Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is less personal, more spectacle

polygon.com:

It’s no surprise that, as a sequel, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is bigger and more expansive than the previous game. Though this game’s scope, length, and subject are quite similar to those of the original Hellblade game — it is, of course, still an action-adventure dark fantasy about a warrior woman suffering from psychosis in ninth-century Northern Europe — much more effort has been put into making it appear grand and seamlessly cinematic. It’s an immaculately composed long take cropped to filmic widescreen. One result of this glow-up, however, is Hellblade 2 losing a bit of what made the first game — much smaller, more focused, and more personal, by comparison — feel unique.

Hellblade-the-first, Senua’s Sacrifice, begins and ends with its hero, Senua, mourning her murdered lover, missing her mother, and struggling to break out from under the mountain of guilt and shame handed down by her father. It’s a private and individually focused story. Senua spends the vast majority of the first game alone, with little but her delusions to accompany her.

It feels small and cramped as a result. Senua, returning from a self-imposed exile, is shattered after learning about the slaughter of most of her village, and spends the rest of the game lashing out against manifestations of her guilty and traumatized memories. It ends with her conquering her personal demons, coming to an understanding about her own unique way of seeing the world, and promising to take this newfound understanding with her, on to new adventures.

This is where we find Senua in Hellblade 2. She has allowed herself to be captured by the Northman slaver Thórgestr, and taken far away from Orkney to the rugged alien world of Iceland. The series’ focus has opened up, passing beyond oceans and across mountain ranges. It’s a travel story, following a small troupe of heroes as they hike across the rocky steppes and wave-beaten shores of this uncompromising landscape. It’s a Saga, a tall telling of Senua as freedom