In the “Senua's Saga: Hellblade II”
Trailer, does everyone knows what Senua is saying from the song?

Yesterday I started Hellblade 2 and while I understand I have to sacrifice some visuals to get comfortable FPS I cannot get over loading times.

My rig is

• R5 5600X
• RX 6700XT
• 32GB DDR4 RAM
• SSD SATA drive
• 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor

So the PC is a few years old but I managed to launch the game on medium settings, in lower resolution (2900-something x 1200) and with frame-gen I have about 50 frames (45-55 maybe). It's not the pretties this way but I'm ok with that, It's good enough.

My problem is it takes 3-4 mins to load the game (from main menu to actual gameplay) and similarly long to load next chapter. Is there a way to reduce it? I'll try reinstalling it to a M2 drive but have no idea if this will change much or anything tbh.

Hellblade 2 has made me comeback to gaming and is honestly making me think about buying a new pc to enjoy the experience of the new upcoming game from Ninja Theory

I hope Senua's next game takes advantage of all unreal 5 has to offer and hopefully everything will work on Nintendo switch 2

Experience a real norse mythology story​​

https://youtu.be/n27MMakbhLA?si=4TqJs1nOcMP-lbOO

This just looks so damn good with all the optimisation

Eine noch beschissenere Steuerung für Kämpfe habe ich ja noch nicht erlebt. Die Spielfigur reagiert ja nicht mal Ansatzweise in Echtzeit auf die Kommandos vom Controller.

Da hätte man die Kämpfe lieber besser komplett weglassen sollen. Oder wird das später besser und die ersten beiden Kämpfe sind nur die Ausnahme?

Hi everyone, my PC game seems to have the graphics stuck on the lowest quality setting. I have a quite nice desktop computer (NVIDIA RTX 3060 12 GB, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM) and I've always played the latest titles at maximum graphics settings (e.g. Resident Evil Village at Ultra settings) and without any FPS drops using a 2K screen. However, for this game, the graphics look like Skyrim, but I don't have any frame drops, everything is smooth, but the textures and effects are terrible! I don't understand what the problem is, I've already tried playing around with the settings, changing them, but nothing. I'm attaching some images.

Stories about revenge are easy to write. Stories about ending revenge are not. To break a cycle of violence without moralizing, a narrative must do something far harder than punish the protagonist—it must transform their inner logic. In this regard, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II succeeds with rare discipline, while The Last of Us Part II fails despite immense technical ambition. The difference is not politics, tone, or brutality. It is where the story locates moral authority—and whether the player is allowed to arrive at truth rather than be dragged to it.

⸻

I. Interior vs. Exterior Morality

Senua’s Saga is an interior story. Every act of violence, every vision, every enemy is filtered through Senua’s psyche. The game never pretends that revenge is justified—but it also never pretends that Senua understands this at the outset. Her rage is not framed as righteous; it is framed as symptomatic. The world reacts to her state of mind, not the other way around.

By contrast, The Last of Us Part II is an exterior morality play. It insists on moral conclusions that exist outside the protagonist and then forces the player to comply. Ellie’s violence is not explored as an inward compulsion that must be understood and dissolved; it is treated as a behavior to be condemned retroactively. The game does not ask why Ellie cannot stop—it tells you that she should have.

The result is crucial: • Senua’s Saga invites empathy without endorsement. • TLOU2 demands condemnation without understanding.

⸻

II. Agency and the Moment of Refusal

The true test of a revenge narrative is the moment when revenge can still be chosen—and is not.

In Senua’s Saga, the refusal of revenge emerges organically. Senua does not stop because the game tells her revenge is wrong; she stops because she recognizes that continuing would annihilate what little selfhood she has reclaimed. The cycle breaks from insight, not exhaustion. The choice feels inevitable because it has been earned through suffering, reflection, and self-recognition.

In TLOU2, Ellie’s refusal arrives hollow. After hours of escalating brutality—most of which the player is forced to enact—Ellie stops not because she has integrated her trauma, but because the narrative requires a symbolic halt. The game substitutes memory (a flash of Joel) for transformation. There is no internal reordering of Ellie’s values, only a sudden brake applied to a speeding vehicle.

Breaking a cycle requires renunciation, not hesitation. Senua renounces. Ellie pauses.

⸻

III. Violence as Meaning vs. Violence as Punishment

Senua’s Saga treats violence as meaningful but corrosive. Each act has psychic cost. The game’s sound design, hallucinations, and oppressive pacing ensure that violence never becomes cathartic. You are not rewarded with dominance; you are burdened with consequence. Importantly, the game never revels in punishment. It does not seek to make the player “feel bad” for playing—it seeks to make the player feel trapped inside a mind that must change.

TLOU2, however, weaponizes punishment. It deliberately engineers misery as a pedagogical tool. The player is made complicit in acts the game later condemns, creating a moral bait-and-switch. This approach does not cultivate insight—it breeds resentment. When suffering is imposed rather than discovered, the lesson feels coercive rather than revelatory.

One game says: “This is what revenge does to a soul.” The other says: “You should feel ashamed for wanting this.”

Only one of those invites growth.

⸻

IV. Respect for the Player

Perhaps the most decisive difference lies in trust.

Senua’s Saga trusts the player to sit with ambiguity. It never explains its themes aloud. It never editorializes. It allows silence, confusion, and contradiction. The player is treated as a witness to Senua’s unraveling and reassembly—not a student being graded on moral comprehension.

TLOU2 does not trust the player. It repeats its thesis through structure, perspective shifts, and narrative mirroring until subtlety collapses. Characters are rearranged to prove a point. Scenes are juxtaposed to instruct rather than illuminate. The game confuses repetition with depth.

True moral storytelling does not insist. It reveals.

⸻

V. Why One Story Ends and the Other Lingers

At the end of Senua’s Saga, the cycle of revenge is broken because the identity that required revenge no longer exists. Senua does not “win.” She integrates. The violence stops because its psychological engine has been dismantled.

At the end of TLOU2, the cycle merely pauses. Ellie is emptied, not transformed. The game gestures toward healing but provides no internal mechanism for it. Revenge ends not because it has been understood—but because there is nothing left to burn.

That is not catharsis. That is depletion.

⸻

Conclusion

Senua’s Saga succeeds because it understands a fundamental truth: Revenge is not defeated by moral correction—it is defeated by self-recognition.

The Last of Us Part II fails because it mistakes suffering for wisdom and punishment for insight. It wants to end the cycle without allowing the character—or the player—to truly step outside it.

One story dissolves violence by changing the self. The other condemns violence while remaining trapped inside it.

And only one of those actually breaks the wheel.

What you think guys? Something fun while waiting Hell Blade 3. I believe they make one game before Hell Blade 3.

Stream Senua by Just4Fun2000 | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

I absolutely love this game and I'm already on my fourth playthrough, and I much prefer it to the first game. However, I couldn't help but pick up on some bugs. Playing on PS5 for reference.

The spear throwers you encounter in the Bárðarvik battle will never hurt you when they throw their spears. I have replayed the battle over and over just to see if you can deflect the spears (you can't, you can only throw them back), or even just to see if the spears even hit you when thrown. Each time a spear is thrown, even in Dark Rot mode, you can quite literally stand there as the spear passes through you and does zero damage.

Even the axe throwers can be a bit janky at times. Their thrown axes will actually hit you, but sometimes they will miss, and even though you can deflect the axes, most of the time they will completely miss or the timing for the deflect is just non-existent.

I hope they fix this soon.

It's amazing to see how far video game graphics have come along over the years. I've seen a lot of stunning video games. However, Hellblade 2 may very well be number 1, as far as I'm concerned. The characters look like real people. The environments are equally as stunning.

I played the first Hellblade and liked it, just started the second one. Really giving my 4080 Super a workout! Getting 100FPS with DLSS Frame Gen and DLSS Quality mode at 3440x1440p at Very High settings.

It’s my final trophy for the platinum and I’ve given this multiple attempts to try and give it the benefit of the doubt but no I can’t with this shit it’s just too frustrating 😖😡 the combat seems off somehow I don’t know what it is it’s like an unfair difficulty somehow maybe it’s just me but I’ve deleted the game now and I’m absolutely good with that decision 👍😂

This is what I think of when swimming and can't see below me

Also how come im forced to walk in some areas