"With Gramr reforged, you will have Odin's blessing to walk, a Goddess, into the halls of Helheim and challenge Hela as an equal."
--Druth, Hellblade, Senua's Sacrifice
A very limited but highly unique game, Senua's Sacrifice combines simple gameplay elements with weighty themes about mental health and psychological fortitude. The setting of Norse paganism and the psychosis mechanics alone, and especially together, distinguish it from other puzzle and action games very dramatically. There is no elaborate combat system, though there is combat, and there is no wide cast of characters, though the protagonist is well-utilized. A great deal of the plot is thoroughly ambiguous despite the hints at what is really happening: the vagueness here is artistically successful, like that of Dark Souls and unlike that of Tenet.
Production Values
Everything from floating symbols to sudden transitions in the world to to the quick appearance of standard enemies reinforces how there is something unusual about Senua's consciousness. The visuals have to be stylistically strong to convey this well, and they do, complete with graphics that, while not the best on the Xbox One, are absolutely not of poor quality. Senua travels to many places, including forests, tunnels, and Helheim itself. The Sea of Corpses is particularly striking on a visual level (the screenshot directly above this paragraph shows part of it) for its bodily forms that help form the landscape. With such a small number of characters, any voice acting would need to be impeccable. Senua's Sacrifice delivers excellently on this front. Along with Senua's voice, characters like Druth will be heard, often in his case. As vague or sometimes logically fallacious as what is said can be, the voice acting is integral to the characterization and to how psychosis is portrayed in Senua's many internal voices.
Gameplay
The bulk of the game--besides walking and listening to story/lore accounts--is split between puzzles and fighting. For some puzzles, symbols will appear in front of Senua, scattered around the screen, and only standing in a specific location will match the symbols or with the environmental shape needed to progress. For others, she has to search for one or more precise shapes somewhere in the perceived external world until wood or shadows forms the rune. Between many of these challenges, Senua has to use her sword to kill Northmen or even beings like Surtr from Norse mythology. A very small handful of basic attacks are available, and the protagonist can be beaten to the ground, where rapid button presses can save her from death. To help avoid this fate, the voices in Senua's mind can give advice during combat and help her parry at proper moments when multiple enemies are around her at once.
The game actually lies near the beginning of the game when it says that dying enough times will increase the black rot until it reaches Senua's head, killing her and forfeiting all progress in the game. Tameem Antoniades of developer Ninja Theory is reported as trying to say it was not the literal wording of the in-game message that suggests this, but this is absolutely erroneous. Words mean whatever is intended by them and the words point to a permadeath mechanic. However, no matter how many times I died at certain parts, Senua never had to start the entire quest over. Even in this way, Senua's Sacrifice cleverly touches on how mental illness can present false things as if they are true, though no one has to make assumptions because of these perceptions.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Senua's significant other Dillion has been killed by Northmen while she was away in the wilderness, and she intends to go to Helheim to free his soul from Hela, the Norse goddess of death. With competing voices in her mind and the spirit of a dead friend named Druth seemingly guiding her, she travels by boat and by foot to hopefully reach the realm of the afterlife. Confronting pagan entities like the god of illusion, the determined warrior struggles with her psychosis, for which Dillion out of the people around her did not regard her as cursed. The head of her deceased lover is carried with her so that he can be freed.
Intellectual Content
These are psuedo-deities or other pagan entities that the game itself presents as created beings that can be killed. Senua herself defeats and kills beings like Surtr, and some of the lore excerpts tell stories which relate to the killing of Baldur. They are not an uncaused cause. In fact, Ragnarok is spoken of over and over in optional lore stones, where it is emphasized as the overarching series of events that results in the death of Odin and other gods. Senua herself is eventually said to have a role in Ragnarok.
It is even more unclear than usual, though, if some or all of the Norse figures Senua encounters, like the goddess Hela or the wolf Fenrir, are supposed to really exist. In actuality, senses like sight and hearing do not prove that one is or is not hallucinating, so there is no baseline level of human knowledge about whether one is seeing the real physical world. The way the game shows phenomenal like Senua seeing enemies that seem to suddenly appear out of the air openly holds up this epistemological issue to the player very directly. Since she has psychosis, severe mental health problems are present and relevant to her perceptions, yet it is especially ambiguous as to what is really happening beyond her consciousness.
Conclusion
As artistically bold and philosophically complex as its basic mechanics are simple, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice emphasizes a condition that is seldom explored in gaming. Senua's journey to and through what might or might not be Helheim takes mental illness very seriously without disregarding the person who suffers from it. The way that the gameplay incorporates psychosis is perhaps unprecedented in all of gaming up until the title's debut. There is not a wide breadth of things to do in this Norse tale. Ultimately, that is alright in this case because a hyper-focus on specific elements in Senua's Sacrifice makes them all the more unique in their execution.
Content:
1. Violence: Physical attacks draw blood when Senua and her opponents receive blows.
2. Profanity: Words like "fuck" and "bastards" are used.
3. Nudity: Nude corpses are seen from time to time, skinned or burned. Hela is shown naked, but with burned skin on one side and no detailed anatomy on the other side--though nudity and even extreme sensuality are not sexual in themselves.
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