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The first Hellblade was impressive in many ways, and one of the main gameplay elements was the combat system. As the producers of the game have announced, Saga Senua: Hellblade 2 should raise the bar even higher in this aspect.
Although work on Hellblade 2 been underway for a long time, until the developers provided fans with a lot of information or materials, so every mention of the work of Ninja Theory is of interest.
We know that in the continuation of the bestseller, a new person will be responsible for the design of the entire combat system – Juan Fernandez. As he stated in an interview with the Spanish site Vandal, compared to his predecessor, the fight in the sequel will be deeper and more thoughtful.
We did a lot of things right in the first part of the game, but I think there are a lot of things that could be improved and that I would like to change today. You have to remember that the team that worked on the first Hellblade adventure was incredibly small for a project like this. Most of the time, about fifteen people worked in the studio.
Juan Fernandez also revealed exactly what he would change from the original. First of all, he wants to focus on more options for defeating opponents and variety of enemies.
What I didn’t like about Hellblade was the lack of variety of enemies, the battles being too long, the way the difficulty was balanced – the enemies had too much health, too much stamina. We had many different attacks and combos at our disposal, but it was the characteristics of the enemy that discouraged us from using everything that the team had prepared. People would find two or three moves they liked and repeat them. I would also fix the overly long periods and the length of the story cutscenes. Both can be balanced in a more reasonable way.
Studio creative director Tamim Antoniades had previously commented on the topic, acknowledging that the fight would be “real and brutal.”
The actress who plays Senua using motion capture technology and has even gone through special “combat training” in the past two years, to make her presence in the game more realistic.
It’s important to note that more people are also working on the sequel. As Fernandez admits, the team’s previous work is their most important reference point.
We raise the bar to do more with less. We have more people than we did with the first Hellblade, but we don’t lose the quality we created with the previous team. I think we’re giving it our all.
It’s been over two years since Hellblade 2 was presented at the Game Awards. Everything suggests that the development of the game is going in the right direction and the developers are aware of the shortcomings of the first part.
A release date for the game has yet to be revealed.
