Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice Options

[SubRosa]

I started playing it today. So far it is alright. It has some utterly fantastic things. The story is simple, but draws you in from the start. Senua is journeying to Hel to get her dead boyfriend back. Or she is hallucinating because she is insane? She is clearly mad. Maybe it is both?

The game recommends you wear headphones when you play, which I agree with. The game uses binaural audio for the voices you constantly hear in your head. So one voice might speak in one ear, and the next in the other, or some in both. There are a lot of voices in Senua's head. The headphones really makes them come alive.

The voices are not just atmosphere either. They both tell the story, and give you hints on what to do next. There is no UI in the game. So the voices are your only guide. I am sure this is no accident. For the voices are Senua's only guide as well.

The creepiness really sucks you in. There is fighting, but the game is primarily story-driven. The combat is only secondary. At least so far. I have seen a lot of reviewers slam the combat for being simplistic. But I do not mind it at all. I have never been into fighting games that are all about mashing buttons in the right combinations like Mortal Kombat.

But there are some really simple things that really bring the game down. Most I think stem from being made with a console in mind. Most notable is that there is no manual saving, and no way to manually load a save. The game autosaves, and loads the last autosave when you restart it. If your save gets corrupted, I imagine you simply F'ed in the rear and have to start completely over. But we know that never happens right?

The graphics are mostly outstanding. But one issue I have is that the camera is too close to Senua's right shoulder, which makes the field of view really narrow. I found a fix for this:

The game's .ini files are found in Users\{Your Username}\AppData\Local\HellbladeGame\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

Open Engine.ini and add the following:

[/script/engine.localplayer]
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV


There is also no way of turning off Motion Blur and Colorfringng in the game's options menu, but you can do it this way:

Open scaleability.ini and add:

[PostProcessQuality@3]
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0

NOTE: In the file scaleability.ini (the @3 is the quality setting you have it set to in gameusersettings.ini, 3 is the very high ingame setting. Set this number to match what you have in gameusersettings.ini)


Turn off Film Grain

Open Engine.ini file, find [SystemSettings], and make the following changes:
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0



Skip Intro Videos

Go to to your Hellblade\HellbladeGame\Content\Movies and rename the following files:
NinjaTheory_Logo.bik
ThirdParty_Logo.bik
UE4_Logo.bik.


There is also a softness to the image. I am not sure what it is. I might be FXAA, or some other post-processing effect. I have seen some people say that turning Post-Processing down to Medium fixes this. But others say it made no difference for them. I will have to experiment.

The final thing that really gets to me is the camera always auto-centers itself, all the time. So if you look up, the camera automatically pulls down to center. The same if you look down. That gets really, really annoying.


Senua

Her BF

The gate to Hel looms

Really close up

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 19 2017, 02:00 AM

[SubRosa]

I turned down the Post Processing to Medium, and the image does look much sharper than it did on Very High. So I am happy with that. I also added a few more tweaks to the first post.

I had more time to play today, and can make some more observations.

One thing that is really different about this game is that there is no user interface. It does not need one, as there is no inventory. There are no items, no spells, no map, no journal, no health bar, no nothing. What you see is literally what you get. It is very minimalist, but it works to help keep you focused on the story.

As I said before the game is story-based. That is it's real strength. The story comes out gradually as Senua explores Hel. Partly it comes from the voices in her head talking to themselves (and to her, but those mostly seem to talk to one another). The other part comes from Druth - the ghost of an Irish Celt whom she found in the wilderness. Druth was enslaved by the Norse, but eventually escaped after years, only to be found by Senua before his death. So he has a lot of observations on Norse culture with an inside view.

Speaking of voices, the voice acting is stellar. Here is an example.

As a side note, there are runestones scattered throughout the game that you can interact with. They start little segments about Norse mythology narrated by Druth. They are not needed to complete the game. But they are nice little touches. I have also read that if you find all 44 of them you will get a special extended ending of the game.

The game is very linear. Sometimes you have choices to go one way or another, but sooner or later you have to go back and do the side you passed by. It is like a Bioware game that way, where there is a set number of chapters you have to do, but you can do them in any order you want.

Most of the game is exploring and solving puzzles. Most of the puzzles are cases where you are given a rune or set of runes. Then you have to walk around and look at the environment to find that rune. Often it is a case of lining up several different objects from just the right angle so they call come together to form the rune. It is neat, but can get tiresome when you come upon a difficult one. To help out, when you come near the area where the rune can be seen, you will see dozens of the same rune appear glowing in the air all around you. So that can help you get on track. Plus the voices in your head will sometimes help point you in the right direction.

A small part of the game is combat. You can tell when combat starts because Senua draws her sword (you cannot do this on your own). You tend to get one or two enemies coming at you at a time. The movement controls become very sluggish, to the point where it is nearly impossible to move at all. You have a block, a fast attack, a heavy attack, and an evade button. The evade just makes you back up if it is the only button you push. If you use the Evade + a movement button you will do a roll to the right or left, or a charge forward. This literally the only way you can move in combat.

I find it is best to block until the baddies attack, and exclusively use the fast attack on them a few times until they get their bearings again. Then block as they prepare another attack. After a few rounds of this you will see a glowing blue-white rune similar to the mirror Senua wears on her waist. Press The Focus Key when you see it, and it slows down time. Then it is time to start mashing the Heavy Attack until you kill the bad guy. Often you can wipe out two or even three of them in mirror time.

You can tell if you are losing because the edges of the screen start to go red. But more than that the voices in your head will tell you: "She's losing!". Combat is generally not too hard. But it can get frustrating because of how hard it is to move. If you die the game reloads the autosave before combat began. I died a lot in my first Boss fight with Surtur. But killed Valravn my first go (it was hard though).

In your first fight you 'die'. I think this is scripted so it always happens no matter what you do. You get this black rot growing in your hand. The game then tells you that every time you die, the rot will spread up your arm. If it gets to your head, death is permanent (and the game is over). But I have seen many say online that this never actually happens. I died about 6 times fighting Surtur, and never saw the rot move. So my advice is not to worry about it.


The picture is sharper with post processing down to medium and motion blur disabled

A mythology-telling runestone

A close up

There is a puzzle piece rune nearby

Burning

Surtur

Senua smites!

The killing blow

Now on to Valravn

That is not Valravn

Not Valravn either

Searching for the next rune

Facing Valravn

Splekt!

Valravn falls

Darkness

And Light

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 20 2017, 05:33 PM