A closer look at Ninja Theory’s state-of-the-art graphics.
So, how do these early shots pan out?
Is this the Unreal Engine showcase we’ve been waiting for?
In terms of visual features, Hellblade 2 is clearly pushing some really impressive tech.
The animation is unbelievably good, superbly translating motion-captured performances into a plausible digital character.
There is some aliasing around Senua’s hair, but it’s otherwise virtually flawless.
Motion blur is similarly strong, without obtrusive sampling artifacts even when we zoom in on still frames.
Elsewhere, there’s the typical mix of Unreal Engine 5 features, albeit deployed very effectively.
All of this is in line with prior video assets from Ninja Theory.
Reflections are also tough to judge.
Earlier trailers did exhibit some SSR issues, and one appeared to prominently make use of a planar reflection.
Moving on, animation is another strong point in Hellblade 2.
Senua’s Sacrifice was a good looking title.
Hellblade 2 is unique here in that these effects seem unusually high-quality and unusually pervasive.
This is a time-honoured way to save GPU performance we’ve seen across multiple generations now.
Beyond that, another image quality concern revolves around the resolution of the volumetric effects.
The low-lying fog seen in the footage has artefacting issues and suffers from visibly low-res rendering.
These effects look good I think, but they don’t hold up as well with close scrutiny.
Again, reducing resolution of volumetric effects is not specific to Hellblade 2 - many games do it.
Performance of the captured footage comes off as generally fine based on the asset we have.
On Xbox Series X, it’s clearly a demanding game, but the results still look excellent overall.
It’s the lower-power platforms - specifically the Series S - that I’m more curious about.
It’s a lot like other high-end UE5 efforts we’ve seen so far in that respect.
