Ninja Theory: Hellblade isn't tied to Heavenly Sword at all
Like many of you, when Ninja Theory showed its new game at Gamescom we turned to each other and whispered "Heavenly Sword 2? Come on, that's totally Kai!" But no, it was Hellblade, and in an Eurogamer interview the studio's confirmed the PS4 game has no ties whatsoever to the 2007 hack-and-slash. And no, it's not even a spiritual successor.
"It's a brand new IP," Ninja Theory's Dominic Matthews said. "Senua is a new character. It's not tied to Heavenly Sword at all. I saw someone describe the name as someone just putting Heavenly Sword into Thesaurus.com and going, oh it's Hellblade. It's not something where we've gone, 'Yeah, let's make people think it is this.' We really like Heavenly Sword. We loved making that game. So it's actually more just we like making female protagonists that look in a certain style. And we like swords. And we like hell. It's more that."
Apart from shooting down the links to Heavenly Sword, the UK studio is keeping details limited on its latest major project. However, on the game's new site Matthews reiterated the studio's vision, and how it'll apply to Hellblade:
"Ninja Theory is defined by three things," he wrote. "ninja-class melee gameplay, strong character stories and a unique art vision. On Hellblade, we will double down on what we do best to give you a deeper character in a twisted world with brutal, uncompromising combat."
Hellblade is "first to console" on PS4, a phrase we heard plenty at Microsoft and Sony's Gamescom conferences. It suggests the game's likely to come out on PC and other consoles such as the Xbox One at some point.
"Sony have offered us a great platform to announce the game," Matthews told Eurogamer. "The big thing for us is we wanted to get something out there. We've been quite quiet for a while because we've had stuff that's not worked out for us. We've been pretty honest about that. We've concepted games that have not been greenlit."
