Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Based on Norse mythology, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is pure psychological horror disguised as dark fantasy. Its suffocating atmosphere is the consequence of dealing with themes such as depression, grief, and death while diving into the mind of a character whose mental illnesses infuse the game with hopelessness and despair. The game feels incredibly claustrophobic because it doesn’t observe those issues at a safe distance, but inside the very mind where these feelings thrive.

In the story, Senua is traveling to a “land of mist and fog. The place the Northmen call Hel” to get back the soul of her dead boyfriend, Dillion. Like in the myth of Baldr, here the goddess Hela holds a soul so precious that one would do anything, even travel to the depths of Hel, to retrieve it. But what Hela wants from Senua is not something grand, like she asked for Baldr, but something deeply personal. Senua’s mission is to go deeper and deeper into her own psyche – and because it’s one tainted by illness, the journey becomes excruciatingly dark. It’s plainly stated several times during the game: “The hardest battles are fought in the mind.”

Hellblade makes a striking first impression with its brutal art direction. As Senua slowly rows her log, which is passing for a boat, to land in Hel, she doesn’t take long to see impaled bodies standing out in the mist, alongside hanged bodies, burned bodies, basically all kinds of bodies. It becomes immediately clear that this place is about suffering and death. It’s about darkness and hopelessness. The very goal of Senua’s mission already reveals how futile it is: “She wants to rescue him. He’s already dead.”

Senua is far from being a straightforward protagonist. She suffers from some unspecified mental illnesses that make her listen to voices in her head, have constant hallucinations, and reinterpret the world around her in a way that leads to depreciative thoughts – connecting her struggles to people who suffer from schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and other illnesses.  Although the player has access to her thoughts, they are far from being reliable. The game begins by describing a “darkness” that towers over Senua; a darkness that never leaves, a darkness that “builds onto itself”, and that it’s only a bad day away from claiming her life. This darkness is not something that she can get used to, it makes her good days only reinforce how awful the bad ones can be. It’s a threat that is forever there, a shadow cast over the person, just waiting for its chance to strike again and take back the reins of her life. The voices in Senua’s head warn her: “You might try to ignore it, turn away, but it’s always there just out of sight, where you are most vulnerable. It’s like it knows that just enough light… is all you need to see its suffocating power.”

The game’s main mechanic is ingenious because it acknowledges that the thing that mental illnesses affect so much is one’s perception of things. To navigate the land of Hel, Senua must try to find meaning amidst the chaos around her, seeing specific patterns in the shape of trees or in the way parts of buildings overlap when observed at a certain angle. Senua can only proceed when she can shift and control her perception of reality. There are moments that you must look between certain objects and portals so that a bridge that was not there suddenly is now. When everything seems lost, paths may open if Senua has someone or something to guide her gaze to see a path forward. In other words, Senua must use the same thing that is deeply corrupted to fight the very thing that is corrupting it. In Hellblade, perception is the stage of a fierce battle between Senua and her darkness, with the prize being the control over her mind.

The world of Hel depicted here is all about illusions. The monsters she kills seem to fade away like they never existed. Sometimes, Senua relieves memories of fires where she must pass through carbonized bodies and hear endless screams while the voices in her head, tapping into her guilt, keep saying that all of that is her fault and that she should run as fast as she can. And we don’t know if those are indeed her memories or if they are lies created by her fears.

There is a brilliant sequence of pure horror when Senua gets trapped inside a dark place. She can barely see anything ahead of her and must follow sound cues and Dillion’s voice to find the exit. But soon she must go inside a building where a disfigured bloated monster lurks and that she can barely distinguish moving in the darkness. And if she sees it, it sees her too and she’s dead. The sound design is terrific – headphones are not recommended, they are required – and you can hear the floor creaking with Senua’s every step and the chains nervously clanking when you stumble into them. And as we are led to think she’s finally safe, the game pulls the rug out from under us, and Senua is suddenly half underwater near a bunch of the same creatures, whose shapes can now be confused with the skinless bodies that are hanging from the ceiling.

It’s no wonder that Senua is going through great lengths to save Dillion’s soul: as this scene proves, he often saved her soul from her own personal hell. While her father despised her, deeming her cursed, unfit and broken – feeding her illness – Dillion was there to help her, guiding her through the darkness. He is literally depicted as a beacon of light at several moments, which is a masterful touch, if not subtle.

One of the game’s main discussions is about suffering, asking whether it has a purpose or if it’s just pain. On the one hand, someone – especially a Christian – could argue that suffering is a way to wash away one’s sins, a form of penance, and a path to heaven. The word “sacrifice” is on the very title of the game: Senua believes that her suffering will achieve something; she thinks that by giving herself away she’ll get Dillion back. On the other hand, there is the possibility that is all for naught. As Senua’s spectral guide, Druth, tells her: “The Northmen made fire sacrifices, burning slaves like me, to reveal the path to Surtr. I searched for meaning in their suffering, in their eyes, but they just screamed like helpless pigs.” For Druth, it’s not that suffering doesn’t mean anything, but that it takes so much from a person that it robs them of their humanity, leaving only the animal: there is no higher meaning to pain, it’s just cruelty that destroys people. There are only helpless screams because there is no need for language when there is only pain.

This leads us to the game’s main theme: grief. It’s true that Senua goes through several narrative arcs. After all, she must deal with the constant voices inside her head – will she fight or accept them? – with the narrative that she’s worthless – will she treat it as a narrative or as fact? – and even deal with past trauma – will she be able to hide from it forever or have to relieve it once again? But her main task still remains the same: to retrieve her dead boyfriend’s soul.

But, as Druth constantly points out with his tales of Norse mythology, death is inevitable.  Druth explains that even the Gods themselves can’t escape Ragnarok: “There is nothing they can do to prevent it, but Odin ever seeks knowledge and magic, hoping, hoping to find a way to postpone the dark day.” This is why what you’re supposed to do during the first and the last battle in the game is the very same thing.

Moreover, there is a bigger problem that lies in the fact that Senua’s ultimate goal and the objective of the antagonist are one and the same. Her illness entices her to take her own life, while she wants to offer it to the Norse embodiment of Death as a sacrifice to save Dillion. Her problems with perception begin to make more sense as Senua starts to realize that what she wants and what she perceives in the world may not be what she really wants and what’s really there. Mental illness can deform one’s notion of reality and Hellblade illustrates this in the most suffocating way possible.

Senua wants to defy death by bringing her beloved back to life. But as she goes through her personal hell, she eventually begins to discover that to defy death is not to revert it – even the Gods failed when they tried with Baldr – but to keep living. For Death is ultimately personal: you can only deal with yours. This is why her journey in the game is so tailor-made to tap into her fears and uncertainties. This is why Hela looks precisely the way she does. As she goes deeper into Helheim, Senua is going deeper into her own soul. The voices may say that what she is doing for Dillion, but in the end, is Senua herself who comes out changed.

The game’s presentation is also brilliant and, even on the Switch, the art direction shines, especially during the moments of great spectacle, like the sequence that takes place in a grotesque river of blood. Meanwhile, the binaural sound is put to great use to represent Senua’s voices surrounding her, whispering, shouting, and laughing all at the same time. The music during the more important battles, with its guttural voices, makes the battles more intense, while the lighting is used to great effect, helping create an epic mood.

The battle system is a simple one, but combat is far from being the focus of the game. You have the usual light and heavy attacks, the ability to parry and dodge, and finally a move to use against shielded enemies. What makes the fights interesting is the paradoxical use of Senua’s voices: sometimes they help you, warning from where a blow is coming from, but often they only add noise to the battles, making everything sound too chaotic, reinforcing the suffocating atmosphere of the game. This is why the gauntlet of enemies in the aforementioned river of blood manages to be breathtaking – and not in the Keanu Reeves kind of way.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a brilliant horror game, developing one of gaming’s most complex and tragic protagonists.

June 18, 2019.