Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Based on Norse mythology, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is psychological horror disguised as dark fantasy: its suffocating atmosphere is the consequence of tackling such themes as depression and grief while diving into the mind of a character whose mental illnesses infuse each event with hopelessness and despair. Hellblade feels quite claustrophobic because it doesn’t observe these issues from a safe distance, but rather from within the very mind where such destructive emotions thrive.

In the story, Senua is traveling to a “land of mist and fog. The place the Northmen call Hel,” to retrieve the soul of her dead boyfriend, Dillion. Like in the myth of Baldr, here the goddess Hela is holding a soul so precious that one would do anything, even travel to the depths of Helheim, to retrieve it. But what Hela wants from Senua is not a grand, symbolical gesture, like the one she asked for Baldr’s soul, but something more personal: her mission is to venture ever deeper into her own tortured psyche – and since it’s one tainted by illness, this couldn’t be a more treacherous quest. After all, as it’s plainly stated: “The hardest battles are fought in the mind.”

Hellblade makes a striking first impression with its unsubtle art direction. As Senua sails alone to Hel, slowly rowing a log, which is passing for a makeshift boat, we don’t take long to see impaled bodies standing out in the fog… alongside hanged bodies, burned bodies, all sorts of bodies. The omen is clear: Senua’s journeying toward a place of suffering and death; abandon hope, all ye who enter here. The very goal of her mission, by itself, already reveals how futile it is: “She wants to rescue him. He’s already dead,” the voices in her mind say.

For Senua hears voices, and they’re not like Kevin, the kind. No, they tell her that she’s a failure, that everybody hates her, that she can’t do anything right. We hear them coming from all directions, surrounding her, non-stop. They’re oppressive and all-consuming. And she believes their words. So, Senua’s makeshift boat may already hint at how ill-prepared she is for the quest, but things are much worse since she suffers from this unspecified mental illnesses that put voices in her head, but also produces constant hallucinations, and, more importantly, reinterprets the world around her in a way that manages to turn it even more uncaring and hostile. She’s going to Hel, but her mind has probably been painting everywhere else in the world just like that her whole life. A cruel person could say that, in a way, she’s going home.

The game begins by describing a darkness that towers over Senua; a darkness that never leaves her, a darkness that “builds onto itself,” and is only a bad day away from claiming her life. This darkness is not something that she can get used to or easily dismiss, as it taints her perspective and experience, making the good days only reinforce how awful the bad ones can be. It’s a threat that is forever there; a shadow cast over her soul, just waiting for its chance to strike again and take back the reins of her life – only to end it. It’s a constant struggle, then; it’s an invisible battle that drains her energy and spirit every day. The very voices in her head warn Senua of this looming threat, but sardonically, as if laughing at her condition: “You might try to ignore it, turn away, but it’s always there just out of sight, where you are most vulnerable. It’s like it knows that just enough light… is all you need to see its suffocating power.”So, what I’m trying to impart here is that if Senua is alive at the beginning of this journey, that is, by itself, no small victory. It’s proof that she’s a warrior. And a fierce one at that.

The game’s main mechanic is ingenious because it acknowledges that the thing mental illnesses affect the most is one’s perception of things (of the world and of oneself). To navigate the land of Hel, Senua must try to find meaning amidst the chaos around her, seeing specific patterns in the shape of trees or in the way parts of buildings overlap when observed at a certain angle. Senua can only proceed when she can shift and control her perception of reality: she must acknowledge that her default view of the world is corrupted, tainted by a self-sabotaging psyche, which in practical terms means that we must look between certain objects and portals so that a bridge that was not there before… suddenly appears to be now. When everything seems lost, paths may open if we have someone or something to guide our gaze and help us see a way forward. In Hellblade, perception is the stage of a fierce battle between Senua and her own darkness, with the prize being the shape of her reality.

It’s not a coincidence that this version of Helheim is all about illusions. The monsters Senua defeats seem to fade away like they never existed. Bridges can suddenly form when there was nothing there before – a small victory that, unfortunately, serves as a reminder to Senua of her own condition, robbing the moment of any joy. Sometimes, she relives memories of fires where she must pass through carbonized bodies and hear endless screams while the voices in her head, tapping into her guilt, keep stating that all that pain, all that suffering, is her fault. And we don’t know if these are indeed her memories or if they’re just elaborate lies created by her fears, for Senua’s very mind is an unreliable narrator. We – just like Senua – can’t trust anything.

There’s this brilliant sequence where she gets trapped inside a pitch-black place, and we can’t distinguish a single thing moving in the darkness, so we start to follow sound cues and Dillion’s voice to find the exit – Senua’s eyes fail her, so she must have help, something or someone to guide her forward (and if you love someone in Senua’s situation, you gotta be that someone, that unwavering beacon).

After all, there’s a disfigured, bloated monster lurking around, and if Senua looks at it, if she contemplates its existence, much like the abyss, it looks back at her too… and she’s dead. The sound design during this whole sequence is terrific – headphones are not recommended; they are required here – as we can hear the floor creaking with Senua’s every step and chains nervously clanking when we blindly stumble into them. And when we finally believe that we can breathe again, that Senua is safe, the game pulls the rug out from under us and puts her half underwater near a bunch of the same bloated creatures, whose shapes can now be confused with some skinless bodies hanging from the ceiling. It’s pure horror.

It’s no wonder that Senua is going through great lengths to save Dillion’s soul: as this scene proves, he often saved her own. While her father despised her, deeming her cursed, unfit, and broken – feeding her illness, giving it power over her –, Dillion offered his hand to guide her through the darkness. Senua is lost, and Dillion is literally depicted as a beacon of light at several moments, which may not be subtle, but it couldn’t be more fitting nonetheless.

One of the game’s main discussions is about suffering, asking whether it has a purpose or if it’s just, well, pain. On the one hand, someone – especially a Christian – could argue that suffering is a way to wash away one’s sins, that it’s a form of penance, a path to heaven as we achieve grace through pain. The word “sacrifice” is in the very title of the game: Senua believes that her suffering will achieve something; that by giving herself away to Hella, she’ll get Dillion back. He’s become her beacon, and now she’ll go to Hell for him. Love is often like that.

But there is the possibility that it is all for naught. As Senua’s spectral guide, Druth, tells her one time, “The Northmen made fire sacrifices, burning slaves like me, to reveal the path to Surtr. I searched for meaning in their suffering, in their eyes, but they just screamed like helpless pigs.” For Druth, there is no higher meaning to it; no grace to be achieved, it’s just destruction on a personal level. If there are only helpless screams at the end, it’s because people ended up reduced to a state where there is no need for language anymore: suffering can rob us of our humanity.

This leads us to another main theme: grief. Senua goes through several narrative arcs here, having to deal with the constant voices inside her head – will she fight or heed them –; with the thought that she’s worthless – will she treat it as a narrative or fact –, and even with past trauma – will she be able to hide from it or relieve it time and again? But her main task remains the same: she must retrieve her dead boyfriend’s soul from the clutches of Hella. The way she’s decided to deal with his death is by reversing it. However, as Druth constantly points out with his tales of Norse mythology, death is inevitable, to the point that even the Gods themselves can’t escape Ragnarok: “There is nothing they can do to prevent it, but Odin ever seeks knowledge and magic, hoping, hoping to find a way to postpone the dark day.” Memento Mori, he’s saying, remember we all must die.

Senua’s ultimate goal and the antagonist’s – her own mind – are one and the same. Her illness pushes her to take her own life, but she plans to willingly offer it to the Norse embodiment of death anyway, as a sacrifice to save Dillion. But as she goes through Hel, Senua begins to realize that to defy death is not to revert it – for even the Gods failed when they tried with Baldr – but to keep on living for as long as we can. For death is ultimately personal: first of all, we must learn how to deal with ours. This is why her journey in the game is so tailor-made to tap into her own fears and uncertainties; this is why Hela looks precisely the way she does here: as she ventures deeper into Helheim, Senua is venturing deeper into her own soul.

Hellblade has a combat system, but since Senua’s struggles are of a psychological nature, it correctly doesn’t play a great role here: as much as we want it, we can’t stick a sword into our self-destructive thoughts, unfortunately. I should know, I’ve tried. Senua’s got the usual light and heavy attacks at her disposal, and the ability to parry and dodge, but combat here is meant to just spice things up: it’s the seasoning, not the main meal. So, what makes the sporadic fights a bit more interesting is the ambivalent function of Senua’s many internal voices: sometimes they indeed help us, warning about where a blow is coming from, but more often than not, they only add noise to the battles, making everything sound too unpleasant and chaotic, reinforcing the suffocating atmosphere.

Hellblade also opens with a message that there’s permadeath at play – that if we fail enough times, Senua’s darkness will consume her whole. This adds tension to every fight, raising the stakes, but the point of the message is that it puts us closer to Senua’s state of mind: unsure of ourselves, nervous, anxious, believing that there is little hope left, for total failure is just a matter of time; it’s a question of “when” and not “if.” We start to believe we’ll fail, and each defeat will greatly reinforce that fear and may even cripple our performance during subsequent fights.

Finally, the game’s presentation is striking (even on the Switch, where everything is naturally scaled down), with the art direction shining in moments of great spectacle, such as the sequence in a grotesque river of blood. Meanwhile, the binaural sound – please, use headphones, I’ve never asked you for anything – is put to great use to represent Senua’s voices surrounding her, whispering, shouting, and laughing all at the same time from every position.

When Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice builds the protagonist’s journey around a battle of perception, it’s not saying that the answer to something like depression is a reductive “just change your perspective on things and everything is gonna be okay. It’s all in your head anyway, so just try to think of something nice.” That would be offensive and wrong, and the game is better than that. What it’s trying to depict is how this type of condition creates an internal battlefield that we can’t escape from; a prison of the mind where battles are constant and dangerous, stripping us of what everyone else takes for granted: trust in our own reality. The things she perceived may not be true, her thoughts may not be entirely her own. Since Senua’s mind is at war with her, she must cast suspicion on her own conclusions, as they may be tainted, being the fruit of self-deprecating sabotage. What Hellblade is saying, then, is that there isn’t a more horrifying task.

September 14, 2025.