A recent tweet from Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that Ninja Theory working on Hellblade 2 and other Xbox Game Studios are excited to use Unreal Engine to make their games.
Now this could mean two things; either Ninja Theory is already planning to port Hellblade 2 to Xbox Series X using Unreal Engine 5 or it could be used with the next game.
Hellblade is the story of a mentally broken young girl named Senua, who suffers from psychosis and in the original game went on a metaphorical journey to the Viking underworld to attempt to persuade the goddess of death, Hela, to resurrect her murdered love.
The game won a great deal of praise for its story and the realistic portrayal of psychosis victims, and became a surprise sleeper hit after its release. The game also won praise for its visuals, and was developed on Unreal Engine 4.
It won’t be a big surprise though, considering that fact, that Ninja Theory could be using Unreal Engine 5 for Hellblade 2 development. Epic Games showed the engine off today in a demo that was supposedly going to be used for a real game that would come out in the future, and it looked amazing.
We’ll likely be seeing more environments like what Senua went through in the original Hellblade in its sequel, and if Ninja Theory wants to continue disturbing people with the same sorts of environments we saw in the original game, Unreal Engine 5 will help them do it.
We already saw a good amount of disturbing imagery in the game’s reveal trailer, which showed off a pagan Viking ritual, a giant, and more, all in amazing-looking cinematics. While that may not be exactly what Hellblade 2 looks like, Unreal Engine 5 will probably bring it extremely close.
We are hoping that UE5 is the one being used however, since the game has been in development for a while, the chances seem slim. Fingers crossed for the July Microsoft event as we will get the confirmation of Game Engine version then.
Hellblade 2 will be releasing on the Xbox platforms and PC.
