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The latest Xbox exclusive has the best graphics ever on a home console, as its troubled heroine takes on Viking slavers and hungry giants. If Hellblade 2 achieves only one thing it is to act as proof that there is absolutely no need for a new generation of consoles, despite rumours of Xbox planning to start one as early as 2026 . It also proves that modern games don’t need hundreds of people to make amazing looking graphics, since it was made by a team of just 80.

Hellblade 2 is probably the best-looking video game to ever appear on a console and yet it’s still almost the only first party title on the Xbox Series X/S that isn’t also on Xbox One – hinting at how much more the hardware still has to give. The facial animation and recreation of 9th century Iceland represents the most believably photorealistic graphics ever in a commercial video game and, apart from some occasional issues with draw distance, the impression of exploring a real world, filled with real people, is almost perfect. That’s not how you’d describe the rest of the game though, which is deeply flawed at a conceptual level, when it comes to gameplay, storytelling, and what it’s trying to portray in terms of mental illness.



In the original Hellblade , created before Microsoft bought developer Ninja Theory, you’re introduced to a Pict named Senua, who survives a Viking raid on Orkney that kills everyone else – including her lover and mentor. Senua already has a type of psychosis, and this is m.

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