Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 [XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

Unveiled on stage at the 2021 Game Awards, the Senua's Saga: Hellblade II gameplay-reveal features shots of Senua, Hellblade's main protagonist, fighting a giant troll that emerges from the water. To bring this critical scene to life, Ninja Theory, a part of XBOX Game Studios, turned to Ziva Dynamics for the most high-performance, real-time character.

The Ziva Dynamics artists began by building the troll in Ziva VFX, the soft tissue simulation software. This process was expedited by a combination of Ziva's Anatomy Transfer tools and their proprietary generic male anatomy simulation. Ziva then added the troll's torn, hanging skin flaps to the simulation as a coupled skin pass. At this point, the asset was complete with excitable muscles, jiggling fat, and wrinkling skin, all while being over 40ft tall in world-space so accurate gravity would influence on all of those anatomy layers.

The tradeoff for the gigantic film-quality results, however, was a render speed of 6 hours per 50 frames, leading to hundreds of hours of baking on a 15 machine AWS cluster. So, to transform this large film asset into a real-time game character, Ziva fed over 12GB of performance capture data along with the high-quality Ziva VFX simulation into their Ziva Real-Time Trainer. This technology used machine learning to train the troll asset to perform all of the animations along with novel poses in real-time while maintaining the rich dynamics of the original simulation. As a result, the final ML troll body performed at a fully-interactive frame rate of under 3 milliseconds per frame in Unreal Engine 4.26 and was ready to be handed back to the innovation-loving Ninja Theory team.

https://www.newswire.com/news/senua...y-reveals-character-by-ziva-dynamics-21569515
 
Looks like Uncharted "gameplay" walking/running interspersed with mini cut-scenes.

Edit: Essentially that would make it all real-time, which is astounding. Honestly, I better get used to 30fps gaming again. Even with a 3080, I am expecting the worst.

The 3080 is the gpu you think you'll be using. But when this game hits you'll end up buying a 4080 or a 7800 lol. I keep saying my ryzen 3800 and 3080 geforce will get me through a few years. I think its doubtful lol
 
As a result, the final ML troll body performed at a fully-interactive frame rate of under 3 milliseconds per frame in Unreal Engine 4.26 and was ready to be handed back to the innovation-loving Ninja Theory team.
I thought they moved to UE5. The micro detail on the ground make me think it was UE5 in action.
 
I thought they moved to UE5. The micro detail on the ground make me think it was UE5 in action.

That's what Ziva Dynamics was using, there's no mention in the article of what version of UE Ninja Theory is using.

It may be that Ziva Dynamics hasn't moved to UE5 yet due to the state of their internal tools. While data is easily imported from UE4.x to UE5, tools may need more work to make the transition.

Regards,
SB
 
So going from the demo.. I believe the game will be about Senua "confronting her inner demons ( referred to as "the gods" by the tribe), and quelling the voices insider her head. I think that the tribe is conducting a sort of ritual which allows her to manifest these inner demons as actual physical beings which take different forms.. in this case, a giant, which she will have to battle and overcome in different ways depending on how she relates to them.. all in order for her to overcome her guilt and restore her mind.

You can see in the beginning she's within the circle, the other tribesmen chanting, conducting the ritual, then she's transported over to the cave entrance where her and the others go on a mission. In this case her plan is to lure the giant out into the open, into a trap where they can light it on fire. Her and the tribe seem to have a plan but are quickly overwhelmed, and all the while Senua hearing the voices in her head pulling her in different directions with doubt, fear, anxiety, and sadness.. and during this battle she realizes that she somehow knows this "being".. and she is beginning to be able to piece things together.

I think this game could be a "Shadow of the Colossus" type Hellblade game where there are these bosses, which are Senua's inner demons manifested, that this tribe can help her to summon and battle. I think along the way, some tribe has found Senua, understands that she's ill and carries heavy burdens and are able to conduct these rituals to help her confront and overcome them.

This demo was SO cool imo.. What a cool idea to show off as a demo scenario. I absolutely love what they did here and I can't wait to see more.
 
So going from the demo.. I believe the game will be about Senua "confronting her inner demons ( referred to as "the gods" by the tribe), and quelling the voices insider her head. I think that the tribe is conducting a sort of ritual which allows her to manifest these inner demons as actual physical beings which take different forms.. in this case, a giant, which she will have to battle and overcome in different ways depending on how she relates to them.. all in order for her to overcome her guilt and restore her mind.

You can see in the beginning she's within the circle, the other tribesmen chanting, conducting the ritual, then she's transported over to the cave entrance where her and the others go on a mission. In this case her plan is to lure the giant out into the open, into a trap where they can light it on fire. Her and the tribe seem to have a plan but are quickly overwhelmed, and all the while Senua hearing the voices in her head pulling her in different directions with doubt, fear, anxiety, and sadness.. and during this battle she realizes that she somehow knows this "being".. and she is beginning to be able to piece things together.

I think this game could be a "Shadow of the Colossus" type Hellblade game where there are these bosses, which are Senua's inner demons manifested, that this tribe can help her to summon and battle. I think along the way, some tribe has found Senua, understands that she's ill and carries heavy burdens and are able to conduct these rituals to help her confront and overcome them.

This demo was SO cool imo.. What a cool idea to show off as a demo scenario. I absolutely love what they did here and I can't wait to see more.

Yup. The fact the giant said "help me" in the end was chilling. Very SoTC-like. There is no telling the giant was actually violent. he was just trying to chill, and the people attacked him first.

Maybe "integrating the shadow" is part of the theme of the game. Rather than repress her inner demons, Senua learns to incorporate them into her being, finally finding inner balance that way?

All speculation though...
 
is this coming to last gen too ? If so, i know UE5 is compatible with last gen, but not nanite nor lumen. If HB2 uses both, i wonder how it'll end up looking on last gen, the difference should be pretty big, more like typical RES/LOD differences we're seeing with games released so far.
 
is this coming to last gen too ? If so, i know UE5 is compatible with last gen, but not nanite nor lumen. If HB2 uses both, i wonder how it'll end up looking on last gen, the difference should be pretty big, more like typical RES/LOD differences we're seeing with games released so far.
no way this quality is comming to last gen, I still not sure we don't see some donwgrade in the end as for example fire on this trailer is offline rendering level
 
now thats the generation jump

To be fair, if hellblade 2 was made for Xbox One, it still look a lot better. The first one had great assets but very washed out and inconsistent lighting even for its time. Guess it was the adaptation of the team into a PBR pipeline...
 
I feel like that hellblade video was just captured oddly. I don't remember it having raised black levels like that. But maybe it does, or I adjusted the brightness in-game.
 
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