Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and to celebrate, Ninja Theory has just put out a next-gen upgrade for their five-time BAFTA Award-winning game.
Play Hellblade on Xbox Series X|S today and you’ll enjoy a whole new visual experience with “enriched visuals, DirectX Raytracing, resolution mode, and more." Hellblade was already a very pretty game, but with raytracing, the game’s lighting gets kicked into overdrive. Shadows playing over Senua’s face, lights dancing off the reflections in water, and flickering flames all look far more realistic thanks to this next-gen update.
Ninja Theory updated Hellblade's website with some stats for the three different modes now available. On the Xbox Series X, Performance mode targets 120 fps and up to 1080p graphics, while Resolution mode has dynamic 4K resolution at up to 60 fps. Only when you hit Enriched mode do you get raytracing along with 4K resolution, but only up to 30 fps. Xbox Series S gets full HD graphics at 60 fps on Performance mode, 1440p at 30 fps on Resolution mode, and raytraced 1080p at 30 fps on Enriched mode.
Related: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Is A Story Only A Game Can Tell
There’s no word on whether or not a similar set of upgrades will be offered for Hellblade on PC, but here’s hoping.
Hellblade 2 is still on its way, although we still don't know exactly when it will be released. We do know that it'll be made in Unreal Engine 5 and feature much of the same visual upgrades that have just been added for the Xbox Series X|S version of the original game. We also know that it'll be set in Iceland and pit Senua against the Vikings.
What we learned at Xbox's second games showcase after E3 was that Hellblade 2 still seems to be a fair way off, with creative director Tameem Antoniades saying that Ninja Theory was "building a good chunky slice of the game before we then move into full production to build out the rest." So you might want to take a breath if you were holding it expecting a 2021 release.
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