Hellblade’s Xbox Series upgrades deliver the best console experience yet • Eurogamer.net

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice left quite an impact when it released some years ago. Developer Ninja Theory delivered an exceptional game within a limited budget, combining beautiful audio-visuals with solid technical underpinnings provided by Unreal Engine 4. Its powerful exploration of mental health challenges made it stand out from the crowd – and with over six million copies sold, the game was a tremendous success, scaling beautifully from high-end PCs down to Nintendo Switch. And now, Hellblade returns, looking better than ever before thanks to an Xbox Series console upgrade.

This new revision of the game may have come as something of a surprise, but it’s certainly welcome – it’s a great way to re-introduce gamers to the original before the sequel completes development, while at the same time, Hellblade continues to attract new players on Xbox Game Pass, so why not revise the title for a generation of users? The first surprise is that the upgrade for Series consoles isn’t actually by Ninja Theory itself specifically. QLOC – who handled the impressive Switch port – take point here, with the studio promising updated materials, particles, pushed out draw distances, new frame-rate options and hardware-accelerated ray tracing reflections.

Multiple modes are available in this one but our primary focus is on the newly embellished enriched mode, which adds DXR ray tracing and a whole bunch of extras. It’s available on both Series S and X consoles, deployed primarily on water throughout the game. Any surface previously using screen-space reflections now gets a big RT upgrade – but it’s fair to say that the improvement varies on a per-scene content. The main benefit is that when the reflector is occluded from view, the reflection remains visible, while standard SSR would see sudden gaps appear in the reflection. Don’t expect massive changes here – RT simply allows for much higher fidelity reflections where appropriate, though there is some unintentional flicker, while in select circumstances, SSR reflections are not replaced by RT alternatives.

There are many other upgrades, though. Shadow maps for world geometry – including foliage – are now included, whereas the last-gen versions concentrated more on less accurate screen-space renditions instead. Volumetric lighting appears to be of a higher quality on Series X while the average resolution is higher, lending the game a sharper overall appearance. Ambient shadowing has also changed – on Xbox One X, there are visible ambient occlusion halos visible all over the place, but on Series X, the solution to contact shadows has changed. In some scenes it may look missing, but on the whole, it appears somewhat more natural given the lighting conditions.

Meanwhile, I also noted adjustments to bloom intensity and yes – there is more far-off detail resolved on more expansive areas. On top of that, I noted the addition of shadow casting lights attached to elements like fire – more lights now cast real shadows, which was not the case on Xbox One X. There’s also a change in overall colour grading – many scenes now exhibit differences in color between the two versions. On top of that, there are post-process changes too: stacked up against Xbox One X, depth of field seemed improved with cleaner bokeh shapes.