Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the recently announced sequel to developer Ninja Theory’s hit 2017 game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, will also be coming to PC. The game was only announced a few short weeks ago with a dramatic trailer as part of Xbox’s showcase at The Game Awards 2019, but now it seems Hellblade II will be released for PC as well as the new Xbox Series X, presumably next year to coincide with the debut of the new console.
The original Hellblade game was met with great critical acclaim. Ninja Theory employed the use of both historical and mental health consultants to ensure the game would as historically accurate to the Pict protagonist and Norse setting as possible, while still also providing one of the most true-to-life depictions of mental illness in major modern games. The titular Senua, portrayed through motion capture by actress Melina Juergens, is on a quest to bring her lover back from the realm of the dead, while also dealing with her own mental illness and trauma stemming from her loss.
When asked on Twitter whether Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II would be an Xbox exclusive, Aaron Greenberg, General Manager of Xbox Games Marketing at Microsoft, confirmed the game was “being made exclusively for Xbox and PC.” Whether it will be released for other consoles or platforms at a later point is yet to be announced, but fans looking to play Hellblade 2 as soon as possible will need to look to those two platforms when waiting for an official release date.
The original Hellblade began as a Windows and PlayStation 4 exclusive, with it releasing later for the Xbox One and only this past April for the Nintendo Switch, so this release represents a change from the past. However, it’s not at all surprising considering Ninja Theory was acquired by Microsoft last year along with several other studios to help bolster its first party selection of games.
Hopefully Microsoft will continue to give Ninja Theory enough creative control to tell the story that they want to tell in the sequel, continuing the path of Senua’s journey through grief and her own demons. Whether this game is successful may reveal larger trends about how Microsoft’s investments in more first-party developers are paying off, and how much they are willing to let the reins go to allow their studios to make the best games possible. The Xbox Series X’s release date won’t be until December 2020, so it will likely still be a while until Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and other new games give us a better perspective of where Microsoft is headed with future titles, across all of their platforms.
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Source: Twitter
