Posted by It’s always a bold move to build your game around something decidedly not-fun, especially in a market that thrives on cutting-edge visuals and cathartic gameplay. Even as someone who believes art has value beyond mere entertainment, one has to admit that a grim, no-holds barred reflection on mental health is something of a hard sell. Audiences are always going to be more receptive to ‘fun’ than they are to ‘depressing, but interesting,’ and that’s the uncomfortable niche that Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is straining to fill with every ounce of its being.
In brief: Hellblade follows Senua, a woman suffering from some non-specific psychosis, as she journeys through a magical island and into the underworld in an attempt to rescue her dead husband. Along the way she is plagued by her past and various symptoms of her psychosis, which manifest as whispering voices in her head, along with floating symbols, images, paranoia, and self-loathing. The game never attempts to diagnose or name Senua’s condition, with other characters in-game believing her to be either cursed or gifted with some sort of insight, particularly her mother, who repeatedly encourages Senua to embrace her “sight into the underworld.”
The developer, Ninja Theory, has spoken at length about the research and interviews conducted to accurately recreate and depict Senua’s experience, and yet I’m not convinced that Hellblade truly succeeds as a healthy or positive representation of mental health issues. While I’m in no position to comment on the accuracy of her symptoms, Senua’s life is so fundamentally distinct from the modern world that I struggle to identify meaningful connections to the experience of real-world psychosis. Her symptoms are not only heavily influenced by her world’s mythology and religion, but are simultaneously encouraged and worsened by a culture that has no real concept of mental health. She spends most of her childhood isolated and abused by a village that brands her as cursed, her mother actively encourages her to listen to the voices, her home is ravaged by plague, which is then blamed on her, and finally her husband is slaughtered by invaders. Senua’s abusive upbringing is a critical, if not the critical factor in an overwhelming number of her personal conflicts. Even if her symptoms are 100% accurate to what someone in her position would see and feel, her journey is deeply individual, so much so that I wonder how many people could possibly have experiences that directly relate.
Still, there’s a bigger issue at play, a trap that many stories like this fall into: ambiguity. Senua’s journey is marked by all kinds of supernatural events. Nearly every plot point involves the direct intervention of gods, spirits, or other magical occurrences that cannot be explained via natural events. This of course raises an obvious problem: if the magical things Senua encounters are, on some level, real, then she’s not really mentally ill, is she? If the voices in her head really are warning her about real things that actually do happen, and if the gods and spirits she encounters actually are actual manifestations of magical beings, is she really suffering from delusions by any modern definition?
Given the presentation of the story, and the lack of any deeper context, I find it difficult to believe that none of the supernatural elements are real, but if we extend that to its logical conclusion, don’t the events of the story then prove that Senua’s mother is right? That her symptoms are a connection to a magic and afterlife that demonstrably exist? Tying a real world mental illness to a fictionalized spirit world doesn’t fully sit right with me, and it would seem to undercut the developer’s intentions to faithfully and respectfully depict their given subject matter. It implies that Senua’s experiences are not an illness at all, but a condition that lets her see the world for what it really is, which is a troubling message to send about a mental illness defined by a disconnect from external reality.
Maybe Senua is just connected to the spirit world and also suffering from psychosis? But that’s a pretty suspicious coincidence, and if only some of the things we see are real, but some are delusions, how on earth are audiences expected to delineate between the two? I suppose we could just assume that Senua arrives on the island and then everything except the environment itself is just her hallucinations, but if this is supposed to be a ‘realistic’ depiction of psychosis, that interpretation starts to push the bounds of credibility, raising the question of how Senua’s hallucinations successfully navigate her through the entire island and towards emotional closure.
Ultimately, Hellblade’s portrayal of psychosis, despite its developer’s intentions, succeeds more as a stylistic element than it does as a meaningful exploration of mental illness. If you can separate the narrative from any commentary on real-world psychosis, it’s a unique and engaging story that at least stands out among the crowd. It’s only when you try to read closely that troubling patterns start to emerge. Still, the upcoming sequel: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, is going to have to grapple even further with some of these questions, and I’m curious to see how far Ninja Theory is willing to push the concept, hopefully without making any serious missteps along the way.