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]

hazmick: I did not even realize it was Hela at first. I thought it was a giant. When I met her again at the end of the game it was a lot more obvious who she was. Then I could see that half of her body was burned and corroded.

I really liked the Tower trial, where the whole area had two versions - light and dark, and you had to keep switching from one to the other to get through.

The Blindness trial annoyed me after a while. The darkness was fine, but I did not like how the game got all blurry a few feet away. It started to hurt my eyes. If they had just made it completely black at that distance I think it would have been better.


Acadian: Senua rarely speaks. I guess you could say the voices in her head do most of the talking. She also does not look into the camera when you pan it around to look at her. Usually you can only see her straight on during the cinematic cutscenes. It is like she does not want to be seen or noticed. When you learn more of her history you understand why. It really does pull you in to her story.


haute ecole rider: They really went all out to make Senua come alive. And they did a marvelous job at portraying her psychosis, and Norse mythology. It is really an outstanding game.


I found a workaround for the single save game. The game save file is kept in the Users\{Your Username}\AppData\Local\HellbladeGame\Saved\SaveGames folder. What I did was create subfolders within it for all the chapters of the game. Then at the beginning of each chapter I Alt+Tabbed to the desktop and copied the main save to the appropriate subfolder. At one point I missed a Lorestone and had to go back. So I deleted the main save and copied back the one I had put in that chapter's subfolder. It worked perfectly.

Well, I finally 'beat' teh game like a red-haired stepchild. P4eAR M3 N00b$!

Seriously though, this was a fantastic game. It is hands-down the best new game I have played this year. Nothing else can hold a candle to Senua. Not since Pillars of Eternity. I would say that in the last three years, the best games I have played have been (in order of their release) Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, and Senua's Sacrifice.

As many people say, it is a short game. I would guess I spent about 16 hours on it. I have seen others say they did it in as little as 6 hours. I went back a few times to make sure I got all the Lorestones, which made it take longer for me. If I had not I would guess it would have taken me about 13 or 14 hours. Given that the price tag is half that of a normal game, I do not have any problem with that. TBH, I am kind of glad that it is done, and I am out of Senua's head. It is not very pleasant in there, not to mention awfully crowded!

There was one thing at the end I did not like. Drove me crazy in fact. There are several big boss fights in the end, as you work your way across three platforms to Hela. In one you have to refight all the bosses you killed before - Surtur, Valravn, and Fenrir. Another was just a bunch of generic Norse monster-men. Once you get to where Hela herself is there is just an endless battle of monster-men. The game literally spawns an endless horde of monsters until you finally die. I got really frustrated trying to win that battle. It was only after I finally got killed in it that I learned you are supposed to die. That is counter-intuitive, to say the least. I wonder how many other people got really ticked off like I was at the time. I think that could have been done better. Like by actually being able to defeat the monster-man horde, and then go to the final cutscenes with Dillion and Hela.

But those final scenes did payoff hugely, and assuaged my previous annoyance. Senua finally got her redemption, and the peace she never found in life. I was actually surprised at how positive it was. I really never expected things to work out well for her. But it came out more than good. The ending even hints at a sequel. It might be because I found all the Lorestones and got the extended ending. I am not sure what the regular ending is like. It might be less rosy.


Back to the bridge

Test of Blindness

Memories

Gramr has been reforged by Senua's trials

Through the darkness

Sea of Corpses

Sea of Corpses II

Climbing over the dead

Blue skies again

Fenrir

Dillion

Senua struggles on

Hela

The End

Senua Rising

Back to the Light

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 28 2017, 03:59 AM