In their latest development diary for Hellblade, Ninja Theory share a look at how they have prototyped the world for the game. Since Hellblade is being developed by a team of just 13 people, it required the studio to be efficient about how they designed and populated environments, and you can see how they did it in the diary.
Meanwhile, enemies were approached in a similarly smart fashion. Enemies in Hellblade are all humanoid in shape and are part of a unified Viking clan. Ninja Theory’s character modeler created a single enemy, and used its basic frame and rig to create other variants with different features and silhouettes.
In terms of the combat system, Ninja Theory began by trying to perfect a single attack, making it look and feel good to use. From that point on, it was a matter of creating fast attacks, heavy attacks, charge attacks, blocks, evades, and more. Directional blocking and evading are currently features that are present in the Hellblade prototype.
Ninja Theory also say they’re interested in the idea of altered perception within the game. This one is a little harder to explain, so I would recommend the development diary to see what they have in mind. In general, this is one of the more informative dev diaries Ninja Theory have put out about Hellblade’s development.
Hellblade is currently in development for PC and PlayStation 4.
