Senua in Hellblade 2 Aims at Maximum Photorealism; Video on Devs' Scientific Approach
Senua in Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is expected to be much more realistic than in the prequel - even photorealistic. Ninja Theory has shown how it intends to achieve this.
If nothing changes, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II will come out on PC and XSX/S in 2024, which is seven years after the release of the excellent first game. A considerable gap, especially considering the fact that the game was announced back in 2019. Nevertheless, the piety with which the developers from Ninja Theory approach to creating the various elements of the sequel seems to fully justify the prolonged development time.
The video released today shows the developers' perfectionist approach in creating the protagonist's character. Although Senua already came off very realistically in part one, in the follow up she is to be downright photorealistic. This will be helped by facial and body scans of Melina Juergens - the actress providing her image and voice to the protagonist - as well as by the fact that costumes, makeup and hairstyle are first created by hand and only later digitized. The video below shows part of this process.
"The costumes are created by experienced designers using traditional materials and period-specific techniques, which achieves a level of realism and detail simply not possible with strictly digital techniques," says Will Potter, communications manager at Ninja Theory studios. The latter, however, are still necessary to "bring the protagonist to life," or, in other words, to animate her.
Like in the first game while working on Senua's Saga: Hellblade II this task was entrusted to the company 3Lateral. It was to give the protagonist the maximum possible credibility. One of its members, Uros Sikmic, described it in the following words:
"The idea was to push the boundaries of the digital man to get as close to photorealism as possible, while experimenting and exploring new movie techniques. The more photorealism we achieve, the deeper we go into science - into anatomy, into physics, into simulation, into human perception."
Hopefully, after Senua's Saga: Hellblade II will finally be released, we'll be able to say that it was indeed worth waiting seven long years for this game (assuming no delays, of course). Especially since the developers want to also revolutionize facial expressions and radically change the combat system.
