsating things wandering in the darkness bring to mind something out of Silent Hill.
- The "sea of corpses" that Senua finds herself in after claiming Gramr is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: an ocean of blood and pus in which giant corpses writhe in agony while Senua is forced to fight off hordes of attackers.
- Trying to make your way through Hela's castle, while avoiding her guard dog, Garmr, is one of the most intense sequences in the entire game. Senua must run between safe zones of light to avoid her pursuer. Every time she enters the darkness, the screen is lit up by flashes of horrifying visions, while the sound of Garmr coming up behind you grows louder by the second. You'll be so intent on running for safety that you don't dare look back, until Senua does, and catches a glimpse of the beast right behind her.
- Then you finally get to fight it, and find it can cover your screen with those same visions unless you either focus or hit it with a heavy attack.
- Shortly before the final battle against Hela, the game reveals what the short nightmarish glimps were that Garmr showed Senua whenever she was in darkness: it's of her mother literally burning to death at the stake.
- Everything that Senua's father did. Everything. To just name some examples: he murdered her mother by burning her alive for disobeying him, he trapped Senua in a well for almost 15 years, he did obscure rituals aimed at "banishing darkness" that apparently were painful and horrible, he abused and gaslighted her, he infested her with the idea that she is cursed and can't ever be happy unless he heals her by praying and he rallied the clansmen against her when she tried to interact with other people. And, perhaps worst, he led the invading Northmen to his village and let them slaughter everyone in exchange for sparing him.
