Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Was Senua's Sacrifice also done by Ninja Theory?
The failure of Razor,[1] and questions from Garland about why the gaming development scene did not have many independent projects similar to the independent film industry[20] prompted the team to begin to evaluate the idea of "independent AAA", where the team would own the intellectual property and publish the game themselves without mainstream game publishers. The game would still have high production values but would be sold at a lower price. The team firmly believed that there was "a middle ground between the low budget pure indie development and AAA [projects]". The team opted not to use Kickstarter having decided to fund it themselves.[1] This led to the creation of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, which had a team of only 15 people working on it.[21] Since the game had a small budget, the studio did not promote the game heavily with advertisements instead creating numerous developer diaries for players who were interested in it.[22][23] The team collaborated with several technology companies like 3Lacteal, Cubic Motion and Xsens to help with motion capture, which allowed the actors to preview their performance while acting.[20] In September 2016, Ninja Theory announced their Senua Studio division, which would work on real-time virtual character technology.[24] As the game explored mental illness and psychosis, the company consulted professional neuroscientists and obtained financial backing from the Wellcome Trust.[21] After a three-year development cycle Hellblade was a critical success when it launched in August 2017, with praise for its depiction of mental illnesses. The game was also a commercial success, becoming profitable within three months of its release,[25] generating more than $13 million with sales of more than 500,000 units.[26] The game was nominated for five awards at the 14th British Academy Games Awards. Antoniades considered the critical acclaim validation that the independent AAA business model worked.[27]
Inspired by Norse mythology and Celtic culture, "Hellblade" follows Senua, a Pict warrior who must make her way to Helheim by defeating otherworldly entities and facing their challenges, in order to rescue the soul of her dead lover from the goddess Hela. In parallel, the game acts as a metaphor for the character's struggle with psychosis, as Senua, who suffers from the condition but believes it to be a curse, is haunted by an entity known as the "Darkness", voices in her head known as "Furies", and memories from her past. To properly represent psychosis, developers worked closely with neuroscientists, mental health specialists, and people suffering from the condition.
Hugues Giboire, art director of previous Ninja Theory game "Heavenly Sword", returned to work on the game. A Microsoft Windows version of the game was announced on January 9, 2015. The game is powered by Unreal Engine 4, and was made by Ninja Theory with a team of around twenty developers. Its subtitle, "Senua's Sacrifice", was announced in March 2016. "Hellblade: Senua's Psychosis", a short documentary film included with the game, details the concept behind its story and inspirations, notably the team's study of mental illness. It was written and narrated by Antoniades, and edited by Juergens.
Senua's voice acting and motion capturing were performed by German freelance photographer and video editor Melina Juergens, who had never done either of those things prior to "Hellblade". She was used by the team as a stand-in for Senua for several months while they perfected their motion capture techniques, and they eventually came to the conclusion that she could play the character in the finalized game. Game director and lead writer Tameem Antoniades stated that he knew her well enough to know that he did not have to teach her how to act, but to "relive her own internal pain". All cutscenes feature Juergens' vocal performance as she recorded it during the filming of her physical performance with motion capture suit and markers, rather than before or afterwards during a voice acting session. In addition to the camera placed in front of Juergens' face to capture her expressions for her animated counterpart, Antoniades used a portable camera to film the scenes as they appear in the final game. As they only had one camera, the team opted to make all the cutscenes be presented as one single long take, the objective being to make the viewer feel like "an observer, like a presence watching Senua throughout".
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a dark fantasy action-adventure game developed and published by the British video game development studio Ninja Theory. Self-described as an "independent AAA game", it was created by a team of approximately twenty developers led by writer and director Tameem Antoniades. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 in August 2017, with an Xbox One version in April 2018. The game features support for virtual reality, which was added in an update in 2018.
While only released in digital form, "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" was a commercial success. It was the best selling game on the PlayStation Store in Europe for the month of its release. According to director Tameem Antoniades the game sold "better than expected" and broke even in approximately three months, ahead of the six to nine months the developers expected. "PC Gamer" stated about "Hellblade"s success that "the news can only be positive. Perhaps if other developers see an experimental game like "Hellblade" finding commercial success then they'll be more likely to take risks on their own titles—and that, ultimately, will lead to more interesting games". To celebrate World Mental Health Day on October 10, 2017, Ninja Theory donated all profit made from the sales of "Hellblade" on that day to Rethink Mental Illness. By June 2018, the game had sold over a million copies across all three platforms.
Shoemaker also stated ""Hellblade"s single most powerful trick is a near-constant stream of voices in Senua's head, recorded with a spatial audio technique so they feel like they're all around you, nagging at you, undermining your decisions and your confidence. These voices are frequently in conflict with what you're doing and even with each other; one side can be encouraging you while the other mocks you mercilessly. The effect is striking. Over time Senua's pain becomes palpable, incontestable, especially as the stress worsens the longer these voices harangue you, the more vicious and deranged they become. It's important to remember that you as the player, though, have the luxury of turning them off whenever you want. "Hellblade"s robust bag of psychological tricks and the sheer fact of Senua's distressing reality result in the game's uncommon ability to capture the feelings of worthlessness, lack of control, of being misunderstood and shunned, the strange mix of hope and despair that can accompany a debilitating mental illness".
In 2017 Ninja Theory used binaural recording techniques for the video game . This was done to immerse the player in the mindset of the player character, Senua, who is affected by psychosis and hears multiple voices in her head.
"Hellblade" was announced for the PlayStation 4 at Sony's Gamescom media briefing on August 12, 2014, where a trailer was shown. In a joint statement, Ninja Theory described the game as "an experience focused on delivering a deep character in a twisted world, with brutal uncompromising combat", and stated that they wanted to "make a smaller, more focused game experience that is uncompromising in its combat, art and story". The developers called it an "independent AAA game", with their goal being to make a game with all the qualities and production values of any AAA game on the market, but with creative freedom and an "indie spirit". The team eventually succeeded in releasing the game independently, but to achieve this could only release it via digital distribution.
Mollie L Patterson of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" declared that "while I can’t speak to that side of things from personal experience, I can tell you that I was legitimately affected by [Senua's] condition at times. Playing a good portion of the game with headphones on, quiet moments were often broken by the never-ending chatter of those other selves conflicting in their thoughts, with some wanting to help their host in her quest, and others constantly telling Senua (and you) that she was wrong in her choices, that she was destined to failure, or that it was all hopeless. It’s hard to explain how powerful those words can be, even as a player detached from Senua’s condition, and it was one of many elements that helped form a bond between us.
Early in the game, after Senua's hand turns to rot because she got "tainted", the Darkness tells her that every time she "dies" (every death turns out to be a vision of a possible future), the rot will spread further up, until it reaches her head and consumes her soul; the game implies that, if this happens, it will result in a permadeath, as the player's save would be deleted, and all game progress until then would be erased. However, several media outlets later found out that the rot stops spreading after a certain amount of deaths, and cannot progress further before a certain point in the game, ultimately making it impossible for it to reach Senua's head.
Antoniades admitted that during his research, he "didn't have to look very far to discover my own ignorance of the subject". To portray psychosis properly, Ninja Theory "consulted world-leading neuroscientists and non-profit organizations like Wellcome Trust to properly capture the experience of psychosis and its devastating effects on the human mind". Antoniades "learnt that people can experience hallucinations and delusional beliefs without it being a problem – the illness comes when those experiences cause suffering. Often the recovery is not about curing yourself of hallucinations, but finding ways to live with them. That was a revelation to me".
"Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" is divided in two types of gameplay: the first allows Senua to walk freely and interact with her surroundings. Those parts focus on either story via voiceover, as Senua travels from one location to another, or the resolution of a puzzle or challenge of some kind to progress further. She can use a capacity known as "focus", in reference to her tendency to see things differently from other people due to her condition, to trigger puzzle-related events. If she uses her focus on totems hidden throughout the game, it triggers a memory via voice-over of her friend Druth telling her of the stories of the Norsemen; activating all forty-four of them triggers a bonus cutscene shortly before the game's climax, that extends on Druth's backstory. Several areas feature their own exclusive mechanics or trials, such as reaching a safe zone in time before Senua dies, or using the focus ability to modify the structure of her surroundings.
Ninja Theory Limited is a British video game development studio based in Cambridge, England. Notable games it has developed include, Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, DmC: Devil May Cry and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Andy Serkis was a close collaborator on two of its titles.
When working with experts, the team realized that "quite often, the illness comes not from the symptoms, but from the stigma, isolation, and mistreatment that comes about from the rest of society". This led the team to make Senua's father and the way he abused and isolated her during her youth the real nature of the Darkness which haunts her. To create the voices heard by Senua, the team "worked closely with a group of voice-hearers to try and get these sounding as realistic as possible"; Senua's visual hallucinations, including her flashbacks, or the way several elements of a level appear brighter than they should be, were also based on descriptions from people suffering from delusions. In June 2017, the team presented the near-finished game to several of the people suffering from mental illness they had collaborated with, as a way to see if the final result had "reflected their views or if it had misrepresented them".
Michael Briers of "PlayStationLifeStyle.net", stated that, "by working closely with neuroscientists and those unfortunate few who have been diagnosed as psychotic, "Hellblade" carefully avoids those cheap, half-assed tropes that render a character insane and, therefore, woefully one-dimensional. Not only does it act as a disservice to those who suffer with mental illness, this practice of painting in broad strokes only minimizes the room for nuance, but "Senua’s Sacrifice" boldly cuts through the white noise". Leif Johnson of "PC Gamer" praised the gripping depiction of a character suffering from psychosis, stating "Ninja Theory uses haunted eyes to full effect in long, moody closeups peppering the narrative. [Senua] peers not only into the darkness, but seemingly past the camera, past the screen. Looking back, I found depths of despair and anger there that were sometimes hard to meet head on [...] Some people would crumble under such pain. But still Senua fights. It's a little inspiring."
During "Game Developers Conference" 2016 in San Francisco "Epic Games" demonstrated full-body motion capture live in Unreal Engine. The whole scene, from the upcoming game "" about a woman warrior named Senua, was rendered in real-time. The keynote was a collaboration between "Unreal Engine", "Ninja Theory", "3Lateral", "Cubic Motion", "IKinema" and "Xsens".
"Hellblade" does not feature any HUD or tutorials. Instead, Druth, Furies, or the Darkness, provide audio indications on game mechanics, and how to progress through levels and puzzles. The Furies also provide Senua advice in battle, notably warning her if an enemy is attacking from her back. They react when Senua takes damage, and panic heavily if she is close to death: how nervous they are when she takes a hit is representative of how much damage she can still take. The nature of most apparitions, events witnessed, or voices heard, is purposely left unclear, and can be interpreted as either an actual apparition by a spirit, a memory of Senua, or a trick created by the Darkness or one of the deceptive creatures she has to face. As such, the clues given during the game are not always reliable, except for Druth's: certain Furies try to demotivate Senua, or give false indications such as telling her she took the wrong way, or that she is walking into a trap. Another core mechanic is the possibility of permadeath, which is meant to delete the player's save data after they surpass a number of deaths.
The game's depiction of psychosis was applauded, and often described as the game's greatest quality. Several media outlets and reviewers analysed the game's depiction of psychosis in more detail: it was noted that all parts of the game, including the fights and puzzles, were made to further the depiction of Senua's psychosis and revolved around her condition. Paul Fletcher, a neuroscientist and psychosis expert at the University of Cambridge who worked on the game, said that "It’s been exciting to see Senua received so positively by those who have lived with experiences of psychosis".
The team began diversifying its portfolio of games and taking on contract work for publishers after finishing the development of DmC. It also entrusted a small team to develop their first self-published title, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. The team developed a business model they called "Independent AAA", where the game would have a small budget while retaining high production values. Exploring the theme of psychosis, the game was a commercial and critical success. In June 2018 it was officially announced that Ninja Theory had entered into an agreement to be acquired by Microsoft. Several new projects, including virtual reality games, are under development.
In a positive review, Leif Johnson of "PC Gamer" praised "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" for its themes, presentation and story, but complained that the "inspiration doesn't carry over to the actual fights. [...] I frankly found it kind of dull in the one-on-one duels at the start, and it didn't help that the enemies sometimes seem to skip a few animations when reacting to attacks. Nor does it help that there's precious little variation in the foes themselves, who almost always show up as tall, shirtless warriors with deer-skull helmets or as beefy berserker shamans. By the end of the first hour, you've basically seen every non-boss you're going to see". He did, however, consider combat to get much better once Senua has to face many enemies at once. In one of the rare publications to give the game a somewhat negative review, "Edge" was unhappy with the game's depiction of Senua's condition.
Operating on a much smaller budget with "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" than their previous games, Ninja Theory went out of their usual ways to film the cut scenes of the game. Instead of going to bigger studios and having a team of approximately 20 people film several actors together, like they did in the past, they filmed only Juergens in a small space, with only three other people needed on set: Antoniades directing and filming, one person to look after the audio, and one person to look after the motion capture process. To save more money, the team used equipment described by Antoniades as "fairly cheap", including material bought at a low price at IKEA and on Amazon. As a further cost-saving measure, they used their own boardroom for the motion capture scenes, rather than using external motion capture studio spaces.
The main inspiration of Senua's character was the Iceni queen Boudica, while her name came from Senuna, a Celtic goddess long lost to historians but re-discovered in 2002, whose name was at first read incorrectly as Senua. Based on what is believed of the way Celtic warriors looked, Senua was given war paints, and braided hair clumped with lime. Doing research to find the right angle for the character, the team realized that despite the Roman Empire being able to conquer nearly all of Europe, they were unable to conquer a group of Celts, known as the Picts, in the northern reaches of Great Britain. Towards the end of the 8th century, the first Vikings arrived in the lands of the Picts, more specifically the islands of Orkney, and quickly replaced them as the main population of the land. Based on the belief that the Norsemen were known for sacrificing the leaders of the tribes they had conquered to their gods, the game's director and lead writer Tameem Antoniades decided to use this as the basis for Senua's quest and trauma, and to have her find everyone in her village killed by the Norsemen and her lover sacrificed to Norse gods via the blood eagle, a ritualized method of execution whose authenticity is actually debated among historians.
Alice Bell of "VideoGamer.com" noted that although Senua's psychosis is a cause of tragedy in her life, the game also depicted her condition as something that can bring her contentment, stating that her hallucinations are sometimes "actually lovely too, reflecting that psychosis can manifest as colour and beauty." Regarding the story as a whole, she stated "you [the player] learn about the trauma Senua has faced, made greater by her struggles with her own mental health and others' lack of understanding of it. Great care has been taken, with input every step of the way from psychologists and people who have experienced psychosis, to give as faithful a representation of it as possible. The hardest battles are fought in the mind, says Dillion, although Senua has physical battles as well".
Antoniades and his team initially conceptualized "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" as "a compelling, adult, fantasy game". The game was always supposed to be hinted as taking place in Senua's mind, but with her mental illness originally less central to the story. However, the team came to see it as an opportunity to raise awareness on psychosis; regarding the team's interest with the condition, Antoniades stated "It is easy to see the pain and suffering caused by physical diseases or physical trauma, it is not so easy to see the mental suffering or trauma or severe mental illness. But what if we could find a way to see it ? Games are capable of drawing you in for hours on end, playing the role of a character who's different from you, experiencing their perspective, and actively involving you in a world that functions with a different set of rules. [...] There are many things that happen in the world of "Hellblade" that make perfect sense within the context of Senua's mind. [...] To complete Senua's quest, you have to internalize and accept the logic and meaning behind these things to progress"; he notably felt that using the tendency of certain psychotics to see patterns others would not see or notice as a game mechanic to solve puzzles would provide a unique angle impossible in media other than video games.