New Hellblade Screenshots & Release Date

Hellblade will be released August 8th on PlayStation 4 and PC

Check out the new trailer below!

Available to pre-order on PS4 & Steam now!

 

Revealing The Finer Details Of Hellblade’s Mysterious Heroine

Ninja Theory’s upcoming game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is being developed by a small team, with a modest budget. That doesn’t mean that the studio is scrimping on the details, however. One of the biggest areas that they’re putting particular focus on is the titular character, Senua. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the Pict warrior, pointing out the inspirations, historical roots, and other easily missed details behind her creation.

Hellblade is set around 790 AD, according to the game’s creative director, Tameem Antoniades. “It’s specifically that period because the Christians haven’t arrived yet,” he says. “It’s in the Orkney Islands, which is just off Scotland. Shortly after the Vikings landed in Orkney, the Celtic population in Orkney disappeared. People don’t know why. The story sets out to explain that.”

One of the mysteries that Hellblade is addressing – as fictional as the solution may be – is Senua herself. “They discovered a goddess fairly recently in England, and the only thing they found was a carving on a stone that says, ‘To the goddess Senua. We have fulfilled our vow.’ And there are some gifts there. There’s nothing else known about this goddess. We thought there was a nice little mystery there – who’s this goddess and what vow was fulfilled?

Senua
Senua’s in-game model is the result of high-tech scans and motion capture. A Serbian company, 3Lateral, scanned in the face of actress Melina Juergens using proprietary technology. Juergens portrays the role of Senua in the game, and she’s also Ninja Theory’s video editor.

Face paint
The Picts’ distinctive face-painting is the reason why the Celtic tribe earned the name. “The Picts were a people that used to paint themselves in war paint using woad, like Mel Gibson in Braveheart – though he was several hundred years too late. The Pictish warriors were given the name by the Romans, because they were pictoral. They were like barbarians, and were mostly naked in fact,” Antoniades says. Records from this time period are sparse, and what the painted designs actually looked like has been lost to history. Ninja Theory decided to keep Senua’s paint simple, and within the bounds of something that she would be able to apply to her own body. “We actually grabbed paint and made patterns on paper and scanned it in and put it on her,” he says. If you look closely, you might be able to see finger marks and other distinctive smears.

Hair
Senua’s hair is a striking part of the character’s profile, and it’s also rooted in history. “They put lime in their hair, that would clump up and give them this dreadlock look,” Antoniades says. Her hair is decorated with a variety of small stones and beads, though that flourish has more to do with art design than historical accuracy. “They’re just little decorations kind of holding that stuff together. We put that in mainly because she’s so dark, and it helped to bring it out.”

Headpiece
Senua is a fierce warrior, but one of the biggest battles she’s fought has been internal. The character is battling psychosis, and she hears and sees things that other people don’t. It’s an element that’s more fully explored in gameplay, but her headpiece is a physical reminder. “Part of the idea is that the voices that are intruding on her, she wears this almost as a kind of protector,” Antoniades says. The word “barbarian” is often used disparagingly, but the Celts of this era were skilled craftsmen. “All the jewelry is incredibly ornate, from the period.”

Furred collar
What kind of animal fur is Senua sporting? Antoniades says it’s based on wolf.

Brooch
Senua’s brooch has significance to her past. “It’s a warrior pin that’s almost like a little sword; it represents her warrior status that Dillion probably gave her.” Dillion is Senua’s former lover, and as we’ll soon learn, the pin isn’t the only physical relic of his that she’s hauling around. “These brooches, they’re very common Celtic pins for women,” Antoniades says. “But the Vikings really liked them, and they appropriated them. So when you see Vikings TV shows you’ll see these ornate brooches that were actually meant for women.” The design is also an interesting – and mysterious – detail. “The threes seem to be common in Celtic symbology. They don’t really know what it means, or why it’s so significant. It’s hard to unpack what these things could have meant, because the Celts didn’t write down a lot, or the things that they did write down didn’t survive. But it’s variously described as infinity or when the Christians kind of appropriated Celtic and Pagan symbolism, that was then turned into the trinity – but it didn’t start off meaning the trinity, it meant something else that we don’t really know about.”

Sword
Senua’s sword is critically important in combat, but the game’s not a stylish-action game like some of Ninja Theory’s previous titles. She uses it to battle Vikings, but the game has extended sequences that don’t feature any swordplay at all. She also loses it at a certain point in the story, where it’s replaced with a blade that she puts particular significance upon. Is it the titular hellblade? Not necessarily. “I thought of her as the Hellblade; she is the Hellblade,” Antoniades says. “It’s not the sword that’s important in this story, like it was in Heavenly Sword. It’s her.”

The sack
What’s in the sack? Well, it’s Dillion’s head. Senua believes that the head contains the soul of the departed, and she’s taking it with her to bargain for her love’s release. It’s a grim totem, but that’s not the most disturbing part. “The head itself isn’t complete [at this point in development], but at times you see it suck in breath,” Antoniades says.

Mirror
Senua’s mirror isn’t just for checking on Pictish paint. These items had an important role in the period, which is also the case in Hellblade. “They were considered magical. They weren’t made of glass and silver, like the mirrors you get now,” Antoniades says. “They were made of polished iron, so they were really rough and the reflections were ambiguous. Druids used to use them to see into the underworld. It’s based on a real Celtic mirror.”

 

Ninja Theory Announces Hellblade.

Let’s Start A Twitter Campaign..

Do you want Heavenly Sword 2 as much as I do?

Let’s take action and tweet Sony and PlayStation and tell them we want this..

Tweet #HeavenlySword2ByNinjaTheory to Sony and PlayStation

It’s Rant Time…Heavenly Sword Movie Trailer!!

I didn’t want to talk about this or give it ANY attention what so ever but it’s annoyed me sooo much that I need to vent.

I will not post the trailer since it’s so bad it will make my eyes bleed if I ever watch it again.

Nariko is played once again by Anna Torv, sad thing is Anna sounds very wooden in her portrayal of Nariko in this film and I’m not sure I blame her with some of the truly crappy dialogue they’ve given her.

King Bohan is now played by Alfred Molina, I have nothing against Alfred in fact I think he’s a great actor and I loved his performance in Spider-man 2 but if you’re a big HS fan like me you know only one man can play Bohan and that is Andy Serkis.

Who the heck is this guy, well apparently this is Nariko’s brother Loki (looks like someone didn’t play the Ninja Theory game)

Here is the exact quote from the intro to Heavenly Sword by Nariko herself…

“I should not have been, it was written that 23 years ago in the year of the firehorse. A deity would be reborn in the body of a mortal man. A saviour, destined to unite our people and show us the way to the promise land. Instead I was born from my mother’s dying body and my people wept. They said I was a portent of doom..maybe they were right.”

This plainly states Nariko is the ONLY child of Shen and his wife. This was one of the most important aspects of Heavenly Sword, Nariko’s isolation from her father and the other members of the clan because they hated her for being a ‘curse’.

Kai is back too but I’m unsure who plays her, but it doesn’t sound like Lydia Baksh (who played Kai in the video game) She isn’t shown enough to know if she is exactly like her video game character.

The way he says this is so creepy it’s like he’s hitting on them or something *yuck*

There are a lot of glaring mistakes in this film too.

First mistake I noticed in the trailer.. a clan member is seen taking Kai’s necklace and teasing her, the clan NEVER did this, In fact I’d say Kai was popular with them. (she was found by Nariko and quickly welcomed into the clan) Kai is Nariko’s only friend and adopted little sister.

Nariko’s sleeve is on the wrong side but in the next shot in the trailer

It’s back on the left, Nariko’s top must have magical shoulder swapping powers.

I never saw horses in the final battle.

The Heavenly Sword is an ancient and mystical weapon, but it never fired beams of light into the sky.

Not a mistake but.. this was one of my favourite sequences from the game (The Goddess) and I just know this crappy film will do this incredible scene no justice.

Well my rant is officially over, let’s hope this movie fades into obscurity and is never mentioned again.

 

Ninja Theory Working On Exciting New Things!

50 PlayStation 3 Games That You Should Play Before You Die!

24. Heavenly Sword

Emotionally charged, stunningly beautiful and delivering unprecedented dramatic character performance, Heavenly Sword showcased the power of PlayStation 3. A dramatic tale of revenge sees Nariko, a fiery red-haired heroine embark on a quest for vengeance against an invading King and his army. The story builds around the ancient Heavenly Sword which once belonged to a powerful deity. It can never be wielded by a mortal without it draining their life-force, killing them within hours.

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Ninja Theory Developing Game For The PS4!

Look who I spotted in the confirmed developers for PS4

Could the Heavenly Sword sequel we always wanted be in the works? I hope so..

Rhianna Pratchett talks Heavenly Sword, Sony, and Andy Serkis

 Rhianna Pratchett talks about writing one of the PlayStation 3’s premiere.

Why Heavenly Sword Matters!

The PlayStation 3 needs good, exclusive titles. So when Heavenly Sword came out, it had a lot riding on its shoulders. Luckily, the game delivered a thrilling action experience, complete with incredibly well-written and -acted cutscenes featuring the work of WETA digital and benefiting from both the motion capture and voice acting of Andy Serkis, also known as Gollum.

The game stars Nariko, a woman who is given the task of protecting a blade that her clan worships and keeps safe, and Kai, her young friend who hasn’t been quite right in the head since some traumatic events in the past. The relationship between the two women and the rest of the clan, as well as the evil King Bohan, make up the bulk of the cutscenes.

Still, all those characters needed something to say, and Rhianna Pratchett was the mind behind the script for the game. In the past she has written the superbly-funny Overlord, and now with Heavenly Sword she’s proven that you can make an action game better by adding complexity to the characters, while at the same time keeping her trademark humor in the dialog. Rhianna was gracious enough to talk with us about writing Heavenly Sword, poking fun at Sony, and new content for Overlord.

Rhianna Pratchett is one of the writers trying to keep story and characterization strong in gaming, and as always her insights are both fresh and amusing.

Ars Technica: When you began writing Heavenly Sword, how much information did Ninja Theory give you? They knew it was going to be an action game, obviously, but do you have outlines for each character, or did you create Nariko and company from scratch?

Rhianna Pratchett: There was actually a first-draft script in place when I came on board, which is as rare as rocking-horse poo in the games industry, it really is. So Nariko, Kai (the two main characters in the game), et al., were already there, although not all the characters had names, and most of them didn’t really have properly defined journeys, relationships, foibles, etc. So character-wise there were some good bones then and some goddamn fantastic concept art!

My job was to brainstorm the story, characters, relationship, themes, etc. with Tameem Antoniades (creative director) and Andy Serkis (dramatic director) and then write up profiles, revise story documents, and completely rewrite the script (without changing the basic spine of the story too much) with those ideas in mind. From that the cutscenes were drawn and visually scoped out.

I remember you saying that you finished Heavenly Sword before Overlord. Once you’ve turned in your finished script, are you still involved with the game? Is there a sense of “Oh, my job here is done,” or do you continue to follow the development process?

Script-writing for a game is an incredibly flexible process. It has to be due to the nature of games development. So the script was really written in sections as the level design got locked down and then folded together, and polished up all nice and fancy for the outside world. Even a linear game does not mean a linear script-writing process. You’re always going back and forth tweaking this and that in line with design changes.

After I finished the main script, I also worked with the level designers to scope out and write the level dialogue—everything that occurs in a level but does not include cutscenes or ambient stuff. When it came to the combat chatter we needed to hire another writer (Andrew Walsh) to help me out since there was a huge volume of dialogue that needed to be created. It also all had to not only change in tone and delivery depending on the actions of the player during the combat but be pretty much unique from encounter to encounter. I think the technical term is “shitloads.”

Even after all that there were still other writing tasks to do, such as rewrites, on-screen text, chapter headings, even weird funky bits like the plaques in Bohan’s armory. So finishing the main script was by no means the end of my involvement.

When voice acting goes tear-inducingly wrong!

AT: When we talked to Susan O’Connor, she didn’t like talking about what could happen once her words hit the mouths of voice actors in some instances. Do you get nervous before seeing a final game to see how the developers took your script and translated it into cutscenes and dialog? It must have been easier knowing someone like Andy Serkis was involved with bringing your words to life.

I’ve worked on a lot of titles, so I’m only too aware of how wrong—how tear-inducingly wrong things can go at the voice recording stage. Been there, heard that, cried myself to sleep.

Personally, I’ve found that getting involved in the VO directing whenever possible can help a lot, and not just for my control-freak sensibilities. Obviously it allows me to help steer things and offer advice about what I believe to be the right direction for a story or character, just as a movie writer/director would do. But, as I think I mentioned to you before, it’s also incredibly beneficial to have someone there that knows the entire script line for line.

However, it’s not always possible, and sometimes you really can’t get all Charlton Heston “from my cold, dead hands” about it. You’ve just got to let your baby go. Wave it off with a snotty hankie and a tear in your eye, and just hope it doesn’t come back upside down and on fire.

Of course, it’s a lot easier when you know you’re sending your baby off into the hands of folks like Andy Serkis and WETA. Andy had been involved in the development of Heavenly Sword for a long time, and he was fantastically enthusiastic about the project. I also met with some of the other actors beforehand when we had a full script read-through pre-WETA, and I got a chance to talk to them about their characters and feel confident that they would do a good job, which clearly they did! So, yes, the hanky was definitely drier!

Let’s talk about Nariko and Kai for a moment. Nariko is really defined by her relationships: with her father, Kai, her clan, and even who she believes she is. Kai is much odder, and she’s a very funny character, but at the same time there is this core of loyalty and bravery in her. It seemed like these characters were more complex than what we usually get in action games, and it was a very welcome change from the norm. Do you find that lately, developers are more willing to put a better story with more compelling characters in action titles? Do you think a strong story and characters can help action games stand out from the crowd?

The game focuses on Nariko’s journey and obviously that is a mental, almost spiritual one, as well as a physical journey. Nariko has had to live her whole life under a curse, under constant suspicion from much of her Clan that, by the time we start the game, has manifested into downright hatred. She has to find a way to cope with this as well as her duties as a stoic, fearless warrior. It’s unsurprising that this gives her very little time to be a human being.

Nariko is much more conflicted than your average action hero

A constant question for me when helping create Nariko’s character was “What happens when the mask slips”—what happens when you listen to all those little voices—and not only listen to them, but give them body and form, and let them take you over.

Nariko seems very single-minded on one level, but inside there’s a lot of churning emotions going on. When she makes the decision to wield the Heavenly Sword, she knows she is sacrificing her life, but what she doesn’t know—and what she discovers through the course of the game—is that what kills her actually allows her to live more completely than she has ever done before.

Gamers seem to have warmed to Kai a great deal, which I’m very glad about. Writing younger characters is always hard, even more so when they are, let’s say, “special.” They’re a fine line between cute craziness and just plain annoying. She’s a funny little creature, and Lydia Baksh does a great job with her. Kai’s relationship with Nariko is quite central to the story as well. Kai doesn’t care what the Clan thinks of Nariko—she simply loves her without question. In turn, Nariko would do anything for Kai—and does.

I do think that a strong story and especially strong characters help action-adventures a great deal. I love developing characters… I even love the evil ones (actually I especially love the evil ones). I don’t think there are enough video game stars—even well-known ones—that are really fully rounded characters. Lara Croft started out as nothing more that a pretty avatar for the first couple of games, and I’m not really sure she’s ever been able to better herself. True, there was more of a concerted effort in Legend, but that was seven titles in, so rather late in the day!

Maybe that’s enough for some people, but it’s not enough for me.  I want my game characters to be lovable, hateful, flawed, neurotic, confused, bitter, twisted, dark, regretful, wrong, righteous—full of guile, pathos, quick wit, brokenhearted and open-hearted—human.

Although maybe not all in one character! That would be rather a tall order!

Evil characters and good dialogue

AT: I’m glad you brought up the evil characters. There is a line about Bohan’s genitals that was just… it was out there. Do you have fun writing a character who is that crazy? It almost made him scarier, once you were done laughing.  You get a sense he had a terrifying personal life when it came to chasing his pleasures.

The great thing about Bohan is that I could write him with Andy’s voice in my head. It sounds a little freaky, but it’s actually extremely useful. Andy did a great job in bringing out Bohan’s craziness and also the fact that this guy might seem mad as a box of frogs, although almost sane compared to his generals, but he is also extremely, extremely, dangerous and unpredictable. And you know that anyone who would get involved with Whiptail (a half-woman, half-snake General) on a personal level has some questionable tastes.

Andy Serkis (right) and Stephen Berkoff (left) show off the motion-capture look.

Kai’s line about hitting an enemy soldier in his “weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE” was a great touch. Were you scared that SCEA wouldn’t have a sense of humor about that infamous quote? Did they groan when they first heard it?

We actually didn’t think that line would make it in there, so I’m glad to know it has. It was just a bit of fun really… a kind of wink to the hardcore gamers.

Wait, so even after the game is up, you’re not sure of what actually made it into the final title? It seems odd that you don’t see a final, approved script.

There are always last-minute changes for all manner of reasons, and as an outside contractor, it’s not always possible to keep up to date.

Well, the story and script are only a small part of what makes a good game, so after you’re done writing and the game comes out, do you play the title to see how the story and cutscenes work with the play itself?

I actually got to see a lot of the cutscenes online as they got released, and obviously I’d seen most of the raw WETA footage. I haven’t had a chance to play the full game yet… as I’m still trying to get hold of a PS3. I’ve managed to play the Whiptail fight at a friend’s house. That made me smile; Race Davies is fab, and she’s got a fantastic voice. I’d love to write for her again in the future.

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Ninja Theory Denies Working On New Heavenly Sword

Ninja Theory, the developer behind PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavenly Sword, has denied that they’re working on a sequel or anything related to the IP.

The denial comes via Twitter, after a rumour appeared in the latest edition of PlayGamer magazine Ninja Theory said: “We’re not currently developing HS2 or anything within the HS IP.”

Only E3 will show if the HS2 rumour is true.