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It's also a much worse message if it's "all a dream". If she's actually just getting revenge as a mechanism for working through her problems, thats... not as good. If she's actually going to the underworld where her issues are manifested as obstacles due to the nature of underworlds, she's still conquering her problems, but in way that speaks to their universality. If her journey is literal, than the story is saying "you can be a hero, even if you suffer from mental illness". If she's just off murdering vikings, the message is "mentally ill people might go on a confused and murderous rampage of revenge and work out their problems in the process".
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Sep 2, 2017 20:27
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I don't think that's the case. In the event that it was actually a viking stronghold that she was rampaging through it would be a pretty straight forward revenge story. Once again, I'm not denying that "what's really going on" isn't the intent of the story or that you'll get the most out of it fixating on that. it's just with the way everything is framed it's natural to have some curiosity about it, and I don't think we need to say that people are missing the point when they bring it up, because they very well may not be, maybe they just want to chat about a game in it's thread. I think it would have been more interesting if they hadn't driven the mental illness thing home so hard in marketing and even putting it in the opening credits. it would have been way more intriguing to have just thrown players into it and let them come to their own conclusions.
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Sep 2, 2017 20:42
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Snak posted:If her journey is literal, than the story is saying "you can be a hero, even if you suffer from mental illness". If she's just off murdering vikings, the message is "mentally ill people might go on a confused and murderous rampage of revenge and work out their problems in the process". I think the latter reading is what makes that Zero Punctuation review miss the point entirely. He criticized the game for framing psychotic people as being good at killing people when, if I remember correctly, Senua's path to becoming a warrior begins with her crush asking her to join the warrior trials with him. That's the first of his reviews I've seen in a long time. Why anyone would rely on reviews nowadays when you can use good word of mouth is just beyond me. Anyway, if you like the music in Hellblade I would recommend Wardruna. They're a Norwegian folk band that puts a hell of a lot of effort into making the most authentic sounding Old Norse music they can. Apparently their music is featured pretty heavily on that Vikings show. "Helvegen" and "Völuspá" are two songs that I've been listening to over and over since I found them.
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Sep 2, 2017 21:05
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veni veni veni posted:While I don't disagree with you, it's logical to speculate what really happened. It's a question that won't get answered, but it doesn't need to be shut down either. Read my post again. I'm not shutting down the discussion, rather I said the ambiguity is what makes the game interesting. And precisely because it is subjective, the question of what is real and what is not is ultimately irrelevant. Everything was real to Senua.
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Sep 2, 2017 21:14
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veni veni veni posted:I don't think that's the case. In the event that it was actually a viking stronghold that she was rampaging through it would be a pretty straight forward revenge story. A straightforward revenge story is pretty uninteresting, though?
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Sep 2, 2017 21:33
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exquisite tea posted:Read my post again. I'm not shutting down the discussion, rather I said the ambiguity is what makes the game interesting. And precisely because it is subjective, the question of what is real and what is not is ultimately irrelevant. Everything was real to Senua. It's this. There's a tendency for people to try and separate the real from the unreal in stories with unreliable narrators (especially games, Silent Hill 2 ruined so many of us), but the best answer is usually that the question isn't relevant. Hellblade's about an exploration of revenge, recovery, and mental illness viewed through a Norse mythic arc - whether or not the baddies Senua is butchering are actually there doesn't matter much, because in the end they're still just props for the sake of the story's message.
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Sep 2, 2017 21:46
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It's the same kind of situation as asking if Rick Deckard was really a Replicant, or who among MacReady and Childs was still human at the end of the Thing. The presence of the question is more interesting than providing an answer.
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Sep 2, 2017 21:48
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I get all of that, and I've said it a bunch of times. I'm saying that if someone wants to talk about just let them talk about it. Every time someone mentions it, it's followed by a bunch of "irrelevant" posts that drowned out the people who actually want to talk about it. It's possible to wonder what was "really" going on and still understand the intent of the game and the importance of ambiguity. Even if it is largely irrelevant and will never be explained, what's the big deal if people want to chat about it and speculate? It's not a particularly subtle game, I think everyone here gets what they were going for. It doesn't need to be explained to us. Edit: just to be clear because it reads kind of like it is, I am not intending to be snarky or combative with that post. veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Sep 2, 2017 |
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Sep 2, 2017 22:50
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veni veni veni posted:I get all of that, and I've said it a bunch of times. I'm saying that if someone wants to talk about just let them talk about it. Every time someone mentions it, it's followed by a bunch of "irrelevant" posts that drowned out the people who actually want to talk about it. It's possible to wonder what was "really" going on and still understand the intent of the game and the importance of ambiguity. People like to be right on the internet, is why. Probably.
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Sep 2, 2017 23:07
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I don't get why people are calling the Dog Boss Fenrir when it is clearly Garm. Who is Hel's literal watchdog in Norse Mythology. The term Helhound thought to have came from him.
MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 2, 2017 |
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Sep 2, 2017 23:09
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Hellblade: Norse Mythology is badass
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Sep 2, 2017 23:21
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MonsterEnvy posted:I don't get why people are calling the Dog Boss Fenrir when it is clearly Garm. Who is Hel's literal watchdog in Norse Mythology. The term Helhound thought to have came from him.  
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Sep 2, 2017 23:29
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Even the developers forgot, man. Garm has got to be pissed at not getting his proper credit.
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Sep 2, 2017 23:53
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The game calls him Garm so the cheevo writer goofed.
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Sep 3, 2017 00:09
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I looked it up, and in some versions of the mythology, Garmr and Fenrir are the same creature. I was gonna make a big effort post about the sources of mythology in this game, but I got distracted by Factorio.
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Sep 3, 2017 00:20
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I usually don't get mad at Yahtzee's reviews but he gets actual facts wrong (the permadeath thing, for starters) and the whole tone of it was like "punching downwards". Like yeah, it's his gimmick to hate, but I can think of dozens of reviews this year where he talked about how good the game was while criticizing the few things it got wrong. Dumping so hard on a $30 passion project that at least tries some cool stuff is just lame. I expected him to at least praise the fact the game has no HUD and teaches you everything about how to play it without text boxes saying "press button to parry!" etc.
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Sep 3, 2017 04:25
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Oxxidation posted:The game calls him Garm so the cheevo writer goofed. Developers too checking it out. So yeah the cheevo people made a mistake here.
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Sep 3, 2017 04:33
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I'm telling you, Garm and Fenrir are the same creature in this version. It's not even really a mistake. You gotta remember, Senua is learning this poo poo like 3rd-hand, also. Edit: When does the game call him Garm? Snak fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Sep 3, 2017 |
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Sep 3, 2017 05:11
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This river of corpses is quite the place.
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Sep 3, 2017 05:24
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Snak posted:I'm telling you, Garm and Fenrir are the same creature in this version. It's not even really a mistake. You gotta remember, Senua is learning this poo poo like 3rd-hand, also. Garmr his name can also be translated as. But like checking with the Devs it appears that was just a mistake. Fenrir and Garmr are different in their telling. As for when the dark voice calls him Garmr at the start.
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Sep 3, 2017 05:58
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Right, but I mean I don't remember him being called Garmr in the game either. I'm not disagreeing, I saying I don't remember. Why do you think Garmr and Fenrir are different in this telling?
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Sep 3, 2017 06:14
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He was called Garmr ingame the moment you get to when his mechanic shows up.
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Sep 3, 2017 07:05
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Garmr fuel
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Sep 3, 2017 07:07
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Snak posted:Right, but I mean I don't remember him being called Garmr in the game either. I'm not disagreeing, I saying I don't remember. Because like I just said. The Devs said that was a mistake made on the achievement. It was never supposed to be Fenrir.
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Sep 3, 2017 07:40
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MonsterEnvy posted:Because like I just said. The Devs said that was a mistake made on the achievement. It was never supposed to be Fenrir. I'm not trying to criticize you, but I can't find where the devs have said this, do you have a link?
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Sep 3, 2017 08:14
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precision posted:I usually don't get mad at Yahtzee's reviews but he gets actual facts wrong (the permadeath thing, for starters) and the whole tone of it was like "punching downwards". Like yeah, it's his gimmick to hate, but I can think of dozens of reviews this year where he talked about how good the game was while criticizing the few things it got wrong. Dumping so hard on a $30 passion project that at least tries some cool stuff is just lame. I expected him to at least praise the fact the game has no HUD and teaches you everything about how to play it without text boxes saying "press button to parry!" etc. Yahtzee's entire gimmick for years has been willfully misunderstanding even the most basic conventions of video games, which for a game like Hellblade that tells you nothing about how to play it must have been a field day. He's the living embodiment of the too cool gamer stereotype who doesn't need any of that handholding while failing to grasp even tutorial level-like mechanics, either out of a tired allegiance to his perennial games r bad tone or because he's a tremendous idiot. Also unsurprisingly, the type of viewer who is still into ZP videos in 2017 has already decided that Hellblade is an SJW game for feminists because it has an empathetic female protagonist who isn't even that hot.
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Sep 3, 2017 09:01
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I bought this game and it's quite beautiful but gosh is it ever spooky. I don't deal very well with spooky things so this is going to take me forever to finish haha
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Sep 3, 2017 09:17
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Fauxbot posted:I bought this game and it's quite beautiful but gosh is it ever spooky. I don't deal very well with spooky things so this is going to take me forever to finish haha If it helps there's not really much in jump scares. It's all atmosphere. Be brave and plow through.
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Sep 3, 2017 11:19
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Snak posted:Yeah, she was really good. I was really surprised when I IMDBed her that she hasn't acted before. I figured she was a professional actress they hired because of the demanding role. She knocked it out of the park. Yeah, my only tiny criticism of her performance is that a couple of lines of her monologue towards the end have her German accent coming though a little stronger than the rest of the game. It was jarring for me because I wasn't sure who was supposed to be talking at that point. I kind of liked that she had a hybrid Euro background though. Whatever the Pict language sounded like, it sure as hell wouldn't have been contemporary British.
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Sep 7, 2017 19:37
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In case you were hoping this game did well, Hellblade was the most downloaded PSN store game in August for Europe and second only to Madden in the US. It's currently hovering around 150k copies sold on Steam, and Ninja Theory themselves have said they'd need to sell somewhere between 300-400k total to break even. I really hope their example will lead to more games like this in the future. Short, narrative-driven games with high production values that aren't cheap pixel art pieces of crap are extremely my thing.
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Sep 9, 2017 09:27
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exquisite tea posted:In case you were hoping this game did well, Hellblade was the most downloaded PSN store game in August for Europe and second only to Madden in the US. It's currently hovering around 150k copies sold on Steam, and Ninja Theory themselves have said they'd need to sell somewhere between 300-400k total to break even. I really hope their example will lead to more games like this in the future. Short, narrative-driven games with high production values that aren't cheap pixel art pieces of crap are extremely my thing. Let me tell you about this little game called Observer 
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Sep 9, 2017 16:26
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I'll get around to playing it eventually but Divinity: Original Sin II is coming up soon and that's going to be a mega-time waster.
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Sep 9, 2017 17:05
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I love all the various combat animations, like how Senua throws drunken, desperate punches when she's close to dying.
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Sep 9, 2017 17:36
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New patch, no idea what it did. How come nobody knows the real answer as to whether the game erases your save file? I keep seeing stupid people trashing the game for doing that, but as far as I can Google, Ninja Theory haven't actually said if it does and some guy tried dying dozens of times and never had his save erased.
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Sep 9, 2017 20:20
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Because everybody already knows the answer: It doesn't
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Sep 9, 2017 20:59
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It's funny, actually. The game pulls that old trick of being completely honest, but just vague enough that you completely misinterpret what it said. The exact text that appears on the screen reads "The dark rot will grow each time you fail. If the rot reaches Senua's head, her quest will be over, and all progress will be lost." All this is borne out in the game; what isn't said is that the dark rot is Senua's personal metaphor for the fear she has of her mental illness (as well as a gameplay device to put stress on the player) rather than a permadeath mechanic. In any case, the game clues you in that something's off when the rot grows after you kill Valraven and Surt and starts advancing/retreating arbitrarily after multiple deaths.
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Sep 9, 2017 21:27
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It would be nice if Ninja Theory would come right out and say it never happens, though, because then all the people claiming that it's happened to them (who all just happen to also hate the game for being "SJW") will look even more stupid than they already do.
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Sep 9, 2017 21:44
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precision posted:It would be nice if Ninja Theory would come right out and say it never happens, though, because then all the people claiming that it's happened to them (who all just happen to also hate the game for being "SJW") will look even more stupid than they already do. It doesn't happen. I've seen someone's rot all the way up their shoulder, and they died but it just went down to their elbow.
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Sep 9, 2017 21:51
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SirSamVimes posted:It doesn't happen. I've seen someone's rot all the way up their shoulder, and they died but it just went down to their elbow. Yeah - when I was hosed by a game breaking bug I must have died 100+ times to 'the Beast' and the rot just started moving to random lengths up the arm.
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Sep 9, 2017 21:57
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I died at least 20 times during the Burning House segment, and then a bunch later during the Bridge, and had the same thing happen (reset to elbow), on Hard. It's ridiculous that people are claiming it's happened to them, or that they care so much about this game to make poo poo up.
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Sep 9, 2017 22:04
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