We learned a few new details about Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, there’s also a new video

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is one of the first announced next-gen exclusives in a Microsoft production, and while that doesn’t mean it will be the first to come to play, the development of that game is progressing well. We didn’t see her at the Xbox conference for E3, but Ninja Theory has now revealed a few new things about her.

We learned that the plot of the game will take place in ninth-century Iceland. It’s possible that this has been speculated or mentioned even earlier, but I’m not entirely sure about that. In any case, the production of Hellblade II will be significantly more ambitious and thus more expensive than in the case of the first part. The team traveled to Iceland, where they scan the environment, recorded sounds, and combine it all with satellite images of the island. Apparently, they are targeting a large playable territory, which suggests that the game could be open-ended.

They also made their lives miserable by making real costumes for the characters, which they then scan and put into play. The lead actress, Melina Jurgens, has been training sword fighting for two years, and all of the game’s animators have also undergone fighting training to better understand the moves they will be animating. The host of Ninja Theory says their goal is to make the fight in the game as brutal as possible.

We also got a very experimental trailer that shows more the process of making material for Hellblade II, but there are also a few frames from the game that show the environment and the main character. But the caveat stands: everything you see is evolving and is not the final look of things.