Remember that recent third-person action game with a mythological Norse setting and a (mostly) continuous camera? No, not 2018’sGod of War, I’m talking aboutSenua’s Sacrifice: Hellbladewhich pulled off the same technical feat a year earlier. Both sequels,RagnarokandSaga, reuse the cinematic technique, and both times it works so much better for Senua than it does Kratos.
Let’s just get this out of the way - the shots aren’t truly continuous. They’remostlycontinuous though, and that’s close enough for me. It’s an impressive technique in film, brought to mainstream attention in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 stage-adapted thriller, Rope. There, it’s used to keep tension in the film and give it a more play-like quality, and it’s also not truly continuous. Edits are cleverly hidden to give it the appearance of a single, continuous shot.
Senua Uses The Single-Shot Technique Better Than Kratos
In Hellblade and God of War, the purpose of the continuous shot is to highlight the inner journey of protagonists Kratos and Senua. Senua is a Celtic warrior whose head is filled with nasty whispers—the Furies, she calls them. She must journey into Hel and quite literally confront her demons. Kratos, on the other hand, is a former god, now trying to be a better father. He must work to suppress his rage and learn patience.
As a player, being bombarded with the cacophony of unreliable voices in Senua’s head while being unable to get a break helps to firmly put us in her shoes andpartially feel what her psychosis is like. In God of War, while the continuous camera works to centre the series’ newfound priority on character development, it feels more restrictive—like an idea someone had in a meeting that everyone thought was cool but doesn’t actually add to the experience of playing the game.
I adored the action in God of War’s Greek saga but found it lacking in the Norse games. This is a series that was known for its quick time events and boss battles of epic proportions. Kratos used to fight inside Titans, across whole cities, he even killed Posideon while the camera switched into the God of the Sea’s own point of view, making me flinch when Kratos shoved his thumbs into what felt like my own eyes.
In the Norse saga, even fighting Thor or storming Asgard has to remain relatively grounded because the camera needs to. It’s a technique that works well when someone is fighting inner battles, like Senua does, and I think it would have been great to have several extended sequences where the camera remains focused on Kratos for long periods of time, but it’s less impressive when I want to feel the scale of fighting through Elvish hordes or killing Baldur on top of a dead Giant and am instead stuck behind the bald Spartan.
If You Advertise A Continuous Shot, We Look For Cuts
The camera should take away limits, not add them. In Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, a Giant erupts out of the ground, her body contorting and twisting menacingly as she folds over backwards to look Senua in the eye. The camera stays on the Giant the entire time, and the sequence is terrifying. The closest shot in the Norse God of War games is when Jörmungandr slithers up from his lake, but we still never get a full sense of his unimaginable size.
The technique feels wasted on Kratos due to the fact both modern God of War games take a good few play sessions to complete, so we, as players, break the shot numerous times. Maybe because I had to rush for a review deadline, but I finished Hellblade 2 in one long play session and it wasn’t until halfway through I realised it was all one continuous shot.
The fact Hellblade’s marketing didn’t make a meal out of this works in its favour, too. Admittedly, there wasn’t much marketing at all for Hellblade 2, but the God of War developers banging on so much about how technically impressive the one shot camera was made it infinitely more noticeable than if they’d just thrown a few cuts in or let us discover it for ourselves. If the point of a continuous shot is immersion, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to it, because then everyone just looks for the few hidden cuts there are.
One feature that helps elevate Hellblade’s camera over God of War’s is the lack of UI or need to constantly be in menus. Senua doesn’t get new equipment or upgrades, it’s just her, her sword, and her mirror charm. I’ll admit the lack of direction via UI hindered some of my experience with Hellblade 2 as I got a bit confused with what I could interact with, but it worked brilliantly for the camera and enabled seamless transitions between gameplay and cutscenes. Again, these got annoying, because I wasn’t always sure when I was in control of Senua or not, but the point is it helped the direction of that camera.
In God of War, I’m constantly breaking the shot by going into menus, equipping new runes, changing my armour, upgrading my weapons, so why bother with the continuous camera if it’s just going to get in the way of the spectacle? In Hellblade, it works to make the game more cinematic, but the gamified elements of God of War actively work against the cinematic quality the technique tries to assert. It feels unnecessary. Worse than that, by stripping the series of the colossal boss fights it was known for, it feels limiting.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
WHERE TO PLAY
Following her trials and tribulations in her debut game, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 sees the titular protagonist again have to battle the darkness in order to liberate others from a tyrannical regime.
