Microsoft Senua's Saga: Hellblade II - Information Thread, update (05/24): "Can Xbox Series S (and Steam Deck/ROG Ally) handle Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2?" (Digital Foundry technical analysis)

[AbsolutSurgen]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Text article that accompanies the Digital Foundry video:

 

Can Xbox Series S handle Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2?

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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Can Hellblade 2 deliver a good experience on Xbox Series S, Steam Deck and ROG Ally?

 

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As you may expect, Hellblade 2 on Xbox Series S has a few key visual cutbacks relative to its Series X counterpart. The most obvious hit here comes down to reflections. On Series X, there's Unreal Engine 5's full Lumen reflections system, combining a mix of screen-space reflections and software ray tracing to accurately portray reflections of the world. It looks pretty good for the most part, although the SDF-based reflections do look a little crude, especially on foliage elements, while skinned objects are represented only in screen-space. It's not perfect, but in general gameplay, when not examining it at point-blank range, it produces a pleasing result.

 

Series S instead swaps in screen-space reflections, without Lumen's ray tracing to fall back on. You see good-looking results when the reflected detail is in screen-space, but the technique fails when you try to examine a reflection from steep angles. Water surfaces can look bereft of lighting detail, and sometimes have a somewhat matte appearance. There are also the more typical SSR occlusion issues when Senua gets between the camera and the water surface, as we don't have a good reflection method to fall back on, producing a void in the reflection. This usually doesn't have a big impact on the visuals, but in some water-filled spots it can produce annoying results.

Xbox Series S also features lower-resolution volumetric lighting than Series X. You'll notice that the volumetric lighting here is less sharply defined and suffers from additional artifacting on the S. The overall impact of the lighting is much the same, but lighting detail on Series X is obviously more detailed and cleaner, holding up better in motion. There are other lighting tweaks in some scenes. Hellblade 2 uses software Lumen GI plus virtual shadow maps, so differences in their resolution on Series S should yield slightly different results. Usually the outcomes are very similar at a glance, but flashing back-and-forth does reveal some subtle tweaks, and occasionally we do find faults in the VSMs that are largely unique to Series S.

There are other little tweaks in the mix as well. The Series S doesn't seem to have the same water dripping animation as the X here. Low lying volumetric fog looks a little coarser on the S too. Foliage quality appears to be somewhat reduced on Series S and sometimes rocks are placed somewhat differently across the two platforms, though I didn't notice a consistent difference that would make me suspect a visual cutback. There are also some differences in asset quality and at some viewing distances, Series S appears to have lower-resolution textures. I think this is mostly a side effect of a lower rendering resolution on the Series S, as when we get right up close to texture surfaces the apparent detail is similar. The actual makeup of the terrain also sometimes slightly differs between the two machines.

 

 

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Moving onto Steam Deck, the challenge in delivering a consistent, good-looking experience is far more daunting. I elected to start out with the game running at 720p output with FSR 3 in performance mode where low settings seems acceptable at around 30fps, but high and medium settings are off the table - the hit is just too intense. Across a range of scenes, we observe the same pattern. Only low settings will get us anywhere near a stable 30fps on a consistent basis, so that's what we need to stick with. Thankfully, low settings seems to include support for software-based Lumen GI, so the basic visual character of the game is preserved. Foliage sees obvious tweaks, but elsewhere the visual presentation looks quite similar for the most part.

 

The most obvious exception comes down to reflections, which lose the SDF-based ray tracing with the lowest settings preset. The medium and high preset enjoy proper Lumen-powered reflections, but with the low preset we have to make do with screen-space reflections. Looking back at the Xbox Series versions of the game, I think the Series S is actually not too far from what we're seeing here. Most of the visual differences here come down to the resolution of the final image and the resolution of the game's lighting effects.

 

 

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But it's clear we need more horsepower and that's where the Asus ROG Ally proves useful with its more potent Z1 Extreme processor. Extra power and more performant silicon offers more options, but even with a similar 15W TDP level in performance mode, we're up to about 50 percent faster here, with some scene to scene variation. Turning the system up to turbo mode, the performance goes up further still, although the gains are more moderate, at about a 10-20% frame-rate uplift in my test shots. If we run through a good range of game content in this configuration, we're usually landing in the 40s and 50s. However, noticeable stutter still manifests.

 

I did try bumping up the resolution to 900p in turbo mode, to better suit the Ally's 1080p panel. The performance dip is moderate, and we end up with frame-rates that are similar to running the game at 720p in the Ally's performance wattage preset. I did log a brief sub-30 span, but otherwise we're comfortably in the 30s and usually in the 40s - within the Ally's VRR window with low frame-rate compensation. There is one small caveat though, which is that there seems to be a minor rendering issue with the game on my system. The opacity of atmospheric effects seems a bit much on the Ally, relative to other platforms. This could be an issue with the AMD graphics drivers on the Ally, which are updated somewhat infrequently and are often a little out of date, though you can force install more recent drivers if you can stand a bit of hassle.

 

 

[Best]

14 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

 

 

What's the quick summary of this?

 

The mythology of the game has me wanting to replay GOW 2018.

 

Edit: Nevermind. Wade got me. 

[Best]

I seriously cannot recommend this game to anyone. It's extremely dark and depressing and not enjoyable to play in the slightest.

 

I'm claustrophobic and this game capitalizes on that big time. The story is a complete slug. 4/10

[Biggie]

31 minutes ago, best3444 said:

I seriously cannot recommend this game to anyone. It's extremely dark and depressing and not enjoyable to play in the slightest.

 

I'm claustrophobic and this game capitalizes on that big time. The story is a complete slug. 4/10

I won’t even try it just to look at graphics. I despise games like these. 

[Best]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

I won’t even try it just to look at graphics. I despise games like these. 

 

It's not fun. It's so depressing and dark. Yea, it looks extremely realistic but who gives a shit if the game sucks. 

[eventide11]

I mean, does the game ever open up at all? Or are you crawling and limping to the next plot progression? Surely this isn't the whole game?

[Best]

4 minutes ago, eventide11 said:

I mean, does the game ever open up at all? Or are you crawling and limping to the next plot progression? Surely this isn't the whole game?

 

It "opens up" but you litteraly just follow a path with absolutely nothing going on except listening to voices in your head. Which drove me up the wall. It's not a videogame. 

[eventide11]

2 hours ago, best3444 said:

 

It "opens up" but you litteraly just follow a path with absolutely nothing going on except listening to voices in your head. Which drove me up the wall. It's not a videogame. 

Same. I played about an hour and couldn't take it anymore. I mean, it's friggin gorgeous but at what cost? It's not a game. It's an interactive story with very little to do until the next interactive story time. Stellar Blade in the other hand.. Holy crap. I did NOT expect to like that game as much as I do. Korean developers have consistently impressed me thus far. Lies of P, Dave the Diver and now this? They've more than won me over

[Bacon]

Seems like a game made for YouTube

[Best]

8 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Seems like a game made for YouTube

 

I'd love for you to play this and then get your opinion. I'm being serious. 

[Bacon]

Just now, best3444 said:

 

I'd love for you to play this and then get your opinion. I'm being serious. 

I have no interest in playing it.

[Best]

10 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I have no interest in playing it.

 

Good 👍 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

 

I'd love for you to play this and then get your opinion. I'm being serious. 

 

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

I have no interest in playing it.

 

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

 

Good 👍 

[Best]

19 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

 

 

I meant I love reading Bacon's reviews and impressions. But I said good because it's better off he doesn't play this nightmare of a game at all. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

9 hours ago, best3444 said:

I seriously cannot recommend this game to anyone. It's extremely dark and depressing and not enjoyable to play in the slightest.

 

I'm claustrophobic and this game capitalizes on that big time. The story is a complete slug. 4/10

Thanks. That’s what I thought it would be like. 

[skillzdadirecta]

Credits Roll on the first game. It's interesting because I bought this when it first came out for the PS3 back in the day and I stopped playing probably about a third of the way through. I remember getting fed up with the "puzzles" in this game. I started over recently on the Xbox and while the puzzles could be a little obtuse, they didn't bother me as much this time. I actually enjoyed this more than the other recent "cinematic experience" game I played, Alan Wake 2. I asked myself why that was and it comes down to one thing... PACING. In Alan Wake 2 there were long stretches of game where nothing interesting was happening or you were flipping scenes around trying ti adavance the plot. For me a lot of the systems in Alan Wake 2 just didn't work for me and often got in the way  of the game. I didn't feel that here. The game moves and I think the internal dialogue mechanic keeps things interesting for me. The game wore out it's welcome a little towards the end but overall I enjoyed the experience. Very well acted, very well written with a story I actually wanted to see through to the end. I've played all of Ninja Theory's games to date except for their DMC remake and I almost want to check that out now. These guys can definitely tell a story. Another one in the back log down, time to download and start part 2.

[Greatoneshere]

44 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Credits Roll on the first game. It's interesting because I bought this when it first came out for the PS3 back in the day and I stopped playing probably about a third of the way through. I remember getting fed up with the "puzzles" in this game. I started over recently on the Xbox and while the puzzles could be a little obtuse, they didn't bother me as much this time. I actually enjoyed this more than the other recent "cinematic experience" game I played, Alan Wake 2. I asked myself why that was and it comes down to one thing... PACING. In Alan Wake 2 there were long stretches of game where nothing interesting was happening or you were flipping scenes around trying ti adavance the plot. For me a lot of the systems in Alan Wake 2 just didn't work for me and often got in the way  of the game. I didn't feel that here. The game moves and I think the internal dialogue mechanic keeps things interesting for me. The game wore out it's welcome a little towards the end but overall I enjoyed the experience. Very well acted, very well written with a story I actually wanted to see through to the end. I've played all of Ninja Theory's games to date except for their DMC remake and I almost want to check that out now. These guys can definitely tell a story. Another one in the back log down, time to download and start part 2.

 

The DMC remake is actually quite good, I played it just two years ago and the combat is really tight. If you like Ninja Theory, definitely give it a shot. It is different from the mainline DMC games but once you get past that it's all good. The level designs are sharp and it controls pretty well.

[skillzdadirecta]

28 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

The DMC remake is actually quite good, I played it just two years ago and the combat is really tight. If you like Ninja Theory, definitely give it a shot. It is different from the mainline DMC games but once you get past that it's all good. The level designs are sharp and it controls pretty well.

I have no loyalty to the original Devil May Cry so i should be fine.

[Spork3245]

30 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I have no loyalty to the original Devil May Cry so i should be fine.

90% of the hate it gets is “dAnTe LoOkS dIfFeReNt”, the other 10% is that back-and-forth “fuck you” scene with the one demon. The game is very enjoyable.

[Keyser_Soze]

Plus Combichrist did the soundtrack so it gets @Phaseknox seal of approval.

[Greatoneshere]

7 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

90% of the hate it gets is “dAnTe LoOkS dIfFeReNt”, the other 10% is that back-and-forth “fuck you” scene with the one demon. The game is very enjoyable.

 

Basically this. The internet tried to shit on the game on release when it seemed it was trying to be "edgy" but when you play the game it doesn't come off as try hard at all.

[Phaseknox]

13 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Credits Roll on the first game. It's interesting because I bought this when it first came out for the PS3 back in the day and I stopped playing probably about a third of the way through.

You must mean PS4, because it didn’t come out for PS3. 
 

13 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I've played all of Ninja Theory's games to date except for their DMC remake and I almost want to check that out now.

Definitely check it out, because it’s really good.

 

10 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Plus Combichrist did the soundtrack so it gets @Phaseknox seal of approval.

Yeah, and Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist did the soundtrack for Hellblade as well.

[stepee]

23 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

You must mean PS4, because it didn’t come out for PS3. 
 

Definitely check it out, because it’s really good.

 

Yeah, and Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist did the soundtrack for Hellblade as well.

 

Or they were thinking of Heavenly Sword!

[Phaseknox]

12 minutes ago, stepee said:

Or they were thinking of Heavenly Sword!

Heavenly Sword is a great game, I wanted a remaster for PS4.

[stepee]

34 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

Heavenly Sword is a great game, I wanted a remaster for PS4.

 

It’s on the list of ps3 games that are very “lost in time” in that there is no good way to play them today compared to pretty much any other system. Before that it was Xbox but the BC program MS did last gen brought a lot of those foward and emulation is getting quite performant on pc.

 

PS3 emulation is pretty rough still and Sony hasn’t emulated it itself yet. So you have stuff like Heavenly Sword, Infamous 1/2, MGS4, Lair, Motorstorm trilogy, The Puppeteer, LBP 1/2, etc that are either streaming only or you need a ps3 hooked up.

 

I’d love to see maybe with the pro or whatever for Sony to start an initiative to bring these playable on ps5 natively at 4k/60. Definitely would add a lot of value to a system they could use some more exclusive content on.

[DarkStar189]

@stepee oh man I forgot about Lair. I remember being so excited for it. I thought the screenshots looked amazing. Definitely remember being disappointed.

[stepee]

2 minutes ago, DarkStar189 said:

@stepee oh man I forgot about Lair. I remember being so excited for it. I thought the screenshots looked amazing. Definitely remember being disappointed.

 

Was really bad at launch with the forced sixaxis motion controls for movement! It’s better after they patched in gamepad support . I feel like at 4k/60 the game would still look damn good!

[DarkStar189]

2 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

Was really bad at launch with the forced sixaxis motion controls for movement! It’s better after they patched in gamepad support . I feel like at 4k/60 the game would still look damn good!

Yeah I had played it pre patch so it wasn’t great. I just checked out some gameplay videos and I have to agree, for being almost 17 years old, it doesn’t look too bad!

[skillzdadirecta]

Pretty sure I beat Lair WITH the Six Axis controls. 

[stepee]

52 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Pretty sure I beat Lair WITH the Six Axis controls. 

 

Man you EARNED that “skillz”

[skillzdadirecta]

So I played Hellblade 2 for about an hour last night... played up to the part

Spoiler

 where you fight the slaver and take him captive

Which I guess is the tutorial "stage"? Presentation and acting is top notch... damn near photo-realistic at some points. One thing I did notice was the combat felt a lot "heavier" and somewhat less responsive than the first game? Combat in the first game was pretty basic, but fun and satisfying because while Senua didn't have a lot of moves, she was pretty fluid and responsive for the most part. She seems less so in this game, but that may be because I'm still getting used to the "feel" of this game. I'm gonna play some more tonight once the sun goes down, but I'm digging this so far. Again, for me, these "cinematic experience " games live and die on their pacing. You can't have long stretches of nothing happening to move the story forward IDGAF how atmospheric your setting is. That shit is boring and it grinds the narrative to a halt... the one thing you don't want to do if you're trying to emulate a film. Senua's internal dialogue always keeps things interesting as you move from point A to Point B. We'll see if the game can keep up this pace. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[skillzdadirecta]

Just played for another hour, according to the chapter select I'm in chapter 3. Really digging the set pieces and the spectacle but the combat literally feels like thinly disguised QTE's. Maybe I'm not used to the timing yet but that's my only gripe so far. Game is really well shot and directed... like a Rober Eggers flick. 

[Best]

8 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Just played for another hour, according to the chapter select I'm in chapter 3. Really digging the set pieces and the spectacle but the combat literally feels like thinly disguised QTE's. Maybe I'm not used to the timing yet but that's my only gripe so far. Game is really well shot and directed... like a Rober Eggers flick. 

 

Is this Senua 2? I am glad you're enjoying it but I couldn't take how sophisticating and depressing it was. So fuckin dark with such limited gameplay. I guess it's a decent movie if you look at it that way. It's definitely not a videogame.