Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is for sure going to offer some truly next-gen graphics. We already knew that thanks to the Unreal Engine 5 trailer showcasing all the neat technical achievements that have arrived since the first game, such as ray-traced dynamic lighting and virtual shadow mapping, but now we’re also finding out how Ninja Theory plans to offer next-gen textures too.
Ninja Theory’s latest tweet shows how they plan to get crinkled, weathered leather for use in some of Hellblade 2’s assets. First, they get a rough cut of leather and lay it on the ground. Then, they take a chef’s torch and burn the crap out of it. This leads to blackened, cracked leather that probably smelled horrendous.
Once Ninja Theory has burnt its leather to a crisp, that’s when they bust out the high fidelity cameras and take a scan of what they’ve wrought. "It's high-quality scans like this that will help us reach an amazing level of detail in our games,” Ninja Theory explains in a subsequent tweet.
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If you just looked at the burnt leather as a whole it can be sort of hard to see how this could be useful in game development, but focusing on specific sections, you can absolutely see how parts of it look perfectly worn and weathered. A decades-old leather skin made in minutes.
As for what this texture might be used on, it looks like it could be part of Senua's new costume–at least, judging by the teaser tweet we got back in May.
We still don't know when Hellblade 2 will arrive, but we do know that it'll continue Senua's story as she takes on the Pict's ancient foes, the Vikings. In the meantime, you can get the first Hellblade with an Xbox Series X|S upgrade to get a taste of what Hellblade 2 will look like once it's finished.
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