The Moving Pixels Podcast Goes to Hell…blade

This month we discuss my GOTY of last year, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

Let me just say off the bat I apologize for the awful audio at the very start. I tried to create a sonic experience relating to the game and upon hearing it, I should have just gone with the standard “hello.” Trust me, the game’s audio is light years beyond anything I could produce.

I am still in awe of this game even months after playing it. While certain details escaped me, the vast majority of the game’s visuals and sequences are vivid in my memory. Being able to revisit it through our conversation let me sit in awe of its craft all over again. I said at the beginning of the podcast that this is a game that has to be experience first hand to get the full effect of the work. Hearing us talk about it just doesn’t cut it.

Eventually, the conversation turns to one of being able to decipher a game’s meaning. Nick brings up the point that there’s nothing inherent about Hellblade that indicates it is about mental illness. We know it is, but not because of the game itself and can be seen as a fantasy story. It’s a point I disagree with mainly because the game demands you interrogate its meaning. Still it is a point worth examining and I wish we hard a third person on to get another perspective on the subject.

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“It’s funny. We all want to see behind the veil, don’t we? But once we do, we mostly…just close our eyes again and pretend what we saw was ever really there.”