Hellblade II is a game best played with headphones

In The Saga of Senua: Hellblade II, the first and only instruction provided by the game is that it is best to play the game with headphones. As a rule, I always ignore this advice. I’m not a “headphones on, lights off” type of person. I do not need atmosphere. But for Infernal Blade II, I decided: “Why not?” What followed was a beep experience it delighted, frightened and destabilized the Hel(lblade) outside of me.

Note: Of course, if for some reason you can’t play with headphones, the game’s subtitles and closed captions do a good job of conveying the game’s unique audio design.

In Infernal Blade II, the sequel to 2017 Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Senua, a Pictish warrior, sets out on another harrowing journey. Instead of venturing to the gates of Helheim, she travels north to confront the Viking raiders who are stealing and enslaving her people. During her journey, Senua is accompanied by a Homeric chorus of voices that reflect her struggle with psychosis. The Ninja Theory team made it a point to explain that they consulted mental health experts – including a professor of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and people living with the disorder – to describe psychosis. with respect and precision. This manifests itself as hearing voices coming in and out on either side of my headphones. At the beginning of the game, I would turn my head left or right while the voices skipped before finally getting used to it.

There’s a richness to vocal performances that is lost if they’re played out in the open instead of directly into your ears. They speak in short, choppy sentences, contextualizing Senua’s feelings about a particular encounter. When she meets someone, her voices wonder if they can be trusted. During fights, they shout encouragement and admonitions. “Get up. Get up!” or “They are so strong!” I like the voices. They remind me of my own rapid internal monologue, joking about the myriad of things going around in my head.

Senua’s voices also help with navigation and puzzle solving, but not so much that it becomes obnoxious. In Infernal Blade II, there’s none of this “dialogue tells you the solution” that happens in other games. For the first section of the puzzle involving a path blocked by a large symbol, the voices shout “Focus!” prompting you to press the right trigger to activate Senua’s focus ability. When I got lost during a particularly confusing section in a dark forest, the voices only noticed once that I was lost and then locked away, leaving me to find the solution in blessed silence.

Diving into a dry lake, I could hear the water flowing all around me as the caverns echoed with the sound of my breathing. The further I went, the darker it got and the more sinister the sounds became. My breathing slowly turned into the guttural sounds of worried spirits. This should have been a problem. I to hate the sounds typically associated with horror – that quiet, crawling sound used whenever a game or movie wants to convey that something is disgusting and wet. But the scary sounds Infernal Blade II I’ve never crossed the threshold of repellent or trigger for me (misophonia sufferers, rejoice). Instead, the sounds were soft and quiet but no less eerie, as if they were right over my shoulder in the real world.

My hearing journey with Infernal Blade II was not limited to sound effects and voices. Music also played a vital role in creating a complete visceral experience of the game. Early on, there’s an encounter where everything combines – music, sound effects, and voice acting – to create a goosebump-inducing moment that I won’t spoil it. The tempo of the music combined with the action on screen created a rhythm that I could physically feel resonating in my chest as I played. It’s a watershed moment that truly showcases the skills and creativity of Infernal Blade IIThe team is from.

I am an auditory person, someone who places great importance on sound, and Infernal Blade II I felt like it was a game made for me. In Infernal Blade II, there is no UI in the game. There are no tutorial pop-ups that pause the action to tell you which buttons do what or how to interact with the environment. A user interface adds a layer of artificiality, reminding you that this is fiction. Without it, the game created a level of reality that I’d never really experienced before, forcing me to fully inhabit Senua as a character. And with headphones, I heard a lot more about the world and got a better sense of Senua’s unique experience.

The Saga of Senua: Hellblade II is now available on Xbox and Game Pass.