The anticipated action-adventure Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II from British studio Ninja Theory recently received its first previews from foreign journalists, which turned out to be very positive. While Digital Foundry’s Oliver McKenzie wasn’t one of the lucky ones, he did provide detailed analysis of the recently released material.
If the first part managed to surprise thanks to a limited budget and rather “AA” form, then the second part is a full-fledged AAA game that relies on modern technology. It uses Unreal Engine 5 and all its core strengths: Nanite for highly detailed environments and objects, Lumen for realistic lighting (though the reflections here are obviously a mix of different technologies, including SSR), and Virtual Shadow Maps, which provide high-quality shadows. .
In addition, Hellblade also stands out for its high-quality battle animations, which were captured using Performance Capture, but mainly for its highly detailed and realistic facial expressions.
As for image quality, McKenzie says it can be slightly marred by occasional artifacts. The internal resolution of the Series X footage ranged from 1296p to 1440p, it’s hard to say what it will look like on the less powerful Series S. Otherwise, the game uses motion blur and quite a bit of film grain.
The frame rate was kept at 30fps as planned on consoles, some stuttering was caused more by the video being encoded at 30fps, which can cause quite a bit of damage. However, for now, this should be taken with a grain of salt: the only way to fully test performance is directly in the game.
McKenzie’s overall impressions are very positive, despite some shortcomings, and he says it will likely be the best-looking UE5 game at launch. We won’t have to wait long: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II will be released on PC and Xbox Series X|S on May 21st.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is one of the most visually stunning games of the year, and its latest version doesn’t disappoint. For this video, I took a look at the visual features of the game and also went into detail about the image quality. https://t.co/1pSJkodNWX
— Oliver McKenzie (@oliemack) April 10, 2024
Source : Zing
