Last week, Ninja Theory promised to reveal something every day until the launch of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. So far, the team has focused heavily on how far they had to go to create what is primed to be the most realistic-looking game on the current-gen console.
Ninja Theory’s reveal on Monday, May 6, 2024, was how they created some of the elements that brought life to the game’s environment—particularly the wood carvings. Instead of just digitally creating the game elements, they carved the words and 3D scanned them which gave a better result than when they tried to digitally create them.
ALSO READ: Sucker Punch Reassures Players Ghost Of Tsushima Won’t Need A PSN Login… But There’s A Caveat
“When we say hand-crafted, we mean it,” the team shared in their latest update. “Sculpted from wood and then digitized through photogrammetry to generate an in-game asset with a level of detail and ruggedness we’d have a hard time achieving with a purely digital process.”
For the last three days, Ninja Theory has focused on giving potential players a clue about how they achieved the insane level of realism of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. On May 5, the developers showed off their bigger, more spacious studio which allowed them to pull off more ambitious performance capture.
“Having a bigger performance capture space for Senua’s Saga has given us the flexibility to build large-scale rigs for our stunt shoots, enabling us to capture every step of Senua’s journey with greater detail and accuracy,” the developer wrote on X.
ALSO READ: Pocketpair Shares Palworld Roadmap As Game Exceeds 2 Million Concurrent Players. 3 Lessons I Learned
A day before that, the team talked about what it took to create realistic costumes for Senua. The costumes were also physically created with the help of fashion designers and 4D scanned. These painstaking processes are the reason why Hellblade 2 stands out in realism.
Ninja Theory’s effort on Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 reignites debate about realism in games
Over the last decade, games have increasingly become more realistic. Year after year, developers are increasingly pushing for games to be more life-like, adding subtle details that often make games look like movies. However, some have argued that it is not necessary.
In fact, for some gamers, all the talk about realism doesn’t matter, all they want to see is actual gameplay. In other words, a game may look all shades of real and still not appeal to them if the gameplay sucks.
No gameplay… 😂
— Dae-Hyun (@Peter2000011) May 6, 2024
At the heart of the debate is what is most important in games; having realistic character models and worlds or having great gameplay? The answer will certainly vary from one player to another. However, gameplay will likely have the edge at the end of the day.
ALSO READ: How To Create The Most Immersive VR Gaming Experience – 5 Must-Have Accessories
For example, Palworld was not the most realistic-looking game ever made. Some analysts even claimed that the world looks incomplete and that the game sometimes feels broken. However, Palworld was fun to play and attracted over 25 million players in about a month after release.
On the other hand, Immortals of Aveum by Ascendant Studios pushed for realism in the character models and hired professional actors, but ended up becoming one of the biggest AAA flops of 2023. At some point, the game was found being retailed for £1.
Interestingly, pushing for realism comes at a huge cost. Like we have seen with Ninja Theory and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, it often means flying a crew to real locations to take pictures, videos, carve and scan real objects, hire professional actors, and so on.
In an unpredictable AAA market, the loss may be massive if the game fails to appeal to the wider audience and falls short of the expected sales numbers. The big question is, what do players really care about in a game? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
TAKE OUR POLL
