Hi, I’m Hamish Black and welcome to Writing on Games.
During my time with Hellblade, I was forced to confront some very real things about myself.
I would often find unnerving parallels to some of my own lived experiences; I’ve badly
hurt myself in the past, I’ve pushed loved ones away as a result of illness; I’ve been
the guy to angrily shout into a mirror as if I were being attacked by a distant facsimile
of myself.
These are all things I’ve since thankfully moved past, but reflecting on it all through
Senua’s protracted anguish was tough, especially given that on a mechanical level, it’s not
particularly captivating.
With that in mind, I can’t call my time with Hellblade “enjoyable”.
I don’t want to play it again; contrary to what you might believe the function of
a game to be, it was most certainly not “fun”.
But that doesn’t matter.
That’s a good thing.
What Hellblade is, is necessary.
Like Mafia II’s critique of the American Dream or Spec Ops’ deconstruction of the
military shooter, Senua’s story is further proof that the strength of games is in their
ability to convey narrative through interactivity, and that sometimes the best stories come from
dull mechanics.
Hellblade, however, perhaps goes further with this idea than any game previously; flat out
rejecting the notion of “fun” to bypass any ambiguity in the team’s vision.
This game wants you to know exactly what it’s about but isn’t afraid to make you work
to realise that.
On a symbolic level, Hellblade toys with your expectations from the outset, at least partially
framing itself as an action game replete with sword-swinging and dodge-rolling.
It’s developed by Ninja Theory, known for their bombastic hack-n-slashers, which itself
is a genre that typically rewards style and flow.
I mean, it’s called Hellblade for god’s sakes – you be hard-pushed to find a more
cartoonishly action game name if you tried.
But no, instead what you get is a mediocre, stop-and-start affair; the monotonous environment
puzzles in which you walk around looking for symbols, feeling ruthlessly and jarringly
segmented from the barebones combat, in which the only real escalation in difficulty comes
from the number of enemies you must fight.
And that’s the game, for eight hours.
There’s no UI, no rewards for combat outside of making it through another fight, merely
allowing you to wander further into Senua’s torment.
There is no player expression or progression here, in the way you might expect from other
action games.
On every level, the game removes your agency from a genreframework that usually seeks to
maximise it, in place of a distinctly mundane series of encounters.
All of this fits with the idea that for the vast majority of people, mental illness is
mundane.
It’s a constant, numbing battle against yourself, at times feeling like every minor
victory only gives way to more internal conflict.
Eventually you deal with it so much, learn its signals, that it becomes rote; never satisfying.
Thoughts of pain and death become the norm; as a great scholar once said, it’s every
day, bro.
To accurately reflect that experience in a game then, that game can’t be truly “fun”
in the traditional sense.
To produce Hellblade in such a way would be to trivialise the very real conditions Ninja
Theory was referencing when they consulted people living with this illness.
But Hamish, mechanically engaging representations of mental health struggles can be achieved!
Just look at Souls!
That series still manages to be fun while also acting as a metaphor for depression!
Sure, but the difference in my mind comes down to purpose.
You can ignore the symbolic implications of hollowing in Dark Souls – you cannot ignore
the mechanical narrative of Hellblade.
It isn’t trying to be a fun game that also happens to be about mental illness.
It exists purely to tell a specific story of specific suffering.
No, the beauty of Hellblade, where the game goes deeper than any representation of mental
health issues seen previously, is that its mechanics aren’t merely symbolic – in
many ways, they are literal; symptomatic of Senua’s condition.
You see, the team could have just told a spooky story in which Senua sees and hears things,
but as the head writer himself describes, to do so would be to rely on low-hanging fruit;
to rest on the surface-level understanding most have of psychosis.
Instead, the team cements the tedium of your interactions; forcing you to face the realities
of what this condition can do to people.
Those boring environment puzzles aren’t there to break up the humdrum combat– they’re
representative of the fact that Senua’s psychosis manifests itself in a kind of heightened
apophenia; what psychiatrist Klaus Conrad described as the process of “repetitively
and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the experiential field”.
Which is to say that, in very broad terms, Senua tends to recognise and attribute meaning
to patterns where they don’t exist; isolating herself through an increasingly paranoid and
conspiratorial internal logic that only she experiences; rooted in the ordinary.
In short, she suffers delusions, and while it might not make for enjoyable play, what
better way to represent these symptoms than through protracted mechanics based solely
on pattern recognition?
Constant repetition forces you to internalise enemy attack patterns in the same way you
constantly seek naturally occurring runic shapes in the world.
You see the puzzles as unnerving, as hiding some meaning you just can’t quite figure
out yet; you see the combat encounters as dangerous.
You become fearful that you’re going to lose hours of progress.
Senua’s delusions feel real to you because you’re experiencing them with her.
At the end of the day, however, that rune you found is just a coincidental arrangement
of trees; all it ever does is open a door with seemingly no physical barrier.
Waves of enemies appear out of thin air and only stop arbitrarily; your progress will
likely never be erased.
There was never any objective danger - Senua’s greatest enemy is herself; the peril you feel
is largely of your own creation; beginning with a seed that germinates into immutable,
ubiquitous paranoia.
Such is the nature of Senua’s psychosis and, indeed, of the many others who experience
it.
It can be as terrifying and potentially dangerous as it is ordinary and tedious.
To create traditionally “fun” mechanics to represent that then would be disingenuous.
It would be dissonant with the reality they are trying to portray.
To dedicate themselves so wholly to this notion, however, the small team Ninja Theory clearly
took a risk.
They could have created an action game rife with gripping combat and player expression
and the like; they have proved themselves capable of that.
In going the other way, however; by refusing to cater to a demand for instant gratification
that seems so prevalent in this industry, they were able to achieve something much more
important – they told a genuine, heartfelt story about a widely misunderstood and misrepresented
condition that, while not enjoyable to play, will stick with me for a long time to come.
So I hope you enjoyed my piece on Hellblade.
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And with that, I'm Hamish Black and this has been Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you next time.