Hellblade 2 Combat Designer Says Quality is 'through the roof'

One of the most anticipated Xbox Series X|S games is coming along nicely, it would seem. Commenting on the progress of the game, Hellblade 2 Combat Designer Juan Fernández has stated that his team are pushing the quality ‘through the roof.

In an interview with Spanish outlet Vandal, combat designer Juan Fernández talked about his job. He offered new details on the depth of combat in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 compared to the original title. There are some interesting tidbits in this interview, including that Hellblade 2 combat will be taking a different approach than its predecessor, including the need for players to use different attacks and combos.

“We’re raising the bar of doing more with less. We’re more people than the first Hellblade but the quality we’re giving versus the team behind it compared to similar games… I think it’s through the roof.”

Juan Fernández, Hellblade 2 Combat Designer

“What I like about Hellblade 2 is that it’s a very unique approach, I think it’s going to have an impact like Hellblade 1 but for other reasons, because obviously there’s a lot of things that were new in the first game that will have less impact in the second game, but there’s a whole bunch of other new things that will have that impact”.

The quotes included on this page have been translated from Spanish. It’s possible some of the nuances of language have been lost. However, the premise of Fernández’s comments are essentially that Hellblade 2 will not be a simple revision of the original game. The designer talked in more detail about the Hellblade 2 combat experience. 

“What I was least satisfied with in Hellblade 1 was the lack of enemy variety, the long-range combat was stifled. And the balancing stuff; the way the difficulty systems were tuned, the enemies had too much life, they had too much durability and it got tiresome a lot of the time. We had a lot of variety of attacks and combos but the enemies didn’t really encourage you to use one or the other. People found two or three moves they liked and repeated them constantly. There were very generous parries and story timings that could be balanced more intelligently.”

Fans eagerly anticipating Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will surely be excited by these comments. The original Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice launched back in 2017, as a PlayStation 4 exclusive. It wasn’t until a year later that the Xbox One version of the game arrived. Times have changes however, and the sequel will arrive as an Xbox Series X|S exclusive.

No release date has yet been announced for the game. It’s likely that we’ll see more of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 at E2 this June. Are you excited for the game? Let us know in the comments below!