Hell Blade II: Senua’s Saga

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Game Description: The sequel to the award-winning Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Senua returns in a brutal journey of survival through the myth and torment of Viking Iceland.


Platform:
 Xbox Series X/Gamepass Genre: Third Person, Action-Adventure

Role: Experience Designer (Contractor) Date: Sept 2021 – July 2022

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While contracting at Ninja Theory I worked on two projects Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga and Project Mara. During the development of HB2, I was an Experience Designer which as Rahni Tucker described the role to me ‘The director of the level’. I would design the level, while taking in considerations of the already scanned part of Iceland, and design the mechanics needed to best elevate the story. Alongside implementing the dialogue & narrative moments within the level.

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The two levels I had involvement in was that of the opening level Chapter 1: Reykjanesta  &  Chapter 5: Bardarvik

I worked alongside Matt Watson on Chapter 1 as the brief we had, was that the level needed to be roughly an hour long in duration, introduce us to some of Senua’s new crew as well as the ‘darkness’ haunting the Island, in the form of that of viking lore Draugrs.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II Review

Level design on this project was extremely different to other studios I have worked at, as we really wanted to stay true to the real world environment as much as possible. So much so, that the Enviro team had scanned a lot of the areas that the game would take place in.

The main themes for the first level, when I was working on it was:
– Loss
– Uncertainty
– Fear


As this was a whole new island, which Senua did not know, we really wanted to focus on keeping up the pace of twists & turns Senua would see in the first chapter. We used the area to help achieve that with Black Sand, Geysers & Draugrs as the enemy type.

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Earlier I mentioned that it was not just my job to design the level but also to design mechanics as well. Which would help to sell the world & feeling of Senua. The valkyries were such a memorable aspect from the first game, I wanted to try follow that lead.

With Huw Warren-Roberts we worked on the first version of the totems. But this was not advanced and Ninja Theory took them in another direction.

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In the final game, they are more of ‘collectibles’ that give players more lore of the world around them. Orgianlly we found that the first settlers in Iceland would place these totem/poles around to appease the gods/mark their path.