Ninja Theory announced today that Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice development just hit the Alpha stage, and the entire game is playable from beginning to end internally.
Additionally, they’ve shot all of the performance capture scenes and are in the process of putting them into Hellblade, recorded all of the VO for the voices that follow you, implemented all of the gameplay mechanics and are now refining them, completed the combat system and will begin thorough play testing, and prepped the puzzle experiences for a final art polish. Most of the music is complete as well.
However, as Product Development Ninja Dominic Matthews explains, there’s still a lot of work to do:
We’ve just hit the Alpha stage in the development of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. This is significant, because it means that for the first time the entire game is playable from beginning to end.
That doesn’t mean that the game is finished, however. There’s still a huge amount of work to be done across Hellblade. Some parts of the game are starting to look and feel just as we envisioned, whereas others are still only built to a basic level. The important thing at this stage is that all of the areas are laid out and the design clearly defined.
Next up for Hellblade is the Beta stage, where Ninja Theory can focus on the player experience – “looking at the game step-by-step, improving it along the way, honing how the game will look and feel to our players. It is at this stage that we will add a lot of the small details that make a big difference.”
The final stage of Hellblade’s development will be Mastering, where Ninja Theory smooths out any remaining bugs and ensures optimal performance on each platform.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice releases in 2017 for PlayStation 4 and PC. It was previously set for 2016, before being delayed in November.
Asked if they might sent out Alpha codes, Ninja Theory said, “We won’t. As a story-led experience, we want everyone to have the chance to go through the journey at the same time.”
[Source: PlayStation Blog]
