Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice | Explained

[Music] hello and welcome to the gamer archives I'm Daniel and I'm Joe today we're discussing one of my favorite PlayStation games of last year hell-blade senator's sacrifice this game first caught many people's attention due to its incredible graphics on top of that the story tells is beautifully in depth if not a little bit harrowing before we go into it though if you enjoy our content don't forget to subscribe to our channel for weekly videos and maybe check out the patreon page as well now hell-blade sweat of sacrifice tells its story less like an action game and more akin to a walking simulator so the story can be a little hard to follow and so we thought it would be you know a good idea to discuss our interpretation of the games events obviously there is a spoiler warning attached to this episode and and also this game is really really dark at times featuring some pretty grim realities based not only on real world history but also on current mental illnesses so if you find either of these topics disturbing then please proceed with caution like most walking simulators this game story doesn't focus much on what's actually happening in the game but it's largely about what's happening in our protagonist Z Noah's past senua is a young picked warrior the picks were a large formation of tribes found in both northern and eastern Scotland who had a similar language and culture to the Celts with this game being set so long ago in US history it's only recently that people had begun to accept and understand mental health conditions and the implications associated with them in fact the current level of awareness is still relatively new and there is often still a negative stigma surrounding the subject however back in cinemas time there would have been next to no understanding of mental health issues at all to fully understand so Noah's story we need to explore her childhood Sarah's mother is a priestess named Galena and her father is a druid names in Bell Galena suffers from psychosis psychosis is a symptom which is associated with serious mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia symptoms of psychosis can range because of a large variety but they can include difficulty concentrating depression anxiety delusions and hallucinations now a hallucination for those who don't quite know is defined as the perception of an object or an event in the observance of any external stimulus essentially this means that you sense things that don't exist outside of the individual's mind generally people think for loosen Asians as you've seen things although actually audiological hallucinations which means you hear things in your head is the most common kind of hallucination among those who have suffered from psychosis however symptoms can affect any or all of people's five senses so including taste touch anything like that galina's psychosis presented itself as auditory hallucinations now without the current knowledge of mental health issues Glenda believe these were the voices of the spirit world communicating with them however her her husband zimba had a different opinion he believes that Glenna was cursed and that hearing spirits was an ability which define defied the gods themselves he called her condition her curse the darkness eventually symbols fear of this cursed richest apex when señor is just five years old and he led a mob and burned Galena alive in front of Senya as a sacrifice to appease the gods some a star husband-material right there see the issue with his actions is that it just spreads the problem modern research suggests that while mental health issues aren't strictly hereditary it is more likely to affect you if it runs in the family and and a very very common precursor to mental health disorders is experiencing large traumas in your early years like witnessing you mother being murdered by your father would definitely class as a childhood trauma and it's of no surprise then that witnessing her mother cause something to snap in senors mind and she begin to begins to show signs of psychosis now sometimes when we witness horrific things our mind subconsciously represses the memory and replaces it with something we can cope with as some kind of like a defense mechanism and this is exactly what happened to Sen Uwe and who forgot what she had witnessed and began to believe that her mum had committed suicide but just because say Noah doesn't consciously remember her mother's execution her subconscious does and she was understandably affected zimble soon realizes that Senna was displaying symptoms much like gonna and believes that the curse must have been passed to her however he doesn't seem to have the heart to kill her a'right as she's his daughter so instead uses old religious methods to quote unquote cure her curse things like beating her performing rituals on her and isolating her from the rest of the tribe which seems horrific and it is but again as we said earlier it's important to remember that mental health wouldn't have been a thing if you see things it would be witchcraft or a curse or a generally would because people didn't even consider that the mind could be ill so after the abuse he would then manipulate the young sinner by acting like a nurturing parent was just trying to do what's best for her which I suppose he was trying to maybe what my argument is right okay he's trying to do his best maybe maybe don't burn someone to it well yeah this is where the whole good guy thing falls down do you think that he's just not great yeah but time differences maybe he was just trying to do his best and we don't know anyway as senua grew up zimble only allowed her to leave the house to gather herbs or run small simple errands for him during one of these errands so Noah saw one of the tribes war warriors named Dillion practicing his sword techniques Senna was fascinated by them and began to mimic them teaching herself the basics of sword fighting by copying Dillion one day dillion saw what she was doing and came to talk to her impressed with her skill despite the complete lack of training he suggests that she takes warrior trials and that she becomes a warrior for the tribe herself cinema takes advice and managing to become a warrior herself during this time Dillian and her fall in love until they decide to move in together I guess then you'll wanna see some other sort of I wrote this episode it has puns I know I can't say no I went to a father who had never agreed with the relationship to tell him the news symbol is furious screaming a sinner and hitting it to the floor saying that she's not only defying his wishes but that of the gods as well and that her curse would ruin the entire tribe cinema gains a strength to overcome her fear of her father draws a sword and holds him at bay so that she can leave and life is good for a while until one day a group of warriors including Sonora and Dillian leave the village on a mission when they return from their mission the village is been hit by the plague now either one of the Warriors in said newest group contracts the plague whirled around and brings it back to the village or the plague has already infected the population when they return and to be honest I can't find the exact right answer it's between those two but regardless of exactly what happened the tribes members are decimated in in the real world when plague hit the UK 60% of the population was killed and unfortunately this included the death of the tribes chief which was dillion's father the survivors are obviously heartbroken and angry and as people do they start looking for something to blame and remember symbols words about sin newest curse causing the tribe ruin so they begin to blame her and so her psychosis flares up and she business she suffers from a very real visual hallucination where Dillion is also blaming her screaming that it's all her fault and it causes her to flee the village into the forest to not spread the curse as such psychosis is often associated with heightened negative emotions so her guilt and fear were most likely the catalyst for this hallucination Dillian does manage to find Sonia and he tells her that he doesn't blame her at all and never would however Senora has convinced herself that if she stays in the village the curse will spread to Dillion or lead to more deaths so she decides to stay in the forest to battle her darkness alone Zeno stays in the wilderness for quite some time she nearly dies but survives until one day where she meets a badly wounded half burn man named Ruth from another Pictish clan drew this smart man and is able to speak both locally and to the Vikings because of this he's often acted as an inn he often acts as an interpreter preventing bloodshed where possible this didn't last though and he was eventually kidnapped by the Vikings the Norseman tortured drove until they forced him to lead them to their other pictus villages he escaped but the attack left him clinging to life sedima befriends draweth and sits with him as he dies while she's there he regale so with stories myths and legends of Norse mythology including stories of rune stones anyone else in cinema shoes would have passed draweth off as crazy on knowing that these were just stories but cinema took these tales as facts and then matter how embellished she viewed these Norseman as as just as real as her darkness as he died rough vowed that he would repay sinners kindness by looking down on her from the afterlife as he dies send your horrors back to her village hoping they're safe from the Vikings however when she returned she finds devastation the Vikings have ransacked the village and killed everyone Dillian has been sacrificed using the blood eagle ritual a particularly brutal method of execution blood Eagle execution is performed by line the victim faced down and severing their ribs from their spine using a sharp tool the victims lungs are then pulled through the opening to create a pair of wings Dillian was then put on for all of the village to see mmm yes oh this horrific sight and the loss of loved ones triggers a severe psychotic episode and sin he was mind creates a story that she can understand and cope with and the story combines the horrors that she's seen in her village her curse being the results of an evil being and the savage stories of Norse mythology that she was told about from druffs and she creates this story is that Halla is the one that cursed her with the darkness hella rules over the Helheim the north's version of Hell and she also believes that Dillian was sacrificed to her so send us sets off to find Helheim to confirm the hella taking Dylan's head with her as she believes that this is where the soul resides in hope that she can save him and bring him back and this is where the game begins we see the opening shots of cirno sailing to where she believes he'll wholeness and near the beginning she also begins to here'd Roth's voice ring through her head more than likely because draweth said out of kindness that he'd looked down from her from the afterlife again her psychosis probably fed into that and thought he meant it almost literally and so the story feeds in that he's literally there helping her and although this is what the gameplay shows us is happening it's actually where events are most unclear as what we see in the game is not technically real all the horrors are a result of cinema's psychosis making her perceive the world as twisted and horrific hellscape dudes gameplay not being an accurate representation of truth events we can't say with 100% certainty what real happened what really happens one theory is that sin who never left her village she's frozen in terror surrounded by the sight of her family and friends butchered around her and that the entire game takes place in her mind as she tries to make sense of the destruction around her the second theory is similar it still didn't really happen but that señor really did travel to another Island believe in the hell home was located there the island that she travels to is occupied by Vikings but instead of just seeing these Norseman as what they really are just normal people that are mostly and warriors she sees them as amplified versions of how they appear in the story she's heard huge men with huge axes with schools adorned in their hands one of the later bosses the fearsome Ven Rhea is probably something like a war dog or a wild bear but she perceives it to be a big monster and whenever she finds a deer her psychosis tells her that it's locked by ancient magic and she doesn't even attempt to touch the door before she's unlocked it everyone else would have just seen a normal door where they would just walk through without a problem she also sees law stones which draweth told her about the rune stones and she's reminded of drugs stories and so they echo throughout her mind reminding her that this is how the world should be according to him and the voices she has throughout the game often belittle her probably due to her own self-doubt the loudest voice of them of them all is the shadow a focal point of her inner darkness and during the game Senya remembers the truth about her mother's death and what her father did and the shadow is revealed to be a manifestation of her father hearing his voice taunt her right until the very end it may not seem like it but the short time Sen who spends with drove was critical as cinemas perception of reality she had never met him or heard his stories her mind would have probably established a very different reality for her completely void of Norse gods and rune stones it may appear as it may appear strange that Drath is so important to cinema being as they only knew each other for a very short period of time but really he's probably one of the only people cinema felt close to her mother would have understood her condition where she was killed before it had fully manifested Dillian was understanding and loved her but couldn't fully understand what she was going through draweth however had his own demons and so cinema we fell a close kinship with him ultimately there was no hallow or Helheim that demonic Vikings either didn't exist at all or were just normal Vikings every voice she hears go she sees and rune blocking the door at just manifestations of her mind trying to come to terms with dillion's death in a time when people didn't know mental health issues existed without that knowledge she would have believed that everything she experienced was real finally at the end of the game señor is attacked by endless waves of enemies shadowed by hella looming over until eventually sin he was struck down and defeat defeated and all enemies vanish and Halle shrinks down to send you aside and approaches slowly and these things of disappearing and shrinking that señor begins to realize that none of this is real but she desperately clings to clings to the fantasy that Dillian can be bought back and saved and so she begs Halle to trade her own soul for his Heller doesn't respond at all and so cinema begs for death saying she has nothing left and Heller obliges picking up saying his weapon and stabbing her with it and then picks up Dylan's skull and throws her away but Heller was never there and so could not have killed Sarah we next see Senna in hellas place a metaphor showing the viewer that Senna was strongest opponent was herself and her own inner demons by accepting DeLeon is gone forever she can begin to move on and come to terms with his death some people believe that this means that she is rid of self the psychosis however the reality is she probably would never be rid of the visions but she can rid herself of the control it has over her and live at peace with her visions and that's the end of cinemas tale for those interested in history after the Vikings invade the pics which send historic tripe they would join the Scots forming the now kingdom of Scotland and now we'd love to hear from you how did you interpret the game did you agree with what we said if not let us know why not just pop it in the comments and we'll see you next week and just before we go you may notice that we only gave a very brief overview of psychosis and how it affects people and it's very unlike us as we do our best to be as thorough as possible with pretty much every topic that we even touch upon and I think when discussing Khajiit for elderscrolls we even went into cat penises you know we did however with this kind of topic I feel like we should leave it to someone a little bit better qualified after all we're literally a couple of nerds that enjoy talking about video games we know that psychosis is very real and very salary serious illness that affects a lot of people and I don't want to be someone that blunders in and says something accurate and accidentally hurting people or offending them is that's not what we're trying to do and so if you want to learn more about psychosis itself I have left a link in the description this page also has some useful contact information so if you're struggling with any you know mental health issues or you know anyone that is maybe check it out and just make sure that you know we're keeping everyone safe and happy after all we're trying to make you know you guys a community and so we want more safe and healthy [Music]

Channel: Game Lore Archives

Views: 40,125

Rating: 4.8631177 out of 5

Keywords: PowerDirector15, Playstation 4, PS4, Xbox One, Game Lore Archives, Game Lore Archive, Brit Screen Gaming, PC, PC Gaming, Gaming, Video Games, Computer Game, Computer Games, Steam, Elgato, Internet Database, Lore, Explained, Game Lore, Theory, Game Theory Lets Play, Let's Play, Gameplay, *** Genres *** Role- Playing Games, RPG, Action Games, Walking Simulator Games, Walking Sim, Walking Simulator, Horror Games, Puzzle Games, Hellblade, Senua's Sacrifice

Id: yxSlmRNibMQ

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 14 2018