Hellblade 2 Will Show How "Suffering Shapes Myths, Gods, And Religion," Says Dev

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is one of the three upcoming projects coming from Ninja Theory designed under the developer's mission to craft life-changing art with game-changing tech--the third of which, Project: Mara, was just announced. In a YouTube dev diary, Ninja Theory revealed what type of story Hellblade II will tell.

"While Hellblade gave us a very personal insight into psychosis, this sequel builds on that to show how madness and suffering shapes myths, gods, and religion," Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades said. "Our goal is to make an experience comparable to the epic myths and sagas of old."

Antoniades continued: "The team will be about twice the size of Hellblade's team--still very small by triple-A standards, but it aims to prove that small teams can achieve great things using procedural technologies and smart tools." Earlier in the dev diary, Ninja Theory commercial director Dom Matthews said that the team behind the original Hellblade was composed of 20 people, so we can infer about 40 people are on the team working on Hellblade II.

Hellblade II was announced alongside the reveal of Xbox Series X, Microsoft's next-gen console. The first game, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, launched as a limited-time PS4 console exclusive in 2017, before releasing on Xbox One in 2018 and Nintendo Switch in 2019. The game is currently included in Xbox Game Pass.

In GameSpot's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice review, Alessandro Fillari wrote, "Hellblade's most notable achievement is the handling of an incredibly sensitive subject matter within an engaging and well-crafted action/adventure game. At its heart, the story is about Senua's struggle to come to terms with her illness. In the process, she learns to find the strength within herself to endure and to make peace with her past. And in a profound and physical way, we go through those same struggles with her, and come away with a better understanding of a piece of something that many people in the world struggle with."