The LORE Rich Story of Hellblade (1 & 2)

Every time you tell about Senua fighting new wave of norse warriors, this vision is evoked:
"Three hundred Northmen for only two pounds?! Yes, sir!"

Wait ..... the slaver has the darkness creeping up his arm too ????

so it's just a story about a woman with schizophrenia cool I guess

Hellblade 1 is just a Psychonauts level in which Senua enters Senua's own mind. The fact that she never interacts with another person is what makes the story of the game be more interesting to me. One of the things that I hate about the second game is how many times Senua interacts with other people. The second game is a more straightforward "epic" story about a hero with lots of mental issues. It's just not what I was expecting. I just wanted more "Psychonauts" with Senua.

Haven't played the second one yet, but the whole "people are the real monsters" and "you don't have to become your parents" seem like the themes. That just disappoints me because those feel like tired themes. The first game and the portrayal of mental illness through mythology and a quest that starts with trying to undo the past and leading to accept loss and yourself? God, that was a great game. It was such a unique experience and felt so honest and real about living with a mental illness and trauma. It felt refreshing and new. I felt like I could choose multiple ways of interpreting the story and all were valid. The second game doesn't look quite as groundbreaking storywise. Still gonna play it, but I can see why it didn't get quite the same fanfare as the first game.

Great job man! You always cover games I love or REALLY want to play too, which is nice. Lore and story are a big part of why I game in the first place……. So now where’s Rule of Rose!!! Haha

Before I ever watched this video, I watched all the cut scenes from the first game and the second my belief is when. Senua claimed that she had killed a god. If you looked closely after she drops the head, you can see where she had previously been lying. Hella is lying there instead, or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. Also, in a way she did slay a God that may have just existed in her head though. My theory which I may be completely wrong, after the volcano erupted all the famine and sickness that spread I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised, if a lot of peoples mental state was unhinged, and that ended up in tangling with their beliefs, and because the Norseman were imposing their gods on to others through torture conquest, you name it there may have been more people at that time suffering with mental illness. And also, I won’t be at least bit surprised if there may have been something in the air that was causing like mass hallucination. Don’t quote me on this, but there are documentation from the past where mass hallucinations did happen either from pollutants in the water or pollutants in the air. It just takes one suggestion that could spread this madness. Yet Senua was the only one who really was able to get through this fog and in away she had already conquered that part of herself that was controlling her before. When people are scared, it is easy for them to fall to manipulation as well. Makes it hard when it comes to something like this. What can you truly believe? Apologies I got off of one of the topics that I was gonna talk about. Forgive my spelling the Drager I figured right away or cannibals with all the famine going around some had to obviously resort cannibalism and group too much of a liking to it. I do rather like how Senua gave some of the giants piece like helping lost spirits find their way. You can take what I said here with a grain of salt take it or leave it. It’s up to you.😊 thank you for doing this video all the same. I truly enjoyed it as I always enjoy your videos.❤

I miss the 5 second countdown it makes your videos feel like movies

I don’t like they changed her walk on the 2nd game because it is definitely bad ass on the 1st. ❤

Ooooh do Wolfenstein plz I always wanted to play it but never got a chance

I just hate how modern games are intentionally made overdemanding with system specs as a form of tech demo and story is just super ambiguous. The first Hellblade was really good with the story and everything and it had really good graphics that didn't require a 1080ti lvl gpu to run. It was enjoyable enough on moderately high settings with solid 60fps even on a 1070 lvl gpu but this new hellblade 2 is nothing more than a techdemo in my opinion and good luck getting it running with a 3070 on high settings without dlss. I don't even know what purpose does this sequel serve other than making some dough.

I think while the theme of the first game was schizophrenia, in the second one is Mass Psychosis since everyone believed in the giants to be real and interacted with them. There are documented cases of Mass Psychosis were a large group of people all saw the same thing.

Dillion as in Dillion Harper

I got frustrated when they decided to kill the handsome guy at the end 😢

Weird how an elderly overweight father could beat his fitted son

Gosh the voices in her head are so insufferable to listen to - but I guess that's the point lol

I got 20 minutes into this.
I cant play it or watch it.
Im schizophrenic and it’s similar to this, you cant understand the hell

great narration/summary

Draugr, pronounced drah-ger

Honestly i just utterly adore these games. I thought the second was a huge upgrade

Being schizophrenic and playing hellblade 1, it made me wish there was some journey leading to a conflict that ends with resolution. This life isnt like that unfortunately and instead of a desired conflict helping you to recove, you get medications that are as bad for your body as the delusions are for sanity.

I’ve never played these games but I just wanted to let you know this video is beautifully made and you are a wonderful storyteller. I love the extra research you put into the folklore that aspects of the games are based on. This is by far my favorite lore channel because of how much care you put into telling the stories of all these games.

Fear and insecurity can lead normal people to become monsters. Game 2 checks out. This series is stunning, both visually and storywise. Gameplay was cool too.

Played the first one on PS4 and loved it.

But because of this console exclusivity crap, i watched this to understand the second game after watching a full playthrough.

End exclusivity BS

Damn it Harry have you never played Skyrim!? It annoyed me to no end the way you pronounced draugr !!!

Just like Alan trash wake 2 this game forgot about its physical fans, so no go. Part 2 will flop just like Alan wake 2. Care about your customers or lose money.

YESS! 🙌 Maybe I'm OCD but I cannot stop playing a game until I've found everything it has to offer! It's kinda a waste of money if you don't! I LOVE this channel for that! 🙏

A couple of random things, 1 both games are very much stories of mental health, the team even hired on mental health consultants specifically to get that aspect as correct as they could. Secondly I think the devs missed some history. Iceland actually used to be dense forests until the norse came and logged the entire thing to ship the lumber back home, so the iceland in the game is actually very much post "being tamed".

hello gamingharry i was waiting for your Lore video Sweeet!

this lore is so boring I can’t even fall asleep to it.

Now I know how to correctly pronounce draugr

I really struggled to play the first game and never picked it up after putting 2ish hours into it. I love the concept, the story line, and the design. Thanks for posting this with a good bit of gameplay and audio with it, I can appreciate both games as phenomenal games even if I don’t get around to playing them

This game got me hooked! After how awesome the first game was, I was worried for this one when I saw so many mixed reviews but boy did this game prove them wrong! Ninja theory set out to tell a terrifying tale about mental struggles in the most beautiful way they know how and they did a spectacular job! I can’t wait for the next one. I’m glad that I’m alive to be a witness to this masterpiece

I love ur use of basically occum's razor the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I believe also that the 1st game is completely inside her head where as the 2nd would be a shared delusion as it where

I would LOVE to watch this video. Looking forward to do so. I want to play Part 1 and 2 myself without spoiling... so...
Just want so say: i love your videos ❤ i'll be back

PHEW! I saw a now I realise sarcastic tweet that the final battle of Hellblade 2 was with her psychiatrist. I'm not joking, I watched the entire video bracing that, at any second, it might cut to live action footage of Senua's actress whilst a psychiatrist explains every symbol and metaphor in her story. I'm genuinely glad that's not the case.

Thank you for this. I played the first game but lost interest during the pit of bodies parts. I game was a lot to take in so i didn't get the full experience of the Norse lore richness that was in the story, and so I chose not to play the second. Thanks to this video i got to experience the story and really understand it. It really is steeped in Norse myth and actual pretty cool. I still won't play as the game isn't my taste, but at least i got to see how it all plays out. Thanks.

Game looks great, but definitely not for me

"...lofty expectations..."

People were expecting the video game to be a video game.

I think that the Giants never existed. Even Senua confirms this

What happened was ancient people needed religion and folklore to explain the cataclysm that was happening to them. Every time there was a Giant, it would be actually be a natural disaster, that was so big, that it looked like a giant person for some reason.

It's so hard to continue a fantastical game like this one when the very facts of the player's actions are up for debate, I think that the first game works incredibly well as a metaphor, but if you want to take in the second game, you need to settle on the first being at least mostly real.

Here we go another all in le head video

I played the first game but I gave up very quickly. The game wasn't scary nor difficult but very depressing.

I thought the giants were interpretations of the conditions within mother nature tied to the stories of people of suffered during those conditions. Like the volcano and the mother who lost her child. He used those natural disasters against his people telling them they were giants?

Awesome work. Thanks for all the hard work. Hellblade is certainly an intriguing story.

as a dane i have to mention how every pronunciation was butchered. Maybe the game does the same, but still...

The letter ð is not a d, it makes the same th sound as in "other" (oðer); Goði = "gothi"
Also, the letter ö is not an o, ör sounds like the er in "other" (othör); Björg = "byerg"

The fact that Senua's response to her lover being blood eagled was to remove his head and take it with her is the most Icelandic folklore thing I can conceive of